– issued in advance of the G-20-Summit on 7/8 July 2017 in Hamburg, Germany –
„It would be a bad thing for science if later generations were not permitted to add new insights on the knowledge of their predecessors.“
(Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, 1548)„How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature’s productions should be far ‚truer‘ in character than man’s productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life?“
(Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, 1859)
Today, climate change, extinction of species and environmental destruction are the gravest existential challenges threatening the lives of all human beings irrespectively of their different cultural and political conditions.
In view of this, we call on the business, scientific and political communities to switch to an ecologically sustainable and participative economy in order to reduce the threat to nature and mankind and to develop a new modern style of economics.