Keynote Speakers

Riccardo Petrella

Life, the Great Challenge
The world is not a commodity

We have long been told that science and technology are powerful tools of human development and well-being throughout the world. Yet, the use our so-called “knowledge societies” have made of scientific and technological advances seems to have done little more than devastate our planet’s ecosystems. Inequalities have widened; the commodification of life has become rampant; the energy, food, water and climate crises have all led to what has become the “global crisis”. The world today is violent, with more than 2.8 billion people living in abject poverty, another 1.7 billion living in shanty towns, more than 2.6 billion without proper sanitation... We have to learn to reconstruct our society into one that is capable of valuing life, the life of all of the planet’s inhabitants. Valuing life is possible when we recognize that the right to life belongs to all of Earth’s inhabitants; that we are all part of legal and political entity that is humanity; that life’s essential and unsubtitutable assets must be viewed as globally-shared goods over which societies are collectively responsible; that the sovereignty of peoples and safe existence of human communities are riches to be shared; that political and financial considerations are indissociable; that knowledge is not a commodity. To come to realize, in other words, that our fate lies in the hands of us all. The Earth is not an asset to be hoarded for the good of the strong. Today’s economy has distorted the true nature of the oikos nomos (eco-nomy), or “rules of the household”. It is high time to get working on building our “Earth home”.

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