Great social change occurs in several ways. A technologicalbreakthrough – the steam engine, computers, the Internet – may play a leadingrole. Visionaries, such as Mahatma Gandhi,Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela, may inspire a demand for justice.Political leaders may lead a broad reform movement, as with Franklin Rooseveltand the New Deal.
Our own generation urgently needs to spur another era ofgreat social change. This time, we must act to save the planet from ahuman-induced environmental catastrophe.
Each of us senses thischallenge almost daily. Heat waves, droughts, floods, forest fires, retreating glaciers, polluted rivers, and extreme storms buffet the planet at a dramatically rising rate,owing to human activities. Our $70-trillion-per-year global economy is puttingunprecedented pressures on the natural environment. We will need newtechnologies, behaviors, and ethics, supported by solid evidence, to reconcilefurther economic development with environmental sustainability.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is taking onthis unprecedented challenge from his unique position at the crossroads ofglobal politics and society. At the political level, the UN is the meetingplace for 193 member states to negotiate and create international law, as inthe important treaty on climate change adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.At the level of global society, the UN represents the world’s citizenry, “we the peoples,” as it says in the UNCharter.  At the societal level, the UN is about the rights andresponsibilities of all of us, including future generations.
In the past two decades, governments have come up short on solutions to environmentalthreats. Politicians have failed to implement properly the treaties adopted atthe 1992 Earth Summit. Ban knows that strong government action remains vital,but he also recognizes that civil society must also play a larger role,especially because too many governments and politicians are beholden to vestedinterests, and too few politicians think in time horizons that extendpast the next election.
To empower global society to act, Ban has launched a boldnew global initiative, for which I am grateful to volunteer. The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network isa powerful effort to mobilize global knowledge to save the planet. The idea isto use global networks of knowledge and action to identify and demonstrate new,cutting-edge approaches to sustainable development around the world. Thenetwork will work alongside and support governments, UN agencies, civil-societyorganizations, and the private sector.
Humanity needs to learn new ways to produce and uselow-carbon energy, grow food sustainably, build livablecities, and manage the global commons ofoceans, biodiversity, and the atmosphere. But time is running very short.
Today’s mega-cities, for example, already have to confrontdangerous heat waves, rising sea levels, more extreme storms, dire congestion,and air and water pollution. Agricultural regions already need to become moreresilient in the face of increased climate volatility. And as one region in onepart of the world designs a better way to manage its transport, energy needs,water supplies, or food supplies, those successes should quickly become part ofthe global knowledge base, enabling other regions to benefit rapidly as well.
Universities have a special role to play in the new UNknowledge network. Exactly 150 years ago, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln created America’s“land-grant” universities to help local communities to improve farming and thequality of life through science. Today, we need universities in all parts ofthe world to help their societies face the challenges of poverty reduction,clean energy, sustainable food supplies, and the rest. By linking together, andputting their curricula online, the world’suniversities can become even more effective in discovering and promotingscience-based solutions to complex problems.
The world’s corporate sector also has a significant role toplay in sustainable development. Now the corporate sector has two faces. It isthe repository of cutting-edge sustainabletechnologies, pioneering research and development, world-class management, andleadership in environmental sustainability. Yet at the same time, the corporatesector lobbies aggressively to gut environmentalregulations, slash corporate-tax rates, and avoid their own responsibility for ecological destruction. Sometimes the same companyoperates on both sides of the divide.
We urgently need far-sighted companies to join theSustainable Development Solutions Network. These companies are uniquely placedto move new ideas and technologies into early-stage demonstration projects,thereby accelerating global learning cycles. Equally important, we need acritical mass of respected corporate leaders to press their peers to cease theanti-environmental lobbying and campaign-finance practices that account for theinaction of governments.  
Sustainable development is a generational challenge, not ashort-term task. The reinvention of energy, food, transport, and other systemswill take decades, not years. But the long-term nature of this challenge mustnot lull us into inaction. We must startreinventing our productive systems now, precisely because the path of changewill be so long and the environmental dangers are already so pressing.  
At the Rio+20 Summit this past June, the world’sgovernments agreed to adopt a new set of goals on sustainable development forthe period after 2015, to build upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals’ success in reducing poverty, hunger, and disease. In thepost-2015 era, the fight against poverty and the fight to protect theenvironment will go hand in hand, reinforcing each other. Secretary-General BanKi-moon has already initiated several global processes to help establish the newpost-2015 goals in an open, participatory,and knowledge-based way.  
The Secretary General’s launch of the SustainableDevelopment Solutions Network is therefore especially timely.Not only will the world adopt a new set of goals to achieve sustainable development,but it will also have a new global network of expertise to help achieve thosevital objectives.