Abstract
In 2012, the United Nations Development Group initiated a series of thematic consultations with over a million people from around the world in an effort to clarify what are the contemporary concerns of the global community and assess what themes ought to be prioritized by a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals beyond 2015 (see the United Nations Development Group, ‘A Million Voices: The World We Want’, July 2013: 3). The results of this ‘global conversation’ (Ban Ki-moon, September 2013) suggested a strong convergence on the need to advance a more equitable response to global challenges like poverty, climate change, and increasing resource scarcity. In its official report on the findings of this global public consultation (2013), the UN underscored the necessity of ‘concrete and urgent actions’ to address pressing concerns, actions that ‘can only be achieved’, it added, ‘with a broad alliance of people, governments, civil society, and the private sector, all working together to secure a sustainable management of common resources, including fisheries, forests, freshwater resources, oceans, and soils’ (UN A/RES/66/288 2012a: 20). Diminished resource availability worldwide is thought to necessitate a new level of ‘global partnership’ (UN 2012a: 8) not seen before, one that relativizes the importance of distinctions such as that between present and future humanity, citizen and non-citizen, or national and non-national in the interests of ‘our common future’ and increasing vulnerability to ecological disaster (see UN 2012, Back to Our Common Future).
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Skillington, T. (2017). What Is Common About ‘Our Common Future’? Maintaining the Human Rights Status of Water. In: Climate Justice and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_7
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