Читать книгу Sustainable Futures - Raphael Kaplinsky - Страница 13

I decided to write this book after returning from a wonderful family summer vacation in September 2018.

Looming over the warm afterglow of the holiday was the spectre of a damaged and increasingly unsustainable world. Donald Trump was two years into his malign disruptive Administration, threatening safety and livelihoods not just in the US, but across the world. It was increasingly clear that the UK was descending into a narrow tunnel in which delusions of past imperial grandeur, coupled with rising xenophobia, fuelled an insular and destructive nationalism. In my country of origin, South Africa, ‘state capture’ had led to the looting of state coffers by a predatory and opportunistic new elite. In Brazil, President Bolsonaro was following in the footsteps of his mentor, Donald Trump, and in the slums of the Philippines, police were encouraged to shoot on sight. If that wasn’t enough, climate change and global warming were accelerating at an alarming rate.

Out of my post-holiday depression was born a desire to contribute in some small way to finding a solution to these societal ills. This book is an attempt to identify a path which might help us to get out of the mess in which we find ourselves. Learning from history, it is not inevitable that our worlds collapse into increasing unsustainability. To the contrary, there are credible reasons for optimism, and this is the furrow which I plough in this book.

Out of crisis comes opportunity. It is possible to rebuild a more sustainable world by taking advantage of the potential offered by a new socio-economic paradigm. The lives of all of our grandchildren – to whom this book is dedicated – demand that we do so.