Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: sustainability

  • Principles for Global Sustainability

    Principles for Global Sustainability

    1. Responsibility to allocate resources so that greed of the few does not eclipse need of the many. (Survival Principle; Democracy Principle)
    2. Responsibility to preserve the planet and its resources for future generations. (Intergenerational Equity Principle)
    3. Responsibility to do no irreparable harm to the planet and its inhabitants. (Precautionary Principle)
    4. Responsibility to foster diversity of species and ideas. (Anti-Monopoly Principle)
    5. Responsibility to make war a last resort, not a first resort of the powerful. (Nonviolence Priority Principle)
    6. Responsibility to hold accountable the perpetrators of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, including genocide. (Nuremberg Principles; International Criminal Court)
    7. Responsibility to guarantee basic human rights for all individuals. (Human Rights Principle: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Torture Convention, etc.)
    8. Responsibility to cooperate across national borders to achieve these ends. (State Cooperation Principle: Global problems are incapable of solution by any single state, no matter how powerful.)
    9. Responsibility to choose hope over despair. (Hope Principle; Perseverance Principle)
    10. Responsibility to leave the planet a better place than you found it. (Individual Action Principle; Horace Mann Principle: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”)
    11. Responsibility to educate for global sustainability. (Education Principle; Critical Thinking Principle)

    In sum, I would encourage you to seek to advance global sustainability by adopting a planetary perspective, doing no harm, engaging in doing good for the planet and its present and future inhabitants, choosing hope, and persevering. If we accept these responsibilities as individuals and work to implement them in our national and international policies, we can turn Earth Day into a year-round commitment to creating a planet we can be proud to pass on to future generations.

  • Nuclear Weapons and a Sustainable Future

    2012_05_01_npt_briefing.pdf

  • Climate Change, Nuclear Risks and Nuclear Disarmament: From Security Threats to Sustainable Peace

    2011_05_17_scheffran_climate.pdf

  • Science, Peace, and Sustainability

    Science, Peace, and Sustainability

    Speech delivered to INES Conference in Mexico City on March 1, 2008

    We are meeting to explore relevant issues of Science, Peace, and Sustainability. The relationship between science, peace, and sustainability affects the lives of all of the planet’s inhabitants as well as the lives of future generations yet unborn. The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) takes seriously issues of global responsibility, and we believe that engineers and scientists, because of their training, knowledge and privileged place in society, have a special role to play in improving the human condition and assuring a better future for humanity.

    INES has worked since 1991 in three principal areas: Peace and Disarmament, Sustainability, and Ethics in Science. INES is an international network of some 70 organizations in 34 countries. It also has individual members throughout the world. INES has held major conferences in Berlin, Amsterdam and Stockholm; and smaller meetings in many places in the world, including Buenos Aires, Argentina and most recently Nagpur, India. We are very pleased to be having our first meeting in Mexico. It is our hope that from this meeting will emerge many important and innovative ideas that will help strengthen the ties between science, peace and sustainability.

    Many years ago, in the early 1980s, I had the pleasure of working on a Reshaping the International Order (RIO) Foundation project on Disarmament, Development and the Environment with the great Mexican diplomat and Nobel Peace Laureate Alfonso Garcia Robles. He skillfully negotiated the world’s first Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in an inhabited region, that of Latin America and the Caribbean. Last year that treaty celebrated the 40th year of its existence. It has been one of the significant success stories in the area of preventing nuclear proliferation.

    Many other regions of the world have followed in the footsteps of Latin America and the Caribbean, and we have Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones now in the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, Antarctica and Central Asia. Virtually the entire Southern hemisphere has become a series of Nuclear Weapon-Free Zones. Now countries in the North need to learn from the South, and cease their hypocritical and dangerous posturing and brandishing of nuclear arms.

    Around the same time that the Treaty of Tlatelolco, establishing the Latin American and Caribbean Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, was being agreed to, another treaty was being negotiated to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That treaty, known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), was signed in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. It contains a major trade-off. In exchange for the non-nuclear weapons states agreeing not to acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states agreed in Article VI to “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice advised in 1996 that this meant bringing to a conclusion “negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    What I wish to emphasize is the abysmal lack of “good faith” on the part of the nuclear weapons states and, in particular, the United States. In UN General Assembly voting on nuclear disarmament matters in 2007, the United States had the distinction of voting against every one of the 15 measures put before the UN. France voted against 10 measures, the UK against 9 and Israel against 8.

