Molly Harriss Olson joins the Board of Australia21

We are delighted to welcome Ms Molly Harriss Olson to the Board of Australia21.

Molly is an internationally recognised leader in global sustainability. Her  experience spans over 30 years and her approach to  global sustainability encompasses leadership and economic redesign, green building innovation, fair-trade, population, environment and development issues.

Molly was the sustainability expert for the Opening Plenary of the World Economic Forum's 2000 meeting in Davos. She was the Chair of King Carl Gustaf's Business Leadership and the Environmental Symposium, Stockholm, Sweden, has given lectures at the Harvard Kennedy School and was the Myerhoff Visiting Scholar for Global Civic Responsibility, Goucher College, Baltimore.

Her work in the White House (as the Founding Executive Director of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development) enabled her to bring Al Gore to Australia for his first visit in 2003 as keynote speaker at the National Business Leaders Forum.

Now based in Australia, she is the Chair of the Board of Fairtrade International, which is a 4.9 Billion Euro annual turnover of products sold in 120 countries; and she sits on a number of environmental boards. She is the founder and convenor of the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development. She is a co-founder and director of EcoFutures, an Australian-based international policy firm working on building sustainable strategies with business, government and civic leaders; and co-founder of Earthmark.

We look forward to working with Molly in the coming years when sustainability is likely to become even more critical for the future of Australia and the world.

More information on other members of the Board of Australia21 is available here.

Richard Eckersley on "Riding the Apocalypse"

Eckersley, R. 2013. ‘Riding the Apocalypse’. Canberra Times, 31 January, p.19. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/riding-the-apocalypse-20130130-2dld6.html

Riding the Apocalypse

The global threats of the moment could be the spark for civilisational change, writes Richard Eckersley

A few years ago, I took part in a panel discussion on the future as part of the Brisbane festival of ideas. My two co-panellists quickly declared their optimism (although both were fully across the challenges). I’d decided that morning to ‘come out’ and admit I was a pessimist. ‘Pessimist’ was a pejorative term, I said, but pessimists had the consolation of being right.

I realised more than five years ago, with the evidence of the growing impacts of global warming, that we’d left it too late; and we are continuing to leave it too late. As well as being a real threat, climate change is also a symbol of humanity’s wider predicament.

We are now facing our fifth decadal deadline for dealing with global environmental problems such as climate change, land and water degradation, food security, peak oil, population growth, and biodiversity loss. As each deadline passes without the necessary action being taken, we defer it another 10 years. With the failures (or at least limited achievements) of the 2009 Copenhagen conference on climate change, the 2012 Rio+20 Earth Summit and last month’s Doha climate change meeting, we are still waiting.

Indeed, one of the most striking things when we look back over the last 50 years is the resilience of the status quo, the persistence of a politics in Western democracies that, explicitly and implicitly, sees no need move beyond a worldview of unending material progress, despite the disenchantment of their citizens and the evident failure of material progress to deliver on its promise to keep making life better.

It is not that nothing worthwhile has been achieved with ‘politics as usual’ approaches. There are many ‘good news’ stories around - for example, the rapid growth in solar power - but they all run up against huge scale anomalies, a yawning gulf between the magnitude of the challenges and the scale of our responses.

In addressing this chasm, we need to pay more attention to the psychosocial dynamics of our situation, not just the geopolitical manoeuvring and the biophysical constraints and limits. In particular we need to do more to link the debate about future threats to the current and growing costs of material progress and high-consumption lifestyles to our health and wellbeing; it’s not about a trade-off.

Our immediate, personal experiences count for more, psychologically, than abstract statistics and future uncertainties. People discount global threats for several reasons: a human bias towards optimism (she’ll be right, we’ve overcome problems like this before), perceived uncertainty (there is a history of failed predictions of global collapse, and experts disagree), and system justification (a tendency to believe in and justify the way things are, and to not want to change the familiar status quo).

Surveys reveal deep social pessimism and public unease in developed nations, including Australia; pessimists outnumber optimists about our future quality of life. But environmental and resource issues are not the main reasons: the concerns are more immediate and personal; more social, cultural and economic; more about the quality of relationships than material conditions. We need to show these are all part of the same predicament.

Dealing with this situation means going well beyond specific issues and policies. The magnitude of the necessary transformation will be akin to that from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the medieval mind to the modern mind.

The seeds of the Enlightenment were sown in the Middle Ages, including the turmoil of the fourteenth century and the devastation of the Black Death; and so, too, are the seeds of a new consciousness being sown in the chaos of modern times. While the earlier revolution spanned centuries, the advances in education and communication could allow a new cultural revolution to happen in decades.

