Aurelio Peccei
Encyclopedia
Aurelio Peccei was an Italian scholar and industrialist, best known as the founder and first president of the Club of Rome
.
, the capital of the Piedmont
region of Italy
. He spent his youth there, eventually graduating from the University of Turin
with a degree in economics
in 1930. Soon thereafter he went to the Sorbonne
with a scholarship and was awarded a free trip to the Soviet Union
.
His knowledge of other languages brought him to Fiat
. Although under continual suspicion as an anti-fascist in the early 1930s, in 1935 a successful mission for Fiat in China
established his position in Fiat management.
During World War II
, Peccei became involved in the anti-fascist movement and in the resistance, where he was a member of the "Giustizia e Libertà
". Peccei's work with the anti-fascist underground during the war caught up with him in 1944, when he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, came within an ace of execution and escaped to lie in hiding until the liberation.
.
In 1949, he accepted to go to Latin America
for Fiat, to restart their operations, as Fiat operations in Latin America had been halted during the war. He settled in Argentina
, where he lived for nearly a decade with his family. He quickly realised that it would make sense to start manufacturing locally and set up the Argentine subsidiary, Fiat
-Concord, which built cars and tractors. Fiat-Concord rapidly became one of the most successful automotive firms in Latin America.
In 1958, with the backing of Fiat, Peccei founded Italconsult (a para-public joint consultancy venture involving major Italian firms such as Fiat
, Innocenti
, Montecatini
), and became its Chairman, a position he held until the 1970s, when he became Honorary President. Italconsult was an engineering and economic consulting group for developing countries. It operated under Peccei’s leadership, on the whole, more as a non-profit consortium. Italconsult was regarded by Peccei as a way of helping tackle the problems of the Third World
, which he had come to know first-hand in Latin America.
In 1964, Peccei was asked to become President of Olivetti
. Olivetti was facing significant difficulties at that time due to the profound changes occurring in the office machine sector. Peccei, with his foresight and his entrepreneurial vision, was able to turn the situation at Olivetti around.
But Peccei was not content merely with the substantial achievements of Italconsult, or his responsibilities as President of Olivetti, and threw his energies into other organisations as well, including ADELA
, an international consortium of bankers aimed at supporting industrialisation in Latin America. He was asked to give the keynote speech in Spanish at the group's first meeting in 1965, which is where the series of coincidences leading to the creation of the Club of Rome began.
, then American Secretary of State, who had it translated into English and distributed at various meetings in Washington
. A Soviet representative at the annual meeting of the United Nations
Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (ACAST), Jermen Gvishiani, Alexei Kosygin's son-in-law and vice-chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Soviet Union, read the speech and was so taken by it that he decided he should invite the author to come for private discussions, outside Moscow
. Gvishiani therefore asked an American colleague on ACAST, Carroll Wilson, about Peccei. Wilson did not know Peccei, but he and Gvishiani both knew Alexander King
, by then Director General for Scientific Affairs for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris
, so Wilson appealed to him for information.
As it happened, King did not know Peccei, but he was equally impressed by the ADELA paper and tracked down its author via the Italian Embassy in Paris
. King wrote to Peccei, passing on Gvishiani's address and wish to invite him to the Soviet Union, but also congratulating him on his paper and suggesting that they might meet some time as they obviously shared similar concerns. Peccei telephoned King and they arranged to have lunch.
The two men got on extremely well from the very outset. They met several times in the latter part of 1967 and early 1968, and then decided that they had to do something constructive to encourage longer-range thinking among Western European governments.
Peccei accordingly persuaded the Agnelli Foundation to fund a two-day brainstorming meeting on April 7–8, 1968 of around 30 European economists and scientists at the Accademia dei Lincei
in Rome
. The goal of the meeting was to discuss the ideas of Peccei and King of the globality of problems facing mankind and of the necessity of acting at the global level. The meeting at the Accademia dei Lincei was not a success, partly due to the difficulty of the participants to focus on a distant future.
