People, Health and Wellbeing: Will we make the necessary value shifts in time?

by Paper by Professor Bob Douglas, Chairman of the Board of Australia 21

Presented at the Manning Clark House Forum Making Canberra Sustainable, Canberra, 17-18 October 2005

Short Biography

Professor Bob Douglas is a medical epidemiologist who chairs the board of a new research and development organization Australia 21. He retired four years ago from the Foundation Directorship of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University and prior to that was Dean of the Medical School at the University of Adelaide.

Australia 21 is a non-profit company administered by a board of 12 directors who have links to academia, government, the private sector and non-government agencies. Australia 21's mission is to expand frameworks for understanding key challenges that face Australia in the 21st century. It does this by bringing together independent networks of outstanding thinkers, practitioners and researchers on topics ranging from the health and well-being of Australia's young people to energy options facing the nation, to our relationships with our neighbours and the sustainability of the Australian landscape.

Introduction

Futurists are becoming united in their assessment of future risks and possibilities for the health and wellbeing of humankind. The Global Scenario group argues that a "Great Transition" to a future of enriched lives, human solidarity and a healthy planet is both possible and practicable. But there is growing consensus also, that for such a transition to occur we will have to modify quite drastically, the values which currently dominate modern Western society.

Gerard Diamond in his book on "Collapse" where he explores the characteristics of societies through history that have survived environmental threat, points out that the Australian environment is the most fragile of the world's continents and like the environment on other continents it is deteriorating at an exponential rate. This deterioration is a consequence both of human impact and climate change. Diamond expresses the view that more than any other first world citizens, Australians are beginning to think radically about the question "Which of our traditional core values can we retain and which ones no longer serve us well in today's world?"

I put it to you that we are at a fork in the road and that "business as usual" will not suffice. For our children to continue to experience our current levels of health and wellbeing, our societies must now reduce greenhouse gas emissions, change our consumption behaviour, develop better understanding of the ecosystems on which our future depends and move to a new state of global solidarity across religions, cultures and national borders.

The future health and wellbeing of Canberrans will depend on our ability to shift away from the priority of undifferentiated economic growth to the economy of human well-being and the economy of the ecosystems on which human society depends.

I would like to initiate this workshop by proposing four major values shifts which I suggest will be crucial. Here are my four proposals on the values shifts that we need to make:

1. A shift from the notion that "My home and my land are my castle and I can do what I like with them", to the view that: I am a temporary steward for this part of the planet and need to care for it so that my descendents will have a life". This is a journey that most Australians are yet to make.

2. A value shift from the prevalent belief that "This is our country and we have earned what we have the hard way and it's not our fault that other countries have mucked things up with over breeding and corruption" to the recognition that "Globalization now means that all 6.5 billion of us are in the survival business together and that building fortresses around our own good fortune will not alleviate the threats to our children’s future".

3. I think we must urgently move from the twin belief system which drives current global politics that "It is the economy stupid!" and "Human well-being depends upon what we own" to the recognition that "It’s nature’s economy stupid! Human well-being depends not on what we we own but on having meaning, purpose and fulfilment in our lives".

4. Finally we need to move from the prevalent belief that "I cannot change what the rich and powerful are doing to the planet so I will simply concentrate on doing what I can for my family here and now." to the view articulated by Margaret Mead, "Never underestimate the power of individuals and small groups to change the world. Indeed they are the only things that ever have".

My own view is that we can change the world but that we must now learn to believe in our capacity to change it. Our politicians will not lead us on these matters. We must lead them and we must rediscover the power of the people.

I now suggest that we break immediately into groups of 6-8 people to discuss three questions. And that the task in the next half hour is for each group to come up with a two or three sentence response to each of the following questions.

• What are the values currently shaping our society?
• how are those values shaped and modified?
• What do we now need to do as a community to move towards survivable values and what are those values? 

These findings need to be placed on an overhead projector slide and presented at the end of the session to the whole workshop so that they can become part of the published output of the conference.