by Flavia Pansieri, UNV Executive Coordinator

05 September 2011

Bonn, Germany: Dear responsive citizens

I wish to enthusiastically thank you for the hard work, the committed participation in the declaration that Felix just presented to all of us.

As Marian Harkin said on Saturday, “I like to come to conferences because, yes I give, but I get so much more!”

It is a pleasure to stand up here and to accept the declaration, because you have been giving so much. All your discussion, all your creative inputs, all of your ‘civic’ energy has made this conference a great success.

How did we get here?

Well, the first step of a dialogue is getting to know each other. In the last few days I met with old friends and colleagues but also met many new people. I presume that is the same for all of us.

Meeting new people and listening to new ideas in the roundtables and workshops has been inspirational. This helped each of us to develop new ideas and understand the different areas of work and the richness of our different perspectives.

But we need to keep connecting these perspectives. Like a 13-year old boy and committed activist – the other Felix - Felix Finkbeiner, said during the tree-planting ceremony at the very beginning of this conference, the world needs to stop talking and start acting – and act together. That very much includes all of us.

We all have a hell of a lot in common – whatever our agendas and fields of interest, whatever our backgrounds, genders, nationalities.

Please stand up if:
- Your organization is an environmental organization
Sit down
- Your organization works on poverty issues
- Your organization is a Faith-based organization
- Your organization is a woman’s organization
- Your organization is a man’s organization
- Your organization is a people’s organization

Now I would like you to stand up if:
- You have ever volunteered?
- If your organization was started by volunteers or still has volunteers active in its work.

So all of us are connected by our interests in sustainable development, the environment, to reducing poverty, to volunteers, to responsive citizens, to people!

And volunteers are people who stand up – like you just did, and like you do every day – who stand up, step forward and make themselves counted.

So volunteering is part of the work of most of our organizations. You can be professionals and volunteer at the same time. And we all here because we think we need to do something about the state of the world.

We stand up as activists, volunteers and we get inspired by other volunteers: people like Chico Mendes, citizens in fair trade schemes, Mother Teresa, the two Felixes who planted a tree on Saturday.

The volunteer firefighters who, almost exactly ten years ago ran not away from but into the twin towers to make a difference – many of them losing their lives in the service of people they didn’t even know.

It’s a mindset, a way of life, and one we all share.

Despite this, I think you would all agree that there are not enough people together in this room alone to create sustainable societies across the entire world. How many more people do we need? Many many millions. So how we engage them?

We need to go out there to inspire many more people and encourage them to understand what sustainable societies are all about, how they can become responsive citizens, they can volunteer, become activists, make change and implement sustainable development.

So to speak with the conference tagline, we need to commit, encourage and volunteer. We need to get out there, and   ….

Connect the dots

For such a long time we had this debate on development versus environment. I think all of us here believe that sustainable development as coined by the Brundtland Report in 1987 and accepted in Rio is the only way forward.

And we all know that development isn’t just about the money. It is about more than just building infrastructure and boosting employment, important though these are.  It’s about inclusiveness, equity, connecting the economy and the ecology, and connecting people with the planet. It’s about connecting the dots

We should therefore stop seeing sustainable development as a parallel track to economic or social development. It should be the only track.

And then how do we achieve sustainable development? There are three pillars of sustainable development: green economics, environmental preservation and social causes. And we want to get this discussed in Rio+20 and other fora such as the UN General Assembly. And yes Felix, acted on.

Even Ban Ki-moon during Davos this year said that sustainable development is about a revolution – a revolution in our lifestyles, politics, societies as well as our economics. We need a revolution to energize governments, change mindsets.

Someone commented yesterday: ‘Civic energy is a driver of voluntary action for sustainable development’. This is people that want to make a change, and they come from civil, society, government, from pepsico, and even from UN organizations. Because we all know we are at a critical point, maybe even at a threshold…

How can we make the change: measuring our progress differently, taking into consideration, environmental, social and civic engagement indicators besides purely GDP and HDI. We have to go beyond GDP. We need something like a gross sustainable development index, as the key measurement for progress. We are talking about Societal well-being. Thus an SDI. Well, maybe we need to think about the acronym.

How do we move the sustainable development agenda forward… with volunteers. Where do you see volunteers?. Take an African village with a water pump, that pump is being managed by a local volunteer committee, I am sure the fair trade towns were started by and still inspired by volunteers. And what about the energy policy change and closing down of nuclear power plants in Germany, if it wasn’t for the tens of thousands of people going onto the streets, activists, volunteering their time for a common cause. People freely giving their time for the benefit of others from commitment to create change. As Vandana Shiva said, “Volunteerism is freedom”

This is freedom when we commit, encourage and volunteer for sustainable societies.