    In 1982, I helped found an organization, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which believes that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. This belief was earlier pronounced by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto issued on July 9, 1955. The Manifesto concluded, “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    This is the power that scientists and engineers have placed in the hands of humanity: the power to create a new Paradise on Earth, and the power to foreclose the future by means of technologies capable of causing “universal death.” What shall we do? Which path shall we take? Which power shall we exercise? Science has contributed abundantly to war and continues to do so. Can science and scientists play a role in tipping the balance toward peace?

    And what about sustainability? Shall we go on using up the world’s resources because rich countries consider them to be inexpensive? Nothing irreplaceable can be considered inexpensive. This is another way of foreclosing the future. As an alternative course, scientists can contribute to protecting the world’s resources and developing sustainable forms of energy that do not place heavy burdens on future generations. To succeed in sustainable development, we will also need sustainable disarmament. They are inextricably linked.

    Resource depletion is a cause of war. So is greed. So is crushing poverty. If we want peace, we must protect our environment, conserve our resources, and have global standards of human dignity. We must also control and eliminate the weaponry we have created that could destroy human life on the planet, as well as most other forms of life.

    If we want peace, we must reverse the Roman dictum and prepare for peace. That means that we must use sustainable technologies and conserve our resources. It also means that scientists must work for constructive rather than destructive ends. They must also set appropriate professional standards that delegitimize destructive uses of science and technology. And they must speak out against such destructive uses and those scientists and engineers who succumb to such projects. We need a Hippocratic Oath for Scientists and Engineers based upon the commitment to “do no harm.”

    At our conference over the next few days, we will be exploring some critical issues:

    1. science, education and social responsibility;
    2. militarization and the spread of nuclear weapons;
    3. climate change and other serious environmental issues; and
    4. the paradigm of sustainability.

    All of this will be infused with the perspectives of Latin America.

    Time is not on our side, but perhaps in our deliberations we can make progress on deflecting the course of history that has divided humanity in the past, been conducive to wars, generated human rights abuses, tolerated environmental degradation, and set humanity on a collision course with catastrophe. Let us use our human capacities to choose hope and set a new course for the future, one rooted in peace, sustainability and the constructive uses of science and technology.

    I will conclude with a poem that is part of my first poetry book, Today Is Not a Good Day for War. The poem is about the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who are victims, but also the ambassadors, of the Nuclear Age. It is called Hibakusha Do Not Just Happen.

    HIBAKUSHA DO NOT JUST HAPPEN

    For every hibakusha there is a pilot

    for every hibakusha there is a planner

    for every hibakusha there is a bombardier

    for every hibakusha there is a bomb designer

    for every hibakusha there is a missile maker

    for every hibakusha there is a missileer

    for every hibakusha there is a targeter

    for every hibakusha there is a commander

    for every hibakusha there is a button pusher

    for every hibakusha many must contribute

    for every hibakusha many must obey

    for every hibakusha many must be silent

    Of course this is not just about hibakusha. It is about us as well. It is about our responsibility and also our silence. In today’s world, we all are at risk of becoming hibakusha. We must choose peace, sustainability and human decency, while outspokenly refusing to allow the gifts of our human talents and skills to be used to improve warfare and its capacity for slaughter.

    We must break the silence and be leaders for peace and sustainability. We must each play our part in reversing the militarization of our planet and moving it toward a peaceful and sustainable future, the Paradise that Russell and Einstein believed was within our grasp.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Nuclear Weapons and Sustainability

    Nothing threatens sustainability more than nuclear weapons. And yet these weapons are rarely considered in discussions of sustainability, which tend to focus on resources and environmental degradation. The simple fact is that nuclear weapons are capable of destroying not only our most precious global resources and degrading our global environment, but of destroying civilization if not humanity itself. The possession and threat to use nuclear weapons also afflicts the souls and spirits of their possessors.

    Nuclear weapons are a holocaust waiting to occur, but this understanding is obscured by comforting though unprovable theories of deterrence. Decision makers and the public alike confuse deterrence with defense. In fact, deterrence is not defense. Deterrence is only a theory that an attack can be prevented by threatening to retaliate. It is a bad theory because deterrence cannot prevent attacks that occur by accident or miscalculation, nor attacks by terrorists or criminals who have no fixed place to retaliate against.

    National security “experts,” such as Henry Kissinger, who propound theories of deterrence, are the sorcerers of our time. The public is expected to be humble before the apparent wisdom of such self-absorbed theorists. Clearly, there has been a price to pay for accepting their rhetorical invocations in the name of national security. The price is the willingness to place in jeopardy our human future, and our own humanity.

