UN Sustainability Goals
The future is not to be predicted, it is to be achieved. Civana launched in Davos last week with a ‘Remember the Future in 2030’ celebration of the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We shared a dream of living in harmony with each other and nature with a new social contract and ethic that is fit for purpose. We will have designed our society for regenerative abundance. We will have decentralized systems for direct democracy and governance that are anti-rivalrous, antifragile, and auto-catalytic that embrace our collective intelligence. We will have created new systems for universal healthcare, education and basic income. In short, we will have tackled humanity’s greatest challenges by coming together as a united civilization. This is not simply a possibility for our future, it must be an inevitability.
We are living through a time of great transition. Our world is on fire. I could reel off all the disgraceful statistics about species extinction, runaway climate change, rising inequality and more but I’m sure you already know — we’re in a crisis unlike anything ever seen before.
In Davos last week, the Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that 4 out of 5 people on the planet believe the system is broken and 2 out of 3 people believe the future is going to be even worse. Meanwhile, most efforts typically tweak at the edges of the existing system, stuck in the same win-lose narrative and the victim, hero, perpetrator unwholesome threesome. Imagine our civilization had a compass and we need to head north. Most adaptations take us from South to South-South-West. Tweaking the existing system is not a viable strategy to get us out of this pickle.
On 25th May 1961, President John F. Kennedy said before Congress the United States “should commit itself to achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” James Webb was leading NASA at the time and in response to JFK’s announcement he organized an ‘Apollo Mission Success’ party to celebrate the successful landing on the moon 8 years before it happened. He invited the brightest minds in America to come together for the party. When the engineers, professors, and rocket scientists all came into the smartest room they’d ever been in they realized this was the invitation to be part of a team that would inevitably bend the arc of history.
There is great power in planting a collective belief in a vision for the future. Interestingly, NASA’s total budget between 1958 and 2018 has been $601 Billion. Meanwhile, experts predict that between 2015 to 2030 achieving the SDGs will cost an estimated $65 Trillion. That is more than 100 times the entire budget of NASA across its 70-year history. In short, achieving the SDGs is by far the greatest challenge our civilization has ever undertaken. The SDGs are also the most comprehensive framework for humanity’s thriving future that we have. Despite this, we need an additional $50 Trillion in funding on top of the existing $1.4 Trillion already being spent on the SDGs each year if we are to achieve the goals by 2030. Our current effort is like only having enough rocket fuel to get to near earth orbit but nowhere near the moon and back.
Inspired by Webb’s NASA celebration party, Civana invited some of the most powerful people in the world to celebrate the achievement of the SDGs. The event was one of the best-attended and diverse gatherings during Davos. People from every corner of the world shared their dreams for how we collectively achieved the SDGs.
We had 20 people give ‘Future Casts’ sharing their stories around how we achieved the SDGs. We all agreed it is time to build the future our children demand of us. The Future Casts included:
Yanling Duan of Davos BlockBase described China’s role in creating conscious education, social technology development, art and storytelling and internal health. She spoke of the assembly of a star troop where everyone is empowered to find their unique spot in the organic whole.
Bear Kittay of Good Money told us how we made the world work for 100% of humanity through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offence. He described how all citizens of the world will be stakeholders in the upside we co-create.
Lea Tarnowski of Averon told us how we established trust in the digital world and ended the era of fake news. In 2030 we will all own our identity, and be able to speak freely, authentically as ourselves.
Hans Raffauf of Clue told us how every girl in the world will own a smartphone and use it to manage their health and wellness to achieve SDG 3 — Good health and wellbeing.
Andras Forgacs of Modern Meadow described how we ended global warming by transforming the world of materials. He described the end of the slaughter of animals for meat and leather and the birth of a new revolution in bio-based material production. All leather products will be bio-fabricated.
Chris Kemp, Former CTO and CIO of NASA told us of how we be able to send anything to space and have a permanent human settlement on another planet that can sustain itself without the earth. We will have universal connectivity provided through satellites and be able to monitor the health of the planet as a unified system.
Sophie Monpeyssen of LeCiel Foundation described how we will know who we are, the sacred within and our unity with the planet. When we opened our hearts and realized that we are nature we transformed our collective consciousness.
Toni Lane Casserly of Cultu.re told us how artificial intelligence will free us of unnecessary labor and in turn free our individuality. She spoke of the end of scarcity politics into abundance for all humanity.
Mamadou Toure of Africa 2.0 Foundation told us of the decade of Africa rising and the eradication of poverty. He spoke of how we used the blockchain to leverage assets to redistribute wealth to the entire planet creating a world of equality, diversity, progress and enlightenment.
Carolina Guardiola Romo of We Are All Human told us of the role of Latin America in creating inclusion for the entire world and how the next generation united into force for good.
Andrew White, Associate Dean of Saïd Business School told us of the transformation of the education system to provide an understanding of planetary boundaries, to show that we are one, to help us understand ourselves, and from that self-awareness we will learn about the power and responsibility of capital to be in service of the greater good.
Alden Bevington of Civana told us of the creation of an operational platform for the SDG community that was not siloed. He told us of the convening of a design consortium that created the ecosystem and AI for the achievement of the SDGs.
Theo Cosmora of SDG Foundation spoke of an infinitive source of energy and currency lifted 4 billion people out of poverty.
Ocean Whitehawk concluded the evening by taking the attendees into a meditation that ended with a blessing, prayer and three OM’s.
In the eleven years, I’ve been to Davos, I’d never experienced anything as positive. We will be repeating this celebration in the future until we do this celebration in the present. I believe it is time to celebrate our way into making the future we all want a reality.
I invite you to be part of making this dream a reality. I invite you to apply to be among the first Founding Members of the Civana Community. We’re looking for community managers, designers, developers, funders, creatives and others committed to working together on humanity’s greatest challenges. This is the time for us all to be part of creating a thriving united civilization. The future is ours to bring into the present.
About Civana
Civana is a global community committed to working together on humanity’s greatest challenges. Civana focuses on creating products and programs for movements, communities, and multi-stakeholder initiatives looking to maximize their impact on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Civana’s first product is a digital collaboration tool being developed to intelligently integrate the diverse initiatives working on the SDG’s with the purpose of mobilizing, linking, and sharing knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources.
Davos interview:
Future cast recordings: