Restructuring society -- by Alan N. Connor

Why we need a circular economy 

Al Connor speaking to QEW

If nothing else persuades us that we need a new model for the global economy, the present recession should. A number of people reached that conclusion a few years before the “meltdown” in 2008. John Cobb and Herman Daly [1] advocated for it before the turn of the century. David Korten has called for a new economic paradigm in an Agenda for a New Economy.[2]

It is obvious to many of us, who are studying and concerned about the present economy that the present system of the industrially developed world is not sustainable. It is based on perpetual economic growth and perpetual supply of natural resources that the Earth does not have. Those resources--fossil fuels, minerals, pure water, fertile top soil, timber -- are being used, extracted, converted to goods much faster than nature can reproduce them. And they are discarded at a rate that is faster than nature can absorb them.

Such a system requires ever increasing consumption to maintain ever increasing production by industries simply to continue to maximize profits that are shared by the wealthy investors who own most of the shares of stocks. Rather than meet need, it produces goods and services that are not necessary for a good quality of life. It creates demand for non-necessities via advertising that values individual and household opulence rather than the “good life”. It is a system that prices a significant portion of the population out of the market for necessities by limiting supply to keep the effective demand price high.

Aggregation of luxurious goods and assets designates the winners in our competitive economic game. The wealth gap between winners (investment bankers and corporate executives) and losers (workers) increases inequitably. Costs of essential goods and services, such as healthcare, shelter, transportation, education food, fuel, utilities, are inflated above their intrinsic value. And necessities are priced at levels many low paid workers, doing work that In addition, our present economic-industrial system emits gasses and micro particles into the atmosphere and pollutants into our water and soils that degrade them and are hazardous to the public's health. There is empirical evidence and consensus among atmospheric and eco-biological scientists that industrial and agricultural emissions and pollutants are changing the Earth’s climate and its ability to sustain existing life.[3] According to a number of economists a limited or even a no-growth economy in which a majority of people prosper is possible.

Economists and atmospheric and biological scientists have claimed that such an economy is necessary for human and most other life forms that inhabit earth today to continue to exist. James Hansen, chief atmospheric scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has said and written that CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere must be limited to 350 parts per million (ppm) to avert a future catastrophe. Some regions now have over 400 ppm.
Given the above information, plus the extreme weather and catastrophic events the Earth and its inhabitants have experienced this decade, an economy that is not driven by depleting fossil fuels and other minerals is worth trying. Hansen and a few other Earth and atmospheric scientists, recently, have said that much of the Earth’s altered eco-systems cannot be restored to their original condition and function. Since we cannot restore them to their original condition, human and other life will have to adapt to the extant ecology and perhaps regenerate the damaged and degraded eco-regions.

Probably many of us have a vision of how a new economy might be structured. A few have written books and scholarly papers describing their vision or some of the elements of what they believe a viable, sustainable economy include.[5]There are variations among the visions cited, but there are similarities also. Korten and McKibben envision an economy that is local community based, rather than globally based. Jackson, Daly, Brown and Garver envision global governances and cultures that enable nations, regions, municipalities to establish and operate institutions, polities and economies in which all citizens participate and have access to the essentials of the “good life”. All of them see the necessity for an economy that is not reliant on and driven by non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels, present state of the art nuclear power, minerals that are converted, used and discarded at rates faster than they can be renewed. In order for an economy to be sustainable, the ecological environment in which it exists and of which it is a subsystem, must be sustainable.

My vision

Seek the shalom of your community - montage by J. Fowler

My vision of a worldwide social system is one that consists of local communities that are economically, ecologically and socio-culturally sustainable. They are self organized primarily to increase the probability that the settlement will persist into perpetuity.[6] According to Parsons and Smelser the original, primary function of an economy was to harvest and extract local natural resources and convert them into useful goods and services that enable the local settlement to persist into the future. The goal and purpose or mission of the economy is to sustain the community not amass individual wealth. They defined the function of the polity – organized politics – as acquisition and control of resources so the inhabitants of the settlement can perform its economic functions. The local community culture then functions to create and promulgate values and behavioral norms that enable its economy and polity to perform community-sustaining functions.[7] 

Communities are social systems that cannot persist very far into the future in isolation. Closed systems become entropic.[8] For any system to persist, be it social, biological, mechanical or physical, it must put out some utile good into one or more other systems and must input one or more utile good from beyond its boundary -- i.e. from one or more neighboring systems. All systems are interdependent. Primitive settlements knew that.In order for communities to persist into perpetuity, they must be parsimonious in the extraction, harvesting, conversion and output of local natural resources, particularly those resources that require centuries to regenerate or renew themselves.[9] Natural resources, whether renewable or not, are a community‘s natural capital assets. They need to be conserved. Throughput (extraction, harvesting, conversion allocation, distribution and consumption of a resource) needs to be durable, reusable and recyclable. Extraction should be at a rate that is not faster than the rate at which resources can regenerate and reproduce themselves.[10]

Internal Community Systems 

For a community to be sustainable for seven generations or longer, its internal systems must function to sustain its inhabitants. A community is a social-ecological system. It is social because it consists of people who settle in a more or less proscribed environment and relate to and interact with one another. They collectively develop behavioral norms and rules for relating and interacting in ways that do not harm one another and the environment that sustains them. It is ecological in that these particular people have settled in a place that provides them with natural resources that support and sustain lives.

We can consider the community or settlement a system of subsystems: the economy, the polity and the socio-culture.[11]  Daly maintains that the economic system is a subsystem of the eco-region or ecological system.[12]  For purposes of this discussion, let us consider community system and its subsystems: economy, socio-culture and polity as subsystems of the local eco-region in which the community is located. Each of those subsystems can also be thought of as composed of a set of subsystems.

Within a community economy there could be the following subsystems: manufacturing for producing and distributing products that are essential for a decent quality of life as defined by the local socio-culture; food production, allocation and distribution; banking (the allocation and distribution of credit, accounting and managing of local currency) and the exchange of goods and services within the community and with external communities. 

The socio-cultural subsystem includes: families and other household forms, religious, service and civic groups and organizations, educational institutions, friendship groups. Those groups and organizations, formal and informal, develop and model the community’s ethic, values, behavioral and social norms and develop informal means to reinforce compliance and punish noncompliance.

The polity consists of the institutions that make or enact community public policy decisions and enact ordinances that conform to the community’s norms and values, allocate and regulate access to the community’s natural capital assets,[13] and enforce compliance to local public policy. It might include such institutions as police and fire departments, healthcare, social and legal services, conflict resolution organizations, overseeing the commons and infrastructure building, management and maintenance.

A Community Economic System

A community economic system would produce for all the community’s inhabitants such goods as safe, healthy and tasty food; shelter; pure, fresh water for local agricultural, industrial, and household use; tools, energy and technology that enable inhabitants to produce sustaining goods and perform sustaining services. It would include the organizations and institutions that effectively and efficiently allocate and distribute those goods and services to all the community’s inhabitants consistent with their need. Those organizations and institutions form the communities’ polities. Because each inhabitant would function in a social role the community values, a sustainable supply of goods and services would be his/her right. 
 
The goods produced from non-renewable resources or resources that take years to regenerate or reproduce themselves, must be long lasting, reusable and recyclable and could pass through a number of users. That would reduce waste, hopefully, to the capacity at which the local environment can absorb it. Tools and technology used in any specific community would be appropriate for the local ecological environment and for the tasks they are to perform. To the extent possible, the materials to produce them would be found locally. 
 
What is not available locally can be imported. Technology can be designed that is appropriate to the function it is to perform. Some materials needed but not found in the local community and its environs may need to be imported. The communities involved in the transaction would seek to develop an exchange that would be advantageous to each. They would be cooperators not competitors.

