Creating the Necessary Conditions for a Sustainable Future

Ottawa, Canada—November 14, 2007—The Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development (IHCMD) announces the release of its insightful report "Beyond Managing Environmental Crises: Creating the Necessary Conditions for a Sustainable, Peaceful and Secure Future." The report, going beyond conventional measures and understanding of the ecological crisis, considers the conditions necessary for a sustainable and secure future.

The report, available at http://www.ihcmd.org, argues that while conventional measures are necessary, they are insufficient to deal with growing environmental problems. Addressing only symptoms and consequences, the human effects on the earth, they are only short-to-medium term measures. They fail to address the human causes, deep-rooted problems and developments behind the ecological crisis. According to the report, conventional measures need to take place within the context of long-term development changing how we understand and manage human affairs. On their own conventional measures only buy time for a way of managing existence
that is not sustainable.

The way we traditionally and today understand and manage human existence contradicts and conflicts with the natural conditions of existence, causing persisting and growing problems and difficulties for the individual, society, and the natural environment. It leads to changes in natural developments that in the long-term will render the natural environment of the Earth uninhabitable for the human species.

Essentially, we meet non-material mental needs in material ways, exploiting and consuming natural resources beyond actual human material needs. We try to create in the world around us in socio-cultural and physical-material terms what by nature we must establish in the mind, interfering in the natural environment beyond what is necessary to manage our existence. The problem, we fail to understand and manage the mind and mental existence, where we consciously exist and act, where problems have their roots and beginnings.

A sustainable and secure future, the report argues, requires establishing the necessary internal mental conditions, before dealing with the world around us, with nature and the natural environment.