The Big Three of the 21st Century--Food, Energy and Water

Here at the beginning of the 21st century, the challenges are clear: the growing population is stressing the Earth's resources to the breaking point. The "big three" are Food, Energy and Water--whose initials ominously spell FEW. Looming shortages make human misery more likely as time passes without finding solutions. Will the 21st Century be known as the Century of Scarcity? Or will we find new technical, political and economic approaches to free humanity from want and discontent?

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Thursday, November 15, 2012

Creating some momentum after Rio+20

The palpable disappointment following the Rio+20 sustainable development conference cast a pall on sustainability thinking in general. What does it take to motivate nations to change?

One thinker, Edward Barbier, has put forward three near-term actions in an article in Science magazine. Since many of you probably don't subscribe to Science, I'm giving it a tiny amount of added publicity.

Basically Barbier, at the University of Wyoming, is saying that sustainability and development have been separate and cannot remain so; that sustainability has no priority in the thinking of governments; and that even the UN has no body to push sustainability initiatives. He cites the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization as UN bodies that are effective because they have mandates.

But perhaps the most exciting thing in Barbier's piece was a discussion about how to raise funds for development. He cited a Gates Foundation study of which I was unaware. Bill Gates discusses in great detail how to finance global development using several untapped and largely painless sources.

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