Michel Serres Institute on resources and public goods

The institute is working at conceptual and operational, legal and political instruments that restore resilient mechanisms and practices at regional and local levels of decision making through resource stewardship. The transition to resilient societies (in socio-economic, environmental, financial, demographic, etc terms) has to be socially just, ecologically responsible, and society-wide (culturally) acceptable.

Partners and Actions

Make UN global Pact work
We have designed a resource-centered approach in a cooperation program between ENS de Lyon, EPFL Lausanne, and Oslo University [1] That framework is simple and universal and is meant to catalyze the diplomatic and political process envisaged by the Global Pact for the Environment as voted on May 10, 2017. It is mobilizing existing UN institutional organizations “to adopt an international instrument ” by 2019. The building of such an instrument requires intersecting in an actionable manner planetary and social boundaries and planetary health notions.

Making the United State of Resources

Humans are strongly health-minded, and are individually and collectively resource-driven, but frame resources incorrectly because public and private resources are unsustainably managed. Resources, including the human resource, are the matrix of economic and political power systems, of history’s ups and downs. They now constitute a hidden global challenge of our time. The open-source paper (1) describes a resource-centred science-policy framework consistent with the inclusive planetary health narrative. The framework promotes human rights and duties in the public interest through resource justice and environmental responsibility.

Main findings are :

1. Nature’s goods and services are the ultimate foundation of life and health, but the environmental crisis reflects the depreciation of planetary natural capital.
2. We have identified public health inequity as politically determinant. This is problematic, because health is a universal value and precondition, outcome, and indicator of sustainable societies.
3. Current governance is not equipped to handle challenges, such as those embedded in Sustainable Development Goals, with a holistic approach. Resource governance across sectors does not exist.
4. Inclusive resource-centred science and education programs do not exist.
5. Resource overuse marks the interconnectedness between social and ecological systems and is an early warning signal of socio-ecological vulnerability, an unhealthy momentum.
6. Global challenges agendas have resource knowledge and management as a common denominator that needs to be recognized and enacted.

Ioan Negrutiu, July 30, 2018