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Alexander Likhotal
"The Club of Rome, given its record, intellectual capacity and moral authority is one of the best placed institutions to facilitate change."
Alexander Likhotal brings together academic research and guidance for sustainable political decision making. The President of Green Cross International on global crises, the Club of Rome and the "Limits to Growth".
Financial and economic crisis, climate and energy; a whole range of crisis has dominated the agendas of international decision-makers over the last years. In your view, what are the most critical global challenges for the next ten years?
The multi-faceted crisis that has hit the world shows with a renewed sense of urgency how tightly the key challenges of environment, development and security are intertwined.
Climate change, being but a tip of this crisis, gives global stability and security threats existential proportions that can shock the foundations of modern civilization. It threatens to unleash multi-million migrations and exacerbates the problems of growing poverty, social inequality, water, energy and food crisis.
Therefore the biggest challenge in the next 10 years will be our ability to offset this systemic crisis with comprehensive solutions based on scientific knowledge, focusing on the problem itself and not on usual political "priorities".
What role can the Club of Rome play in this context and how do you envisage your contribution to the work of the Club?
The Club of Rome, given its record, intellectual capacity and moral authority is one of the best placed institutions to facilitate change and encourage search for proper mechanisms of adjustment. After all you can not fix an existential problem by exclusively political or economic means, especially when economic system has been skewed and politics - misbalanced and asymmetric.
The Club of Rome can spur change by targeting not only the governments and intellectuals but also by encouraging public at large value change. This could be achieved if intellectual effort is combined with a complex program designed to create a practical modern lifestyle model that consumers are able and willing to emulate. Research tells us that it takes up to 10% - 12% of value driven citizens to trigger a profound change. That process has begun and I will be glad to contribute to its acceleration together with other members of the Club of Rome.
"The Limits to Growth" the initial report to the Club of Rome is now almost 40 years old. One of the report's key assumptions was that unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources cannot go on forever. Did this verdict stand the test of time?
This verdict has never been so substantiate as today. The title of the book said it all - "Limits to Growth". It has challenged not only one of the then core assumptions of economic theory - that the Earth was infinite and would always provide the resources needed for human prosperity. It actually raised the question of the modalities of human progress and meaning of history itself.
It was based upon the first research to make serious use of computers in modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing global population. Most of the scenarios pointed to a major economic/environmental calamity happening in the early 1990s. The humankind has belatedly started to realize that the "prophecy" was correct only by the end of the first decade of new millennium. As a result we have had a late start, but it's more important not to be late at the "finish". I am positive that having lost the first round we still have the power to win the game.
Alexander Likhotal
Professor Alexander Likhotal is the President of Green Cross International. He holds doctorates in Political Science from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (1975) and in History from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, USSR Academy of Sciences (1987).
In addition to an academic career as a Professor of Political Science and International Relations, he served as a European Security analyst for the Soviet Union leadership. In 1991, he was appointed Deputy Spokesman and Advisor to the President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. After Mr. Gorbachev's resignation, Professor Likhotal served as his advisor and spokesman and worked at the Gorbachev Foundation as the International and Media Director.
Having joined Green Cross International in 1996, he is actively involved in furthering sustainable development agenda. He was born in Moscow in 1950, married, has one daughter.
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