Creating a Sustainable Society:
Reforming the the Global Economic System

Barry Coates explained that globalisation is a deliberate, rather than inevitable, construction with rules which underlie it directed towards 'liberalisation' of trade. Half the world's economic activity now operates under World Trade Organisation rules, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will affect 160 sectors from health and water to transport and tourism. Thus these rules form a profound social and environmental framework, but are leading to poverty, exploitation and suffering for a great number of those living in developing countries. However, there is now a broad recognition that these trade rules are unfair to poorer countries and whilst the current rules are dangerous to the broader interests of society, regulations are necessary at the international level, but need to be implemented on the basis that they must provide for the rights of the poor to basic needs and services and lead to justice and equity.

Ann Pettifor worked with Jubilee 2000 to cancel the debts of developing countries crippled by high interest rates and 'structural adjustment programmes' forced upon them by the IMF and World Bank to ensure they pay their debts, but the banks refused to budge. The massive USA deficit, which now requires $4 billion per day, is a major cause of global instability and is driving the liberalisation of trade. But whilst in 1970 90% of international transactions were trade, by the year in 2000, 90% of these transactions were financial. Money is being made from money, this is unproductive, unsustainable and dominating the global economy. However, a common misconception is that our governments are powerless in the face of this expression of free market economics on a global scale. In reality it is the governments who are delivering this system and they have the power to reverse the whole process. Elected politicians are giving up major powers and the greatest fear is that this is leading to a 'power vacuum' which may be filled by right wing politics, by those who are willing to meet the financial demands by whatever social costs are required.

We have permanently damaged the life support system of the Earth according to Liz Hosken, who provided a positive impulse explaining the movements working for social change and environmental protection. The gap between the rich and the poor is ever increasing and bio-diversity has never been so threatened, however, the anti-globalisation coalition is growing and there are now thousands of alternative initiatives going on worldwide. In the wake of the breakdown of the democratic process people are responding and the Peoples Earth Summit, a coordinated alternative to the World Summit due to be held in South Africa in September, will provide a means of bringing together those who are working on local and grassroots remedies to global problems and an opportunity for a wide ranging discussion on how we can protect and enhance the diversity of cultures and of nature, whilst at the same time find a unifying theme based on human values at a universal level. We could learn to leave things better than we find them, and to incorporate this kind of principle into our systems. There is also an urgent need to communicate the issues to those other than the already converted. Leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi believed in satyagraha: non-violent, non-cooperation and in constructing alternatives: 'Satyagraha does not, like violence, try to exclude the adversary from the solution. On the contrary, it tries to transform the opponent, drawing him in as a participant and beneficiary in the solution.'

The current moves to reform our global economic system from the doctrine which offers great wealth to a few and a 'trickle' to everyone else, must ensure that those who have been marginalized no longer receive only a 'trickle', but the whole effect. As was pointed out by James Robertson, with reward for effort as one important foundation for this process (and as an alternative to reward for ownership), the prosperity and well-being of all could be ensured.

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