How can engaged global citizens help develop their ideas, amplify their voices and take action? How should engaged global citizens reach out to national governments, and to each other, to help address today´s global issues?
People & Planet teamed up with openDemocracy.net, the leading independent website on global affairs, to give you the chance to have your say.
The judging panel met on 9 March 2007 and included:
- Tom Chance, People & Planet Management Committee member
- Isabel Hilton, Editor of openDemocracy
- Becky Hogge, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group
- Stephen Hopgood, Lecturer in International Politics at SOAS
- Anne-Marie O’Reilly, Communications Intern at People & Planet
The overall standard of the entries was impressive, with particularly strong entries from Colin Rowlands (aged 21), Shanahaz Ahmed (aged 15) and David Lawson (aged 17).
The winning entry was from Dave Cullen of the Oxford Brookes P&P group.
Have your say
Excerpts from several of the essays are published below. Have a look, download and read your favourite pieces of writing and get talking on the P&P network web forum.
Winning entry: Dave Cullen
It´s not easy being a global citizen. In 1948, following his experience as an airman in the pacific theatre of World War Two, Gary Davis interrupted the UN General Assembly with a number of friends in tow, and called for world government. As a backup, he called upon individuals to declare themselves world citizens. Never a man to issue edicts and then fail to act upon them, he renounced his American nationality and he has spent the intervening years trying to promote the idea of world citizenship — mainly by distributing `World Passports´, and travelling the world himself attempting to persuade countries to accept them… clearly the line between being an active global citizen, and becoming a crank, is thin and indistinct.
- Read the winning entry on the openDemocracy website.
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Runner up: Colin Rowlands
The crucial point is this; the most effective way to eliminate the damage that some businesses do isn´t to try to convert the business leaders to your way of thinking but to become a business leader yourself. Just think about what you could do if you were in Bill Gates´ position… I do not believe that the tide of globalisation can be stopped. Nor do I believe that we should try to stop it. Any success would only lead to even greater poverty and suffering. However, this does not imply that we cannot influence it. Those who do have influence are truly global citizens.
- Download the runner up’s entry.
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Special mention: Shahanaz Ahmed
On political issues, children are told to listen to adults, however, it is on issues like energy security where children could have a large influence on adults. So it is vital to remember that no matter what a person´s age or status is, they can gain the power to make a difference… The main problem is how we can get our voices heard. An important step in tackling global issues is raising awareness of them. This is something that can be carried out by everyone and will improve the knowledge of those teaching and of those learning… There is strength in numbers — the more people taking action, the larger the difference will be. However, to do this people need to have the knowledge and want to make a difference.
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Special mention: David Lawson
A useful vision can only be founded upon intellectual honesty. Inflexible dogma merely gratifies the ego, hindering positive action. A striking example is the mass denial over aviation: If we agree that we need to dramatically reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and that aviation emissions cannot be sufficiently reduced unless total flights decrease then we must take this to its inescapable conclusion and call for our government to curb aviation levels and make the personal choice not to fly. As reality is what we make of the existential world, we need to prevent self-delusion by allowing our visions to be in a flux, however painful we may find the truth.
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Irma Allen
Community is a concept severely lacking in many parts of the Western world. It has suffered brutal and vicious assault by our current state of permanent fear, suspicion, surveillance, distrust and isolated individualism. Only in a climate of trust, identity, unity — or community — can we grow, develop our ideas, be creative, and amplify our voices through recognition, understanding and mutual respect, rather than echo off the brick walls of blank faces, of frightened and restrained people. We must rebuild networks and recreate place, rather than space. A place has meaning and identity, where a space is an empty vacuum.
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Andrew Deak
It is about finding that balance of understanding global processes and trans-boundary issues, but realising your realm of effective action in the local sphere. How do we conceptualise this? The spokes-person for the Zapatista rebels, Subcommandante Marcos, once put in an eloquent and catchy way: “We want a world in which many worlds fit.” We need to focus on our own worlds, our material realities, which we can see, feel, touch and speak to; but also realise that there is much out there we don´t see, and other worlds struggle to create their own space. The key strategic question is how to empower these worlds.
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Cathy Gitzer
What we need to recognise is that the world hasn´t changed because Luther King wasn´t cynical at times, or because Gandhi had bad days; the world has changed because they believed in spite of their doubts. There is nothing naïve or pious about believing that human rights abuses should be tackled. What is destroying our planet today is also what is eroding the foundation of activism today; that is, a lack of hope. People do not believe they can change anything because all we hear is bad news; we fight for endless campaigns, we see the same emotive images, we hear repetitive negative stories.
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Claire McGowan
We live in a world criss-crossed with borders, artificial barriers that have been drawn onto the map of the world. At times it feels like these borders are more open than they have ever been. The global flow of people increases year on year, and money, goods, and resources fly around the world every day. Air traffic has reached peak volume, with thousands of flights round the world every day. There are an estimated twenty million refugees and displaced people worldwide. With the Internet, national borders have been eroded as never before. It is possible to buy online, bank online, meet online, wherever you are in the world. But at the same time as this increased movement, our physical borders are being strengthened, and the barriers between rich and poor widening. In such a world it´s easy to feel disenfranchised and cut off from decision-making processes.
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Ryan Scott
It is possible that many who regard themselves as engaged global citizens would not qualify for entry to a community of engaged global citizens should criteria be set out. The fundamental reason for this is action or, to be more precise, inaction. Those who engage with others around the globe, whether via the internet or by other means, along with those who are fully versed in current affairs may be engaged with the issues, but are they engaged global citizens? I argue in the negative. One must take action on current global issues should one wish to receive their citizenship of the globally engaged community.
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The judges would like to thank and commend all those who entered the writing competition.