Christianity provided ‘the matrix and law of medieval life, omnipresent, indeed compulsory’, historian Barbara Tuchman has said. Its insistent principle was that ‘the life of the spirit and of the afterworld was superior to the here and now, to material life on earth. … The rupture of this principle and its replacement by belief in the worth of the individual and of an active life not necessarily focused on God is, in fact, what created the modern world and ended the Middle Ages.’

We now face another rupture or discontinuity in our view of ourselves, in what it is to be human, that will change profoundly how we live: one that will renounce the current excessive emphasis on the material and individual and better acknowledge the importance of the communal and spiritual. There are signs this process has begun, although its direction is not yet established, and it remains largely invisible in politics and public affairs.

The emergence and growth of a new ‘human story’ will not—now—spare us from troubled and turbulent times. Rather such events will powerfully influence the course the transformation takes, the shape of things to emerge from the turmoil. They could help or hinder: provide the moral force for urgent action, or preoccupy us with crisis management.

Several writers have described the revelatory, and potentially revolutionary, nature of disasters. Not only can they bring out the best in us, and connect and empower us, but they also lay bare the social conditions and choices that often cause or contribute to disasters, delivering a societal shock that makes change possible.

As Junot Díaz says, apocalyptic catastrophes give us ‘a chance to see aspects of our world that we as a society seek to run from, that we hide behind veils of denial’. Apocalypses are also opportunities: ‘chances for us to see ourselves, to take responsibility for what we see, to change’. 

Creating a new human story, a different awareness of ourselves, represents a ‘no regrets’ strategy. It might no longer allow us to avoid global mayhem, but it would mitigate the effects by enhancing our personal and social resilience and preparedness.

But even in the absence of the threat of catastrophes, it would improve our quality of life. Even if we did not confront social, environmental, and economic limits and breakdowns, optimising our health and happiness requires transformational change.

We may no longer be able to get out of the mess we’re creating for ourselves, but we can still get through it.

Richard Eckersley is an independent researcher and writer (www.richardeckersley.com.au), and a director of Australia21 Ltd, a non-profit, strategic research company  (www.australia21.org.au) . This article draws on a longer essay, ‘Whatever happened to Western civilization?’, published in the Nov-Dec 2012 issue of the Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society.

Global drug reform in 2012

Post by Dr Alex Wodak, AM

That was the year that was: global drug law reform in 2012

In 1912 the International Opium Conference met in The Hague.  This meeting marked the beginning of the international drug control system which still prevails. But one hundred years after the birth of this system, 2012 was a watershed year for global drug law reform. It seemed to mark the beginning of the end of global drug prohibition. The case for global drug prohibition is now beginning to collapse. Unprecedented pressure is being applied in an increasing number of countries.

For the first time ever in the history of the international drug treaties, a country withdrew from a drug treaty. Despite opposition from the USA and some other countries, Bolivia announced its intention to withdraw from the 1961 Single Convention on 30 June 2011. The withdrawal came into effect on 1 January 2012. But Bolivia is re-acceding to the Single Convention minus some sections of the treaty it objects to. Bolivia’s reservation concerns the ban on coca leaf and its traditional uses. Bolivia had earlier attempted unsuccessfully to delete the Single Convention’s obligation that ‘coca leaf chewing must be abolished’ (Article 49). Bolivia’s new constitution in 2009 acknowledged respect for chewing coca leaf as part of its national patrimony. Thus Bolivia’s commitment to the Single convention and its national constitution were irreconcilable. Bolivia’s proposal to re-accede was opposed by a number of countries, including the United States. Bolivia will still be bound to not export coca leaf after the process of re-acceding has been completed.

The inclusion of references to coca leaf was controversial when the Single Convention was first negotiated. An understanding that these references would be reviewed after 25 years was never acted on. The human rights of indigenous peoples are somewhat more respected now than at the time the Single Convention was first negotiated. Indigenous people in South America are thought to have chewed coca leaf for at least hundreds of years. Bolivia and some other South American countries with substantial populations of indigenous peoples have resented the prohibition of the Single Convention extending to coca leaf. There is no evidence that chewing the coca leaf is harmful. President Evo Morales is the first indigenous person to become President of his country (and the first indigenous person to become President of any South American country). The withdrawal from the Single Convention had been approved by the Bolivian legislature. Bolivia had followed the procedures laid down in the Single Convention in this process. The event demonstrates that the treaties are now out of date.

Drug law reform was often discussed in Latin America in 2012. The Presidents of several Latin American countries began to publicly acknowledge the comprehensive failure of current policy and the need to consider alternatives which had until recently been excluded even from consideration. Critical comments about the futility of drug prohibition first came from retired Presidents. Then serving Presidents began to repeat the same perspective.

