This weekend I had the selection of Create YOUR WORLD (part of Rotterdam European Youth Capital 2009). Out of 300 candidates who were selected to present their dreams, I am now down to the last 10. My dream is to create awareness for the beauty of our oceans among youth and inform them about the problems we face.

“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.”
Ancient Indian Proverb

More info will follow shortly!

1. Insist on rights of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse and sustainable condition.
2. Recognize interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend upon the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations to recognizing even distant effects.
3. Respect relationships between spirit and matter. Consider all aspects of human settlement including community, dwelling, industry and trade in terms of existing and evolving connections between spiritual and material consciousness.
4. Accept responsibility for the consequences of design decisions upon human well-being, the viability of natural systems and their right to co-exist.
5. Create safe objects of long-term value. Do not burden future generations with requirements for maintenance or vigilant administration of potential danger due to the careless creation of products, processes or standards.
6. Eliminate the concept of waste. Evaluate and optimize the full life-cycle of products and processes,
to approach the state of natural systems, in which there is no waste.
7. Rely on natural energy flows. Human designs should, like the living world, derive their creative forces from perpetual solar income. Incorporate this energy efficiently and safely for responsible use.
8. Understand the limitations of design. No human creation lasts forever and design does not solve a l l
problems. Those who create and plan should practice humility in the face of nature. Treat nature as a model and mentor, not as an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.
9. Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge. Encourage direct and open communication between colleagues, patrons, manufacturers and users to link long term sustainable considerations with ethical responsibility, and re-establish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity.

The Hannover Principles should be seen as a living document committed to the transformation and growth in the understanding of our interdependence with nature, so that they may adapt as our knowledge of the world evolves. The entire document can be found here.

This species knows
11.3 billion hectares
is all there is
of biologically productive space.

This species consumes
13.5 billion hectares instead
which is
our ecolological footprint.

2.2 hectares of consumption
per person
only 1.8 hectares available
for each of us.

We need another planet
one fifth
the surface of planet earth
to maintain this lifestyle.

Graphics & text by Patrick Kruithof.
Copyleft 2005, no rights reserved.

SOURCES
www.footprintnetwork.org
www.panda.org/livingplanet
Ervin Laszlo, ‘You can cnange the world’

What are the problems? And what are we going to do about the problems? About 60,000 years ago, humanity developed the ability to jump out of its evolutionary niche. We evolved distance weapons which allowed us to kill things without much personal risk. That was the thing which allowed the human population to take off.

The world used to be in balance. The planet can only support a certain amount of living matter. To exploit every opportunity, living things developed biodiversity. Then human beings came along and began chewing into that biomass and that biodiversity.

Peter Hall wrote the very interesting essay Lumberjacks in Eden on this issue. A must read!