Hackles Raised in Fur Debate

Defenders of animal rights in the world's fashion capital say that behind every fur coat is a story of suffering and death.

Global Trade's Road to Cancún

The Mexican cities of Cancún and Puebla will host the negotiations of the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas this year, and progress continues apace. But where is the Latin American Agenda?

World Social Forum 2003

The World Social Forum, in its third annual meeting, January 23-28, will proclaim its central message with renewed energy: "another world is possible". And the host city is once again the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, which expects tens of thousands of people to converge on this "open meeting space".

Ecobreves – LATIN AMERICA: Waste Collectors Unite at WSF

Informal waste collectors from throughout Latin America will hold their first congress Jan 20-23 in Brazil, ending as the World Social Forum gets under way in the southern city of Porto Alegre, drawing tens of thousands of activists from around the world.

Ecobreves – CUBA: Refrigerate without Harm to Ozone Layer

Some 3,000 Cuban technicians are being trained in alternative technologies and best practices in refrigeration as part of a national program to reduce and eliminate substances that deplete the Earth's ozone layer.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Healthy Foods on Show

The ExpoSaludable health fair, to take place Feb 5-9 in the central Chilean city of Quillota, 100 km northwest of Santiago, will be a showplace for foods and other products of "clean technology", in the context of quality standards established in the country's free trade accords.

Johannesburg Summit: Journalism's Bad Example

Journalists are not covering the crisis of the world's model of civilization and seem to be more concerned with spectacle, warns Washington Novaes. "The world is in a big mess," the renowned Brazilian reporter said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Planting in the Desert

Former miners and retired workers in the town of Canto de Agua, 700 km north of the Chilean capital, are growing organic oregano in the middle of the desert, joining the ranks of the expanding mode of farming that is free of toxic chemical substances.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Recyclers Demand Wages

The informal recyclable waste collectors of Curitiba, capital of the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, are demanding that the city pay for the public service they perform in gathering 360 tons of garbage a day.

Ecobreves – NORTH AMERICA: NAFTA 'Pollutes Little'

The launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 worsened pollution in the border areas of Mexico and the United States and among some specific industries, but did not produce the environmental disaster that some critics had predicted.

Nacen nuevos líderes

La flamante ministra de medio ambiente de Brasil simboliza un nuevo tipo de liderazgo en América Latina, surgido de un activismo ambiental que promueve cambios profundos. A algunos ecologistas, les ha costado la vida.

PROTECTIONISM – BAD MEDICINE, WRONG DIAGNOSIS

A phantom is stalking the globalised world and threatening to turn back history: protectionism, which made a big comeback in 2002, writes Benedetto della Vedova, a deputy in the European Parliament for the Transnational Radical Party. US president George W. Bush was the first to try this dance, beginning with tariffs on steel and then gigantic subsidies for agriculture. But the protectionist wind is blowing in Europe too (and not only in agriculture) where the economic crisis is provoking calls for state intervention and trade protectionism. Given that the transferral of traditional industries and production of intermediate goods to countries with lower production costs have benefitted, not harmed, the industrialised countries, Vedova argues that their invocation of protectionist policy is indefensible. The author agues that the industrialised countries should accept, whatever the consequences, the challenge of achieving production excellence in keeping with the new international division of labour. To do so it is necessary to renew systems that have aged to the verge of paralysis and make major investments in research and development. Financing for these changes could come in part from agricultural subsidies, which devour over 40 percent of the EU budget and force European consumers to spend far more one food than they would in a free market.

THE KOREAN PENINSULA: A TRANSCEND PERSPECTIVE

German poet Goethe once said: \'\'People behave the way you treat them.\'\' To a large extent, this applies also in international relations, write Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace Studies and Director of TRANSCEND, a peace and development network, and Dietrich Fischer, Professor at Pace University and Co-director of TRANSCEND. In this article for IPS, the authors write that Bush\'s inclusion of North Korea with Iraq and Iran in the \'\'axis of evil\'\' made North Korea more belligerent, as even the US government now seems to recognise. The hawk/dove balance in North Korea can be tilted by the hawk/dove balance exerted by the US, South Korea, Japan and China, and to some extent by Russia. Fischer and Galtung recommend five steps to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula: Continuation of Sunshine Policy; Regime change in North Korea, like in China, heading for more democracy and human rights; a One nation/two states Confederation on the Korean Peninsula; a Conference for Security and Cooperation in Northeast Asia; foreign troop withdrawl from the Korean Peninsula. What helped end the cold war in Europe was a gradual mutual opening to the flow of ideas, goods and people. The same policy can work in Korea.