Leaders of more than 35 countries met at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, on 14-15 April. In the lead up to this meeting, the President of the USA dispatched his Homeland Secretary and Vice President Biden to separately visit half a dozen Latin American countries in unsuccessful attempts to dissuade discussion of major drug law reform. Eventually President Obama was forced to concede (in a Presidential election year!) that discussion of legalization was ‘entirely legitimate’ although he emphasized the USA would never countenance this option. As the host country of the meeting, President Santos of Colombia was able to insist that drug policy was included in the agenda (despite opposition from President Obama).  There was overwhelming support at the Summit for the notion that the War on Drugs had failed and that a new approach was indeed needed. The meeting resolved to invite the Organisation of American States to identify policy options for consideration. Meanwhile several Latin American countries have begun to reduce the penalties for personal possession and use of illicit drugs. In some countries, criminal sanctions have been replaced by civil sanctions. 

On 20 June, President Jose Mujica referred a bill to Uruguay’s legislature outlining a plan to tax and regulate cannabis. Uruguay thus became the first country in the world to begin the process of legalizing cannabis.  At the beginning of 2013, this process was still underway.

The recent experience of severe and uncontrollable violence in Mexico precipitated by a major national effort to stop drug trafficking influenced many other countries in Latin America. President Felipe Calderon declared a War on Drugs soon after assuming office in December 2006. Drug traffickers, police and the army had murdered about 60,000 Mexicans by the time President Calderon left office at the end of November 2012. Kidnapping and extortion had also soared. Seared by this experience, President Calderon near the end of his term in office called for a drug policy consistent with ‘market mechanisms’, a phrase generally assumed to be a euphemism for legalization. At the 2012 Presidential elections in Mexico, President Calderon’s party was badly beaten into third place with many observers attributing this result, at least in part, to Calderon’s ‘War on Drugs’. President Calderon’s successor announced during the election campaign that, if elected, he would not continue the War on Drugs approach.

History was also made in the USA. Ballot initiatives in Colorado and Washington states in the USA on 6 November included a proposal to tax and regulate cannabis in a manner similar to tobacco and alcohol. A majority (about 55%) of voters supported these initiatives in both states (although a similar ballot proposal in Oregon was defeated). As one observer commented ‘the context of the Colorado and Washington ballot victories is that there is no context’. The Colorado and Washington ballot initiatives were the first time in the world where a majority of voters had supported the regulation of a prohibited drug. This ballot initiative attracted more voters in Colorado than Barak Obama had in running for President in that state. These ballot initiatives breach Federal law and national commitments to international drug treaties (1961, 1988). In the US system, as in other federations, in the event of any conflict Federal laws trump state laws. Therefore, it is likely that the ballot decisions will be challenged and may eventually end up before the US Supreme Court. However, the votes in Colorado and Washington states on cannabis regulation are likely to be followed in other states in the coming years.  These votes in 2012 undoubtedly represent a milestone in the unraveling of drug prohibition. President Obama has commented on the outcomes of the Colorado and Washington votes noting that ‘he has bigger fish to fry’. Ron Paul, who came third in the Republican race for presidential candidate, argued explicitly that the War on Drugs had failed and that the US had to legalize drugs. He was often cheered when making these comments. This is the first time that such a high ranked aspirant for President of the USA has argued for major drug law reform. At the beginning of 2013, medicinal cannabis was available in 18 states (plus Washington DC) covering more than 40% of the national population. There were victories for medicinal cannabis in several state ballot initiatives in the November elections. Challengers supporting drug law reform defeated incumbents supporting drug prohibition in primary elections in Texas and Oregon. These victories attracted some attention as previously candidates in US elections supporting drug law reform have been decisively beaten.  

In 2012 New Zealand began to establish a novel system for regulating certain psychoactive drugs. The system is still being established but essentially, producers of some psychoactive drugs will be allowed to offer proof of the safety of psychoactive drugs they wish to sell and if the evidence is accepted, and after also providing a substantial administrative fee, the producers may be able to sell their product. It is understood that the scheme will commence with some drugs which are said to produce ‘synthetic highs’.

In 2012, two high quality films were released advocating drug law reform. ‘The House I Live In’ was released in cinemas in October while ‘Breaking the Taboo’ was released on the internet in December. Both received a very positive reception. Several major former political leaders agreed to be interviewed for these films.

