MAHB: Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere

There is now unequivocal evidence that humanity has seriously reduced the ability of the planet to support civilization indefinitely. The cumulative knowledge from the natural sciences has clearly shown that the global ecosystems upon which humanity depends have been significantly degraded. Without a fundamental shift in how people perceive and use ecological capital and services, the indefinite continuity of societies around the globe, an unchallenged assumption of past thinking, is now seriously in question. With this decisive diagnosis of the ill-health of our life-support systems there is the clear need for remedy.

The MAHB’s core commitment is to develop that remedy. We propose to do so by fostering collaboration among the millions of citizens, organizations and institutions who share our concern and want to see significant changes in policies and social norms. We propose to complement this by growing a global network of natural and social scientists, humanists, and scholars in related fields whose collective knowledge can be harnessed to support global civil society in shifting human cultures and institutions toward sustainable practices and an equitable and satisfying future.

In summary, the MAHB’s mission is to:

• Foster, fuel and inspire a global dialogue on the interconnectedness of activities causing environmental degradation and social inequity and the threat of collapse;

• Create and implement strategies for shifting human cultures and institutions towards sustainable practices and an equitable and satisfying future.

The MAHB pursues the above mission through 3 strategies:

1. Create a mechanism for progressive global civil society to collaborate for greater policy impact;
2. Develop the analytic framework for foresight intelligence –the bridge between understanding the threat of collapse and effective action; the key to fostering “future smart” individual, institutional and political behavior;
3. Encourage collaborative research between natural and social scientists with the goal of better understanding the issues and the implications of a failure to reverse current trends and trajectories.