Wilmette Institute Course: Sustainable Development and Human Prosperity

Explore the profound implications for sustainability of our higher human purpose, and the scientific and spiritual principles to ensure the future prosperity of all humankind.

Today the nations are trying to implement the 2030 Agenda agreed in 2015, including Sustainable Development Goals with detailed targets and indicators that define how to reach sustainability by 2030, leaving no one behind. We shall explore the concept of sustainability in all its dimensions, and how only an ethical and spiritual transformation as defined in the Bahá'í authoritative texts will motivate people to transform their individual lifestyles and their local communities as essential steps towards a more prosperous, equitable and sustainable future.

Our headlong pursuit of economic development since World War II to respond to the needs of a rapidly expanding world population has created great wealth and lifted many out of poverty, but also pillaged the planet's natural resources, polluted the environment and overshot planetary boundaries, while increasing inequality and leaving half the world population struggling to meet basic needs. The UN has called for a fundamental transformation towards sustainable development to assure that future generations can also meet their own needs. The Bahá'í teachings shed useful light on what this alternative should look like and how we might get there. We shall explore the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development and the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN. How do these translate into things we can do ourselves and in our local communities to live more sustainably? Combining science and spirituality can help us to work with both our head and our heart to build a more just and sustainable world.

All the course faculty are IEF members: Arthur Dahl, Christine Muller and Laurent Mesbah

WATCH THE VIDEO INTRODUCTION

VIEW/DOWNLOAD SYLLABUS