MEDIA ALERT August 19, 2002

Contacts: Xavier Brault, (French and English), Paris, France (33) 1 43 31 0177
Professor Louis Albou, Secretary General, (French only), Paris, France (33) 1 47 66 7100

THIRTY NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATES TO LAUNCH GLOBAL APPEAL AT
WORLD SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

SUNDAY, AUGUST 25 at 11:00 AM
University of the Witwatersrand Great Hall, Wits East Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa

At the International Forum on Globalization Teach-in,
“Which Way WSSD? Corporate Rule or Ecological Sustainability?”

On August 25, 2002 at 11:30am, the World Institute of Science (WIS) with its 100 members, including 30 Nobel Prize Laureates, will launch an urgent global appeal to scientists, policy makers and world leaders that time is running out to respond to the world’s ecological and social crises.

The Appeal calls upon those with “economic and political power” to “protect the biosphere from pollution, conserve natural resources, restore degraded environments and analyze human activities which are causes of climatic change; consider their prevention and the duties of those who are involved.”

The Nobel Laureates argue in the Appeal that “only collectively recognized responsibilities can form the basis of effective legislation, which must include obligations, prohibitions and sanctions.” They call for the reduction of “the waste of energy of and the use of fossil fuels,” and the development of “R&D which lead to renewable and safe forms of energy.”

Founded in 1991 at the College de France, the WIS considers that only an independent world committee of scientific experts can constitute a force for objective information and proposals on vital planetary risks. The WIS will bring together the intellectual and moral elite of science, the economy, and civil society to constitute a steering committee charged with drawing up recommendations on major vital planetary issues evaluated by the WIS (climate, power, biotechnology, agro-ecology, water, pesticides, and demography). The WIS argues that scientists share in the responsibility of the planet’s current ecological and social crisis due to their role in the technological advances that have caused many of these problems.

The Appeal calls “on those with political or economic power not to simply invoke ‘economic realism,’ ‘inevitability,’ or the flow of history in order to excuse and tolerate bad consequences of technological developments.” They argue that “human dignity and the equilibrium of the biosphere are too important to be dismissed this way.”

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