After the meeting there was an informal gathering of a few people in Peccei’s home, which included Erich Jantsch
(one of the great methodologists of planning studies), Alexander King
, Hugo Thiemann, Lauro Gomes-Filho, Jean Saint-Geours and Max Kohnstamm
. According to King, within an hour they had decided to call themselves the Club of Rome
and had defined the three major concepts that have formed the Club's thinking ever since: a global perspective, the long term, and the cluster of intertwined problems they called "the problematique". Although the Rome meeting had been convened with just Western Europe
in mind, the group realised that they were dealing with problems of much larger scale and complexity: in short, "the predicament of mankind". The notion of problematique excited some because it seemed applicable at a universal level, but worried others, who felt that the approach was valid only for smaller entities such as a city or community. Saint-Geours and Kohnstamm therefore soon dropped out, leaving the others to pursue their informal programme of learning and debate.
Thus started what Peccei called "the adventure of the spirit". He was fond to state that: “If the Club of Rome has any merit, it is that of having been the first to rebel against the suicidal ignorance of the human condition.” Another quote of Peccei states: "It is not impossible to foster a human revolution capable of changing our present course."
At around the same time, a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), headed by Jay Forrester, began on the implications of continued growth on population increase, agriculture production, non-renewable resource
depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. He made an offer to the Club of Rome to adapt his dynamic model to handle global issues. A fortnight later, a group of Club members visited Forrester at MIT and were convinced that the model could be made to work for the kind of global problems which interested the Club. The results of the study were published in the 1972 book "The Limits to Growth", which received both worldwide acclaim and strong criticism.
In 1972, Peccei was one of the principal founders of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), in Laxenburg
(near Vienna
) in Austria
. This Institute was formed after considerable struggle, but then served as an important bridge between East and West, partly because its founders included the United States
(through the National Academy of Sciences), the Soviet Union
(through the Soviet Academy of Sciences), Italy
(through the Comitato Nazionale di Ricerche) and various other countries in the then western and eastern sector of the world. IIASA became a meeting place for scholars and scientists of different countries and provided a bridging function for the scientific world, producing important studies in different fields, including climate change
, energy
and agriculture
.
It was during this same period that Peccei became involved in the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature
), becoming a member of its International Board and becoming a strong supporter of their mission, not only internationally but also locally in Italy.
In the early 1970s, several other studies were undertaken to improve upon "The Limits to Growth", with varying degrees of support from the Club of Rome. Reflecting general criticism from the Third World
, a Latin American model was developed by the Bariloche Institute in Argentina. The Club of Rome helped to find funding for the project but did not give its imprimatur to the final report ("Catastrophe or New Society?", A.O. Herrera et al., 1976).
With the idea of giving greater stress to the human dimension, Peccei approached the Dutch economist and Nobel laureate Jan Tinbergen
and proposed a study of the likely impact of a doubling of the population on the global community. Tinbergen and his colleague Hans Linnemann came to the conclusion, however, that the topic was unmanageably large and decided to focus on the problems of "Food for a Doubling World Population". When this was put to the Club of Rome, Peccei and others disagreed strongly, feeling that other aspects such as strains on housing, urban infrastructure, employment, etc. should not be ignored. Ultimately Linnemann and his group pursued their research with funds they had already mobilised in the Netherlands
and published their results independently (MOIRA - Model of International Relations in Agriculture, 1979), not as a Report to the Club of Rome.
In that same month, the OPEC meeting which heralded the first oil shock. The framework of discussion changed radically, at least for a while, and the Club was to become involved in the United Nations debate on the New International Economic Order
(NIEO).
Peccei persuaded the Austrian Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky
, to host a meeting on North-South problems in February 1974 in Salzburg
, Austria. Besides Bruno Kreisky, the following heads of state of government were present in Salzburg: Leopold Senghor, President of Senegal; Luis Echeverría
, President of Mexico
; Joop den Uyl
, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
; Olof Palme
, Prime Minister of Sweden
; Pierre Trudeau
, Prime Minister of Canada
; as well as the representatives of the Prime Ministers of Algeria
and Ireland
. Peccei deliberately did not invite any of the major European powers, the United States of America or the Soviet Union so as to prevent the debate turning into a forum for national or ideological position statements. To encourage the participants to speak freely, they were asked to come without accompanying civil servants and assured that nothing they said would be attributed to them. The two-day private brainstorming meeting ended with a press conference for 300 journalists.
