“My mandate focuses on the protection of those trying to protect the planet. Protection of defenders is my main topic. When I'm speaking to states or companies, it's always related to cases of defenders facing threats, attacks, or penalization by companies or governments, like the recent case of Paul Watson (founder of Sea Shepherd) in Denmark… When I travel to places like Peru, Colombia, or Honduras and meet Indigenous people, I realize they have a relationship with nature that we don't have anymore. They express that the food they eat, the water they drink, and the air they breathe goes beyond just air and food; it represents what they call Pachamama or Mother Earth. This is a cosmovision shared across various communities, not only in Latin America but globally.”

Michel Forst is a prominent human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention. He previously served as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders (2014–2020) and has worked with Amnesty International, UNESCO, and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, championing protections for activists worldwide. Forst’s career is marked by his unwavering commitment to defending those at risk for advancing justice, environmental protection, and human rights globally.

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"I do remember a few things about my upbringing that I think helped shape my systems view, and they're almost oppositional. So, on the one hand, Hinduism is a multi-god religion. They believe in millions of gods, and they have an understanding of cosmology that is multi-lifetime. You don't end your life in this one; you kind of reincarnate your soul into another one. So they have this big cosmological picture, which created a sense of wonder and awe in me right from childhood. Like, oh my God, we are not just living in this house, in this neighborhood, in this town, in this country, in this world. There is this whole big thing with time and space. So, it kind of unbounded my physical existence. On the other hand, the same precepts of religion and the caste system within the Hindu religion were another mind-opener. We are imposing these systemic rules on our lives, which privilege some people, privilege some ideas, and denounce other people and ideas.

And so, I was keenly perceptive that systems analysis broadly lacks a kind of self-reflectivity about its own boundaries. It doesn't allow non-material things, spiritual things, to enter it. To some degree, the Club of Rome's work also suffers from that. We do a lot of systems analysis of material systems but don't incorporate the spiritual, the emotional, the subjective as strongly into as the artistic and the aesthetic, etc. One of my goals now at the Club of Rome is to open up the dialogue beyond just the material systems and earth systems to include these human systems that are, in many ways, driving what's happening to the earth systems."

Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of The Club of Rome and a Professor of Management and Organisations at Pennsylvania State University. He founded the UNESCO Chair for Arts and Sustainable Enterprise at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, and the ONE Division of the Academy of Management. He was the Executive Director of Future Earth, where he established its secretariat for global environmental change programs, and has published extensively on both sustainable management and crisis management.

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Less than two weeks into the new year and the world’s wealthiest 1% have already used their fair share of the global carbon budget allocated for 2025. 2024 was hottest year on record. How can we change our extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset? How can we evolve our systems from economic growth to a vision of regenerative living and eco-civilization?

Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of The Club of Rome and a Professor of Management and Organisations at Pennsylvania State University. He founded the UNESCO Chair for Arts and Sustainable Enterprise at ICN Business School, Nancy, France, and the ONE Division of the Academy of Management. He was the Executive Director of Future Earth, where he established its secretariat for global environmental change programs, and has published extensively on both sustainable management and crisis management.

“Climate change is here. It's already causing devastation to the most vulnerable populations. We are living with an extractive mindset, where we are extracting one way out of the life system of the Earth. We need to change from that extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset. And we need to change from the North Star of economic growth to a vision of eco civilizations. Those are the two main principles that I want to propose and that the Club of Rome suggests that we try to transform our current organization towards regenerative living and eco civilization.”

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Photo credit: Penn State. Creative Commons