Sustainable earth alliance, a necessary network for the citizenship and the rural world of the 21st century

Never before in history of humanity we had attended a expansion of hunger of such magnitude as that experienced in the present, neither in quantity nor in proportion to population. At the end of the first decade of XXI century it is estimated that 1,020 million people suffer hunger which represents 1 in 6 people (16.67% of the population) (1). Unfortunately, the trends are showing that hunger in the world is going to rise in the short term both in number and proportion.

Although it seems contradictory, hunger is concentrated mainly in rural areas producing food from developing countries. In these territories live the 90.7% of the rural population, estimated globally at 3.377 million people (2), concentrated mainly in Africa and Asia, where hunger is greatest in number.

These rural areas that concentrate small and medium producers forced out of the most productive areas, with poor infrastructure and services, are also the most vulnerable areas to climate disasters that today are accentuated in frequency and magnitude as result of human activity on the planet.

Faced with this negative landscape that ended the first decade of the century, our leaders have demonstrated their lack of political will to reach agreements in the multilateral agencies, as has been demonstrated in the recent World Summit on Food Security FAO (Rome, 16-18 November 2009) and the UN Conference on Climate Change (Copenhagen, 7-18 December 2009). These recognized failures show the limited ability of governments to tackling global issues that transcend national or economic boundaries.

In this scenario, the organized citizenry has taken the responsibility, mobilizing, denouncing, informing the society and making proposals that sometimes go beyond the bureaucratic barriers to become formal government policy. In this context Sustainable Earth is inserted, an informal network of organizations and critical citizens able to question freely and without dogmatism the realities of our planet.

Sustainable Earth is a global mosaic built on the diversity of cultures, ideas and capabilities. A network united in diversity through bonds of trust and common work, articulated in those axes, that we have identified from our everyday realities, as common and priority. An alliance responsible and aware of their local and global dimension. A set of capabilities to serve farmers, fishermen and other rural actors who have been denied to access and exercise of their basic fundamental rights.

A look back shows us the fruits of the work of Sustainable Earth Alliance and their ancestors (RIAD, APM Afrique, among others)(3). Through the generation of synergies we can generate training structures, train rural leaders, develop proposals on key issues in rural areas, influence laws that affect our everyday realities, to sensitize policy makers and so on. All this human capital and activities highlights our collective capabilities to address a future that needs of Sustainable Earth Alliance.


What Sustainable Earth Alliance for the second decade of the twenty-first century? The future of the network should follow a path reflected in a critical, constructive and collective way by the members and associates of the Alliance. After Nant (4) meeting, this question remains unanswered. To build a consensus answer, may strengthen us as a platform and otherwise, may weaken.

Think the future is to think of ways and organizational methods of our own alliance. Thinking Sustainable Earth “sustainability” is to think of diversifying their funding sources, providing it with a formal structure that generates transparent governance structures, in adding value through innovation, thinking and pedagogy.

Only a Sustainable Earth Alliance adapted to its future, shared and felt as our own, will address the ambitious future projects as the Sustainable Earth International University.

The support of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation (FPH) in this changing process is essential. As citizens members of the Alliance, we feel the responsibility to ensure the sustainability of the investment in resources and efforts than the FPH as an institution, and Pierre Vuarin as responsible and founder of Sustainable Earth Alliance, continue doing since the nineties of the twentieth century.

Because land is not what we inherited from our ancestors but what we borrow from our grandchildren, let’s go on building and working this collective adventure called Sustainable Earth Alliance.

Valencia, January 18th 2010

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(1) Source: FAO.
(2) Source: United Nations. Department of Economic and Social affairs
 2007.
(3) Under the APM program, Farmers and Globalization, the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation supported the creation and animation of networks of farmers, NGOs, universities on four continents.
(4) Sustainable Earth Alliance meeting of Nant (Aveyron, France), june 29th to july 5th 2009