Australia21 hosted a Roundtable (based on a Discussion Paper) in January and released a report based on this meeting in April. The report concluded that Australia’s drug policy was heavily reliant on law enforcement and by many measures had failed comprehensively. None of the many prominent members of the community known to support drug prohibition accepted invitations to participate in the Roundtable. The release of the report at a press conference in the national parliament provoked a spirited debate lasting for well over a month. Few questioned the major findings of the report. A second Australia21 Roundtable, also based on a Discussion Paper, was convened in June and a report released in September. This report compared the generally positive results of drug law reform in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal with the often disappointing results of the more punitive approach adopted in Sweden.  The second report also provoked national discussion for some weeks and again the overall conclusions of the report were not challenged.

An international conference on drug policy at Ditchley, UK, attended by 40 participants from 14 countries broadly supported the view that future drug policy should be based primarily on health measures rather than criminal justice measures as in the past. In the United Kingdom in December, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg conceded in an interview in The Sun that drug prohibition had failed and major new approaches were needed. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, had made a number of unambiguous public statements in 2002 reaching the same conclusions. But in 2012, Cameron declined to support his Deputy Prime Minister. 

The Global Commission on HIV and the Law, established by the United Nations Development Programme, issued a report in August 2012 entitled ‘HIV and the Law: Rights, Risks and Health’. This added additional support from within the UN system for a drug policy more respectful of human rights and public health.

Overall, international support in 2012 has been growing for the notion that global drug prohibition with a ‘one size fits all’ approach has failed abjectly. However there is still little agreement on what approach to drugs should follow and a general recognition that countries should be able to pursue approaches seen to be more consistent with their national circumstances and interests. Support for the notion that drugs are primarily a health and social issue is increasing.  The notion that political support for drug law reform is suicidal while political support for drug prohibition guarantees electoral victory also appears to be breaking down. The severe fiscal problems experienced by governments in the US and Europe is another major factor undermining continuation of expensive government programs for which benefit is difficult to identify while severe adverse unintended consequences are increasingly difficult to ignore. 

Dr Alex Wodak AM

Director, Australia21

Global Commission on HIV and the law

The Global Commission on HIV and the Law consisted of fourteen distinguished individuals who advocate on issues of HIV, public health, law and development. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil, chaired the Commission.

The Commission’s unique convening power allowed it to focus on high-impact issues of HIV and the law, which have important ramifications for global health and development. The Commission advocated for evidence and human rights based legal environments for effective and efficient HIV responses.

HIV is one of the world’s most important public health issues. The Commission writes:

In just three decades, over 30 million people have died of AIDS, and 34 million more have been infected with HIV. The HIV epidemic has become one of the greatest public health challenges of our time. It is also a crisis of law, human rights and social justice. The good news is that we now have all the evidence and tools we need to radically slow new HIV infections and stop HIV related deaths. Paradoxically, this comes at a time when bad laws and other political obstacles are standing in the way of success.

34 million people are living with HIV, 7,400 are newly infected daily and 1.8 million died in 2010 alone. The legal environment—laws, enforcement and justice systems—has immense potential to better the lives of HIV-positive people and to help turn the crisis around. International law and treaties that protect equality of access to health care and prohibit discrimination—including that based on health or legal status—underpin the salutary power of national laws.

But nations have squandered the potential of the legal system. Worse, punitive laws, discriminatory and brutal policing and denial of access to justice for people with and at risk of acquiring HIV are fuelling the epidemic. These legal practices create and punish vulnerability. They promote risky behaviour, hinder people from accessing prevention tools and treatment, and exacerbate the stigma and social inequalities that make people more vulnerable to HIV infection and illness. HIV-positive people—be they parents or spouses, sex workers or health workers, lovers or assailants—interact intimately with others, who in turn interact with others in ever-larger circles, from the community to the globe. From public health to national wealth, social solidarity to equality and justice, HIV affects everyone. The prevention, treatment and care of HIV—and the protection and promotion of the human rights of those who live with it—are everyone’s responsibility.

The Global Commission on HIV and the Law undertook 18 months of extensive research, consultation, analysis and deliberation. Its sources included the testimony of more than 700 people most affected by HIV-related legal environments from 140 countries, in addition to expert submissions and the large body of scholarship on HIV, health and the law.

The Commission’s findings offer cause for both distress and hope for people living with or at risk for HIV. In June 2011, 192 countries committed to reviewing legislation and creating enabling legal and social environments that support effective and efficient HIV responses. The Commission’s recommendations offer guidance to governments and international bodies in shaping laws and legal practices that are science based, pragmatic, humane and just. The findings and recommendations also offer advocacy tools for people living with HIV, civil society, and communities affected by HIV. The recommendations take into account the fact that many laws exist for purposes beyond public health, such as the maintenance of order, public safety and the regulation of trade. But they place the highest priority on creating legal environments that defend and promote internationally recognised human rights and legal norms.

The Commission’s Report (PDF) may be downloaded from here.