Ex-president to take part in world council conference |02 May 2008
Mr Mancham has been assigned to take part in the first of these, which will look at energy, agriculture and the oceans. It will consider a call by World Future Council chairperson Bianca Jagger for an international renewable energy agency (Irena) to be set up.
Delegates from 60 countries met in Berlin earlier this month, at the invitation of the German government, for a preparatory conference to found such an agency.
The aim is for Irena to be an independent driving force helping to create a level playing field for renewable energy in the Global South. It intends to encourage research and development to make such energy more affordable and easier to implement.
Members of the council and of its board of advisers will be hosted during the conference by the mayor of Hamburg, the city that has given office space free of charge for the next five years as the council’s headquarters.
Besides Ms Jagger, the meeting at the Haus Rissen will be attended by the council’s founder, Jakob von Uexkull, who recently received the Erich-Fromm Prize for his future-oriented commitment to a human society in a globalised world.
He is also the creator of the Right Livelihood Award, an alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize with its award ceremony in Stockholm instead of Oslo.
Others at the conference will be David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Foundation; retired International Court of Justice vice-president Christopher Weeramantry; director of the International Centre for Sustainable Development Professor Marie-Claire Cordonnier-Segger; former president of Trinidad and Tobago Arthur Robinson; the dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management of Santa Barbara, USA, Professor Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker; Olivier Giscard d’Estaing, founder of the international business school INSEAD; and Prince El Hassan bin Talal, who was recently awarded the 2008 Abraham Geiger Award and the Niwano Peace Prize for his “firm commitment to peace and interreligious dialogue”.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Mancham said: “The World Future Council is an on-going high- profile international forum made up of 50 respected leaders, pioneers and visionaries of all continents.
“Together we form a global voice highlighting our responsibilities as citizens of the earth, speaking up for the needs and rights of future lives. The council focuses on what is necessary rather than what seems politically possible. It works with policy makers, civil society groups and inter-governmental organisations, to identify, promote and implement best policies, laws and agreements.
“The council works to change the rules of global governance by raising key international challenges from political-economic to the ethical level.”
Mr Mancham said he is proud to be actively involved in the World Future Council, whose website www.worldfuturecouncil.org gives more details for anyone interested.