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Many years ago when we began working on the precautionary principle, a core concept of the Women’s Congress for Future Generations, we traced the idea back to its origin. The words “precautionary principle” were translated out of a lovely German word Vorsorgeprinzip by Konrad Von Moltke at a meeting of Greenpeace in Europe. The literal translation of Vorsorgeprinzip, according to Nancy Myers, the multi-lingual then communications director of SEHN, is “forecaring”. Forecaring is a complex idea that means caring about and preparing for what might be a difficult future.
As I write this, the difficult future is here. Everywhere we turn we are faced with fire and floods, racial violence and increasing patterns of diseases in our most vulnerable communities. The old ideas of economic growth for its own sake, government by and for corporations, acceptable risk rather than preventing harm have led to a level of suffering and catastrophe that a decade ago were unimaginable.
The Women’s Congress stands for the proposition that we have a responsibility to prevent suffering and harm if we can. Prevention is a future-oriented idea. The Congress affords us an opportunity to examine the ideas that we use as navigational tools as we head towards that future. We believe that the crises of our days and the threat to a livable future require that we use a moral compass to find our way forward. Our grandchildren deserve this. Our neighbors’ grandchildren deserve this. We owe it to them.
** This essay is a foreword to an entire handbook on applying the principles of Commons, Free, Prior and Informed Consent, the Public Trust theory of Government, the Precautionary Principle, and Guardianship of Future Generations, in your community. ACCESS THE FORECARING HANDBOOK HERE
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Carolyn Raffensperger, SEHN executive director, coined the term "Ecological Medicine" in 2001 for a new field of inquiry and action to reconcile the care and health of ecosystems, populations, communities, and individuals.
In light of the pandemic, Bioneers is releasing a free downloadable pdf of the 2004 Bioneers book: Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves, which could hardly be more relevant right now.
Ecological medicine is a unifying field that embodies the recognition that human and environmental health are one notion, indivisible. It’s also a metaphor for the healing process intrinsic to life that applies to both ecosystems and our bodies. Modern medicine’s separation from nature is at the root of many tragedies, both human and environmental, and the current pandemic is an object lesson in how disastrous that disconnection is to us as a society and civilization. Get your copy here.
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