The means of production would be locally owned and operated. Community businesses that required substantial investment could be owned by local working and consumer investors. Such operations could be cooperatives or locally owned limited liability partnerships or corporations. That would insure that the business’s product and its profits benefit the community and its inhabitants, primarily. If incorporated, the corporation’s mission must be to provide a good or service that is for the community’s common good. If its product or service ceases to benefit the community and its inhabitants, the corporation should be dissolved. Local family and individual entrepreneurial ownership should be encouraged and supported.

Locally owned and operated banks, venture capital funds and business incubators could help provide startup and operating loans to local businesses based on the Grameen micro loan model.[14] Community individuals, families, banks, institutions, mutual insurers and the local government could purchase shares in such funds and incubators. Banks operating in the community would be owned by community depositors. They could be credit unions, cooperatively owned banks and building and loan associations. Wall Street bankers and brokerage houses and equity investors should be prohibited from purchasing shares in community owned financial institutions. They tend to suck wealth from the community and exacerbate local poverty rather than create and spread prosperity.[15]  No matter how the financial system is structured, its policies should be determined by a board of directors consisting of local residents, blue and white collar workers and small business operators as well as lawyers, accountants and local business administrators and financiers. 
 
Neighboring communities and urban neighborhoods within the same watershed, or a portion of the same large watershed, can organize regional banking and credit systems. Theycould provide backup to local systems and help establish fair exchange rates between different community currencies. For broader exchanges and transactions, a national currency would be used.

Community government can deposit all its revenue in the municipally owned bank, if the municipality elects to charter its own bank, or one or more of the local depositor owned cooperative banks. Then revenue would be available for community sustainability and development purposes. Municipal and cooperatively owned community banks would charge interest only the net profit earned on a loan.[16]

A Community Polity
 

Montreal political demo 2012

Parsons and Smelser define the polity or political subsystem as one that functions to acquire resources.[17]  For our purposes we can reword that to, functions to access and control natural resources. In a community where the local socio-culture has adopted an ethic that considers all natural resources in the community and its environs public property or the commons, those natural resources are controlled by the people of the community through its democratically elected local government. That government allocates access to residents on the basis of benefit to the community’s common good and the applicant’s need.

The polity, via its participatory democratic legislative and administrative subsystems, monitors the public behavior of the community’s residents and visitors while in the community and enforces compliance to those behavioral norms and values that have become rules and ordinances.

It also monitors the public behavior of local businesses, organizations, institutions and employed members of the local government. It judges the outcomes of those interactions and positively sanctions those that benefit the common good of the community and its inhabitants and negatively sanctions interaction and behavior that is not so beneficial. The polity enacts ordinances and rules that regulate how persons occupying certain community roles should interact with members of the community as well as what behaviors and functions are expected of them.

A Socio-cultural Subsystem

A socio-cultural system functions to develop community values and norms by which residents, institutions, businesses and organizations interact with one another, the local and surrounding environment and its natural and human resources. In so doing, the system defines roles that are of value to the community. The performance of those roles that benefit some or all members of the community, the community’s structure and functions, become valued. Some behavioral norms will be legislated by the polity as ordinances or rules.

Some will be implied and unwritten – i.e. the community’s mores. Most will be passed down from elder to younger by word of mouth, written and oral stories and role modeling. That is an expectation of the family, the church, synagogue, mosque, etc. and the school. Some of the roles performed in the community are publicly and legally defined, such as mayor and town council, fireman, policeman, public works director and town clerk. Others are defined in contracts as job descriptions – e.g. school principal, teacher, minister, rabbi, imam. Some are defined by employers by contract and in some cases by oral agreement. In all those cases the expected interactive behaviors and role functions are explicated or understood implicitly. The responsibility and authority of the role occupant are also understood, although implicit expectations are not always clear. For many roles, there may not be a clearly written or explicit definition. The roles of parent, child, neighbor and employer are seldom explicated. Nevertheless, compliance with role expectations is positively reinforced and there are penalties if persons assuming those roles perform them in ways that harm one or more community members.

Local socio-cultures also can establish norms regarding the allocation of access to and control of the natural and human resources of the community and environs. Nowadays, how individuals, local governments, institutions, local and transnational businesses harvest, extract and utilize local resources is determined by state and national legislatures and agencies that often have little knowledge of how their decisions and policies affect communities and the eco-regions in which they exist. Since those resources are the communities’ common property, those are policy decisions which should be determined by the communities in which those resources are located. 

Integrating Community Systems with Regional, National and Global Governance
 
Neighboring municipalities within a prescribed area can cooperate and collaborate with regard to certain functions, thus forming a region. A logical prescribed area is a watershed or sub watershed. Each watershed forms an ecological region (eco-region). It has a unique set of natural resources--i.e. natural capital: water, timber, minerals, soil, wetlands, topography, flora, wildlife. 
 
Each municipal community with its unique polity, economy and culture, determines to whom access to land within its political boundaries is to be allocated and how it is to be used. Some municipal lands will remain common – publicly owned. Access to and use of that land and its resources will be determined and monitored by the local polity. Each municipal community will need to monitor use of privately held land to insure that the holder does not use it in ways that harm neighbors and other members of the community. However, control of access to, allocation and use of land in the region not within any municipality’s boundaries, could be the joint responsibility of the polities of all the municipalities in the region. So a regional polity or governance would need to be formed. Preferably, all governances would be democratic, impartial and operate in the best interests of all persons and institutions within their jurisdictions.

Such regions already exist as counties in the United States. Their boundaries are usually determined by survey lines and surface waterways. Those determined by waterways divide eco-regions. Those divided by surveys into sections and townships often include parts of watersheds and eco-regions. Where watersheds and eco-regions are split among municipalities and counties, some form of joint governance seems logical. In making public policy regarding allocation and access to and uses of eco-region resources, knowledge and consideration of regional social culture is a requisite.

Within a region, even a small municipality such as village or rural township, there is likely to be conflicting social cultures. Different socio-economic, ethnic, religious and age groups may value community and eco-region resources differently. Those value conflicts need to be negotiated so that regional resource policy for the common good is established. There are three ways to resolve such conflict without third party intervention: conquest, compromise and consensus.[18] In conquest, one side wins and all others lose. In compromise all give up something, thus all sides lose some, but less than they might in a contest. In consensus or synthesis a new solution is developed and all sides win, at least no one loses.

Other functions that would benefit by inter-community regional planning and policy-making, ordinance monitoring and enforcement -- are public transportation, power generation and distribution, banking and trade.

Municipal and Regional Healthcare Systems 

Primary and much secondary healthcare, for the most part, are local community concerns. That is especially true for disease and injury prevention. Geology, geography, topography and climate vary from community to community. Thus the prevalence of disease and injury varies from community to community. Local health service providers and consumers are most knowledgeable about the diseases and injuries that are most prevalent in their communities. They also tend to be most knowledgeable about treatments that are most effective in their communities.

So the mission and functions of a community based and controlled healthcare system would be to assure that the highest quality care is accessible to all residents of and visitors to the community as promptly as possible. 
 
The system also is to assure that the most effective treatments are available when needed. To assure that all members of and visitors to the community have access to top quality care from the local system when needed, the system probably would need a significant amount of local public funding. A source of funds for such a system could be local taxes on real property or other taxes that fund other necessary local services such as police, firefighters, infrastructure construction and maintenance, waste pickup and disposal, snow removal and other forms of emergency assistance that may be needed from time to time. If such a service were administered and delivered by the community’s regional health department or a community agency established specifically to deliver healthcare services, a progressive premium payment system could be designed to operate a prepaid healthcare delivery service. Or a community might opt for a combination of local tax and premium payment funding. 
 
