Abstract
This Part – II of the EPL Special Issue on the Planetary Future is being published after 2024 – Year of the Planetary Future [Preface: EPL 54 (1) 2024] – became part of the history. The momentous 2024 Summit of the Future (September 22–23) took place as mandated by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 76/307 of September 8, 2022 (Modalities Resolution). Unlike the two previous UN summits (2023 Sustainable Development Goals; 2022 Stockholm+50), the 2024 Summit had a wider canvass and was expected to provide prognosis and prospects for the future of our planet in crisis.
The 2024 Summit took place amidst grim situation wherein globally 2 billion women are without any social protection coverage, 612 million women and girls live in conflict zones and 393 million women and girls suffer in extreme poverty (UN Women, 2025). During 2024, the Global Hunger Index (2024) showed a graphic picture of the worldwide hunger wherein 733 million people lack access to sufficient calories, and 2.8 billion (out of total 8 billion) cannot afford a healthy diet. Similarly, the World Meteorological Organization (2024), citing data by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, expressed grave concerns as regards the earth “exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency, on a monthly basis.” It posits some vital questions: Can we reverse the trend? What action does it entail on a planetary scale?
The 2024 Summit of the Future ended on September 23, 2024 after two days of confabulations by a galaxy of Heads of State or Government and their high-level country delegations as well as intensive four dialogues. The Summit adopted an ambitious outcome document – Pact for the Future – along with two annexes on Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations. It was duly adopted by the UN General Assembly resolution 79 (1) of September 22, 2024.
The feisty UN Secretary-General (SG), Antonio Guterres, justified convening of the 2024 Summit of the Future since “twenty-first century challenges require twenty-first century solutions” (Opening Address; September 22, 2024). In the concluding session of the Summit, the President of the 79th UNGA session, Philémon Yang, expressed hope that the ideas exchanged would inspire further initiatives at national, regional and the global levels. Yang observed that “As we close the Summit of the Future, I urge all Member States to continue to push for decisive action and to create meaningful progress” (Closing Session; September 23, 2024).
As explained in Preface to Part I of the EPL Special Issue 54 (2–3) 2024 on the Planetary Future, as a preparatory to the Summit of the Future, we initiated a process in 2023 at EPL to reach out to some of the global thought leaders to think aloud and ahead on the planetary future. The response was overwhelming as a galaxy of scholars from around the world agreed to make contributions on a wide range of issues of planetary concern. While Part I was published prior to the Summit of the Future, this Part II is being published after conclusion of it. As a sequel to the Part I [EPL 54 (2–3) 2024] comprising ten seminal contributions, Part II also contains another lot of ten articles. They comprise cutting-edge ideas on a range of issues as follows: (1) Ideating on the Planetary Future: Prognosis and Prospects (Bharat H. Desai); (2) The Shattered Realm: Reshaping Law and Lawyers in the Anthropocene (Jordi Jaria-Manzano); (3) Rescuing the Planet: Role of the United Nations (Patricia Kameri-Mbote); (4) The Planetary Future: Some Reflections (Karan Singh); (5) Affixing State Responsibility for Harm to Earth's Climate System (Nicholas A. Robinson); (6) Role of State Sovereignty in Securing the Planetary Future: Some Reflections (Nico J. Schrijver); (7) The Horizon of the Third Pole: Mapping Future Scenarios and Strategic Responses (K. P. Oli); (8) Towards Sustainability in Transboundary Water Resources: The Role of Inter-State Solidarity (Owen McIntyre); (9) Ensuring Soil Security to Secure Our Planetary Future (Freya Mulvey); (10) Pact for the Future and Future of the Planet: A Stocktaking (Bharat H. Desai).
Thus, the twenty scholarly contributions [Part -I (10) and Part – II (10)] in the EPL Special Issue 54 (2–3 and 4–6) on the Planetary Future sow the seeds for an ideational churning among the global scholarly circles and the decision-makers. This scintillating scholarly prognosis and the resultant look ahead underscores our modest efforts to inform the global readership of the EPL as well as contribute to the global knowledge pool. It is continuation of a concerted process and a humbling experience to provide the EPL platform to the outstanding global thought leaders for cutting-edge ideas on the wellbeing, care and maintenance of our only abode, the Earth. It led to, during 2020–2024 period, a rich harvesting of creative ideas, curated by this author and published by the IOS Press (Amsterdam, Berlin, Washington DC) in four books: 2024: Perspectives of Women Scholars, 2023: Regulating Global Climate Change; 2022: Envisioning Our Environmental Future and 2021: Our Earth Matters. It underscores the truism that at a time when our planetary future is at stake, it is possible for the conscientious and forward-looking global scholars to seed ideational solutions to save the humankind and the planet from the brink. As prophesized in the Club of Rome (1972) report, there are “limits to growth” but no limits to the human ingenuity in times of existential planetary crisis. In fact our efforts, in the last five years at the EPL, have underscored and vindicated the call given in the pioneering 1972 work by Barbara Ward and René Dubos – Only One Earth – that we require “new insights of our fundamental condition…(and) systematic exchange of knowledge and experience…(and) full and open sharing of new knowledge about the interdependence of the planetary systems” (Penguin Books edition: Chapter 15, pages 290–291).
Thus, in order to operationalize the 2024 Pact for the Future, it would necessitate sincere and concerted follow-up action by the UN system as a whole and all the 193-member states as well as the global scholarly community and other international institutional actors. A lot of scholarly ideas will be required to strengthen and amplify the much-needed push for the global regulatory juggernaut, to revitalize the international institutions and make international law instruments work as well as to ensure that various global actors including sovereign states, international institutions and other decision-makers take the task of securing our planetary future seriously. As the things stand at a ‘moment of truth’, it remains a challenge for the global scholarly community to act in unison in the interests of the future generations and the planet Earth to accelerate efforts for “ideating on the Planetary Future” [SIS Blog, June 30, 2024; lead article, EPL 54 (4–6) 2024].