One day conference with leaders of Religion, Business and Society (FULL)

On the UN Global Environment Day, the Global Leaders Academy will host an interdisciplinary forum with H.H. the Dalai Lama and leaders of the Netherlands exploring leadership for creating a sustainable world.

Major worldwide threats of climate change, energy-shortage and financial instability is calling for new leadership attributes. These include ease with change and uncertainty; leading in the moment, ability to transcend current dilemmas by creating new systemic possibilities, and – most importantly - not relying on the models of the past. We need to look for new models - above all: mental models. It is clear, for instance, that the mental models that created the financial crisis are similar to those driving the climate change and energy crisis: models based on extraction, off-loading risks on others, externalizing future social costs, so-called ‘externalities’.

The search for new mental models is a practice of leadership. In our search for a sustainable economic system we are required to expand our minds, incorporating a much broader set of interests than we used to. In fact, we are required to take responsibility for the entire world, an attitude the Dalai Lama describes as ‘Universal Responsibility’. What would our world look like if our economic and political models were based on universal responsibility?

The human family is confronted with serious problems. Climate change, the growing gap between rich and poor, environmental de gradation are very difficult to solve, yet we should try. It is now an urgent task of leaders to make every effort to find solutions to these problems. This can only be done by having more exploration, more discussion and dialogues, more meetings like this one. Then gradually solutions will be found,

H.H. the Dalai Lama, at the Compassion or Competition Forum in Amsterdam, 1999.