Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
been 'unmitigated disasters', with oligarchic decision-making defining the WTO and
the centralizing tendencies of all three organizations, combined with the inordinate
power of big corporations, militating against popular struggles for decentralization
and democracy in many developing nations. At the very least, corporate power needs
to be checked and regulated more effectively. In
Deglobalization: Ideas for a New
World Economy
(Bello, 2004), he states that continuing anti-globalization action
must be married to concrete proposals for an alternative system, re-empowering
local and national economies, re-embedding the economy in society rather than
having society driven by imperatives profit maximization, cost efficiency and other
market verities. This may be accomplished as follows:
•
By allowing countries to use their own internal financial resources to promote
development rather than becoming dependent on foreign investment and foreign
financial markets.
•
Redistributing land and incomes to create a vibrant internal market that would
secure economic prosperity and free up financial resources for internal investment.
•
Lessen the salience accorded to economic growth in favour of emphasizing equity
in order to fundamentally reduce 'environmental disequilibrium'.
•
Strategic economic decisions should be made subject to democratic debate and
decision-making processes and not be left to the guiding invisible hand of the
market.
•
Civil society organization should constantly monitor both the private sector and
the state.
New approaches to production, distribution and exchange should be developed
that enable the emergence of a system that includes community co-operatives, private
and public enterprises and exclude transnational corporations.
For environmental activist George Monbiot, globalization refers to first, the removal
of controls on the movement of what has become known as 'footloose' capital;
second, the removal of trade barriers and the 'harmonization' of trading rules; and
third, the growth of multinational corporations which displace local and national
businesses. However, the problem is not globalization as such but the inability of
people, civil society and governments to control and restrain it. Monbiot writes: 'our
task is not to overthrow globalization, but to capture it, and to use is as a vehicle
for humanity's first global democratic revolution' (2004: 23). His prescription or
manifesto includes the establishment of a world parliament modelled in part on the
World Social Forum, the establishment of an International Clearing Union, which
would replace much of the undesirable work of the International Monetary Fund,
many commercial banks and the World Bank whose policies and actions have
increased the financial debts of the developing world. More economically sensitive
and benign policies, including debt reduction and/or abandonment will replace them.
Between 1980 and 1996 nations in sub-Saharan Africa paid out twice the sum of
their debt in interest, thus owing three times as much in 1996 as they did sixteen
years earlier. Finally, Monbiot (2003) advocates the creation of a Fair Trade
Organization (FTO) to replace the iniquitous World Trade Organization whose
operations seem to consistently benefit the rich nations at the expense of the poor.
This would lead to greater global political and economic equality as well as a social
and cultural equity only currently dreamed of.
