ECI Affiliate Values Foundation, along with Grupo Aión, organized a new edition of “Impulses for a better world”, centered on the slogan “The Earth Charter in Action”.
This event took place on 18 October 2014, at the Salón de Actos of Fundación Caja Rural del Sur in Huelva, Spain. After the inauguration of the event by the president of Values Foundation, María José Carrillo, several stakeholders presented their testimonies on the implementation of the Earth Charter principles in different types of projects.
Among them, Antonio Romero, Institutional Relations Coordinator at Facua, presented his new project that focuses on the development of a “Critical Consciousness” for sustainable consumption, geared towards children and teenagers. Gonzalo Revilla Parody, talked “De-growth” and his organization’s experiences with this topic, which advocates controlled reduction of economic production for establishing a new balanced relationship between human beings and nature, and among human beings. Antonio Soto and Sara Morales Pérez, from the La Hispanidad Education Co-op talked about “Values education and cooperativism“. They explained the experience of this social and economic center, which aims at promoting principles of education on values and equality of opportunities in education. Finally, Manolo García Villalba, President of Economato Resurgir, talked about this organization’s activity, which provides for almost 2,000 families suffering from a lack of resources in Huelva, offering basic commodities at a price under their production cost.
Then, a discussion table, moderated by Ramón Fernández Bevia, addressed the issue: “Building a better world: the Earth Charter”. Juan Torres López, Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Sevilla, offered a speech called “There are alternatives”, whose message focused on the third principle of the Earth Charter, Social and Economic Justice. Then, José T. Esquinas Alcázar, agricultural engineer who launched the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture approved by the FAO, talked about “Feeding the world, caring for the planet”, focused on the second Earth Charter principle, Ecological Integrity.
This initiative, supported by the Earth Charter, shows the importance of having an ethical framework to guide actions to promote a more sustainable society, as well as the way in which these actions can turn the Earth Charter values into real outcomes.
The arts were also present at this event. Find here the presentation of Rafael Prado, a pianist who played “Soul dance, the world’s movement“.