As a logical extension of the Salzburg meeting, Peccei asked Jan Tinbergen to produce a follow-up report on global food and development policies, exploring these aspects much more thoroughly than the coverage in "The Limits to Growth". Scholars from the First, Second and Third Worlds were invited to participate in the RIO project (Reshaping the International Order), though only Poland
and Bulgaria
accepted from the Communist bloc. The basic thesis was that the gap between rich and poor countries (with the wealthiest roughly 13 times richer than the poorest) was intolerable and the situation was inherently unstable, and that ways should be searched for to try to reduce the gap to 6:1 over the next 15 to 30 years. Unlike "The Limits to Growth", the model allowed the developing countries 5% growth per annum, whereas the industrialised countries would have zero or negative growth; according to the report, however, all would benefit from more sensible use of energy and other resources and a more equitable distribution of global wealth. The main report argued that people in the rich countries would have to change their patterns of consumption and accept lower profits, but a dissenting group saw consumption as a symptom rather than a cause of the problems, which stemmed rather from the fundamental power structure.
After numerous working sessions and presentations over an 18-month period, the final results of RIO were presented at a meeting in Algiers
in October 1976 and accepted as a Report to the Club of Rome. The report did not have the hoped-for impact.
The last meeting Peccei organized and participated in was in Bogotá
, Colombia
, on December 15–17, 1983, with the title "Development in a World of Peace". Co-organizer of the meeting with Peccei was the President of Colombia, Belisario Betancur
. Peccei visited Las Gaviotas in the Vichada and endorsed the project of Paolo Lugari to regenerate the rainforest that was destroyed by decades of extensive cattle farming. He provided an impulse to one of the most innovative restoration projects building on the Human Quality of the local population capable of responding to local needs with what they have.
Peccei died on March 14, 1984 in Rome
.
His biography was written by bis long-time assistant Gunter Pauli
: "Crusador for the future: a portrait of Aurelio Peccei" and published in 1987.
Club of Rome
The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and...
.
Early life
He was born on July 4, 1908 in TurinTurin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
, the capital of the Piedmont
Piedmont
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...
region of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. He spent his youth there, eventually graduating from the University of Turin
University of Turin
The University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy...
with a degree in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
in 1930. Soon thereafter he went to the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
with a scholarship and was awarded a free trip to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
His knowledge of other languages brought him to Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...
. Although under continual suspicion as an anti-fascist in the early 1930s, in 1935 a successful mission for Fiat in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
established his position in Fiat management.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Peccei became involved in the anti-fascist movement and in the resistance, where he was a member of the "Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà
Giustizia e Libertà was an Italian anti-fascist organization, active from 1929 to 1945.- Italian anti-fascist organization :The anti-fascist organization Giustizia e Libertà was founded in Paris in 1929 by the Italian refugees Carlo Rosselli, Emilio Lussu, Alberto Tarchiani, and Ernesto Rossi...
". Peccei's work with the anti-fascist underground during the war caught up with him in 1944, when he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, came within an ace of execution and escaped to lie in hiding until the liberation.
Business ventures
After the war, Peccei was engaged in the rebuilding of Fiat. Furthermore he was engaged in various private and public efforts then underway to rebuild Italy, including the founding of AlitaliaAlitalia
Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. , in its later stages known as Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. in Extraordinary Administration, was the former Italian flag carrier...
.
In 1949, he accepted to go to Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
for Fiat, to restart their operations, as Fiat operations in Latin America had been halted during the war. He settled in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, where he lived for nearly a decade with his family. He quickly realised that it would make sense to start manufacturing locally and set up the Argentine subsidiary, Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...
-Concord, which built cars and tractors. Fiat-Concord rapidly became one of the most successful automotive firms in Latin America.
In 1958, with the backing of Fiat, Peccei founded Italconsult (a para-public joint consultancy venture involving major Italian firms such as Fiat
Fiat
FIAT, an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino , is an Italian automobile manufacturer, engine manufacturer, financial, and industrial group based in Turin in the Italian region of Piedmont. Fiat was founded in 1899 by a group of investors including Giovanni Agnelli...
, Innocenti
Innocenti
Innocenti was an Italian machinery works originally established by Ferdinando Innocenti in 1920.After World War II, the company was famous for many years for Lambretta scooters models such as LI125, LI150, TV175, TV200, SX125, SX150, SX200, GP125, GP150 and GP200.From 1961 to 1976 Innocenti built...
, Montecatini
Montecatini
- Places in Italy :* Montecatini Terme, health resort in Tuscany* Montecatini Val di Cecina, village and mining town to the south of Pisa*Montecatini, hamlet in the comune of San Martino in Rio...
