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Knowledge Repository

Delivering on the Pact for the Future: Forging a New Eco-Social Contract for People and Planet

GEC and UNRISD
  • A Call for Action submitted by the Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract (GRAN-ESC)

  • Briefing produced in consultation with UNRISD, GEC partners and GRAN-ESC working groups & network


Introduction

The polycrisis is escalating and governments and civil society must step up to this

moment. There is a need for renegotiated social contracts that clearly express

people’s priorities for change, centered in human rights and delivery of the 2030

Agenda for Sustainable Development and incorporating a contract for nature, hence

an “eco-social contract”. This proposal is inspired by the UN Summit of the Future

(SoF) that will take place on 22–23 September 2024 in New York—and offers ideas for

the Pact for the Future, its implementation and delivery.


The Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract (GRAN-ESC)

calls upon political actors, civil society and the United Nations to scale up ambition

and action for realizing inclusive, peaceful and sustainable societies for future

generations. We need to address polarization, conflict, environmental destruction,

poverty and inequality by changing harmful narratives, policies and practices that

have divided the world, undermined trust and driven us deep into crisis. Only new

deliberative and inclusive processes that engage deeply with the social contracts at

the heart of our societies—including the unstated, unstable, unavoidable contract

with nature—will do.


Eco-social contract is a constitutive expression of mechanisms for a global pact and

national action to implement the structural and architectural changes envisioned in

the Pact for the Future to be adopted at the SoF. Transformation cannot be imposed;

it needs to be negotiated. While governments may meet for the future and leaders

may negotiate for the future, they need to deliver a better present—so the time for

implementing change is now.


The full brief is available here:



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