Statement of the Bike+10 project

In September the World Summit on Sustainability and Development (WSSD) will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ten years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, world leaders will come together again to discuss the state of the world.

We, the young people participating in Bike+10, from 8 different European countries with diverse cultures and different perspectives, have converged in Göttingen. Being the future of humankind, youth are responsible for ensuring sustainability on our planet.

We, belonging to the youth generation, are facing ecological injustice, environmental racism and climate change. As youth we see the oppressive role of privileged overdeveloped nations, the unequal playing field in international relations, the weakening governments and the increasing influence of Transnational Corporations (TNC`s).

But looking on the hardly existing progress since the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, we have strong doubts about the seriousness of the agreements made there. Also the WSSD in Johannesburg doesn’t seem to make any changes: Regarding the preparations for the conference, a bad outcome of the conference seems to be almost certain.

Both North and South have a moral obligation to ensure sustainable development without further jeopardising the state of the environment and to root out corrupt tendencies that suppress sustainable development.

The time has come to redefine development on the basis of sustainability indicators that recognize human activities as a subsystem of the ecosphere.
We, the cycling youth of Europe have agreed on a set of 10 points and demands, presented below, that constitute our declaration. It is necessary to keep in mind that these points are strongly interconnected. These points need to be discussed on the World Summit on Sustainable Development and have to be the basis for concrete action plans that must come out of the world summit for the welfare of humanity.