The Earth Charter: An Ethical Framework for a Feasible Utopia

This research objective is to highlight an innovative, holistic, inclusive, integrated approach to a sustainable future promoted by the Earth Charter and describe the structure of its ethical framework. The main conclusion of the research is that the ethical framework of the Earth Charter is based on a limited number of core concepts: planetary human identity, feasible utopianism, co-responsibility and committed compassion. Planetary human identity is based on the capacity to incorporate nature into the process of identity building and integrate three complementary feelings: singularity, belonging to groups and belonging to the planetary community of life. The Earth Charter stresses the necessity to give a new life to utopianism by working out a critical-radical-alternative, but a feasible idea of future and our responsibility towards it. Moreover, the Earth Charter rethinks responsibility as co-responsibility and assigns it four different qualities: universal, synchronic, diachronic and differentiated and appeals to an innovative politically connoted notion of compassion.