International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.3, 2022

Ecological Civilisation: from Emergency to Emergence

(Abstract)

David Korten

Humans confront an unprecedented challenge. Science tells us we now have less than a decade to address potentially irreversible damage to the Earth on which our wellbeing, indeed our existence, depends. This is an Emergency. Our home is burning, and we must act. The required Emergency action depends on failed institutions, most of which are adapted relics of an imperial past that must give way to the Emergence of institutions that support us in fulfilling our distinctive human responsibility and potential. Essential action to forestall social and environmental collapse cannot wait for the transformation of culture, institutions, technology, and infrastructure on which a viable human future depends. We must act now with what we have while initiating the transformational Emergence of the new.