Policy regarding where and by whom treatment and support services should be delivered should be made by a democratic body of local service providers and knowledgeable local consumers. Policy regarding funding such a local community system and costs of treatment and support and ancillary services also would be determined and monitored by such a body. A local body authorized to oversee ethical practices of local providers will need to be established. Such a body could also determine how local health service providers would be paid and how much they would be paid.

Not every municipality has a population large enough to support a secondary or tertiary care medical facility with state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment technology. A group of neighboring communities with well administered primary care facilities could form a network to jointly fund, develop policy for and oversee a secondary and tertiary regional health care service. An entity consisting of representatives of local community health care delivery agencies and knowledgeable consumer advocates could oversee and administer such a system. 

Municipal, Regional and Interregional Public Transit
Efficient, convenient, inter-municipality, region wide public transit can have a lot of payoffs for all the people in the region and its communities. It reduces commuting use which:

• Reduces commuting costs to households
  
• Reduces the need for acres and acres of impervious parking lots and expensive multi-story and underground parking structures thus reducing polluting storm water runoff.
  
• Makes more space available for residential and commercial use of in-town land thus supporting non-motor and pedestrian scale development.
  
• Reduces the amount of impervious roadway needed which further reduces polluting storm water runoff and the cost of street, road and highway construction and maintenance.
  
• Reduces the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted to the atmosphere, which improves the quality of local air and the threat to local and regional public health and the rate of global climate change.
  
• Reduces costs to municipalities and regions that are external to transportation operations.
  

Transportation systems, including public right-of-way for private vehicles, are not self-supporting. They require taxpayer support. Public transit requires less subsidy than streets, roads, highways and bridges for millions of private vehicles. As use of public transit increases and private vehicle use decreases, costs for infrastructure and maintenance are reduced.
External costs are also reduced. Inter-region and inter-urban public transit systems can have the same positive consequences as region-wide public transit systems. They need an inter-regional governing and planning institution with authority to match their responsibility that understands the socio-cultural and ecological values and ethos of the regions involved so they can make transportation policy with those values and ethos.

Municipal and Regional Power Generation and Transmission 
 

To the extent space permits, each community or neighborhood within a city can have its own electric generating and transmission system. On-site generation combined with net metering, should be encouraged, particularly for public facilities. Solar, wind and low-head hydro-electric generation and combinations thereof could be used where practicable. Using local renewable energy to produce energy for local industrial, commercial, municipal and household use increases energy efficiency, reduces cost and the local carbon footprint. It also reduces external costs such as mitigation of environmental degradation an healthcare costs. 
 
Non-profit municipal and cooperatively owned systems can reduce the cost of power to consumers and increase generation and transmission efficiency. Efficiency is increased because transmission distances from local generation plants to local consumers are less than distances from monopolistic. Corporation owned centrally controlled power generation plants that transmit electricity over long distances that much of the electricity is lost as stray voltage. Costs to consumers are reduced because of increased efficiency and small local systems’ mission is to provide a local service rather than maximize profits and enable executives and principal shareholders to amass wealth. 
 
Eco-economy
 

My vision of a restructured economy is one in which local community citizens cooperatively make decisions that effect their community’s environment, its unincorporated environs and the social lives of its residents. Community is defined as a self-organizing settlement consisting of families and individuals living in households that interact with one another for the purpose of sustaining that settlement and its inhabitants into perpetuity. 
 
Members of the community—i.e. citizens--perceive their community as a subsystem within a natural, ecological system that contains the natural assets/resources that provide the necessities that support lives. And the community in turn organizes a number of interactive subsystems that need to function collaboratively to increase the probability that the community and its inhabitants are sustained into perpetuity. 
 
The three major community systems are the socio-culture, the economy and the polity. The socio-cultural system develops values and interactive norms that, when adhered to, enable community residents to occupy and perform community and eco-system sustaining roles. The economic system produces and manufactures goods from locally grown and extracted natural assets that help sustain the community. It also imports needed resources that are not available locally from other communities in exchange for local resources and goods other communities may need to sustain themselves. The economy develops means for local investment, establishing credit and intra-community exchange. The polity’s functions include: controlling access to the community’s common natural assets, organizing entities consisting of local citizens that monitor access to and use of such assets, in compliance with interactive social-cultural norms.

Examples of functions of community services, considered here as subsystems of the above three are discussed briefly. We also try to show how each of those subsystems needs to develop networks with systems of neighbor communities for local community subsystems to function with optimum effectiveness, efficiency — i.e. sustainability.

We argue that local community systems designed by community residents, owned in common can operate to sustain communities and their environs into the distant future. In such communities valued social roles can develop for each resident. Those roles enable them to contribute to the welfare and sustainability of their communities.

Notes

1. See Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth (1996), Toward a Steady State Economy (1973) and Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good (1989.)
2. David Korten, Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth 2nd ed. (2010)
3. IPCC report (2007), Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (2008)
4. Daly, Beyond Growth (1996) and For the Common Good (1989), Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: The Transition to a Sustainable Economy (2009), Korten, Agenda for a New Economy (2010), Bill McKibben , Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007), Robertson, Transforming Economic Life: A Millenial Change (1999).
5. Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth (2009); Peter Brown and Geoff Garver, Right Relationship (2009),;J. W. Smith “Full & Equal Rights: providing all a quality of life while reducing labor and resource use by Half.” Institute for Economic Democracy. Mar. 22, 2009; David Korten, Agenda for a New Economy (2010), Lester Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (2008); Bill McKibben, Deep Economy (2007), Daly, Toward a Steady State Economy (1973).
6. Talcott Parsons and Neil J. Smelser, Economy and Society: A Study of the Integration of Economic and Social Theory (1956).
7. Ibid.
8. Ludwig Von Bertalanfy. General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development and Applications (1968)
9. Herman Daly “The Illth of Nations and the Fecklessness of Policy: An Ecological Economist's Perspective.” Nov. 2003 Post-autistic Economics Review. No. 22 (pp1-4) and Beyond Growth (1996), Lester Brown, Plan B 3.0 (2008), McKibben, Deep Economy (2007)
10. Daly, ibid.
11. Parsons and Smelser, Economy and Society (1956).
12. Daly, Beyond Growth (1996).
13. Parsons & Smelser, Economy and Society (1956).
14. Michael Foley, “Microcredit: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Yes magazine. Jan. 23, 2011.
15. Ibid.
16. Ellen Brown, What a Public Bank Could Mean for California,” Yes Magazine May 16, 2004.
17. Parsons and Smelser, Economy and Society (1956).
18. Arthur Dunham, The New Community Organization (1970) pp. 241-243.

Further reading:
David Korten's Building Local Economies BALLE - Business Alliance for Local Economy
Wendell Berry, 17 rules for a sustainable community
Sharon Astyk, Depletion and Abundance
Yes Magazine, The New Economy
What can we do? – a checklist of positive earthcare goals.

Bien Vivir and the MDGs -- by Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán

Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán is director of Bolivia's Solon Foundation, an institution dedicated to  ecojustice. From 1993-2003 she fought for domestic workers' rights; and then for water rights in Cochabamba, World Social Forum, Food and Water Watch, Red de mulieres, the International Tribunal on Climate Justice, and the Buen Vivir movement. She gave this speech (edited for clarity) at Stand Up in New York City, 2010.

To speak of Millennium Development Goals forces me to talk about numbers. I am sorry to say that despite some advances in the fight against world poverty, five years before the 2015 deadline of the MDGs we are still far from reaching those goals.

As I speak, one billion persons lack access to clean water and 2.4 billion people to sanitation. Women in the poor countries spend more than 4 hours a day fetching water for their families. 24,000 children die daily in developing countries from preventable causes like diarrhea due to dirty water.

