Geneva, December 2018
Preamble. In the era known as the Anthropocene, where humanity becomes a telluric force capable of influencing the future of Mother Earth, it should give itself the means to influence its own future. This is the ambition of the Charter of Interdependence carried by the Collegium International. The observation that interdependence increases with the intensification of globalisation has become obvious; the need to regulate it through appropriate governance has become a brutal emergency in order to keep the world-vessel afloat.
As Edgar Morin, Honorary President of the Collegium, sums it up: "Spaceship Earth continues its course at full speed in a process with three faces: globalisation, Westernisation and development. Everything is now interdependent, but at the same time everything is separate."
Since its creation in 2002, the Collegium has worked on the concept of solidary and responsible interdependence and its application to global governance, which cannot be conceived on the state model alone, but must include supra-state and trans-state actors, both public and private, and civil society.
Three principles for a Charter of Interdependence:
1. Preserving differences. Globality is not uniformity. It recognises differences and feeds on them, refusing standardisation on a single hegemonic model. Globality is at once multiple and one: "multiple", it implies a certain pluralism; "one", it calls for a common ordering — close to the "ordered pluralism" that brings differences together without erasing them.
2. Promoting solidarity. Solidarities fall under a common governance, but which one? As globalisation spreads, the classic democratic separation of the three powers seems less and less transposable on a global scale. It is increasingly non-state actors who take part in the counter-powers. This "Governance of Knowledge, Wills and Powers" also calls, paradoxically, for a reterritorialisation: "Act in your place, think with the World", said Édouard Glissant.
3. Distributing responsibilities. For the whole to be coherent, responsibilities must be distributed on the basis of common objectives: those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Earth Summit and the Earth Charter (2000), the Unesco Convention on cultural diversity (2005); the 8 Millennium Development Goals and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (2015); and, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the UDHR, two additional objectives: "universal hospitality" and "outlawing extreme poverty".
Conclusion. The Charter of Interdependence is not a utopia, but an emergency. Faced with an already perceptible reality, it would be an instrument of navigation, designed to be interactive and evolving. The Collegium International undertakes its creation today as a solemn appeal to the United Nations and its Secretary-General, who has already expressed his support for this project.