Foundation – What Are We Building Upon?
So we have this big plan: Our “house” will be called “charter” and it will represent in a beautiful, creative and precise way everything we stand for, everything we are aiming at, everything that we want to change to make this world a better place.
How to begin? It’s obvious: foundations have to be done. Luckily for us, a lot of inspired people have done a lot of groundbreaking work already and came up with tons of ideas on principles and values on ecoconstruction. 23 entries found the way in our inventory, of which we chose 7 for the final output.
There is the “European Charter for Solar Energy in Architecture and Urban Planning”, focusing mainly on technical issues of how to build most economically and ecologically. The “Laufen Manifesto for a Humane Design Culture” agrees and adds to this the essential human need for equality and beauty. Yes!
The next on our list of “founding fathers and mothers” speak for themselves: “We, signatories of the Ecobâtir charter, express our desire to respect, in the act of building, the logic of the living and the cordial bonds existing between the human being and nature.” Feels a lot like the “Earth Charter”, only this one, the result of 6 years of work consulting the brains of millions of people, expressively takes it to the global scale and “seeks to inspire in all peoples a sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the human family, the greater community of life, and future generations.”
The “Agenda 21 (DE, EN, FR)” we could call the contract version of the “Earth Charter”: It’s what the 178 signatory states agreed upon in the Earth Summit of 1992 (officially: UN Conference on Environment and Development). Unfortunately, ignoring or breaking this “contract” is not sanctioned in any way. The agenda’s sequel, the “Agenda 2030”, is toothless in that sense as well, but naming 169 specific targets to accomplish 17 “global goals for sustainable development” makes it certainly harder to argue if you are part of the ones still steering our lifeboat in the wrong direction.
The “Economy for the Common Good”’s answer to why that is: It’s all about money. “Our current economic system is on its head. Money has become an end in itself rather than a means for what really counts: a good life for all.”
Pilot: ArTUR
Redaction Group: Fédération Ecoconstruire, BiWeNa, ebuki
Time Frame: Sept. 2017 – April 2018
Inventories: Complete | Selected Charters
Latest update of this page: 2019-02-18
