Our home, planet Earth, is in jeopardy. Earth provides us with sustenance and shelter, inspires reverence, and nurtures our dreams. But we are pushing the planet’s systems to the edge, threatening our own well-being and that of future generations.

In 1970, the Menton Message, was crafted in Menton, France during an environmental conference organized by Alfred Hassler of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other leading intellectuals and scientists, Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong. The conference produced a statement to “Our 3.5 billion neighbours”, published in the UNESCO Courier in 1971, and eventually signed and presented by 2200 scientists as a letter alongside the U.N. Summit on the Human Environment in Stockholm.

In 2022, fifty years on from the UN Summit, the International Science Council, Future Earth and the Stockholm Environment Institute convened an Expert Writing Group of natural scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars to modernize and extend the historical call on the eve of Stockholm+50.

GLP SSC Member Sharachchandra Lele is Co-Chair of the Expert Writing Group. He reminds us that "technology empowers us to change the world, science predicts its impacts and social science illuminates our motives. But only an ethical framework tells us whether and how we should change it. A holistic environmental ethic, encompassing concern for today, for all humans, for future generations, for other species, and for participatory processes, must be the beacon for all research and action."

We invite GLP Members to read, share and support the letter.