), and became its Chairman, a position he held until the 1970s, when he became Honorary President. Italconsult was an engineering and economic consulting group for developing countries. It operated under Peccei’s leadership, on the whole, more as a non-profit consortium. Italconsult was regarded by Peccei as a way of helping tackle the problems of the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, which he had come to know first-hand in Latin America.
In 1964, Peccei was asked to become President of Olivetti
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...
. Olivetti was facing significant difficulties at that time due to the profound changes occurring in the office machine sector. Peccei, with his foresight and his entrepreneurial vision, was able to turn the situation at Olivetti around.
But Peccei was not content merely with the substantial achievements of Italconsult, or his responsibilities as President of Olivetti, and threw his energies into other organisations as well, including ADELA
Adela
- People :* Adela of Normandy , daughter of William I of England and sister of Henry I of England* Adela of France, Countess of Flanders * Adela of France, Countess of Nevers - People :* Adela of Normandy (1062 or 1067–1137), daughter of William I of England and sister of Henry I of England* Adela...
, an international consortium of bankers aimed at supporting industrialisation in Latin America. He was asked to give the keynote speech in Spanish at the group's first meeting in 1965, which is where the series of coincidences leading to the creation of the Club of Rome began.
Club of Rome
Peccei's speech caught the attention of Dean RuskDean Rusk
David Dean Rusk was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Rusk is the second-longest serving U.S...
, then American Secretary of State, who had it translated into English and distributed at various meetings in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. A Soviet representative at the annual meeting of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (ACAST), Jermen Gvishiani, Alexei Kosygin's son-in-law and vice-chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Soviet Union, read the speech and was so taken by it that he decided he should invite the author to come for private discussions, outside Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Gvishiani therefore asked an American colleague on ACAST, Carroll Wilson, about Peccei. Wilson did not know Peccei, but he and Gvishiani both knew Alexander King
Alexander King (scientist)
Alexander King CMG, CBE was a scientist and pioneer of the sustainable development movement who co-founded the Club of Rome in 1968 with the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei....
, by then Director General for Scientific Affairs for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, so Wilson appealed to him for information.
As it happened, King did not know Peccei, but he was equally impressed by the ADELA paper and tracked down its author via the Italian Embassy in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. King wrote to Peccei, passing on Gvishiani's address and wish to invite him to the Soviet Union, but also congratulating him on his paper and suggesting that they might meet some time as they obviously shared similar concerns. Peccei telephoned King and they arranged to have lunch.
The two men got on extremely well from the very outset. They met several times in the latter part of 1967 and early 1968, and then decided that they had to do something constructive to encourage longer-range thinking among Western European governments.
Peccei accordingly persuaded the Agnelli Foundation to fund a two-day brainstorming meeting on April 7–8, 1968 of around 30 European economists and scientists at the Accademia dei Lincei
Accademia dei Lincei
The Accademia dei Lincei, , is an Italian science academy, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy....
in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. The goal of the meeting was to discuss the ideas of Peccei and King of the globality of problems facing mankind and of the necessity of acting at the global level. The meeting at the Accademia dei Lincei was not a success, partly due to the difficulty of the participants to focus on a distant future.
After the meeting there was an informal gathering of a few people in Peccei’s home, which included Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch
Erich Jantsch was an Austrian astrophysicist.In the mid-1960s his increasing concern regarding the future led him to study forecasting techniques...
(one of the great methodologists of planning studies), Alexander King
Alexander King (scientist)
Alexander King CMG, CBE was a scientist and pioneer of the sustainable development movement who co-founded the Club of Rome in 1968 with the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei....
, Hugo Thiemann, Lauro Gomes-Filho, Jean Saint-Geours and Max Kohnstamm
Max Kohnstamm
Max Kohnstamm was a Dutch historian and diplomat.Max Kohnstamm is the son of Philip Kohnstamm, a physicist, philosopher and pedagogue of Jewish-German origin...
