Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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better and safe public transport;
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'walkable' and disabled-friendly pavements;
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more public phone booths (some open twenty-four hours a day);
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eateries open twenty-four hours a day and allowing street vendors to trade,
thereby increasing the use of space and creating 'eyes on the street';
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curtailing open drug-dealing and usage;
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concerted efforts to sensitize people on the issue;
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change of attitude of both men and women towards sexual harassment;
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sensitized and responsive redressal mechanism in which the police have a very
important role to play.
Globalized protests reached a watershed in Seattle in 1999 and in Genoa in 2001,
where opposition to global free trade, capitalist globalization and the self-regarding
actions of the elite economic nations (the G7), spilled on to the streets in a spectacular
and well-publicized fashion. The protests against globalized capitalism morphed into
an opposition to the growing militarization exhibited by nations such as the US and
Britain following the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in
New York, the 'war on terror', military action against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda
in Afghanistan, and the highly controversial attack by the US and other national
forces on Iraq in 2003. The growth of civil society activism also stimulated the
formation of a counter-public sphere in the 'real' and virtual worlds, where neoliberal-
ism, globalization, imperialism, and alternative strategies and ideas could be vigorously
debated and discussed.
The World Social Forum (WSF), probably the most visible manifestation of this
counter-public sphere, has expanded, since its first meeting in the democratically
radical city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, to become an important dialogic space
and key intervention in world political activity. Smaller thematic Forum meetings
have taken place in India, Africa, Europe, and North and South America. As Leite
(2005) correctly notes, the WSF is a space and not an organization. It is a site for
ideas, the sharing of experiences and intense networking among political activists
from across the world. The WSF does not take a position on issues or pass resolutions.
Its aim is to be, and remain, pluralist in conception and practice. As such, it should
be understood as a process, rather than an event, constituting part of the larger
movement opposing war, imperialism, and global economic and social exploitation.
The WSF has helped create an environment that cultivates social movements, an
ideological climate, and a new internationalism that offers opportunities for
widespread participation and social and intercultural learning. The inauguration of
the WSF in Porto Alegre was of practical and symbolic importance, because the
city's radical budgetary planning process has been frequently cited as one of the best
and most effective contemporary examples of large-scale and successful participatory
democracy (Abers, 1998; Teivainen, 2002; Bruce, 2004). Porto Alegre demonstrates
that Euro-centric knowledge structures, where the development model of the North
is taught or imposed on the South, need not be applied or even be applicable. Writing
of the WSF meeting in Mumbai in 2004, Smith observes that:
