The Earth Charter is a document. It needs people and organizations to put it into action. Read this excellent example of how the ethical framework is used by Hazel Henderson, longtime friend and endorser of the Earth Charter and author of the thematic essay on principle 7 in the book The Earth Charter in Action.
Hazel Henderson says, “We need to make the environmental ethical community worldwide much more aware of the fact that the global financial system is the source of most of the social and ecological disruption we are facing. It is time to teach your audience about the financial risks of science-denial, due to obsolete investments models still used on Wall Street and all capital markets.”
Ethical Markets Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) annual tracks private green investments worldwide since 2009. The GTS tracks Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Life Systems, Green Construction and Corporate Green R&D, representing broad areas of investment in green technologies.
The newest report shows insight in the rapid expansion of the plant-protein food sector worldwide and the wave of new scientific studies behind this shift in our global food system. It tracks how the growing evidence of climate change disruptions, long forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): floods, fires, droughts, hurricanes and species losses worldwide, have changed public opinion toward recognizing these life-threatening events affecting most countries and the global economy. Most strikingly, it pays attention to the extent to which financial asset managers of mutual funds, pension funds, endowments and sovereign wealth funds are still largely operating on obsolete textbook models and algorithms ignoring today’s new risks to our living biosphere and life-support systems.
The report refers to many documents bringing together important information about why the transition to science-based investing is so essential. It states that new forms of globalization should be based on the Earth Charter as the ethical compass to be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.