Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

Par nature, le dogme du développement durable est trompeur : il égare nos esprits de la même manière que l'a fait, en son temps, l'idée que la Terre était plate, mais avec des conséquences infiniment plus graves pour notre survie.

There are few losses more profound than a forest laid waste and vanished.

Who among our politicians will save our forests? Most leaders sense the long-term significance of forests to their people. Forests help define the nation, its past, its culture, its land.

So the economic paradise promised by unlimited, uninhibited, inescapable global free trade has proved illusory. President Clinton acknowledges that world finance is in the worst shape since the Depression. The International Monetary Fund doesn't have enough money to keep bailing out nations hit by the crisis. In Asia, the backlash is getting ugly as people who were promised riches suddenly find themselves poor--and turn on the nearest targets at hand to vent their anger. We've seen violence against the Chinese in Indonesia and political turmoil in Malaysia.

Of the many great problems facing the world today, none is more fundamental than the persistence of widespread hunger and malnutrition. Hunger is the world's hidden and permanent crisis. The threat of nuclear war and the accelerating destruction of the natural environment present enormous challenges to our continued existence. But hunger poses a special problem. Lack of food is a matter of life and death on a daily basis. And the need to eat every day gives the world food crisis a special time dimension that other global problems lack.

As we meet here tonight, a deeply moving occasion for me, my thoughts turned first of all to my late Beloved Father who would have been so encouraged to see such a large gathering of Ismailis concentrated in a new land where they have never been before and as I think of my Late Father, I am greatly encouraged by the strength, the resilience, the tremendous ability to adapt, that all of you here have shown in settling in this great, this wonderful country.

We have been reminded that our primary concern should be the greenhouse effect and in the actions we need to take at a global level the behaviour of every individual for good or ill plays a most important role. Tourism is part and parcel of these planetary changes and changes are called for.