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Invitation from the Editorial Board
ARTICLE | January 5, 2011 | BY Ivo Šlaus, Garry Jacobs, Walt Anderson, Winston P. Nagan
Author(s)
Ivo Šlaus
Garry Jacobs
Walt Anderson
Winston P. Nagan
Fellows of the World Academy of Art & Science,
The Club of Rome, and the Pugwash Conferences
Dear Friend,
By now you should have received the first issue of Cadmus, and we - the Editorial Board - welcome your comments and suggestions. This journal is meant to be interactive, a vehicle for all of us to work together on issues that youdeem important.
The development of human-centered economy explored and humbly outlined in the first issue of Cadmus is reinforced by independent endeavors of The Club of Rome conferences, Human Development Report 2010 and through the recent work of Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. As Ian Johnson, secretary general of The Club of Rome, wrote addressing the topical conference: “The Club of Rome intends to develop a work program on new economics for the creation of real wealth: measuring the things people really want and assuring that a new generation of policies can support the management of all forms of capital and in a manner that creates the kind of employment opportunities that will lead to a safer and more secure world.” Wolfgang Lutz aptly summed up this objective when, in a recent issue of the Population Network Newsletter, he paraphrased Bill Clinton’s much-quoted campaign slogan. The Lutz version: “It’s human capital, stupid!“
Human and social capital are the unique forms of wealth that can assure sustainable comprehensive development. Economic issues have been the most frequent concerns expressed by fellows of WAAS in response to the call for comments on strategic planning. It is clear that further work along these lines is necessary and we plan that next issues will be again devoted to economic issues, broadly defined. Economic issues are intertwined with governance, education, environmental sustainability, climate change and population growth. Governance and decision-making permeate all human activities, economy included, either regulating economic activity, including taxing, or limiting usefulness of market mechanisms or both. For example, the global employment challenge necessitates a solution that takes into account not only economic and demographic factors, but also approaches the issue from the perspective of governance.
In today’s interconnected, interdependent, and rapidly-changing global society, governance and decision-making are severely strained. There is great uncertainty and high levels of vulnerability to many kinds of risks and threats. Although globalizing forces continue to transform our world, we still lack adequate institutions capable of dealing with matters that concern all the world’s people and the planet itself. Some encouraging signs of movement in this direction are offered by the recent work of the G20 and the proposed UN Parliamentary Assembly, but we need much more and better. New, innovative ideas are required. All these topics have been listed by fellows of WAAS and some of them have organized webcasts and meetings on these topics. The Club of Rome and Pugwash have studied many of these topics. We plan to continue along these lines in the next issues -- publishing ideas that will lead to action.
The journal Cadmus and our web portals provide us with a medium for formulating our views on what are the essential tasks of the academies: national, regional and global, as well as of associations of academies. Please do use this discussion forum to express your ideas and proposals. With your consent, we will present all your views on our web portals and the Editorial Board will publish the most representative ones in the journal. We welcome your contributions.
Sincerely yours,
Ivo Slaus, Orio Giarini, Garry Jacobs, Walt Anderson, Nese Kavak and Winston Nagan
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