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DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES GLOBAL – DAG
LEARNING, THINKING AND ACTING GLOBALLY
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DAG's origins
The inspiration and objectives of DAG are rooted in two initiatives.
1. The first is the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm, which addressed the environment-development problematique and launched a global effort by the international community to deal with the emerging challenges in an integrated manner. The Conference highlighted the urgent need to eradicate poverty worldwide, to overcome the development gaps between the global North and South, to nurture the planet’s natural resources and to protect its life-support systems. This was the first major world conference to deal simultaneously with a series of issues that hitherto were handled sectorally, ignoring the causal and structural linkages that bind them. The Stockholm Conference and the ensuing 1974 Cocoyoc Symposium on Patterns of Development and Natural Resource Use, organized jointly by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and UNCTAD, focused attention on the questions of lifestyles, patterns of production, and consumption that today occupy a central place on the global agenda.
2. The second is the work of the Society for Development Alternatives (DA) which, inspired by UNCHE and the early work of UNEP, was established in 1982 in New Delhi. The aim was to translate the broad principles elaborated in the UN into action at the local level in rural India. DA has pioneered research, design and development of appropriate technologies, products and processes, and has promoted the widespread diffusion of these with a view to achieving decent livelihoods and environmental conservation. While these innovations were developed with a view to improving practices in agriculture and local industry and cater for the domestic needs of very poor and marginalized people in India, they are also relevant and applicable in developing countries in general. DA's practical work has been recognized nationally and internationally. (DA website link click)
DAG thus represents the confluence of DA’s national and field level experience in India over the past 25 years and the conceptual and policy work undertaken at the global level following UNCHE, including in the UN, UNEP, IUCN, the Club of Rome, the World Commission on Environment and Development, the South Commission, and the South Centre.
The founding meeting of DAG was held in December 2006. (DAG Founding members click) when a paper setting out its basic orientation and objectives was adopted (Main points of DAG Framework paper click) and its articles of association approved. (Main points of DAG Articles of Association click) The Chancellerie d’État of the République et Canton de Genève included DAG in the register of NGOs on 23 January 2007.
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