Manifesto

“How should we invent another culture? Not thinking about it, not talking about it, not organising ever useless colloquia, but really contributing to it? I propose an appropriate action – here it is- drawn once again from the Grand Narrative”.

Michel Serres The Incandescent (p 231)

 The Common Story

• Resource and promote the Common Story of humankind
• Draw on sciences such as cosmology, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, geology, ecology, in revealing what every living thing has in common.
• Draw on stories told through indigenous knowledge, ancient and modern literature, art, music, scholars and many more sources.
• Make the story accessible in all languages, across all cultures and for all ages.
• Make the Common Story a foundation of a global curriculum. (note 1)

The Economy 

• Instigate Global Justice Report recommendations:
• Set up global wealth taxes on billionaires, international income taxes, and sovereign wealth contributions.
• Redistribute wealth (EG grow the bottom 50% global wealth share from 2% to 30%, while reducing billionaire wealth shares from 6% to 0.05%).
• Set up Global Justice Fund (proposed annual spending averaging 10.3% of world GDP to close global education and health gaps).
• Aim to converge income (raise every country’s average per capita monthly gross national income).

Energy

• Instigate rapid energy transitions to restrict global temperature increase to 1.8°C.
• Reduce material sectors (EG food, construction, manufacturing, energy and transportation).
• Increase immaterial sectors (EG education, health, digital communication).
• Transform global food patterns, land use, and forest cover (note 2).

Food

• Reduce the use of land for grazing livestock.
• Develop alternatives to meat production and consumption (note 3)

Law

• Promote, resource and connect environmental legislation and ‘ecological jurisprudence’ initiatives across the globe.
• Work towards the foundation of a new social contract that recognises the more-than-human as legal subjects. (note 4).
• Use the Common Story to underpin the furtherance of a global contract.

Citizen Movements

• Develop powerful citizen movements across local, national and global scales, including climate activists, community ‘resistance’ groups, scientists, Indigenous communities, and rights of nature’ groups, with particular focus on young people and the dispossessed (note 5).

Governance

• Create global governance institutions to replace the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Education

• Introduce a global curriculum for schools and higher education based on the ‘Common Story ‘(see above).
• Develop and expand accessible global life-long on-line education for all ages (note 6).

News, Information and global ITC Devices

• Curb corporate social media monopolies and replace with not-for-profit platforms.
• Fully resource Wikipedia and other cooperative platforms providing accessible and trustworthy information.
• Develop ITC (including AI) to support global governance, citizen movements, global networking and global education (note 7).

Notes

1, The idea of the Common Story is most fully developed by Michel Serres. The ‘Big History’ initiative and education programme, supported by Bill Gates, has some similarities. The Common Story differs from the latter in that it underpins, and is integral to,  all the other aims in the manifesto.

2, Aims relating to the economy and energy are based on interpreting and expanding the Global Justice Report (GJR) by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) published in June 2026. The report overcomes the shortcomings of mainstream approaches to the planetary crisis.

3, George Monbiot in Regenesis (2022) has pointed out the destructive features of present-day farming. He has shown that calls for more local farming and food production do not add up and have no chance of feeding the world’s population. As well as advances in plant-based food, he outlines experiments in ‘farm-free’ food using modern technology to enhance ancient techniques such as fermentation. Such initiatives anticipate what Serres called the post-neolithic era.

4, Michel Serres published The Natural Contract in 1990. Seen at the time as rather crazy, the idea of treating rivers, seas, mountains and forests as legal subjects has arisen worldwide in recent decades. The notion of a new eco-social contract has also been explored by the UN – see bibliography.

5, Inspiration can be gained from many examples across the world. Indigenous peoples are especially important as they inhabit territories home to unique ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest, the Himalayas, the Sahara Desert and the Arctic. Young people have led the way in terms of mass global protest. Community groups fighting for better air quality for their children, safety from flooding and fires caused by climate change, cleaner rivers and seas, and so on, are uniquely placed to turn the local into the global.

6, The proposal for a common curriculum is set out by Serres at the end of The Incandescent.

7, As Serres anticipated, ITC advances will transform how humans think and act. Yet unimaginable potential must be for the common good.

A short but indicative bibliography

Barsh, Russel. (2000), ‘Taking Indigenous Science Seriously’ in S. A. Bocking (ed.) Biodiversity in Canada: Ecology, Ideas, and Action, 152-173, Toronto: Broadview Press.

Berry, Thomas. (1999), The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower.

Crawford, Ian. (2018), ‘Big history and the cosmic perspective’, Astronomy and Geophysics, 59 (5): 5.33– 5.36.

Davis, Mike. (2007), Planet of Slums. London: Verso.

Desai, Manisha. (2022), ‘Going Beyond the Social: Communitarian Imaginaries as Inspirations for Rethinking the Eco-Social Contract? UNRISD Issue Brief 11’. Geneva, Switzerland.

Francis, Holy Father. (2015), Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for our Common Home, 24 May.

Hujo, Katja. (2021), ‘A New Eco-Social Contract: Vital to Deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,’ Issue Brief 11, UNRISD.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. (2020), Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. London: Penguin.

Lewis, Jason Edward, Whaanga, Hēmi and Yolgörmez, Ceyda. (2025), ‘Abundant intelligences: placing AI within Indigenous knowledge frameworks’, AI and Society 40: 2141–2157.

Mohamed, Najma. (2023), ‘Building New Social Contracts: An Overview of Participatory Mechanisms for Economic Governance. Key Mechanisms, Research Briefing, GEC.

Monbiot, George. (2022), Regenesis: Feeding the world Without Devouring the Planet. London: Allen Lane.

Pelizzon, Alessandro. (2025), Ecological Jurisprudence: The Law of Nature and the Nature of Law. New York: Springer.

Serres, Michel. (2018a), The Incandescent, trans. R. Burks, London: Bloomsbury.

Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. (1992), The Universe Story. London: Penguin.

Copyright Peter Johnson

August 2026