Ottawa, Canada – February 5, 2008 -- In a report, Beyond Managing Environmental Crises: Creating the Necessary Conditions for a Sustainable, Peaceful and Secure Future, released earlier by The Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development (IHCMD), the essential causes of the current environmental crisis are diagnosed and a long-term solution is offered that differs from current ideas and solutions.

The report considers the limits and shortcomings of current views and measures – the lack of political will and action, years of discussion, work and effort with persistent and growing environmental problems, addressing only symptoms and consequences, dealing with different but related environmental problems separately, in isolation from one another.

Going beyond conventional views and understanding, beyond symptoms and consequences, the report looks at the fundamental causes, underlying problems and developments that have brought us to where we find ourselves today.
The crisis we face, the report argues, in its essence is not an environmental or technological problem. It is a human problem. We are the problem. It is a problem of how as a species we understand and manage ourselves. Within this larger context the questions are raised: Why do we understand and manage ourselves in the environmentally destructive ways we do? What are the shortcomings or contradictions of how we understand and manage human existence and human affairs, leading to persistent and growing environmental, as well as individual and social problems?

The solution to the crisis, it is suggested, does not lie in understanding and managing the natural environment. It lies in understanding and managing human affairs, ourselves, within the environment. The focus of the report is to prevent similar environmental problems from developing in the future, not dealing with problems after they have developed.

The report sets out the direction and the steps we need to take, individually, as society and as a species, to understand and manage human existence and human affairs in sustainable, secure and peaceful ways, in ways that do not cause persisting and growing problems for the environment, society and the individual.

Media Contact:
Dr. Axel Dorscht
Institute for Human Conceptual and Mental Development (IHCMD)
(613) 233-8354
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http://www.ihcmd.org

Dr. Axel Dorscht is Available for Interview

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