The Millenium Developing Goals are slipping out of reach. Because we talk about poverty, but not about inequality. We fail to talk about what separates human beings from each other. Our leaders do not face up to the real cause -- the dominant economic system.

The 500 richest families in the world now own more wealth than the poorest 500 million!  The most powerful 20 economies are not just countries, but huge multinational corporations. The growing gulf  between the richest and poorest hinders human solidarity. The gap between rich and poor countries includes a huge historic debt to the poorest in the world, whose commons have been grabbed. Even in the rich countries there are too many poor, and the gap is widening.

And it is not just poverty -- vulnerability is added to poverty. The impacts of climate change on the world's poor get worse every day. Within 8 months of the failure of the Copenhagen negotiations, we saw climate chaos hit people in Russia, Pakistan, Central America, South America just to name a few. Each tragedy increases the numbers of the poor and vulnerable. This is a simple fact.

These floods, fires, droughts and storms warn us that the risks we now face are worse than 10 years ago. Climate impacts will severely affect the MDGs unless rich developed countries  substantially reduce their greenhouse emissions, honor their climate debt by transferring substantial financial support and clean technologies to the developing countries, and give the ¨space” for the planet to breathe again.

I come from La Paz, Bolivia. Our glaciers are disappearing even faster than predicted, threatening our access to water and food security. Hundreds of our rural communities depend on the yearly meltwater from mountain ice caps. Millions of people will be affected. Scientists say that our glaciers have no more than 50 years left. And we did not cause the climate crisis. 80% of the world's greenhouse gases are produced by the 20% of humanity who love in developed countries. The richest countries, and the richest people in the world are eating this planet alive, thinking of it as a mere "resource" when common sense tells us it is our only, our common home.

We cannot win the fight against poverty without restoring the equilibrium of nature, without changing the very basis of mercantile, consumerist society; without bridging the deep inequalities between human beings and avoiding self-destruction. We must change the system, not the climate.

The dreams of wealth and success that are sold daily on TV and the media are an illusion. We cannot afford these individualist dreams; they exclude so many. We must think in terms of the global community, of the commonwealth, conscious that unlimited growth on a limited planet is impossible. If everyone had the same level of consumption as the average of the rich countries, we would need more than three planet Earths.

That is why in Bolivia, people are turning to a new (and very traditional) principle of life -- SUMA QAMAÑA -- in the Quechua language, that means Bien Vivir: Living Well. This principle is incorporated in our new Constitution. It means that the good life is the wellbeing of all -- not the self-enrichment of a few by limitless growth. Growth that would eat up biodiversity, deepen human inequality and destroy life in the planet. We have to revision human development as "common wealth", as equilibrium and equality -- harmony with nature, empathy between people.

If mere words could change the world, we would have been living in a real different reality decades ago. People have the will to change, but we need to convince our leaders to commit themselves to the wellbeing of all, to adjust their every action to the logic of life on this planet. We cannot fight poverty by investing in wars and weapons rather than in people. We cannot foster the MDGs while increasing racial intolerance and marginalization. It is time for world leaders to make decisions; we ask them to make the right ones.

Call for US Interfaith Actions on Climate Change, 21-27 April 2012

Interfaith Actions on Climate Change endorsers include FCNL, various evangelical Protestants, Catholics, McKibben (a Methodist), Congregationalists, Unitarians, Baha'i, Hindus.

As people of faith and spirituality we are deeply concerned about the effects of climate change ravaging our planet, and we are compelled by our traditions and collective conscience to take action together on this deeply moral challenge.

Accordingly, we call for interfaith actions across the USA during the week of April 21-27 to awaken our nation’s elected officials, as well as all civic and business leaders and households, to the urgent need for immediate and effective action to address the climate emergency. (See specific action plans here).

As a first step, we call on our leaders to enact policies that dramatically reduce wasted energy and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy sources. We must equitably phase-out all fossil fuel subsidies. We also call on our leaders to enact policies to help people here and abroad prepare for and withstand the terrible impacts of climate change that are already occurring and that will grow much worse in the years ahead.

We are compelled to heed Martin Luther King Jr’s call to appreciate the “fierce urgency of now” and his warning that “in this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.”

Our call is to: Choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deut. 30:19). We must hold forth a brighter vision for our human future within the community of creation as we seek commitment to a set of clear, widely held moral principles.

First, it is morally wrong to unjustifiably cause human suffering and death. Human-induced climate change is correlated with storms, floods, droughts, crop failures, diseases, and water and food shortages, as well as associated breakdowns in political, economic, social and ecological systems. These breakdowns compromise human security and are already harming and killing people here and abroad. The greatest impacts are falling on low-income people, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and others who have contributed little to climate change. We have a moral obligation to rapidly reduce our carbon pollution to minimize these disproportionate impacts

The second principle is to honor our moral obligation for equity and justice. The shift to a sustainable, energy efficient and renewable energy economy can create millions of good jobs and support healthy families and communities. We must ensure that this shift is a ‘just transition’ that protects the most vulnerable among us and prepares all of us for the impacts of a changing climate. It should spread the investments in solutions and the benefits of new approaches equitably, enable whole industries to make the changes needed, provide adequate resources for workers and communities adversely affected by the shift, and ensure that all Americans have a democratic voice in how those decisions are made.

The third guiding moral principle is to protect the Earth, which is the source of all life. Virtually all the world’s religious and spiritual traditions proclaim that we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of the Earth and all of its creatures and processes. To disrupt the climate that is the cornerstone of all life and to squander the extraordinary abundance of life, diversity, and beauty of the planet is a moral failure of the first order.

Our capacity for repentance and forgiveness inspires hope in a future where we can recover from the errors of our past, repair the damage we have done and share in the act of healing the Earth. May we rely on the guidance of our faith traditions and spiritual teachings to find the power to act with courage and conviction to create a brighter, more secure and sustainable future for all of us, our children and all future generations.

The illusion of a "Green Economy" -- Leonardo Boff

Reprinted from the Rio+20 People's Portal (which is worth checking regularly) Boff's critique of the UN Green Economy proposal to sell the world's commons to raise money for climate action and MDGs (because rich countries have for decades denied direct aid), comes from Brazil's leading liberation theologian. Similar protests from poor countries and ecojustice NGOs will be heard at next week's World Social Forum Thematic Social Forum preparing for Rio+20, in Porto Alegre, Brazil and the New York City Global Civil Society Workshop on the Rio+20 “Zero Draft” and Rights for Sustainability. Meanwhile, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at Davos, and UNCSD in its pre-Rio meetings, have aligned themselves with the Business Action for Sustainable Development corporate lobby for public-private partnerships, carbon finance and corporate offsets.

Boff, The Tao of Liberati

Everything we do to protect our living planet, Earth, against forces that upset her equilibrium and therefore cause global warming, is valid and must be supported. But the very expression "global warming" masks phenomena such as the extended droughts that decimate the grain harvests, the great floods and hurricanes, water shortages, soil erosion, hunger, impoverishment of 15 of the 24 services numbered in the Evaluation of Ecosystems of the Earth (UNO) and which are responsible for the sustainability of the planet (water, energy, soil, seeds, fibers, etc..) The central question is not even that of saving the Earth. The Earth takes care of herself and, if necessary, she will do so by expelling us from her womb. But how are we to save ourselves and our civilization? That is the real question, to which the majority responds by shrugging their shoulders.

Lower carbon emissions, organic products, solar and wind power, reducing our intervention in nature’s rhythms, seeking to replace the resources used, recycling, everything that falls under the rubric of green economy is sought after and disseminated. And this mode of production should prevail. 

