An Earth System Treaty is a proposed global legal agreement intended to be negotiated, signed, and ratified by member countries of the United Nations. Once declared, it will also be available for voluntary signature by individual citizens, corporations, communities, nongovernment bodies, and other groups, organizations, and agencies worldwide, allowing everyone to affirm their commitment to a habitable planet and the sustainable future it provides for humans and other life.
Unless we first agree to survive, our future remains uncertain. The aim of the Treaty is to establish an international legal framework that protects and restores the Earth System, helping to maintain life on the planet so that humans can inhabit it indefinitely. This global treaty for humanity is designed to ensure both human survival and well-being while caring for the planet that supports those benefits. It will set forth goals, standards, and boundaries that everyone can follow and abide by.
While several forms of global treaty have been proposed, none thus far have managed to effectively address all ten of the catastrophic threats that constitute the current human emergency or integrate their solutions. Most versions tend to focus primarily on climate change solutions and environmental decline, while often ignoring critical issues such as population dynamics, food security, nuclear threats, global poisoning, advanced technologies, and misinformation. Unless all ten megathreats are comprehensively included, human civilization will remain at risk.
Depending on the outcome of the UN process, a truly effective Earth System Treaty may embody:
- A universal ban on nuclear weapons
- An international plan to combat climate change
- An international plan to restore forests, soils, freshwater, oceans, atmosphere, and biodiversity to sustainable levels capable of supporting all life
- An international agreement to implement a circular economy and eliminate waste
- A renewable world food supply plan sufficient for all
- A strategy to end chemical pollution in all forms
- A voluntary plan to lower the human population to sustainable levels
- A global plan to anticipate and prevent pandemic disease
- A Global Technology Convention to ensure the safe development and introduction of advanced sciences and technologies while minimizing their potential harms
- A World Truth Convention to verify honesty in public discourse
- An Earth Standard Currency
- All 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The concept behind the treaty is to bind all signatory nations to accepting its standards and promoting them within their societies and industries. By inviting individual ‘Earth Citizens’ to sign the Treaty, we can harness the immense power and creativity of grassroots humanity to implement it—signaling that individuals, as well as nations and corporations, share the responsibility for saving humanity on a habitable planet.
Above all, an Earth System Treaty will strive to keep human activity within the safe boundaries that are set by the Earth System itself, as illustrated by the following diagram from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Currently, humans find themselves in the danger zone for six of the nine key areas.
