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We have entered a new era — one of global anguish and anxiety, pressed by the brutal urgency of the present and the need to act without delay. The hope of reversing the trend cannot take root in traditional reflexes. The time has come for constructive provocations and the boldest reversals against the usual order of things. If it is urgent to warn, it is even more urgent to begin.
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We must face an unprecedented combination of global crises: exhaustion of natural resources, irreversible destruction of biodiversity, disruption of the global financial system, dehumanisation of the international economy, famines and shortages, viral pandemics, political disintegration… None of these phenomena can be considered in isolation. All are strongly interconnected and form a single "polycrisis" threatening this world with a "polycatastrophe".
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Because these great crises of the 21st century are global, men and women throughout the world must absolutely take the measure of their interdependence. There is no butterfly effect here, but the grave and powerful reality that it is our common home that threatens to collapse — and that there can only be a collective salvation.
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The advent of this "global community of destiny" calls for the proclamation of the principle of planetary intersolidarity, a true "Declaration of Interdependence" — that is, the establishment of a global governance worthy of the name.
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The first step towards defining this global solidarity is the universal recognition of the concept of interdependence. We therefore solemnly call on the countries that feel most threatened by global warming to join their voices in the climate negotiations.
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Faithful to the values it embodies, the Collegium International declares its will to contribute actively to the indispensable advent of global governance: by convening a World Convention; by setting up a virtual platform for civil society; by exercising the most uncompromising vigilance over the course of the world.
The nineteenth century was that of industrial nations and their wars, the twentieth that of the reign of the masses and total wars. Let us listen to the underground currents of history: the twenty-first will be the century of global governance — or it will not be.
If it is urgent to warn, it is even more urgent to begin. Let us begin!
São Paulo, November 2009 — for Collegium-International.org: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Michel Rocard, Milan Kučan, Stéphane Hessel, Edgar Morin, René Passet, Michael W. Doyle. Published in La Croix, 17 December 2009.