Rework the World is a global initiative that seeks to mobilise young people around promising sustainable ventures and help take the emerging green economy to the next level.

To anchor the Rework the World summit in tangible action, it takes its starting point in actual initiatives gathered from around the world.

Projects

Building towards the Global Yes Summit, June 2-5, 2010, Sweden

Global Summit 2010

Rework the World - a response to the converging crises

The 5th Global YES Summit – Rework the World is responding to the confluence of three major global crises: the financial, the social and the ecological. These crises are related, both in their consequences and their causes.

The unemployment impact of the financial collapse is much exacerbating pressures on already weak communities, in the north as well as in the south. The increased tension threatens to tear our societies apart at a time when the need to pull together to meet the long-term challenges of humanity is greater than ever. A globalised world without social cohesion, where a billion youth grow up without avenues for meaningful engagement, is unimaginable. It is an immediate and urgent issue. Such a world will not work.

But in today’s integrated world, no simple measures are available to address even immediate concerns. We cannot afford to spend billions on social programmes, just to find that we have restored stability to a world that is inherently unstable and where the logic of value creation is undermining its very foundation: the stability of the natural as well as the social systems.

The sustainability crisis calls for immediate and forceful change that goes to the heart of our economy. At the same time, immediate social concerns call for forceful intervention to restore meaning and dignity to the lives of hundred of millions of people now being pushed towards the margins of society. In a globalised, integrated society, we can no longer deal with these imperatives in a piecemeal fashion. We must not, therefore, treat the social crises as distinct from the sustainability crises. They both ultimately stem from the logic in our value producing systems, where natural, social and human capital are hugely undervalued, and where long-term risks are allowed to build-up exponentially and be pushed onto future generations.

A more inclusive society, fiercely protective of the key life supporting natural systems, must evolve. To be lasting, this change must go to the very heart of our economy and our society. It must go to the heart of how we spend our lives and direct our everyday energy. It must go to the heart of what we call work - not only in the sense of what we do, but also of how we do it, as well as why we do it. Practically, this means that the jobs of tomorrow must be different from those of today, and the organisations and forms of association of tomorrow must build on different values and a different sense of purpose than those of today. The underlying theme for the 5th Global YES Summit – Rework the World is in this sense the nature of work, and the shift required towards a new kind of employment for the generation to come. But this more fundamental question is addressed against the backdrop of an immediate social and environmental crises.

In here lies also an opportunity. We are in the midst of an inevitable transition. Energy systems must be reconstructed, water sources restored, ecosystems regenerated and cities rebuilt. There is an awful lot of work to be done.

Indeed, the whole world must be reworked.