Overview
Campaign objectives
- Raise public awareness and understanding
of sustainability.
- Promote examples of leadership for sustainability.
- Make sustainability a policy priority and principle of governance
at the national, state and local level.
- Promote national, state and local sustainable
development strategies.
- Encourage alliances among citizen groups
working for sustainability.
Approach
In many ways, Leadership for Sustainability is more of a celebration and promotion of a wide rangae of citizen campaigns and initiatives taking place around the countries than a traditional issue-focused campaign.The approach can be seen in four components:
Vision.
The Citizens Campaign on Leadership for Sustainability first
celebrates and promotes the vision of sustainability as
an alternative to the increasingly obsolete industrial models of development
of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Highlighting initiatives and other examples of leadership for sustainability,
CitNet members will seek out politicans, business leaders, artists,
planners, scientists and others with a long-range vision of the United
States as a just and sustainable society. In contrast to the almost
relilgious mantra of "economic growth," a key question is:
How can Americans' learn about sustainable development as another and
more viable choice for America's economy and society?
Commitment.
At
the national level, one of the strongest expressions of a commitment
to turning the vision of a sustainable society into reality is through
a carefully considered sustainable development strategy and plan. In
1992, world leaders at the Earth Summit each agreed to develop and implement
National Sustainable Development Strategies in their respective countries.
In turn, National Sustainable Development Councils were to be instituted
to support that development and implementation.
Today many countries have or are in the process of developoing those
strategies and institutions. The United States, however, remains stubbornly
resistant to meeting this commitment. Despite the life cylce of the
now disbanded President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD),
the US now lags increasingly behind the other industrialized countries
who are taking this commitment and need seriously.
Thus, for CitNet members, a key political objective is for our federal government to develop a national sustainability strategy, with an Office of Sustainable Development to implement and monitor progress of that strategy.
Likewise, CitNet members and affiliates will continue to push their state and local governments to develop and institute state, municipal and regional sustainability strategies and policies.
In turn, households, businesses, schools, and other institutions express their commitment to sustainability through their choices and decisions and daily behavior. When we see ourselves less as individual consumers in a competitive race with each other for status and prizes, and more as part of an interdependent living community based on mutual respect, we are more likely to choose actions that cause the least harm to those around us, or to those yet born. This commitment is shown in the way one lives each day.
Citizen
initiatives.
One
of the most important parts of the Campaign on Leadership and Sustainability
is the encouragement, support and promotion of the initiatives,
campaigns and actions of citizens to move their communities and
country towards sustainability. Thus, CitNet and its members will work
to encourage support and capacity for those citizen initiatives.
This will be done by highlighting these actions through the website,
the newsletter, our various listservers, citizen consultations, public
forums on issues, briefings and meetings with members of Congress, and
other gatherings and exchanges. CitNet members in Washington, DC will
also serve as a voice for citizen advocacy in the nation's capitol.
Regionally and through our working groups, CitNet members, affiliates
and friends will work at the state and grassroots levels.
One important dimension of CitNet's support of citizen initiatives and campaigns is their and interdependence. If we break out the various initiatives and campaigns according to the three overarching objectives of sustainable development (as identified at the World Summit on Sustainable Development), we can look at the groups working to:
(1) protect the environment,
(2) working to eradicate poverty and to ensure economic security, and
(3) transform our production and consumption patterns (i.e., changing
the way we do business in America so that causing harm -- to our neighbors
and the ecological community -- is no longer profitable.)
However, in many ways there remains major gaps between these groups;
instead of working together they see their missions more narrowly focused
on specific, immediate objectives. However, in the long run our longer-term
goals are all dependent on working together in a larger movement to
help our society evolve.
Capacity.
CitNet
will also continue to help build capacity of its members and fellow
citizens in understanding and effectively overcoming the obstacles to
sustainability. This may, for example, take the form of training workshops,
public issue forums, opportunities for citizen consultations and exchanges
with policymakers, participation in policy discussions, joint fundraising
efforts, access to legal, information, media and other resources.
In the coming months, CitNet and others will develop a Citizens Toolkit
with methods, strategies, information and other resources needed to
better communicate the message about sustainability to policymakers
and our fellow citizens.