Even so, we must not be deluded and lose our critical awareness. Green economy is discussed to avoid the issue of sustainability, because it is contrary to the present mode of production and consumption. But deep down, the green economy utilizes measures within the paradigm of dominating nature. The green and the not-green do not exist. There are elements that are toxic to the health of the Earth and society in various phases of the production of all products. Through the Analysis of the Cycle of Life we can demonstrate and monitor the complex interrelations between the different phases: extraction, transportation, production, use and discharge of each product, and its environmental impact. It is clear that the so-called green is not as green as it sounds. The green only represents a phase of processing. Production is never eco-friendly.

Take as an example ethanol, considered to be clean energy, and an alternative to fossil fuels and dirty energy from oil. Ethanol is clean only at the mouth of the fuel pump. All the processes of its production are highly polluting: the chemical products applied to the soil, the burnings, the transportation in big trucks that release gasses, the affluent liquids and the chaff. The pesticides kill bacteria and expel the earthworms that are fundamental to the regeneration of the soil; they only return after five years.

To ensure production of the goods necessary for life, in a way which neither stresses nor degrades nature, something more than the search for the green is required. The crisis is conceptual, not economic. Our relationship with the Earth has to change. We are part of Gaia, and through our careful actions we can help her become more conscious, and create a greater opportunity for assuring her vitality.

The Earth Charter

I see no path to saving ourselves other than that defined by the Earth Charter [final section]: "Our common destiny calls us to search for a new beginning; this requires a change in the mind and in the heart; it demands a new awareness of global interdependency and of universal responsibility".

Change of mind: adopt a new concept of the Earth as Gaia. She does not belong to us, but to the [web] of eco-systems that serve the totality of life, regulating her biophysical base and the climates. She created the entire community of life, not just us. We are her conscious and responsible segment. The hardest work is done by our invisible partners, a true natural proletariat, the microorganisms, the bacteria and the fungi, of which there are thousands of millions in each tablespoon of Earth. They have effectively sustained life for 3.8 thousand million years already. Our relationship with the Earth should be like our relationship with our mothers: one of respect and gratitude. We should gratefully restore that which she gives us, and maintain her vital capacity.

-- Leonardo Boff

See also the post-Durban Proposal of Bolivia to Rio+20 on the PWCCC website, Federico Fuentes' Bolivia Rising, and the Andean Buen Vivir and Minga movements; Asian reactions in Preliminary comments by Third World Network on the Zero Draft of Rio+20 and subsequent updates on TWN.org.sg

Fighting environmental racism

The US environmental justice movement

Van Jones, a leading voice for "green jobs", hopes to mobilize progressive forces of many types and stripes under the patriotic umbrella of the American Dream Movement, a mass open-source campaign of grass-roots organizing, house parties, events, social networking (Facebook, Twitter etc), and electoral activity. See our previous blog and his Wikipedia biography, his Oct 2010 One Nation Working Together rally and Rebuild the Dream (Facebook and video "What would MLK do?")

The American EJ movement was pioneered by black civil rights leaders Reverend Ben Chavis and Reverend Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Reverend Leon White of the United Church of Christ (named in this brief history by NRDC); by Robert Bullard, founder of the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC) at Clark Atlanta University; West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT); the Student Environmental Action Commission (SEAC) f. 1988, and (attended by Michael Dorsey: see our blog) the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit's Principles of Environmental Justice, (see other founding documents here). More recently, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) in NM, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (co-founded 1996 by Van Jones) in Oakland CA, New Orleans' DSCEJ, CLEANHouston, Greenaction in SE San Francisco, student groups SEEJ (at Columbia and Berkeley) and EJCC, Mothers of East LA, Seattle's CCEJ. In Oct 2011 the Council of Elders (veterans of US civil rights and EJ movement, not to be confused with the international Council) met at the Cenacle in Chicago; they supported Occupy Wall St with a public visit, open letters and video. Greenfaith list of EJ resources and actions. In recent decades action has broadened beyond African-Americans to include a rainbow of other minorities, immigrants and migrant workers: see Utne Reader article 2008 and New Economy conferences 2012, 2014.

In Canada 

A new video from the Ecology Action Centre, Halifax NS

Michael Buzzelli, Environmental Justice in Canada – It Matters Where You Live (CPRN 2008, free download); A. Gosine, C. Teelucksingh text, Environmental Justice and Racism in Canada: An Introduction (Emond Montgomery 2008), J.Agyeman et al., Speaking for Ourselves (UBC Press 2009), and the CELA bibliography. See also the University of BC student initiative "Decolonizing Knowledge" video and Facebook site, UBC First Nations House, U of Victoria Indigenous Affairs and First Nations House; Vancouver Ricepaper Magazine's 2011 Green Issue.

You are invited to comment, suggesting other historical and current links.

The EJ movement has gone international, for example the D2D statement at the 2010 US Social Forum -- but that will be the subject of a later blog.

Dr Michael K. Dorsey appeals for an ecojustice coalition of faith groups, environmentalists and the Third World

In this video from Durban, Mike Dorsey explains the shortcomings of civil society participation in UNFCCC and the need for a coalition of ecojustice groups before the Rio+20 Earth Summit.
Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), he has been involved in UN Kyoto negotiations for the last 20 years, in US People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Sierra Club, Center for Environmental Health, Islands First and Environmental Leadership (as a founder), the Obama campaign, and is winner of numerous awards. [I met him at UNEP-RONA in 2010 and have corresponded since.-DM] See his biography and publications. Here is his latest article with Patrick Bond, "Anatomies of environmental knowledge and resistance..." (AJPE Dec 2010) describing the past history and future of the ecojustice movement.

The World Future Council -- Jakob Von Uexkull

Visionary activist Jakob von Uexkull cofounded the World Future Council in 2006, with a global membership  of 100 wise elders, youth leaders, environmental activists, "servant leaders" from business and government advisers. Its activities include climate action, renewable energy and regenerative Cities, future justice, sustainable ecosystems, sustainable economies and Future Finance, Peace and Disarmament. Founder of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award  (the “alternative Nobel Prize”), he has spent the last twenty-five years building the European ecojustice movement. In this video, recorded at the June 20111 Zermatt Summit, he calls for world-scale transformation and citizen action.

Von Uexkull sold his million-dollar postage stamp collection to endow the Right Livelihood Award to "recognize the efforts of those who are tackling [the great challenges facing humanity] directly, coming up with practical answers to such challenges as the pollution of our air, soil, and water, the danger of nuclear war, the abuse of basic human rights, the destitution and misery of the poor, and the over-consumption and spiritual poverty of the wealthy."

The WFC's Intergenerational Justice Initiative (2010) insists on the welfare of future generations and green jobs as a guiding principle for government and business:

...in the long term, without natural resources there will be no wealth production, without education for innovation there will be no technological progress, without tackling unemployment there will be no sound public budgets, without a decent distribution of wealth there will be inequity in participation and social tension, without a flourishing real economy there will be more and more speculative financial bubbles.

The majority of European citizens have understood this: 71% agreed that reforms which benefit future generations should be pursued even if it means sacrifices for the present generation (Eurobarometer, Sept 2010). Some countries have understood this and created systemic future research Commissions (Finland, Netherlands) or even a Commissioner or Ombudsperson for Future Generations (Hungary, Israel). The EU has a chance to join these pioneers and develop its global leadership position in
sustainability concerns, especially in the run up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.

Von Uexkull is also the cofounder of TOES The Other Economic Summit (1984) and founder of The Estonian Renaissance Award (1993). He is a former trustee of the New Economics Foundation (London), patron of Friends of the Earth International, and a member of the Global Commission to Fund the United Nations. He has served on the Board of Greenpeace, Germany. As a Green MEP and Minister of the European Parliament (1984-89), he served on the Political Affairs Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. He is currently on the Council of Governance of Transparency International. See his Wikipedia biography.

