The speed of human population growth and its impact on Planet Earth has generated consequences that challenge our ability to generate solutions and even our survival. Humanity has never reached such high levels of mass destruction, immigration and social inequality as we are experiencing now. The main reason we have reached this point is that we have perpetuated our imprisonment in a poverty trap, understood here not from a financial perspective, but from a human perspective.
All the great changes that have occurred in our history have been the result of a total exhaustion of the capacity to maintain the previous status quo, usually associated with some kind of moral revolution, when we begin to find that behavior shameful and no longer want to be associated with it. In other words, we need to reach the limit of our capacity to tolerate an unjust model, in order to be able to generate some change.
Generally, with few exceptions, human beings seem to prefer to act on the consequences rather than on the roots of the problem, and this affects us all. Today, for example, almost all of the world's attention is focused on the problem of climate change, which in turn is an example of a consequence of the poverty trap, in this case the violent and reckless way in which we exploit our natural resources and pollute the continents and the seas.
In short, at the root of all contemporary social and environmental problems is the Poverty Trap, which imprisons everyone in a model of economic development that has given sufficient proof of being unsustainable and that, paradoxically, has placed People, our own human race, in second place.
We can no longer waste time on palliative solutions. We need to join forces to address the roots of the problem, urgently, but without falling into the trap of rushing, because rushing is the enemy of transformation.
All of this may sound like Utopia, but a Utopia with pragmatism is exactly what we need to be able to build something long-term and truly transformative for the human race and for improving the business environment in the world.
We Need a Pragmatic Utopia – UP
The UP’s proposal is to engage leaders in the area of sustainability in the private sector in an ongoing process of dialogue and objective and productive discussions on how to innovate in social investment and contribute effectively to processes of promoting social and economic prosperity in undervalued communities, which project a less unequal world with greater opportunities for business and human development. This ongoing process will be interspersed with an annual seminar, organized by The Human Project, a social organization dedicated to the construction and dissemination of a sustainable model for overcoming the problem of the poverty trap, with the support of Fundação Dom Cabral, through the Imagine Brasil initiative, which seeks to inspire and mobilize leaders from different segments of Brazilian society to develop and influence the implementation of proposals for inclusive and sustainable prosperity in Brazil. The theme of each annual seminar will focus on an aspect that is perceived as most relevant by the members of the Pragmatic Utopia network, which will bring together representatives from all partner companies, in addition to The Human Project and Fundação Dom Cabral, and will be followed by quarterly face-to-face meetings, so that UP members can exchange ideas. information, cases, challenges, and we can build possible and viable paths to strengthen corporate social investment focused on social impact.