    Nuclear weapons incinerate human beings and other forms of life on a massive scale. This lesson was not lost on the people of Japan, who experienced two attacks with atomic weapons. It was apparently lost, however, on those who used these weapons. The possessors of nuclear weapons, and particularly Americans and Russians, suffer the delusion that they are protected by these weapons.

    Obstacles to the elimination of nuclear weapons include official secrecy concerning nuclear policies, lack of public discourse on these policies, confusion and muddled thinking regarding deterrence by policy elites, and a lack of courage and imagination on the part of political leaders. All of these translate into a lack of political will to radically change nuclear policies and take bold steps toward the global elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Until the public demands the abolition of nuclear weapons, the world will remain hostage to these instruments of genocide residing in the hands of mere mortals. What will arouse the public from its stupor? This may be the most important question of our time. Moral and legal arguments have not prevailed. Arguments concerning the concentration of power and undermining of democracy have not succeeded. Not even arguments concerning the vulnerability of citizens of nuclear weapons states to others’ nuclear weapons have awakened the power of the people.

    We live at a critical time in human history, in which we share the responsibility to pass the future on intact to the generations to follow. On the shoulders of those of us now living has fallen the responsibility to end the nuclear weapons era, or to face the almost certain spread of nuclear weapons and the likely use again, by accident or design, of these instruments of genocide.

    Sustainability and a future free of nuclear weapons are inseparable. Anyone concerned with a sustainable future should embrace the abolition of nuclear weapons, and become a vocal and active advocate of this cause. Because nuclear weapons abolition affects the future as well as the present, this cause provides an important challenge to the youth of today, who are the inheritors of the future.

  • Security and Sustainability in a Nuclear Weapons Free World

    There is a danger that the contemplation of security and sustainability in a nuclear weapons free world will imply to some readers that nuclear weapons have in some way provided security and even sustainability. It is not my intention to imply this. I believe that nuclear weapons have never at any time provided security for their possessors, and that they make no contribution to sustainability.

    The world that we currently live in — a world divided between a small number of states possessing nuclear weapons and a large number of states that do not — is neither secure nor sustainable. If nuclear weapons in fact provided security, logic would suggest that an effort be made to spread these weapons to other states. In fact, the opposite viewpoint has prevailed. Most states, including those currently in possession of nuclear weapons, support policies of non-proliferation.

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been in force since 1970, requires a trade-off from the nuclear weapons states. In exchange for the non-nuclear weapons states agreeing not to develop or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states agreed in Article VI to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. When the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995, the nuclear weapons states promised the determined pursuit of “systematic and progressive efforts” to achieve nuclear disarmament.

    The failure of the nuclear weapons states to make significant progress toward nuclear disarmament may result in undermining the NPT, and in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states beyond the five declared and three undeclared nuclear weapons states. Such proliferation would further bolster the insecurity and unsustainability of the current international system.

    Security

    Security has two critical dimensions: protection from physical harm, and access to resources to meet basic needs. It also has a third dimension, an illusory psychological dimension, that operates at the level of belief systems. Nuclear arsenals do not provide security from physical harm. The only security they provide is in this psychological dimension, rooted in a belief in the efficacy of deterrence. The threat of retaliation with nuclear weapons is not physical protection; the protection provided is only psychological. An opponent’s fear of retaliation may or may not prevent that opponent from launching a nuclear attack based upon irrationality, faulty information, human error, or mechanical or computer malfunction.

    A world without nuclear weapons would be one in which the threat of cataclysmic nuclear holocaust would be removed. Achieving such a world will require careful planning to assure that some states do not secretly retain nuclear weapons or clandestinely reassemble them. As states reduce their nuclear arsenals toward zero, an agreed upon plan will be required to assure transparency, accurate accounting of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials, effective procedures for verification of dismantlement and the controlled and safeguarded immobilization of nuclear materials and the production facilities to create them. The process of reducing nuclear arsenals to zero will be challenging both technically and politically, but it is a challenge that can be accomplished with determination and political will.