. According to King, within an hour they had decided to call themselves the Club of Rome
Club of Rome
The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the CoR describes itself as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and...
and had defined the three major concepts that have formed the Club's thinking ever since: a global perspective, the long term, and the cluster of intertwined problems they called "the problematique". Although the Rome meeting had been convened with just Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
in mind, the group realised that they were dealing with problems of much larger scale and complexity: in short, "the predicament of mankind". The notion of problematique excited some because it seemed applicable at a universal level, but worried others, who felt that the approach was valid only for smaller entities such as a city or community. Saint-Geours and Kohnstamm therefore soon dropped out, leaving the others to pursue their informal programme of learning and debate.
Thus started what Peccei called "the adventure of the spirit". He was fond to state that: “If the Club of Rome has any merit, it is that of having been the first to rebel against the suicidal ignorance of the human condition.” Another quote of Peccei states: "It is not impossible to foster a human revolution capable of changing our present course."
At around the same time, a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT), headed by Jay Forrester, began on the implications of continued growth on population increase, agriculture production, non-renewable resource
Non-renewable resource
A non-renewable resource is a natural resource which cannot be produced, grown, generated, or used on a scale which can sustain its consumption rate, once depleted there is no more available for future needs. Also considered non-renewable are resources that are consumed much faster than nature...
depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. He made an offer to the Club of Rome to adapt his dynamic model to handle global issues. A fortnight later, a group of Club members visited Forrester at MIT and were convinced that the model could be made to work for the kind of global problems which interested the Club. The results of the study were published in the 1972 book "The Limits to Growth", which received both worldwide acclaim and strong criticism.
In 1972, Peccei was one of the principal founders of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), in Laxenburg
Laxenburg
Laxenburg is a town in the district of Mödling in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, near Vienna.- History :The place is well-known for its castle, Schloss Laxenburg, which, beside Schönbrunn, was the most important summer seat of the Habsburg dynasty....
(near Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
) in Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. This Institute was formed after considerable struggle, but then served as an important bridge between East and West, partly because its founders included the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
(through the National Academy of Sciences), the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
(through the Soviet Academy of Sciences), Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
(through the Comitato Nazionale di Ricerche) and various other countries in the then western and eastern sector of the world. IIASA became a meeting place for scholars and scientists of different countries and provided a bridging function for the scientific world, producing important studies in different fields, including climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
and agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
.
It was during this same period that Peccei became involved in the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature
World Wide Fund for Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...
), becoming a member of its International Board and becoming a strong supporter of their mission, not only internationally but also locally in Italy.
In the early 1970s, several other studies were undertaken to improve upon "The Limits to Growth", with varying degrees of support from the Club of Rome. Reflecting general criticism from the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
, a Latin American model was developed by the Bariloche Institute in Argentina. The Club of Rome helped to find funding for the project but did not give its imprimatur to the final report ("Catastrophe or New Society?", A.O. Herrera et al., 1976).
With the idea of giving greater stress to the human dimension, Peccei approached the Dutch economist and Nobel laureate Jan Tinbergen
Jan Tinbergen
Jan Tinbergen , was a Dutch economist. He was awarded the first Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes...
and proposed a study of the likely impact of a doubling of the population on the global community. Tinbergen and his colleague Hans Linnemann came to the conclusion, however, that the topic was unmanageably large and decided to focus on the problems of "Food for a Doubling World Population". When this was put to the Club of Rome, Peccei and others disagreed strongly, feeling that other aspects such as strains on housing, urban infrastructure, employment, etc. should not be ignored. Ultimately Linnemann and his group pursued their research with funds they had already mobilised in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and published their results independently (MOIRA - Model of International Relations in Agriculture, 1979), not as a Report to the Club of Rome.
In that same month, the OPEC meeting which heralded the first oil shock. The framework of discussion changed radically, at least for a while, and the Club was to become involved in the United Nations debate on the New International Economic Order
New International Economic Order
The New International Economic Order was a set of proposals put forward during the 1970s by some developing countries through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to promote their interests by improving their terms of trade, increasing development assistance, developed-country...
(NIEO).
Peccei persuaded the Austrian Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky
Bruno Kreisky
Bruno Kreisky was an Austrian politician who served as Foreign Minister from 1959 to 1966 and as Chancellor from 1970 to 1983. Aged 72 at the end of his chancellorship, he was the oldest acting Chancellor after World War II....
, to host a meeting on North-South problems in February 1974 in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Austria. Besides Bruno Kreisky, the following heads of state of government were present in Salzburg: Leopold Senghor, President of Senegal; Luis Echeverría
Luis Echeverría
Luis Echeverría Álvarez served as President of Mexico from 1970 to 1976.-Early history:Echeverría joined the faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1947 and taught political theory...
