Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR)

CACOR – YouTube Channel

About the Club

The Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR) was founded in 1970 as one of the first of now more than thirty national associations affiliated with the International Club of Rome. CACOR is autonomous, independent, and nonpartisan. Its main objective is to further the sustainability of the global ecosystem including the survival of humanity.
Purpose and Objectives

Promote Knowledge and understanding: among all segments of the Canadian public on the nature of world problems and the need to develop new policies, attitudes, and courses of action.

Find solutions: CACOR is a catalyst for study and research into problems of human well-being and future survival. Its focus is on the interactions and interdependence of social, economic, technological, and environmental components of global and local problems. The objective is to help define alternative ways to meet critical needs at all scales.

Focus on Canada within the international context: CACOR concentrates on Canada’s situation relative to global problems and solutions. It seeks to be a catalyst for the development of Canadian solutions and to advancing Canada’s contribution to the sustainability of humanity on the planet.
Activities

CACOR and its members and associates pursue a range of activities related to implementation of the purpose and objectives of CACOR. These include regular meetings where distinguished experts and thinkers address aspects of the global problematique and potential solutions, discussion groups on specific issues of interest to members, partnering other organizations who have similar goals in staging events, sponsoring publications on key issues and undertaking active lobbying and interventions aimed at getting better information and science and systematic thinking into the decision process–from international to local. CACOR also maintains a website designed to be a resource for those who are interested in access to information and informed discussion on global issues and local and national implications.
CACOR’s Vision is that:

CACOR members in Canada and beyond contribute to restoring and sustaining the natural systems of the planet and the welfare of humankind within them.
CACOR’s Mission is to:

Promote analysis and discussion of important issues related to the sustainability of humanity and the planet, and to take action to address key problems and their interdependence within Canada and beyond.
Encourage a systematic and integrated approach to issues and their solutions, combining social, ecological, and economic considerations at all levels of individual behaviour and governance.
Engage the public and decision-makers on key global and Canadian issues by encouraging members to speak to the public good individually and collectively; informing and motivating citizens and decision-makers to take action to limit, stabilize, and reverse demands on local ecosystems and the global ecosystem.
Provide a forum and means to facilitate members’ contributions to the global and Canadian work of the Club of Rome through on-going activities, which mobilize members and others to work with CACOR on key issues.

Disclaimer:

The postings on this website are provided for the interest of CACOR members and are not an endorsement of any agency, political party, product, technology or policy. The views expressed are the views of authors and not those of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome.

Actively engaged on key global and Canadian issues to motivate citizens and decision-makers to take action to limit, stabilize, and reverse demands on both the local and the global ecosystems.

…(read more).

See related:

• UN Charter for Ecological Justice – Poems For Parliament
• ITS-Balliol

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UN Charter for Ecological Justice – Poems For Parliament

Find out about the legal case against growth economics that is currently being amplified by the anti-growth alliance.

The prevailing global growth culture makes it impossible for us to protect the biodiversity on which all life depends. The depth of this cultural barrier, and the resulting injustice is elaborated in this brief article; which also proposes that a wisely worded Charter for Ecological Justice can serve to unite humanity in an aspiration to eliminate global ecological overshoot. This concept underpins the submission to the High-Level Advisory Board to the United Nations regarding ‘A Framework for Maximum Mitigation‘.

The UN Commons Cluster have justified these ideas in their submission to the High-Level Political Forum 2022. Their paper warns us that increasing our GDP aggravates all of the key drivers of human induced ecological damage (see Preface). The concluding section talks about the need for socio-economic transformation to address excessive ecological footprint, in order to eliminate the global ecological overshoot and thereby achieve sustainability. The UK is offered as an example of a country which operates well over the biocapacity within its borders (300%). Using the example of the UK the paper recommends these steps:

• Raise AwarenessAn awareness campaign equivalent to that achieved for the COVID emergency. Advising UK citizens that climate and ecological collapse is now underway. Advising them that in order to mitigate the long-term impact it is not wise to try to maintain all aspects of the way of life that the UK have enjoyed in recent decades. The ecological cost of that life-style was never sustainable.
• Emergency Government Create a cross-party emergency government. This will ensure that the responsibility for the difficult decisions that need to be taken is shared. It will also send a powerful message to other world leaders, that we regard the Climate and Environmental breakdown as both real and urgent.
• Ecological Objectives Make the UK the first country to rewrite its objectives from the perspective of an ecological budget rather than a financial one.
• Embrace Degrowth Make the UK the first country to actively seek Degrowth as part of its emergency damage limitation exercise with regard to the ongoing and rapidly accelerating Climate and Ecological collapse.

Pandemics, resource wars, economic migration and monetary inflation are all symptoms of escalating ecological collapse. The paper from the UN Commons Cluster recommends that we urgently rethink the STEM education system, with a view to unlearning the sense of ‘entitlement’ which still dominates in many of the countries which became rich through colonisation and extractive economics. It is suggesting we need to reconnect with Nature and recognise our dependence on healthy eco-systems.

The paper is intended to inspire humanity to collaborate collectively to restore ecological balance by embracing the Degrowth ideology which has been evolving for several decades. Different aspects of Degrowth have recently been popularised and explored in books like ‘Less is More’ by Jason Hickel, ‘Post Growth’ by Tim Jackson and ‘Doughnut Economics’ by Kate Raworth. The proposed Charter for Ecological Justice will focus our endeavours on shrinking our combined ecological footprint until we no longer exceed the capacity for Earth to absorb the impact of our behaviour.

Unfortunately affluent men and women have lost their way emotionally in recent decades, wanting bigger and better and seeking unattainable concepts like perfection and excellence. We have lost sight of the simple joys of being in Nature and the importance of ecological balance. We have sought to dominate the natural world rather than living in balance with it. The emotional transitions that are required to acquire the Degrowth mindset are explored here

Imagination is essential to achieve the paradigm shift of the magnitude required to embrace a concept as far reaching as the UN Charter for Ecological Justice, many ideas to stretch your imagination are provided in the book which is free to download from here.

…(read more).

See related:

• Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
• ITS-Balliol

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