Published 2021 – In a recent Open letter to Global Leaders, the Club of Rome with 250 partners and other global institutions launched the Planetary Emergency Partnership. This document re-affirmed the reality that the world is facing a planetary emergency and that now more than ever, new ways of thinking, governing and acting are called for to respond to the devastating effects that the COVID-19 global pandemic are unleashing on the global economy, financial markets and the everyday realities of people’s ability to create livelihoods and hopeful futures. As argued by many analysts, this pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities. In particular the social, environmental and economic injustices that plague our societies have been revealed.
We now recognise the inherent fragility of our highly technological and globalised societies in ways that would have been unthinkable in a pre-COVID-19 world.
And yet in the midst of these challenges, new positive ways of working and thinking have emerged, which could help define a new future and contribute towards new narratives of hope. This is where we would like to weigh in, with cumulative and new African voices—old and young—to consciously co-create an emerging present that places values such as entrepreneurship, sustainability, community, empathy, compassion, circularity and resilience, inter alia, at the centre of our focus.
Authors: Rika Preiser, Mark Swilling, Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, Mamphela Ramphele
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