Hi there!

In the northern hemisphere, it is currently summer and in many countries, people are trying to combine periods of leave and work under continuing pandemic restrictions. At the same time, there are major disasters in the form of fires, floods and drastic weather situations in various locations worldwide. Some of these weather changes follow natural long or short cycles and others are, of course, the result of the long-term ravages of the planet we all share.

In a few months time, another conference will be held on the environment and climate, this time in Glasgow entitled ”UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26)”, almost 50 years after the first conference held in Sweden (Stockholm 1972) entitled ”The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment”. A lot can be said about these conferences, but few have been summarised as well and thoroughly as the Stockholm Conference. Encapsulated and written by Barbara Ward and René Dubos, the unofficial report ”ONLY ONE EARTH: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet”, commissioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations 1972.

This report discusses broadly the same topics as compared to present time – the dangers of increasing, accelerating human activities without taking into account the other inhabitants of this planet, the importance of taking care of natural landscapes or the overall environment. It is a worthy predecessor in many of these aspects and as such a surprise reading, due to the fact that the same problems are still in focus for discussions today.

Two decades after the Stockholm Conference, in London 1991 an advocacy group and charity were founded with the name ”Optimum Population Trust”, now known as the ”Population Matters”. With a primary vision of a future in which the world human population co-exists in harmony with nature and prospers on a healthy planet, for the benefit of all, this month they are celebrating 30 years as an organisation. The increasing population was on the agenda in 1972, the problems well known then, but since that time the subject has been in the shadow of the many climatic effects that the widespread increase of humanity creates, which become more and more visible in the present world.

You can download factual Global Voices, Vital Choices anniversary poster from Population Matters here.

IK sends this friendly recommendation as valuable reading material to enlighten with a historical overview of these important issues, with the hope of being able to nuance and see the whole of our natural as well as our cultural world! Yes, it is complicated, but it is possible to resolve in a long-term and dignified way. The book ”Only one Earth” and the Population Matters organisation are two serious sources of knowledge from which to learn to understand background, present and future.

As a multidisciplinary research organisation for Promoting Natural & Cultural History The IK Foundation has been working on these very same issues since the 1980s in many fields, analyses and publicity projects; we are happy to refer to the above. It gives a good insight into the facts, historical reversal and offers a broad view in which everything is interpreted – one of the most important collections of ideas to understand in order to act as a single human, family, nation, globally, etc. – that is what we call 'To Understand Planet Earth’.