SSS Yet To Be Done.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/
The Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere:
Responding to the human predicament.
Reducing the threat of a shattering collapse of civilization.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/welcome/
What happens when humanists from every walk of life work together and discover a new type of intelligence, foresight intelligence: the ability to implement behavioral, institutional and cultural changes necessary for future generations to live peaceful productive lives. The MAHB envisions a future that embodies two basic principles— all forms of life are essential and interdependent; and, economic underpinnings, social norms, and individual behavior are all part of a single system operating within the bounded biosphere.
What happens when foresight intelligence meets the best of global civil society? Quite simply, we can reduce interconnected complex problems resulting from interactions within and between what can be thought of as two gigantic complex adaptive systems: the biosphere system and the human socio-economic system. These problems include: climate disruption, loss of biodiversity (and thus ecosystem services), land-use change and resulting degradation, global toxification, ocean acidification, decay of the epidemiological environment, an economic system based on growth, pressure from increasing population, and resource wars (which could go nuclear). The manifestation of these interactions is often referred to as “the human predicament.” With foresight intelligence, we can reduce the threats inherent in the human predicament.
This is the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere (MAHB)
The MAHB’s humanists collaborate to:
1. Understand and communicate foresight intelligence; and
2. Create a vision of a plausible and compelling world in 2050 which is moving towards sustainability and social equity.
These are powerful tools for global civil society, the often under-funded front line in the battle to build a secure and sustainable world for all humanity.
The goal of the MAHB is to create a platform to help global civil society address the interconnections among the greatest threats to human well-being: failure of ecosystem services, economic inequity, social injustice, hunger, epidemics, toxic chemicals, and loss of security to crime, terrorism and war, especially resource wars (veiled or not), to name a few.
Globally, there are thousands of organizations and individuals working towards the MAHB vision; too often we compete for the same money and stakeholders, struggle with small budgets, and work in constrained and often isolated environments.
The MAHB aspires to offer six unique tools to civil society concerned with the major threats to humanity. These tools are:
1. An Alliance of individuals and organizations concerned about the existential threats to civilization:The MAHB is a diverse community; organizations and groups that join the MAHB are called “Nodes”; individuals who join are “Associates”. Nodes and Associates include natural scientists, social scientists, students, homemakers, economists, business people, artists, scholars, professionals: people from all walks of life. A Node may be a formally organized NGO, a professional organization or an informal team or group including a group of scholars, neighborhood associations and book clubs to name a few. Nodes and Associates can also interact with one another on the website—recruiting partners, sharing ideas and information, learning from one another and making it easy for the best work and results to go viral and have international impact.
2. Vision of a world moving rapidly towards sustainability in 2050: MAHB teams are defining what a future smart world in 2050 might look like—a compelling world of some 9 billion people. Building on a growing scholarly effort, the MAHB is in the process of describing economic systems that depend on agility and equity without depending on growth, social systems that recognize the limits of our ecosystems, energy and resource infrastructure, and governance: a world where most people can meet their basic needs while enjoying a high quality of life. This snapshot of the future is being designed to inspire and unite the diverse MAHB membership; it will provide a shared purpose that is exciting and inspiring—working towards core goals rather than against current injustice and destructive behaviors.
3. Scholars working across disciplines to build the knowledge that is necessary for civil society and governments to act in ways that will have the highest positive impact quickly;
4. Resources: The MAHB website aspires to become the “go to” place for the best literature, multi-media materials, analysis, movies, and editorials on the interconnected issues threatening humanity and it’s life support systems.
5. Activities: The MAHB website catalogs and makes available ideas for high impact action for those Nodes and Associates seeking additional ideas. Nodes and Associates post their activities, accomplishments, and strategies for shifting human behavior in ways that support a sustainable and equitable future.
6. Urgency: If we are to reverse the degradation of the systems that support civilization, we need to act now. The MAHB aspires to make available the tools necessary for fostering a contagion, a passion for action.
How the MAHB works
Our initiatives are:
1. define foresight intelligence; and
2. create a compelling and plausible vision for a 2050 headed for sustainability, pathways to that desirable world, and measurements of success.
The MAHB website provides a library of books, articles, movies, editorials and unique initiatives so that Nodes and Associates have easy access to the best thinking about meeting the challenge facing those committed to a more equitable, secure, and ecologically sound world. When a Node signs up and joins the MAHB it is automatically listed on the MAHB website and a web-page is set up for them to use to present their work, mission, goals to the MAHB community; they can also link their MAHB webpage to their own website. In addition, their activities become part of the catalog of activities and ideas for others to view and be inspired by. In this way, the MAHB website serves as a reflection of the ongoing work of the MAHB membership and as a source of inspiration for generating passionate action.
Finally, and hopefully unobtrusively, there is a secretariat that maintains and develops the website, recruits Nodes and Associates, organizes meetings and workshops, and helps develop and manage research and public education agendas.
https://mahb.stanford.edu/welcome/the-mahb-mission/
The MAHB Mission
Foster, fuel and inspire a global dialogue on the threat of collapse and how interconnected biogeophysical and socio-economic systems contribute to, and are affected by, the existential threats facing humanity;
Develop and implement strategies for shifting human cultures and institutions towards practices that promote a future in which people can live peaceful and productive lives.
Objectives and Strategies
1. Create a mechanism for progressive global civil society to collaborate for greater political and cultural impact;
2. Explore the promotion of foresight intelligence —the bridge between understanding the threat of collapse and effective action; the key to fostering “future smart” individual, institutional and political behavior;
3. Build system-based understanding of the existential threats facing humanity and the implications of a failure to reverse current trends and trajectories.
There is now unequivocal evidence that humanity has seriously reduced the ability of the planet to support civilization indefinitely. The cumulative knowledge clearly shows that the global ecosystems upon which humanity depends have been significantly degraded. Additional systems, including politics and economics, also show signs of stress. Without a fundamental shift in our personal practices and institutions, the indefinite continuity of societies around the globe, an unchallenged assumption of past thinking, is now seriously in question. With this decisive diagnosis of the ill-health of our systems there is the clear immediate need for ambitious corrective action.
The MAHB’s core commitment is to develop that remedy. We propose to do so by fostering collaboration among the millions of citizens, organizations and institutions who share our concern. We propose to grow a global network whose collective knowledge and energy can be harnessed to advance practices and norms that protect the integrity of future generations.
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