Moral Ground -- a book review

Thanks to Lyn Adamson for suggesting this book, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril (Trinity University, 2010). 

It is a collection of reflections and eco-visions by over 100 thinkers. Since then, the Moral Ground website has added 14 bonus articles, as well as excerpts from the original book.

Like so many others in the ecojustice movement, the editors Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson feel that scientific data and government regulation are insufficient for the social and personal transformation that true earthcare requires. “What is missing is the moral imperative, the conviction that assuring our own comfort at terrible cost to the future is not worthy of us as moral beings.”

In a May 2011 survey, Climate Change in the American Mind, 82 out of 100 admitted they have made no changes in their lifestyle despite the gathering evidence of man-made pollution. Though climatologist James Hansen, biologist E.O Wilson,  preachers like Bill McKibben, University researchers and UN agencies report we are rapidly reaching climate chaos, with 300,000 human lives lost annually as a result of global change, species die-offs exceeding 100 times normal rates, planetary limits exceeded -- the majority of us do nothing.

How can we learn collective responsibility? How can we act out of concern for our grandchildren, and compassion for everything that lives, rather than individual greed, comfort, and convenience? That is the challenge of this book. MG's mission statement invites us to town hall meetings, study groups and actions, to start "a national conversation concerning our individual and collective responsibilities to the future."  

• Yes, it’s wrong to leave behind a ransacked and dangerously unstable world.
• Yes, our lives must be an expression of what we most deeply value.
• Yes, we can and must make conscience-driven choices about how we spend our money and time.
• Yes, we must provide a safe and thriving future for our children.
• Yes, tending to the Earth and reversing climate destruction are a moral, spiritual and religious imperative.

If the World were a village of 100 people -- by Donella Meadows

Copied from miniature-earth.com

The text that originated The Miniature Earth was first published on May 29, 1990 with the title "State of the Village Report", written by Donella Meadows. Nowadays Sustainability Institute, through Donella's Foundation, carries on her ideas and projects. The text used here has been modified. The statistics have been updated based on specialized publications and mainly reports on the world's population provided by The UN, PRB and others. See Wikipedia: Donella Meadows' career as an ecological thinker.

Food Sovereignty -- by Via Campesina and other NGOs

photo: World Forum, Nyéléni, Mali 2007
The Our World Is Not For Sale coalition formed around this statement in opposition to the stalemated Doha round of the WTO in 2001, and was updated in 2003. It has been signed by many NGOs and is one of the clearest statements of their aims. Corporate lobbies still push to complete the Doha round, inserting it in the UN agenda for the Rio+20 conference of 2012.

Priority to Peoples' Food Sovereignty

WTO out of Food and Agriculture

Food and agriculture are fundamental to all peoples, in terms of both production and availability of sufficient quantities of safe and healthy food, and as foundations of healthy communities, cultures and environments. All of these are being undermined by the increasing emphasis on neo- liberal economic policies promoted by leading political and economic powers, such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU), and realised through global institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). Instead of securing food for the peoples of the world, these institutions have presided over a system that has prioritised export-oriented production, increased global hunger and malnutrition, and alienated millions from productive assets and resources such as land, water, fish, seeds, technology and know-how. Fundamental change to this
global regime is urgently required.

People’s Food Sovereignty is a Right

In order to guarantee the independence and food sovereignty of all of the world’s peoples, it is essential that food is produced though diversified, community based production systems. Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets, and; to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of and the rights to aquatic resources. Food sovereignty does not negate trade, but rather, it promotes the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production.

Governments must uphold the rights of all peoples to food sovereignty and security, and adopt and implement policies that promote sustainable, family-based production rather than industry-led, high- input and export oriented production. This in turn demands that they put in place the following measures:

I. Market Policies
- Ensure adequate remunerative prices for all farmers and fishers;
- Exercise the rights to protect domestic markets from imports at low prices;
- Regulate production on the internal market in order to avoid the creation of surpluses;
- Abolish all direct and indirect export supports; and,
- Phase out domestic production subsidies that promote unsustainable agriculture, inequitable land tenure patterns and destructive fishing practices; and support integrated agrarian reform programmes, including sustainable farming and fishing practices

II. Food Safety, Quality and the Environment
- Adequately control the spread of diseases and pests while at the same time ensuring food safety;
- Protect fish resources from both land -based and sea-based threats, such as pollution from dumping, coastal and off-shore mining, degradation of river mouths and estuaries and harmful industrial aquaculture practices that use antibiotics and hormones;
- Ban the use of dangerous technologies, such as food irradiation, which lower the nutritional value of food and create toxins in food;
- Establish food quality criteria appropriate to the preferences and needs of the people;
- Establish national mechanisms for quality control of all food products so that they comply with high environmental, social and health quality standards; and,
- Ensure that all food inspection functions are performed by appropriate and independent government bodies, and not by private corporations or contractors;

III. Access to Productive Resources
- Recognise and enforce communities' legal and customary rights to make decisions concerning their local, traditional resources, even where no legal rights have previously been allocated;
- Ensure equitable access to land, seeds, water, credit and other productive resources;
- Grant the communities that depend on aquatic resources common property rights, and reject systems that attempt to privatise these public resources;
- Prohibit all forms of patenting of life or any of its components, and the appropriation of knowledge associated with food and agriculture through intellectual property rights regimes and
- Protect farmers', indigenous peoples’ and local community rights over plant genetic resources and associated knowledge – including farmers' rights to exchange and reproduce seeds.

IV. Production-Consumption
- Develop local food economies based on local production and processing, and the development of local food outlets.

V. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
- Ban the production of, and trade in genetically modified (GM) seeds, foods, animal feeds and related products;
- Ban genetically modified foods to be used as food aid;
- Expose and actively oppose the various methods (direct and indirect) by which agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Aventis/Bayer and DuPont are bringing GM crop varieties into agricultural systems and environments; and,
- Encourage and promote alternative agriculture and organic farming, based on indigenous knowledge and sustainable agriculture practices.

VI. Transparency of Information and Corporate Accountability
- Provide clear and accurate labelling of food and feed-stuff products based on consumers' and farmers' rights to access to information about content and origins;
- Establish binding regulations on all companies to ensure transparency, accountability and respect for human rights and environmental standards;
- Establish anti-trust laws to prevent the development of industrial monopolies in the food, fisheries and agricultural sectors; and,
- Hold corporate entities and their directors legally liable for corporate breaches of environmental and social laws, and of national and international laws and agreements.

VII. Specific Protection Of Coastal Communities Dependent On Marine And Inland Fish
- Prevent the expansion of shrimp aquaculture and the destruction of mangroves;
- Ensure local fishing communities have the rights to the aquatic resources;
- Negotiate a legally binding international convention to prevent illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing;
- Effectively implement international marine agreements and conventions, such as the UN Fish Stocks Agreement; and,
- Eradicate poverty and ensure food security for coastal communities through equitable and sustainable community based natural resource use and management, founded on indigenous and local knowledge, culture and experience.

Trade Rules Must Guarantee Food Sovereignty

Global trade must not be afforded primacy over local and national developmental, social, environmental and cultural goals. Priority should be given to affordable, safe, healthy and good quality food, and to culturally appropriate subsistence production for domestic, sub-regional and regional markets. Current modes of trade liberalisation, which allows market forces and powerful transnational corporations (TNCs) to determine what and how food is produced, and how food is traded and marketed, cannot fulfil these crucial goals.

