UN’s Pact for the Future, Planetary Commons and The Overpopulation Project

UN’s Pact for the Future, Planetary Commons and The Overpopulation Project

Rhoda Wilson

The Pact for the Future, set to be adopted at the Summit of the Future on 22 September, calls for a significant overhaul of global governance in response to perceived existential risks.

A key component of this Pact is the planetary commons approach which emphasises the need for a global governing body to oversee the planet’s life-sustaining systems.

Recommendations for the planetary commons approach came from a policy brief, ‘Towards a Planetary Commons Approach for Environmental Governance’, issued by the Global Challenges Foundation, United Nations University Centre for Policy Research and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The Summit of the Future event coincides with the 33rd anniversary of a controversial document, ‘The Initiative for Eco-92 Earth Charter’.  This document was distributed at a conference in Des Moines by the United Nations Association of Iowa, in preparation for the UN’s environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro 1992.  This disturbing document advocated for forceful population control measures and global resource management by a select group of powerful nations.

As Jacob Nordangård highlights in a recent article, the summit at which the Pact is to be adopted 33 years later is not the only notable point about the two documents.

While presented in less stark terms, current planetary commons approach proposals from organisations like the Global Challenges Foundation echo ‘The Initiative for Eco-92 Earth Charter’ themes, suggesting a shift towards global governance of “planetary commons” including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere and cryosphere.

Global Challenges Foundation was founded by the billionaire financier László Szombatfalvy.  Szombatfalvy wrote opinion pieces together with Anders Wijkman, Club of Rome’s president, about the “population problem.”  

He also donated money to The Overpopulation Project, an initiative that studies the environmental impacts of global human overpopulation and explores humane policies to end population growth around the world.

The Overpopulation Project has the motto: “Too Many People Consuming Too Much.” One of their prescribed solutions is: “Create a new global treaty to end population growth, with all countries choosing population targets every half decade with a plan on how to achieve them.”

According to Szombatfalvy, the world needed a “political global organisation with understanding, power and authority to tackle these problems.” And added that it was “important that the new system does not require that all nations must be democratic in the Western sense of the word.”

This means Szombatfalvy essentially shared the same Malthusian worldview as the “British Race Patriots” and “living sponsors of the will of the great Cecil Rhodes,” who claimed to be the authors of the document ‘The Initiative for Eco-92 Earth Charter’ and who called for a New World Order, in which “all nations, regions and races will cooperate with the decisions of the Major Nations of the Security Council.”

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