Preserving national resources

THE BIG IDEA 60 seconds to change the world

Can a simple idea help make the world a better place? Each week we ask a guest to outline an idea to improve all our lives. Here, professor of landscape architecture, Martha Schwarz argues that we should all be shareholders of the world's natural resources.

Resources will no longer be owned by specific countries but by all the citizens of the earth.

Every person would be a shareholder of the value of all global natural resources.

I'd create a global resource oversight committee and the initiative would be capitalised by the G8 countries, which would have to donate 80% of their military funding over the next five years.

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This would allow for $1 trillion a year for seed money.

This committee will act as a steward for the maintenance, protection and operations of all global natural resources and to bring gross economic inequity into global balance, through the redistribution of wealth.

As a first step, in a series of steps, to bring environmental balance - the economic value of all natural resources will be determined.

For example, the rainforest is valued not only for the trees but for its production of oxygen, its intake of carbon dioxide, its ability to absorb water and its biodiversity.

Finally, the top 20 countries of the world would be taxed based on the amount of pollutants they produce and paid to poor countries to help protect environmentally critical resources.

Martha Schwarz is Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University

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