, President of Mexico
President of Mexico
The President of the United Mexican States is the head of state and government of Mexico. Under the Constitution, the president is also the Supreme Commander of the Mexican armed forces...
; Joop den Uyl
Joop den Uyl
Johannes Marten den Uijl, known as Joop den Uyl was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party . He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from May 11, 1973 until December 19, 1977....
, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
Prime Minister of the Netherlands
The Prime Minister of the Netherlands is the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Netherlands. He is the de facto head of government of the Netherlands and coordinates the policy of the government...
; Olof Palme
Olof Palme
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician. A long-time protegé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet...
, Prime Minister of Sweden
Prime Minister of Sweden
The Prime Minister is the head of government in the Kingdom of Sweden. Before the creation of the office of a Prime Minister in 1876, Sweden did not have a head of government separate from its head of state, namely the King, in whom the executive authority was vested...
; Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...
, Prime Minister of Canada
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
; as well as the representatives of the Prime Ministers of Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. Peccei deliberately did not invite any of the major European powers, the United States of America or the Soviet Union so as to prevent the debate turning into a forum for national or ideological position statements. To encourage the participants to speak freely, they were asked to come without accompanying civil servants and assured that nothing they said would be attributed to them. The two-day private brainstorming meeting ended with a press conference for 300 journalists.
As a logical extension of the Salzburg meeting, Peccei asked Jan Tinbergen to produce a follow-up report on global food and development policies, exploring these aspects much more thoroughly than the coverage in "The Limits to Growth". Scholars from the First, Second and Third Worlds were invited to participate in the RIO project (Reshaping the International Order), though only Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
accepted from the Communist bloc. The basic thesis was that the gap between rich and poor countries (with the wealthiest roughly 13 times richer than the poorest) was intolerable and the situation was inherently unstable, and that ways should be searched for to try to reduce the gap to 6:1 over the next 15 to 30 years. Unlike "The Limits to Growth", the model allowed the developing countries 5% growth per annum, whereas the industrialised countries would have zero or negative growth; according to the report, however, all would benefit from more sensible use of energy and other resources and a more equitable distribution of global wealth. The main report argued that people in the rich countries would have to change their patterns of consumption and accept lower profits, but a dissenting group saw consumption as a symptom rather than a cause of the problems, which stemmed rather from the fundamental power structure.
After numerous working sessions and presentations over an 18-month period, the final results of RIO were presented at a meeting in Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
in October 1976 and accepted as a Report to the Club of Rome. The report did not have the hoped-for impact.
The last meeting Peccei organized and participated in was in Bogotá
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, on December 15–17, 1983, with the title "Development in a World of Peace". Co-organizer of the meeting with Peccei was the President of Colombia, Belisario Betancur
Belisario Betancur
Belisario Betancur Cuartas is a Colombian statesman, who as a member of the Colombian Conservative Party was President of Colombia from 1982 to 1986.- Biographic data :...
. Peccei visited Las Gaviotas in the Vichada and endorsed the project of Paolo Lugari to regenerate the rainforest that was destroyed by decades of extensive cattle farming. He provided an impulse to one of the most innovative restoration projects building on the Human Quality of the local population capable of responding to local needs with what they have.
Peccei died on March 14, 1984 in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
.
His biography was written by bis long-time assistant Gunter Pauli
Gunter Pauli
Gunter Pauli is a serial entrepreneur and initiator of The Blue Economy.- Life and Business :Gunter Pauli was born in 1956...
: "Crusador for the future: a portrait of Aurelio Peccei" and published in 1987.
Books
Peccei wrote several books, including:- The Chasm Ahead, Macmillan, NY (1969), ISBN 0-02-595360-5
- The Human Quality, Pergamon Press (1977), ISBN 0-08-021479-7
- One Hundred Pages for the Future, Pergamon Press (1981), ISBN 0-08-028110-9
- Before It Is Too Late, with Daisaku IkedaDaisaku Ikedais president of Sōka Gakkai International , a Nichiren Buddhist lay association which claims 12 million members in 192 countries and territories, and founder of several educational, cultural and peace research institutions.-Life and establishment of SGI:...
, Kodansha America (1985) , ISBN 0870117009