    The process of nuclear weapons abolition will demand the creation of stronger systems of international security. Thus, achieving abolition will, by the nature of the process, coincide with strengthened international security arrangements. In order to have a security system that assures maximum protection against physical harm and access to resources to meet basic needs, it will be necessary to go even further in system design than the elements required to maintain security in a world without nuclear weapons. The main components of this security system would be:

    • All states would be allowed to maintain only weapons for defence against territorial invasion, and no weapons with offensive capabilities.
    • Each state would be subject to regular and challenge inspections by international teams to assure that it is neither maintaining nor creating any offensive weapons systems, particularly weapons of mass destruction.
    • All states would be required to make periodic public reports of the types and numbers of weapons in their arsenals.
    • An International Criminal Court would be responsible for holding individual leaders responsible for the most serious crimes under international law (crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and international aggression), and for violations of the conditions specified in points 1 to 3 above.
    • A United Nations Inspection Force would be created to conduct inspections and monitor states for violations of points 1 to 3 above.
    • The United Nations Security Council would be responsible for enforcement of points 1 to 3 above, for apprehending serious violators of international law, and for assuring cooperation with the United Nations Inspection Force.
    • The United Nations system — including the General Assembly, the World Bank, the UN Development Programme and other specialized agencies, and a UN Disaster Relief Force — would be charged with assuring that all peoples of all states have access to the necessary resources to meet their basic needs.

    Sustainability

    Sustainability is the protection of the resources required to meet basic needs for present and future generations, and the upholding of the quality of these resources. Sustainability requires environmental protection to ensure the quality of the air, the water, and the earth. It is no longer possible to ensure sustainability in any state anywhere in the world if all states do not cooperate in protecting the Earth’s resources and the common heritage of the planet — the atmosphere, the oceans and the land. Clean air and water and unpolluted topsoil to grow healthy crops must be maintained if we are to have a sustainable future.

    Over 1000 nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere and a roughly equal number of underground tests have already made a heavy assault upon the environment, as have thousands of tons of nuclear wastes, large quantities of which have already leaked into the earth, air and water. Sustainability will require not only a nuclear weapons free future, but a future in which nuclear wastes are also not generated by civilian nuclear reactors. Present and future generations are already burdened with enormous problems from the nuclear wastes created by both military and civilian nuclear reactors. Some of this waste will be a threat to life for tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years.

    It is unfair to burden future generations with still more dangerous radioactive wastes. What has been produced to date has been the product of ignorance, arrogance, and blind faith, sadly, by some of the best minds of our time. Sustainability requires having an answer to the problem of dangerous wastes before they are produced rather than burdening future generations with these problems.

    Beginning the Process

    A world that is divided between nuclear “haves” and “have nots” is neither secure nor sustainable. Nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity and to all forms of life. If they continue to be relied upon, at some point in the future they will again be used. It is a strong lesson of history that weapons once created will be used — as indeed nuclear weapons have already been used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    The challenge of the highest magnitude before humanity today is to ban forever these weapons which constitute such a serious threat to humanity’s future. The opportunity is before us with the Cold War ended. The nuclear weapons states have promised to negotiate in good faith to achieve nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice has stated its opinion that the nuclear weapons states are obligated to complete negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. In fulfilling this mandate, these states must consider the issues of security and sustainability in a nuclear weapons free world.

    A secure and sustainable world order without nuclear weapons is achievable. It cannot occur, however, so long as the nuclear weapons states are wedded to their nuclear arsenals. The first step in breaking their addiction is to begin negotiations in good faith to achieve their elimination. If they are to complete the journey, they must first begin and thus far serious negotiations to eliminate nuclear arsenals have not begun.

    An international consortium of lawyers, scientists and disarmament experts led by the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) with technical assistance from the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP) has prepared a draft Nuclear Weapons Convention that has been introduced by Costa Rica to the United Nations General Assembly. This Convention — which draws upon previous international treaties including the Chemical Weapons Convention — provides indicators of the issues that the nuclear weapons states will have to resolve to achieve a treaty they can support. It provides a good starting point for the nuclear weapons states to begin the process of negotiations for abolishing their nuclear arsenals.

    What is missing now is the political will to begin the process. Many actions of the nuclear weapons states suggest that they are more interested in “systematic and progressive efforts” to impede rather than achieve nuclear disarmament. There is only one way that this can change, and that is by the people making their voices heard. When the people of the world understand the extent to which their security and a sustainable future for their children and grandchildren is threatened by the continued reliance of the governments of the nuclear weapons states upon nuclear arsenals, they will demand that the promises of nuclear disarmament be kept. It is our job to bring about that understanding.

  • Towards Sustainable Societies

    Sustainability

    Sustainability is a value-based aim and process with environmental, technological, political, social, economic and institutional implications. Sustainability requires that we organise our societies so that they evolve in harmony with nature; dominance over nature is a failed option.

    Sustainability calls for a significant reduction in use of global natural resources and a sharing of these resources between individuals, societies and generations so that a maximum of well-being and dignity is achieved for all. It calls also for the creation of safe and peaceful living conditions and for respect for human, cultural and biological diversity.

    The Current Situation

    While encouraging initiatives and possibilities exist, the overall thrust of our economic systems, social structures and science and technology is working against sustainability; radical changes are required to preserve the options for future generations.