“No” to Neo-liberal Policies in Food and Agriculture

The undersigned denounce the ‘liberalisation' of farm product exchanges as promoted through bilateral and regional free trade agreements, and multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. We condemn the dumping of food products in all markets, and especially in Third World countries where it has severely undermined domestic production. We condemn the attempts by the WTO and other multilateral institutions to sell all rights of aquatic resources to transnational consortiums. Neo-liberal policies coerce countries into specialising in agricultural production in which they have a so-called “comparative advantage” and then trading along the same lines. However, export orientated production is being pushed at the expense of domestic food production, and production means and resources are increasingly controlled by large transnational corporations. The same is occurring in the fishing sector. Fishing communities are losing their rights of access to fisheries, because access has been transferred to industrial corporations, such as PESCANOVA. Those TNCs have consolidated a great part of the production and of the global fishing commerce.

Rich governments continue to heavily subsidise export oriented agricultural and fisheries production in their countries, with the bulk of support going to large producers. The majority of taxpayers’ funds are handed out to big business – large producers, traders and retailers – who engage in unsustainable agricultural, fisheries and trading practices, and not to small-scale family producers who produce much of the food for the internal market, often in more sustainable ways.

These export-oriented policies have resulted in market prices for commodities that are far lower than their real costs of production. This has encouraged and perpetuated dumping, and provided TNCs with opportunities to buy cheap products, which are then sold at significantly higher prices to consumers in both the North and the South. The larger parts of important agricultural and fisheries subsidies in rich countries are in fact subsidies for corporate agri-industry, traders, retailers and a minority of the largest producers.

The adverse effects of these policies and practices are becoming clearer every day. They lead to the disappearance of small-scale, family farms and fishing communities in both the North and South; poverty has increased, especially in the rural areas; soils and water have been polluted and degraded; biological diversity has been lost, and natural habitats destroyed.

Dumping

Dumping occurs when goods are sold at less than their cost of production. This can be the result of subsidies and structural distortions, such as monopoly control over markets and distribution. The inability of current economic policy to factor in externalities, such as the depletion of water and soil nutrients and pollution resulting from industrial agricultural methods, also contribute to dumping. Dumping under the current neo-liberal policies is conducted in North-South, South-North, South-South and North-North trade. Whatever the form, dumping ruins small-scale local producers in both the countries of origin and sale.

For example:

Imports by India of dairy surpluses subsidised by the European Union had negative impacts on local, family based dairy production.

Exports of industrial pork from the USA to the Caribbean proved ruinous to Caribbean producers;

Imports by Ivory Coast of European pork at subsidised prices are three times lower than the production costs in Ivory Coast;

Chinese exports of silk threads to India at prices far lower than the costs of production in India has been seriously damaging for hundreds of thousands of farmer families in Southern India; and,

On one hand the import of cheap maize from the US to Mexico – the centre of the origin of maize – ruins Mexican producers; on the other hand the export of vegetables at low prices from Mexico to Canada ruins producers in Canada.

Dumping practices must to be stopped. Countries must be able to protect their home markets against dumping and other trade practices that prove damaging to local producers. Exporting countries must not be allowed to dump surpluses on the international market, and should respond to real demands for agricultural goods and products in ways that do not undermine domestic production, but rather support and strengthen local economies.

There is no ‘World Market’ of Agricultural Products

The so called ‘world market’ of agricultural products does not exist. What exists is, above all, an international trade of surpluses of milk, cereals and meat dumped primarily by the EU, the US and other members of the CAIRNS group. Behind the faces of national trade negotiators are powerful TNCs, such as Monsanto and Cargill. They are the real beneficiaries of domestic subsidies and supports, international trade negotiations and the global manipulations of trade regimes. At present, international trade in agricultural products involves only ten percent of total worldwide agricultural production and is mainly an exchange between TNCs from the US, EU and a few other industrialised countries. The so called ‘world market price’ is extremely unstable and has no relation to the costs of production. It is far too low because of dumping, and therefore, it is not an appropriate or desirable reference for agricultural production.

The Older Siblings of the WTO: The World Bank and The IMF

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are the older siblings of the WTO and serve as domestic arms of the WTO regime in developing countries. They have played significant roles in weakening agricultural autonomy, dismantling domestic self-sufficiency, creating famines and undermining food sovereignty. Their structural adjustment programmes – now called poverty reduction programmes – have created and entrenched policy induced poverty across the developing world. Hardest hit by these policies are those who rely on agriculture and the natural environment for their livelihood and survival.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the Bank and Fund are unchanged in their belief that “global integration” of domestic agriculture systems and “market access” are the best avenues to reduce poverty. Developing countries are exhorted to undertake reforms in their respective agr iculture sectors, which include dismantling of agriculture subsidies, deregulation of pricing and distribution, privatisation of agriculture support and extension services, provision of greater market access to
foreign producers and removing all barriers to international agriculture trade. However, the Bank and Fund are unable to force the rich countries of the OECD to the same. As a result, Bank -Fund policies entrench inequalities among the developed and developing world and reproduce colonial structures of production and distribution.

Privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation are the hallmarks of the World Bank-IMF approach to development and are necessary conditions in all Bank -Fund lending programmes. Despite fierce criticism from numerous farmers’ organisations, academics and independent researchers, the Bank continues to support “market assisted land reform” and the creation of “functioning land markets” as a key rural development strategy. Bank-Fund policies mandate the transformation of subsistence based, community oriented and self-sufficient agriculture systems to commercial and market dependent production and distribution systems. Food crops are replaced by cash crops for export, and communities and societies are compelled to rely on external markets that they have no control over for food security. Furthermore, the emphasis on export crops has led to increased dependence on harmful and costly chemical inputs that threaten soil, water and air quality, biodiversity, and human and animal health, while providing greater profits for large agribusiness and chemical corporations.

The commercialisation of agriculture has resulted in the consolidation of agriculture land and assets in the hands of agribusiness and other large commercial entities, displacing small-scale and family farmers off their lands to seek employment in off-farm activities, or as seasonal labour in the commercial agriculture sector. Most farmers in developing countries are steeped in debt as a result of increasing input costs and falling farm-gate prices for their products. Many have mortgaged their land and assets to repay old debts, and in several cases have lost their lands altogether. An equally large number have moved to contract farming for large agribusiness in order to hold on to whatever assets they have left. This has resulted in widespread migration of farming families, the creation of new pockets of poverty and inequality in rural and urban areas, and the fragmentation of entire rural communities.

The World Bank and the IMF threaten the wealth, diversity and potential of our agriculture. Agriculture is not simply an economic sector, it is a complex of ecosystems and processes that include forests, rivers, plains, coastal areas, biodiversity, human and animal habitats, production, distribution, consumption, conservation, etc. Bank-Fund policies are creeping into every one of these areas. In order to protect our agriculture, the World Bank and the IMF must be removed from food and agriculture altogether.

The World Trade Organisation Dismisses Calls for Reform

The WTO is undemocratic and unaccountable, has increased global inequality and insecurity, promotes unsustainable production and consumption patterns, erodes diversity and undermines social and environmental priorities. It has proven impervious to criticisms regarding its work and has dismissed all calls for reform. Despite promises to improve the system made at the Seattle Ministerial Meeting in 1999, governance in the WTO has actually become worse. Rather than addressing existing inequities and power imbalances between rich and poor countries, the lobby of the rich and powerful in the WTO is attempting to expand the WTO’s mandate to new areas such as environment, labour, investment, competition and government procurement.

The WTO is an entirely inappropriate institution to address issues of food and agriculture. The undersigned do not believe that the WTO will engage in profound reform in order to make itself responsive to the rights and needs of ordinary people.

