It was 22 years ago. On the 4th of June 1992, 182 States and more than a thousand NGOs took part in the Rio Earth Summit. During 10 days, forums and official discussions led to the drafting and signature of the Rio Declaration in 27 principles. The States represented in Rio also adopted the planetary Agenda 21. It is a collective strategy appended to a 2500 actions plan to implement at the international, national and local levels, in order to preserve sustainable livelihoods for everyone.

A further step was taken in Rio: for the first time, States had to adopt restraining commitments validated by all the countries, both from the North and from the South. Conventions signed in Rio were embodied in national laws and were the starting point of numerous initiatives in most of the signatory countries.

Ten years later, on the 2nd of September 2002, the President of the French Republic gave a foundational speech at the Johannesburg Earth Summit: “Our house is burning and we are turning our eyes away. Nature, mutilated, overexploited, does not manage to renew anymore, and we refuse to admit it. Humanity suffers. It suffers of misdevelopment, both in the North and in the South, and we remain indifferent. Earth and Humanity are endangered, and we all are responsible for it.”

This assessment is clear, limpid, shared and broadcasted. Now it is time to take action. Local Agenda 21 are emerging. Experiments are multiplying. Organisations learn how to “make sustainable development”, transversality and dialogue. In this way, 12 years later, we now know that we all can be a driving force in the process of change, and that we can take concrete action in our daily lives, for today and tomorrow.

This knowledge is translated into concrete actions; nevertheless it struggles to be embodied in real and tangible transformations of society trajectories toward a sustainable world. The accumulation of good practices does not change the paradigm. Everywhere on the planet, the degradation is accelerating. The loss of markers and sense, mistrust against local, national and international powers and capacities, lead to ill-being, demotivation, dislocation, and invidivual and collective retreat.

On the one hand, we observe an individual retreat on immediate consumption acts, which do not meet the satisfaction of real needs, nor do they meet the well-being criteria defined by the citizens themselves. The addictive consumption is nothing but the Danaids’ sieve: it is never full and it is always drilled with new frustrations. But it can show a research for things that individuals can do at their scale, things that are reachable, valued in the moment, by relatives and by society. Everyone can consume, within certain limits, even with money we do not own. What we dare to identify here, through the consumption act as an individual need to be able to, and to get recognition could be satisfied into contribution acts. It is one of the challenge of change of this manifesto. It is a driving force for individuals to consider themselves as agents in a co-responsibility ecosystem.

On the other hand, we notice a collective retreat on control, surveillance instead of goodwill, accumulation of laws instead of shared values that would be connected to real life. And still, a need for confidence, a reason to live together as a desire of a future vision that would not be renouncement emerges everywhere.

The knowledge and the importance of climatic, social, energetic, ecologic and economic stakes are simultaneously affirmed, as well as their interconnections and their acceleration in a world more and more digital. It is no longer the time of giving information and raising awareness. Everyone “knows” or can easily and instantaneously know. This consciousness and this acceleration imposed themselves only in a generation. It is barely enough time to change our social representation system of our common goods, insufficient to try an action, management and protection plan. Too fast and too slow.

The international community, on a basis of consensus, is unable to face these new inter-related stakes. Moreover, the local incapacities are inter-twinned and restrain international governance instead of inventing collectively new ways adapted and connected to realities of life and to cultural references of local agents.

On an operational level, they also mix up by defining without translating macroscopic objectives, which by being redefined again and again, lose their strategic power. These objectives cannot set in motion relevant courses of action besides fossilized role-plays, unable to produce change because they are designed for stability. Conversely, when we try to translate the objectives at the level of local stakes, the translation often betrays and sacrifices a level of ambition, to the benefit of local consensus. Too global and too local.

Civil society claims its place around the table of stakeholders: it demonstrates alternatives and possibilities of self-organization, and implements ultra-local solutions inherently connected to the local level. It protests against the slowness of what is institutionalized, it marvels at the details, and exerts itself by the magnitude of the task. Too local and too small.

Anyway, at the global and the local level, we know how to observe, how to act, but we do not know how to contribute “at the level of what is at stake”. However, this is what “must be done”, Agenda in latin, for the 21th century. We need to learn how to completely fulfil our responsibility, while being conscious of the interdependences of others’ responsibilities.

Twenty two years after the Rio Summit, a rear-window gaze can discourage us, overwhelmed by the magnitude of our shared knowledge and by our incapacity to face the stakes. But a gaze at the stern-mirror is enough to give renewed impetus. Because even though the accumulation of individual and disconnected actions showed its limits, we all know that together, everything is possible. It is not anymore only about raising awareness and taking action. It is about contributing together to making society an essential common good on which each one exerts its part of responsibility, its 100% of responsibility.

Therefore, this manifesto has a purpose of defining and laying the foundations of a territorial project of sustainable development, laboratory of societal co-responsibility for the well-being of all, for today and tomorrow, at the level of what is at stake. This manifesto, constantly changing, also ambitions to involve everyone, public or private agent, individually of collectively, in a transformation process towards a desirable future, guarantor of public interest of present and future generations.

Today, new processes emerging from numerous project backers arise and converge toward societal and territorial coresponsibility. It is now about organizing meetings and to build lively and solid alliances. In that way, these convergences can fertilize themselves mutually by accelerating conversely their transformational potentialities. Therefore, these convergences can express themselves in a territorial ecosystem learning and materializing through ambitious, open, innovating and connected to local capacities and desires projects.