    Human activities are producing unprecedented changes in the biosphere, degrading, for example, soil fertility, ground-water supply and biodiversity. We are overusing natural resources, thus eroding our life-support basis; these resources are being used in an inefficient way, creating too little of value, too few jobs, and too much waste; further, there are growing inequalities, both on a national and on a global level, in the distribution of income, labour and wealth derived from the use of the resources; marginalisation of individuals, societies and even whole regions has become a major threat to sustainability. In most countries, employment has become increasingly precarious and poverty is spreading. All these distortions diminish governability, give rise to insecurity and tensions that often result in excessive reliance on military force, and this reliance in turn exacerbates the problems referred to above.

    A Sustainable Future

    A positive alternative to the current situation is the development of new economic, technological and social structures and implementation of societal values, aiming at sustainable societies. Any process of development seeking sustainability should take the following criteria into account:

    • protecting the integrity of the biosphere:
      • practice sustainable agriculture and forestry;
      • preserve marine resources and biodiversity;
      • establish networks of nature protection;
    • efficient use of resources:
      • social innovation in production and product distribution and use;
      • development of new technologies and designs to increase efficiency;
    • self-reliance: enhancement of endogenous production capacity in the non-industrialised countries using all opportunities available, adding value to the resources and creating jobs in the countries and communities of origin;
    • participatory democracy: creation of structures that ensure access without discrimination of any sort including gender or income level to education, participation in civil and political life, health care, food and other resources, and means of production and labour opportunities; these structures should encourage people to bring their creativity into the political planning and decision process, and thus contribute new ideas and life styles to global sustainability;
    • fair trade: establishment of fair trade patterns and regulatory mechanisms
    • peace and non-violence: creation of a culture of non-violence and establishment and strengthening of structures for peaceful resolution of conflicts; prohibition, elimination and verified safeguards against all weapons of mass destruction; severe restrictions on the development, transfer and use of all weaponry.

    The Role of Science and Engineering

    Science and technology have become instrumental to the present patterns of development, and in many countries have evolved from mere instruments into autonomous driving forces; they are as much a part of the problem as they can be a part of the solution. In some societies there is an impressive capacity for technical innovation; however, it is clearer than ever before that not every innovation can be considered as progress. Natural sciences draw their strength frequently from reductionist analysis, thus inherently favouring specialisation and selective perception of problems. Consequently, the solutions proposed often fall short of an integrated approach.

    A thorough reorientation of science and technology is necessary based on integrated system approaches and the acceptance that science can never claim to fully tackle all aspects of reality.

    Only through innovative reorganisation and public accountability can the scientific and engineering communities meet their obligation to contribute to a sustainable future.

    Appeal

    We, the undersigned engineers and scientists, commit ourselves, as professionals and citizens, to work for a sustainable society, and appeal to other colleagues to join us by undertaking the following actions:

    We appeal to decision makers from the scientific and engineering communities wherever possible to:

    • support and fund the integration of sustainable development in programs and projects
    • emphasise a systematic interdisciplinary approach to the development of alternative technologies and the organisation of their use.

    We appeal to the scientific and engineering communities at large and to their institutions to:

    • be open for new, innovative contributions;
    • foster participation, freedom for and encouragement of innovative thinking and openness for ideas from inside and outside the academic community;
    • support integration of, rather than discrimination against, non-mainstream approaches;
    • investigate and promote all means by which deep inequalities between peoples and between countries can be reduced;
    • apply our insights to our own institutions, buildings, and ways of working.

    We commit ourselves in our professional work to:

    • support the sustainability perspective in the way we develop and conduct projects, to foster systemic integration of different disciplines, schools of thought, and regional perspectives wherever possible;
    • uncover all available information about environmentally, socially or otherwise unsustainable developments.

    For many scientists and engineers there is only limited scope for acting; nonetheless, other options apply:

    • to dedicate some of our time (5 to 10 per cent) to active participation in citizens’ organisations;
    • to support personally, financially and scientifically engineers and scientists who are ill-treated or persecuted for having acted for sustainability in their professional work, or for equity and democracy in their country and in international relations.

    Prof. Dr. Ana-Maria Cetto Mexico, Executive Committee Member of INES
    Dr. David Krieger USA, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
    Gerhard Rohde Switzerland, FIET (International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional & Technical Employees )
    Joachim Spangenberg Germany, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy
    Prof. Dr. Hartwig Spitzer Germany, Chair of the Executive Committee of INES
    Dr. Philip Webber UK, Chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility