Environment, Human Security and WILPF

LET'S KEEP IT: Norwegian glacier. Photo: Felicity Hill

War and preparation for war unsustainably wastes resources and irrepairably pollutes and contaminates our environment.

For WILPF the term sustainable development expresses the concept of providing the basic requirements for life and human dignity for all -- present and future -- in a way consistent with the ecological reality of our human existence. The overall objectives of and essential requirements for sustainable development are poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and protecting and managing natural resources.

Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals as a step toward the total eradication of poverty, toward health for all and an ecologically sound, just and fair sustainable way of living will not be possible without a radical transformation of society. We have to transform the idea that security equals military might to security equaling the wellbeing of every human being, a society based on universal human rights, justice, peace and respect for the natural world upon which we depend.

There is a new sense of urgency about the issue of water although UN reports, agencies, and scientists have warned years ago of an impending water crisis, the danrecognized this only recently. One billion people have no access to clean water and about one half the world's people have no or inadequate access to sanitation services. The prevailing model of neoliberal economic globalization, where every sphere of life is commodified and transformed into an object of ownership for profit, threatens the lives of billions of people by making clean water inaccessible. People are forced to drink filthy, disease-laden water and are without decent sanitation services because they cannot pay for them.

Newsletters of the Environmental Working Group

Commission on Sustainable Development Report 2005
Commission on Sustainable Development Report 2006

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Peace Disarmament Economic Justice Environment Racial Justice UN Human Rights Contact