In our security obsessed times, it is often easier to look for bombs on planes than it is to identify the deeper causes for global instability. The modern political discourse is now dominated by what our leaders call freedom and security, less often are they occupied with notions of justice and peace.

Damnation of terrorists is easy, untangling their motives or the cause of their grievance rarely gets the attention it deserves. Our obsession with the short-term and the immediate is already costing us dearly, both in terms of diminished quality of life and the massive finances required to sustain ever more sophisticated security and military infrastructure, and the bill is set to go up and up.

Our world has never experienced more rapid or profound change. Right now, we are on the brink of a shift in global climate utterly unprecedented in human experience. The depletion of natural resources from fish and freshwater to forests and soils continues apace, to the point where in some countries and regions there is already serious economic and social stress. We have also initiated a mass extinction of the Earth's wildlife species, as more and more land is converted from natural habitats for human use.

The ecological trends are in turn fundamentally related to growing inequality. While the rich northern countries account for four fifths of the world's energy and resources consumption, billions subsist on tiny incomes and are denied the basic services that the better off take for granted. It is also the worst off who tend to suffer most from environmental change. The rich countries produce most of the emissions changing the climate, but it is the developing countries of the south that are expected to suffer the worst effects of more extreme weather, economic disruption, food shortages and mass migration. It is also the people of the South who suffer the worst effects of the rich countries over-consumption, as the resources that sustain subsistence livelihoods are plundered to provide cheap exports of commodity crops, minerals and fish.

Environmental and sustainability concerns may not yet be the main driving forces behind conflict and tension, but the declining ability of our planet to sustain its natural diversity while meeting the demands of its ever increasing human population threatens to exacerbate insecurity, not relieve it. Our grossly unsustainable economy exacts an ever greater price on the global ecosystem, but measures its impact through short term financial returns based on spiralling consumption.

There is an alternative route - the route toward a sustainable society, where all people's needs are met while respecting environmental limits. We have the policies, knowledge and technology to get us there, but clearly not yet the will or the institutions. Now is the time to write the road map to a sustainable future based on environmental justice and respect for our planet. Not only as a matter of moral necessity, but because it is the cheapest option as well. The bill for inaction may not arrive tomorrow, or the day after. But the longer we delay, the more expensive will be the cost - not only for our finances, but for our societies too.

Tony Juniper
Executive Director
Friends of the Earth
March 1, 2004