United Nations: Harmony with Nature?

This will be a series of blogs highlighting our reconnection as harmony with nature. This information (below) is sections in a United Nations report entitled Harmony with Nature. I felt a deep joy when I read it as it identifies our fundamental oneness with nature. What you do to nature returns to the self. The same applies to people (they are nature also). We are indeed one.

Stop reading and look around your room, close your eyes can you feel the peace? There is a relationship between you and all around you. You are not separate, the world constantly interacts with you in spoken and unspoken signals. You may look at your fingers and toes and feel separate but you cannot live without food that grows in the soil, that requires oxygen, sunlight, water and nutrients, as you do. The relationship is symboiotic and deeply intimate, most have simply forgotten, as they go to the supermarket or live in airconditioned environments structured around them. If you went to nature to grow your own plants, collect water, suddenly the basics come into view, you feel the wind on your skin, you soak in the sunlight, you breath deeply as something within you knows the peace of this world. Knows it is part of you, that is the joy responding, that is within you. That is always why we return to nature to have holidays and rest, to re-think life, to take stock, as it is the real peace and that feeling whether you believe it or not, is true love. It is beyond human love, it is completely unconditional, it gives so you can live. I wonder if we can learn to give so nature can live. That is the love you are seeking and indeed, it changes your world.

http://harmonywithnatureun.org/index.html

Sixty-fifth session

Item 20 (i) the provisional agenda

Sustainable Development: Harmony with Nature

HARMONY WITH NATURE

Report of the Secretary-General

Summary

The present report is submitted pursuant to the General Assembly resolution 64/196 entitled Harmony with Nature, inviting Member States, the United Nations system, and other stakeholders to transmit to the Secretary-General their views, experiences and proposals on promoting life in harmony with nature. The resolution requested the Secretary-General to submit a report on the subject to the 65th Session of the General Assembly. Drawing on the inputs received, the present report addresses how sustainable development approaches and initiatives have allowed communities gradually to reconnect with the Earth. Concrete recommendations are provided to facilitate further consideration of the theme by Member States.

I. Introduction

1. In 2009, at the 64th Session of the General Assembly, resolution 64/196 entitled “Harmony with Nature” was adopted. The resolution invites Member States, relevant organizations of the United Nations system, and international, regional and subregional organizations to consider, as appropriate, the issue of promoting life in harmony with nature and to transmit to the Secretary-General their views, experiences and proposals on this issue at the 65th Session of the General Assembly. The Resolution further invites member States, relevant organizations of the United Nations system, and international, regional and subregional organizations to make use of International Mother Earth Day (A/RES/63/278), as appropriate, to promote activities and exchange of opinions and views on conditions, experiences and principles for a life in harmony with nature. This is the first Secretary-General Report on “Harmony with Nature”.

2. The report benefited from inputs received from Member States, regional groups and, major groups regarding “Harmony with Nature” and “International Mother Earth Day”. It further draws information from a number of United Nations reports and publications relevant to the theme and released in recent years, particularly during the period 2009-2010.

3. The report aims to reflect upon the relationship that humans have had with the Earth as well as with their own existence across different stages of civilization, from ancient times to the twenty-first century. In doing so, the report looks at how humans have viewed their existence through the history of medicine and how this is closely related to how they have perceived their relationship with the Earth.

4. The report further addresses how the holistic nature of the concept of sustainable development, pioneered in the early 1980s, has allowed humans to gradually reconnect with the Earth and with themselves. In doing so, the report places special emphasis on the social and environmental pillars of sustainable development and their interface, an insufficiently discussed theme in international forums.

5. Given that environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, diseases and economic instability persist despite the analytical capability and technological capacity deployed by current civilization toward eradicating them, this report looks in particular at the current status of the trends of the educational system on sustainable development worldwide and how education for sustainable development could be strengthened. For sustainable development to succeed, education for sustainable development needs to be mainstreamed worldwide.

6. The report provides an overview of how the lifestyle of the 21st century, through its consumption and production patterns, has severely affected the Earth’s carrying capacity and how human behavior has been the result of a fundamental failure to recognize that human beings are an inseparable part of Nature and that we cannot damage it without severely damaging ourselves.1 The report has also benefited from the work undertaken in recent years by Nobel laureates who have interacted with the United Nations, namely Eric Chivian, Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz in the fields of environment, social and economic issues, respectively.