The WTO is attempting to establish rules to protect foreign investments of fleets that operate in national waters, and is pressuring the governments to yield exclusive fishing rights to the international consortiums. Therefore, the undersigned are calling for all food and agricultural concerns to be taken out of WTO jurisdiction through the dismantling of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and removing or amending the relevant clauses on other WTO agreements so as to ensure the full exclusion of food and agriculture from the WTO regime. These include: the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (SPS), Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Quantitative Restrictions (QRs), Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

Agriculture: A Deadlock at the World Trade Organization

In February 2003, the WTO released the controversial and unacceptable Harbinson Draft proposal, written by General Council Chairman, Stuart Harbinson, to restructure world agricultural production and trade. Modalities are the terms of reference and conditions upon which member states will make binding commitments in the WTO of their agriculture sectors. However, trade-offs in this sector will be linked to other WTO negotiations. All member states were suppose to come to agreement on the Modalities text by March 25-31, but they did not. Members are also expected to draft their commitments in this agreement by the WTO Ministerial in Cancun in September 2003, but they may not be able to reach an agreement by then.

The US and the Cairns Group (a bloc led by Australia and other developed countries, which never reflects the interest of developing countries) are lobbying for more aggressive cuts in agricultural tariffs, claiming that the Harbinson Text is inadequate, but both are content with the proposed domestic support. The European Commission (EC) has the most trouble with the domestic support cuts proposed. Although the European Union does not endorse the Harbinson modalities, there are some commonalties between it and the EC proposal to reform the Common Agriculture Policy. The lack of proposals to fundamentally address the level and nature of US domestic support has been forgotten, because of widespread criticism against the EC. India is in agreement with the EC on its caution against steep tariff reductions. As a result, India is finding itself squeezed from both the Cairns developing countries and the US. India is hoping for 1) a much milder tariff reduction formula; and, 2) a strong permanent Strategic Product (SP) provision and a temporary Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) against import surges, for developing countries only. The SP and the SSM are a major concern for many developing countries that simply cannot afford to liberalise many of their agriculture sectors and even wish to raise their tariffs in certain vulnerable areas.

The proposed modalities still allow developed countries to retain significant levels of trade-distorting domestic support. The GATT-UR provisions on domestic support are maintained, providing protection to payments exempted under the Green Box, where a significant portion of the trade-distorting subsidies of developed countries have been transferred. For example, the direct payments under the Green Box, which have the same net effect of boosting farm production was not subjected to removal despite calls from developing countries for such.

The modalities on market access did not address the main inequity in the provision that forced many developing countries to tarify and lower their tariffs substantially, while developed countries retained high tariffs through tariff peaks and escalation. If developed countries reduce their high tariffs to an average of 60% over 5 years, and developing countries 40% over 10 years, the former will have higher tariff protection than developing countries whose tariffs have already been reduced to very low levels or even to zero at the start of implementation.

Finally, the provisions for special and differential treatment for developing countries remain inconsequential, as they can hardly redress the existing inequities in trade stemming from the agreement, itself. The provision for a minimal tariff reduction of 10% for products specified by developing countries as strategic to food security and rural development ignores the fact that many of these countries have already bound their agricultural tariffs to very low levels.

We, the undersigned, reject the Harbinson Text. Rather than redressing the imbalances and inequities inherent in the AOA, it enunciates modalities that will further intensify trade in agriculture; ensures protection of trade-distorting agricultural support and subsidies in developed countries; and entrenches control of transnational corporations in global agricultural production and trade.

A Role for Trade Rules in Agricultural and Food Policies?

Trade in food can play a positive role, for example, in times of regional food insecurity, or in the case of products that can only be grown in certain parts of the world, or for the exchange of quality products. However, trade rules must respect the precautionary principle to policies at all levels, recognise democratic and participatory decision making, and place peoples' food sovereignty before the imperatives of international trade.

An Alternative Framework

To compliment the role of local and national governments, there is clear need for a new and alternative international framework for multilateral regulation on the sustainable production and trade of food, fish and other agricultural goods. Within this framework, the following principles must be respected:

1. Peoples' food sovereignty;
2. The rights of all countries to protect their domestic markets by regulating all imports that undermine their food sovereignty;
3. Trade rules that support and guarantee food sovereignty;
4. Upholding gender equity and equality in all policies and practices concerning food production;
5. The precautionary principle;
6. The right to information about the origin and content of food items;
7. Genuine international democratic participation mechanisms;
8. Priority to domestic food production, sustainable farming and fishing practices and equitable access to all resources;
9. Support for small farmers and producers to own, and have sufficient control over means of food production;
10. Support for open access of traditional fishing communities to aquatic resources;
11. Effective bans on all forms of dumping, in order to protect domestic food production. This would include supply management by exporting countries to avoid surpluses and the rights of importing countries to protect internal markets against imports at low prices;
12. Prohibition of biopiracy and patents on living matter - animals, plants, the human body and other life forms - and any of its components, including the development of sterile varieties through genetic engineering; and,
13. Respect for all human rights conventions and related multilateral agreements under independent international jurisdiction.

The undersigned affirm the demands made in other civil society statements, such as Our World is Not for Sale: WTO-Shrink or Sink , and Stop the GATS Attack Now. We urge governments to immediately take the following steps:

1. Cease negotiations to initiate a new round of trade liberalisation and halt discussions to bring 'new issues' into the WTO. This includes further discussions on such issues as investment, competition, government procurement, biotechnology, services, labour and environment.
2. Cancel further trade liberalisation negotiations on the WTO’s AoA through the WTO’s built-in agenda.
3. Cancel the obligation of accepting the minimum importation of 5% of internal consumption; all compulsory market access clauses must similarly be cancelled immediately.
4. Undertake a thorough review of both the implementation, and the environmental and social impacts of existing trade rules and agreements (and the WTO's role in this system) in relation to food, fisheries and agriculture.
5. Initiate measures to remove food and agriculture from under the control of the WTO through the dismantling of the AoA and through the removal or amendment of relevant clauses in the TRIPS, GATS, SPS, TBT and SCM agreements. Replace these with a new Convention on Food Sovereignty and Trade in Food,Agriculture and Fisheries.
6. Revise intellectual property policies to prohibit the patenting of living matter and any of their components and limit patent protections in order to protect public health and public safety;
7. Halt all negotiations on GATS, and dismantle the principle of “progressive liberalisation” in order to protect social services and the public interest;
8. Implement genuine agrarian reform and ensure the rights of peasants to crucial assets such as land, seed, water and other resources;
9. Promote the primary role of fish harvesters’ and fish workers’ organisations in managing the use of aquatic resources and oceans, nationally and internationally.
10. Initiate discussions on an alternative international framework on the sustainable production and trade of food, agricultural goods and fisheries products. This framework should include:

* A reformed and strengthened United Nations (UN), active and committed to protecting the fundamental rights of all peoples, as being the appropriate forum to develop and negotiate rules for sustainable production and fair trade;
* An independent dispute settlement mechanism integrated within an international Court of Justice, especially to prevent dumping and GM food aid;
* A World Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Sovereignty established to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of trade liberalisation on food sovereignty and security, and develop proposals for change. This would include agreements and rules within the WTO and other regional and international trade regimes, and the economic policies promoted by International Financial Institutions and Multilateral Development Banks. Such a commission could be constituted of and directed by representatives from various social and cultural groups, peoples’ movements, professional fields, democratically elected representatives and appropriate multilateral institutions;
* An international, legally binding Treaty that defines the rights of peasants and small producers to the assets, resources and legal protections they need to be able to exercise their right to produce. Such a treaty could be framed within the UN Human Rights framework, and linked to already existing relevant UN conventions;
* An International Convention that replaces the current Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and relevant clauses from other WTO agreements and implements within the international policy framework the concept of food sovereignty and the basic human rights of all peoples to safe and healthy food, decent and full rural employment, labour rights and protection, and a healthy, rich and diverse natural environment and incorporate trading rules on food and agriculture commodities.

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See also Wikipedia on food sovereignty, dumping, Doha round, and critique of UN Rio+20 policy in QEWnet.