Consider this little joke: Planet Earth meets another planet somewhere in outer space. The other planet asks: “How are you, my friend?” Planet Earth answers: “I feel terrible, I am not well, I have homo sapiens.” The other planet says: “That is indeed terrible! But do not worry, it will pass, I also had it once” (told in 2017 by the theologian Jürgen Moltmann during a lecture about the theology of the future).
What are we, homo sapiens, doing that such a joke can be told in all seriousness?
One of the important insights that lead to the formation of Nova in 1994, and continues to motivate us, is that the development industry in Africa has had a lot of unintended but destructive consequences, as can be seen, for example, in this statement: “Oil is a curse which means only poverty, hunger, disease and exploitation” says Emanuel Nnadozie in Oil and Socioeconomic Crisis in Nigeria
(http://umich.edu/~snre492/cases_03-4/Ogoni/Ogoni_case_study.htm).
This is not an exception, it is just one of numerous examples of the threat that modern industry and our present way of living pose to the environment and to human well-being. Global warming and wide-spread ecological destruction and overuse of resources are becoming a threat to the future of our children and their children.
To successfully overcome poverty, people need more than modern economic development, we all need ways to develop healthy households and sustainable practices, without such unintended negative consequences.
Nova sees itself as part of a global search for a sustainable and dignified quality of life.
Nova tries to think what we are doing
