During the Berlin conference in September 2013, we asked the participants about their visions for responsible resource management and their ideas what changes would be required to achieve this. Read below the answers from young activists and scientists from all over the world.
Cintia Barnho, Brasil
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Capitalism is not eco. Many things must be changed to create conditions in which there is equal participation of all (women, locally affected etc.) and where growth and the interests of big corporations is not the thriving power anymore.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Democratize the means on participation and access to law. To radicalize democracy we will need to reach a lower level and include communities.
Chol Buwag, Thailand
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Governance should be multi-level and polyantric. I should focus on local contexts and sustainability. Later, certain rules and standards should be implemented.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Advocate a perspective that resource management can also be initiated by normal people and we, as people in charge, are ready to help to make it happen.
Pinaki Dasgupta, India
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A well knitted, preserved, conserved leveraging of resources based on trust and integrity among stakeholders with highest level of sustainability.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Engage all stakeholders in dialogue. Create inclusive atmosphere for a responsible resource management. Share with all the urgency of conserving resources. Unite to make a practical implementable action plan.
Betzabet del Valle Morero, Argentina
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Resources have to be distributed democratically and decisions made locally. Production and demand must be local and small scale. Transport over vast distances must be reduced.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Equal distribution of land. No concentration of people and the administration of resources in the big cities. Promote the decision-making democratically.
Naw Ei Ei Min, Myanmar, Burma
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Managing the resources in a sustainable way with more dialogue between different stakeholders for a transparent and accountable governance.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Review the current energy plan and make it more inclusive. Establish a natural resource committee that involves different stakeholders, which should strengthen the implementation of sustainable development policy by law.
Malik Fercovic Cerda, Chile
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A regulatory-based, multi-stakeholder-based and territory-based permanent process on decision-making according to stringent democratic criteria.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Civic and environmental education. Continuous participatory process locally situated. Binding decision-making.
Recaredo Alberto Gálvez Carrasco, Chile
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Small communities where people maintain a low energy consume and produce organic food.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- More environmental education. Increase the use of “green” energy. Improve the democracy system. Change the party system and electoral system.
Edgardo Leonel García García, Mexico
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A management, implemented by law, done by the people at the local level, in which the persons or communities decide their own way depending on the resources they have
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Encourage civil alternatives and strengthen regional networks of organizations through local, regional and national meetings with the civil society.
Saeeda Gouhari, Afghanistan
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- The prevenue that comes from the natural resources should be used in the betterment of security in Afghanistan and provide education or all the people.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- I would include the community and civil society in decision making, publish the contracts of natural resource management and use the revenue for the community’s education and security.
Divya Gupta, India
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A responsible natural resource mangagement system is one that has more responsible citizens who think in terms of long term implications of their actions. I’s a system based on high social capital and more transparent and accountable governance. I’m aware that managing natural resources will always be a challenge but I envision a system that is continuously and actively sharing knowledge and information at all levels, innovating and developing ingenious ideas to overcome its challenges.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Develop a system that fairly and optimally utilizes India’s great human capital.
- Mobilize the communities, make them more informed so that they act as monitors and are able to challenge the resource governance system (which is now characterized by corruption, nepotism and ambiguous, inadequate policies) and thereby bring about positive change.
Andrew Chibuzor Iloh, Nigeria
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Sustainable use of resources which would be equally distributed to everyone, irrespective of class, gender, age and race.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Map out potential resources in my country. Develop manpower, regulatory bodies to use and manage these resources. Make sure gains from these resources are evenly distributed.
Sven Janovski, Croatia
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Coping with the roles and positions of state, corporations and people. Making states the overseers of the equitable, proper and sustainable use of resources, making corporations adhere to this and not just their private interests and profits, changing the people from consumers to sustainable users.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- I would declare the right to water and food as human rights, also constitutional rights, let all people have access to at least the basic food and water for free, thereby declaring these resources and connected resources as non-privatizable.
Florentina Julius Kideka, Tanzania
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Resources that are owned by communities should be owned and managed equitably by the communities with guidance from the government. Benefit sharing is not enough.
- Resources owned by the government should be managed transparently so that the people can contribute their opinion and benefits can serve the country.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Reform the use of natural resources so that long-term sustainability becomes an issue right from the beginning and let people participate in the whole process. Benefits must be for all.
Cathrin Klenck, Germany
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- That resources are being managed in a way that is promoting social, environmental and climate justice and where all stakeholders involved get their voice heard
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Democratize German resource politics by opening up the space for civil society.
- Set up binding rules for companies and make them responsible for the social, environmental and human rights consequences of their operations. Force them via sanctions to be transparent.
- Set up limits for the resource use, start the fossil phase out.
Tafadzwa Linda Kuvheya, Zimbabwe
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A world where resources are equitably distributed to achieve equality in the global community.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Ensure community participation in the governance of natural resources. Promote a human rights based approach to natural resource management.
Michelle Matta, Lebanon
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Green, clean renewable energy; all the way windmills and solar plants since Lebanon is blessed with practically 300 days of sun.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Apply the zero waste system by raising people’s awareness about consumerism foremost.
- Lobby and push the government to connect the waste water treatment facilities that we have built but are not yet functional (because all of our waste water is getting ejected in our rivers and sea).
- Build windmills and encourage the implementation of a solar energy based system.
Tamiru Sisay Misganaw, Ethiopia
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Seeing Africa efficiently utilizing its resources, make equitable share possible at the individual level, which can be essential to achieve sustainable development.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Organize the public to create awareness on resource management and the problems behind. Hence achieve public participation.
Erick Owino Onduru, Kenya
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Where informed decisions on resource use are collectively made by all the stakeholders based on social and scientific facts.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Gather data on resources to help decision making. Ensure public participation in the decision making process, e.g. on resource exploitation. Determine the public needs vis a vis the need to conserve the resource.
Chan Ramy, Cambodia
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- A responsible resource management with good governance in the extractive industries sector, transparent frameworks, where people are engaged in decision making processes. A Petroleum fund for the next generation should be established.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- I would develop human resources, and then study the extractive industry laws of other resource rich countries and with public consultation develop a good law to be implemented. I would ask my people for what they think the government should spend the revenues from oil, gas and mining on.
Maria Cecilia Reeves, Argentina
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- The relationship between people and nature must be respectful and cannot be determined by state boundaries.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Create a socio-environmental conflicts map. Try to find solutions with the affected communities, respecting their individual cultures.
Johanna Sydrow, Germany
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Consumption should be less and more conscious. Environmentally friendly transportation should become cheaper than flying.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Enhance the possibilities to recycle and raise the awareness on its importance. Reconnect consumers to the production of goods. Support vegetarianism.
Maiana Maia Teixera, Brasil
What is your vision of a responsible resource management in the future?
- Despite challenges will not be fewer, dialectic and resistance in the territories will inspire hope in each denouncement.
What would you do first if you were in charge of the resource management in your country?
- Highlight the controversies that are involved in conflicts on territories and their resources. Put evidence on separating the interests of big corporations and local communities. Provide education that enables societies to think about themselves and their habits of consumption and production.
