The conceptual reorientation of economic growth models and the transformation of values are integral to the organization of a new political culture. Throughout this report, specific action recommendations are called to the attention of the reader.

8.1 Review of recommended actions

In Section 2 (Threats to sustainable society), the ecological, economic and cultural specificity of required action is noted, with a clear re-statement of the need for the North to take the first steps in developing sustainable lifestyles. Sustainable agriculture is given a priority, along with a new look at the need for equity in international relations and in access to resources. The call for moral responsibility in leadership is pervasive, from local churches and communities to national governments struggling with unemployment to developing country calls for land reform, whether in the rapidly changing post-socialist economies, or in the international institutions such as World Bank and IMF.

Section 3 (Work in a sustainable society) ends with a detailed list of people issues in the world of work, areas for study and action which range from the pain of inadequate pay to marginalization, psychological damage, discrimination based on gender and race. A preliminary check list to use as a compass in moving toward the vision of a sustainable society is found in Section 5.3, along with four international initiatives (5.4) aimed at global exclusion and poverty and some specific actions to advocate regarding a WTO/ILO Advisory Body (5.5).

Section 5 (Dilemmas: true and false) noted five specific policy shifts away from the currently posed contradiction between economic growth and environmental sustainability, including the dematerialization of production and consumption patterns, the "loop economy", and new understanding of quality, satisfaction, and "enough".

Sections 1 (Values), 6 (Theological considerations) and 7 (The need for a new political culture) all treat the difficult and principal body of recommendations from the consultation: the need for a profound transformation of values within people and institutions to realize and sustain life in all of its fullness: social, cultural, ecological, economic and spiritual.

In addition to the principles, actors and recommendations in the foregoing, the consultation listed the following people-oriented, value-based strategies and actions.

8.2 People strategies

1. The top down approach is not appropriate to sustainable development. Grass-roots organizations need to facilitate popular participation and to develop political clout by networking at regional and national international level.
2. Citizens must strategize and organize to work for political change and full participation to make public policy on all levels more just, humane and ecologically responsible.
3. Encouragement must be given to those who study, research and teach the various elements of a new vision and its needed institutions; to do the social analysis and build the case for change, such as the Visser 't Hooft Foundation is doing.
4. Poets, storytellers, musicians, artists, dramatists, preachers, video producers must build up the value base and the spirituality for the vision, developing new attitudes and preferences, communicating values of community, equality, real freedom, co-responsibility; helping develop new social conscience.
5. The courage of informed conviction demands standing in opposition to all that goes in the wrong direction, participating in boycotts, civil disobedience, prayer, legislation, speaking the truth to power.
6. Each and all must commit to choosing individual and corporate lifestyles consistent with the vision of a world in which all people have opportunity to live in dignity, and in which humanity lives harmoniously with the natural world.
7. Specific work is needed to create alternative patterns and institutions that will embody the new vision, as the people of Mondragon and other cooperatives around the world are doing.
8. As stakeholders of the planet and the future, each person must share the responsibility to transform existing institutions from within according to the new values -- families, churches, educational institutions, membership organizations, corporations and other employers.

8.3 Role for the churches

1. Given the specific ethos presupposed in the "social economy" sector, the churches are called to reassess the prevailing "work ethic" in the light and context of unemployment issues; their reflection should integrate the flow of experiences of alternative job creation projects.
2. Churches must find news ways to facilitate and encourage the organization and participation of local people throughout the bottom-up process of transforming values and institutions.
3. Churches and other religious organizations should play a key role in situations where fundamental values are threatened or destroyed, such as during economic and social transition.
4. Christians must strive toward living out of an integrated kin[g]dom centered spirituality which resists harmful dualism that isolates the economic aspects of life from the full moral presumptions of our faith.
5. Churches should support efforts to generate funds for environmental and other transducive activities, for example, by taxing productivity gains, shifting the tax base to make labor less expensive and environmental deterioration more costly.

Each and all of these require individual information, thought, prayer, organization and action. Few can be legislated. It is the sincere hope of the consultation participants that each reader will begin work today on at lest one specific concern.

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead

Report Chapter 8, page 1 of 1