Precursors and parallels

Precursors and parallels

World Order Models Project

Richard A. Falk, A Study of Future Worlds (New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 1975).

Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, and Samuel S. Kim. The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993).

 

Hayward R. Alker, Tahir Amin, Thomas J. Biersteker, and Takashi Inoguchi, “Twelve World Order Debates Which Have Made Our Days”,

Limits to Growth: Club of Rome

The Limits to Growth: Abstract, Eduard Pestel. A Report to The Club of Rome, Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III, 1972

About the Club of Rome

World Problematique is a concept created by the Club of Rome to describe the set of the crucial problems – political, social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological and cultural – facing humanity. The complexity of the world problematique lies in the high level of mutual interdependence of all these problems on the one hand, and in the long time it often takes until the impact of action and reaction in this complex system becomes visible.

A report to the Club of Rome should:

1 have a global perspective;

2  a long term approach indicating future trends;

3 an interdisciplinary approach including interaction of political, social, cultural, ecological scientific and technological problems;

4 a distinctively global approach that should not limit the possibility to focus on specific sectors;

5 highlight the importance and the enormous potential of target groups;

6 concentrate an practical suggestions for ways to tackle problems.

The Limits to Growth – the 30 Year Update, Donnella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows, Chelsea Green, 2004.

Blueprint for Survival

A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist, Vol. 2 No. 1, January 1972.

A Blueprint for Survival was published in January 1972, occupying all of The Ecologist Vol. 2 No.1, in advance of the world’s first ever Environment Summit: the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm. So great was demand for the Blueprint that its was subsequently republished in paperback by Penguin books on 14 September 1972. The principal authors were Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen, with additional help from Michael Allaby, John Davoll, and Sam Lawrence. 

The next thirty years, Edward Goldsmith, 2000.

When I founded The Ecologist I didn’t believe that by the year 2000 we would still be leading the ‘advanced’ lifestyles that we in the industrialised world lead today. As we wrote in A Blueprint for Survival, a special issue of The Ecologist, in January 1972,

The principal defect of the industrial way of life, with its ethos of expansion, is that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born today is inevitable – unless it continues to be sustained a while longer by an entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mankind.

Nearly thirty years later I stand by this statement though I have to admit that I thought at the time that it was very optimistic, but the modern industrial system was obviously more resilient than I thought, and the natural world better capable of absorbing its increasingly destructive impact. Predictions are always dangerous, of course. However, for me the most striking feature of the next thirty years will be the major and increasingly disruptive discontinuities that will make life on this planet ever more difficult and more precarious. The discontinuities I refer to are likely to occur in four areas:

Union of International associations

About the UIA

The Union of International Associations (UIA) – non-profit, apolitical, independent, and non-governmental – is an extraordinary scientific research institute and documentation centre. It focuses on a topic of increasing relevance: the nature and evolution of international civil society. Since 1907, it has been a pioneer in the provision of information on international organizations and their global challenges. International associations, now often referred to as INGOs (international non-governmental organizations) and IGOs (inter-governmental organizations), play a role in every facet of 21st century life in all parts of the world. The UIA documents this development, recording information about organizations, their concerns, their philosophies, and their goals. The results of this research and documentation are made available to the public in print, online, and on CD-ROM. In its on-going efforts to facilitate understanding and use of its complex data sets, the UIA has become a cutting-edge technical centre with high standing in the information science community.

UIA Online Databases

  • Yearbook of International Organizations Online

  • International Organizations

  • Biography

  • Profiles

  • Bibliography (organizations)

  • Statistics (organizations)

  • International Congress Calendar Online

  • Free databases (aka Encyclopedia), log-in optional [more]

  • Transnational Associations

Union of International Associations, Wikipedia.

Celebrating the Institutional Century of the UIA (1907-2007): senility, immortality or reincarnation? Anthony Judge.

Windows on the Union of International Associations, Anthony Judge.

  Project coordinator: Richard Tanter
26 May 2008