BUILDING UTOPIA

The World Social Forum grew directly out of the economic, social, and political conditions of the opening of the 21st century, writes Candido Grzybowski a sociologist, director of IBASE (Brazilian Institute for Socio-economic Analysis) and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. Vast numbers of people remain trapped in profound desperation, in the deep crisis of a global capitalism that in its neo-liberal form is even more savage and destructive. Others face the even worse prospect of bombs and death, the fruits of a logic of terror and war. While it isn\'t yet clear how we can exit this crisis, what is clear is that it is time to act, the author writes in this article for IPS. The WSF is an initiative designed to overcome neoliberal globalisation and bring about a globalisation based on solidarity, democracy, and sustainability. It establishes that political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum.

THE DOHA DEVELOPMENT AGENDA: CHALLENGES AHEAD

Multilateralism is the only sustainable way to secure our global future, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation. At Doha in November 2001, in a climate of dangerous international uncertainty, WTO members showed the determination to make multilateralism work. What the world needs today is a reaffirmation of this choice of multilateralism over unilateralism. In this article for IPS, the author writes that trade liberalisation is a powerful ally of sustainable development. Improving market access for products of particular interest to developing countries, such as agriculture goods and textiles, will make a huge difference to the lives of millions. We should also remember that trade is not a zero-sum game. Developed countries also stand to gain from trade liberalisation in these areas. For instance, agricultural support in developed countries, which comes close to USD 1 billion every day, represents a significant cost to developed country tax payers and consumers. In the WTO, developed country members have committed themselves to respond to the concerns of developing countries, but more could be done.

WTO: DOUBLE STANDARDS AND DECEIT

If it is to stop terrorising the weak and the powerless to pry open markets for rich corporations and rich countries, the World Trade Organisation must be reformed, writes Vandana Shiva, an author and international campaigner for women and the environment. In this article for IPS, Shiva writes that what is urgently needed to bring justice and fairness into international trade rules, protect the survival of Third World peasants, and defend the food rights of the poor is to lower production costs and prevent unfair competition from artificially cheap subsidised imports. While US and European subsidies have actually increased in the past year, countries like India have been forced to remove import restrictions and have seen domestic markets and prices collapse as artificially-cheap, heavily-subsidised products flood the market. Sustainable agriculture/organic farming along with import restrictions are the only guarantee for livelihood security and food security in the Third World, the author writes.

LEGAL ACTION THREATENED TO BLOCK IRAQ WAR

While the Bush administration was boasting recently that other countries will join a war against Iraq, fast increasing majorities in Britain and much of the rest of the world were telling their governments not to do so, writes Fredrik S. Heffermehl, Norwegian lawyer, International Peace Bureau consultant, and author of \'\'Peace is Possible\'\'. In this article for IPS, the author writes that several governments have even been threatened with legal action to stop them from taking any part in the US war. Notice of legal action was served upon the prime ministers of Britain and Canada last week, warning government officials to respect the 1998 Rome Treaty or face prosecution before the new International Criminal Court. Bush may face his toughest challenge at home if anyone in Congress accepts an offer from international law professor Francis Boyle to assist in impeaching the president for unlawful threats. \'\'The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive warfare or pre-emptive attack in alleged self-defence was rejected soundly in 1945 in the Nuremberg Judgment, \'\' Boyle says. The strong prohibition against power between nations has taken centuries to establish. The purpose of the UN is to avoid wars and the power to veto military action is an intentional component of its design. No state can claim a right to attack because it finds that the Security Council has proved unable to act, Heffermehl writes.

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS: LEADERS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Progress depends on more than high-level cooperation among global decision-takers, writes Klaus Schwab, founder and president of the World Economic Forum. It also requires a different kind of leader, Schwab writes in this article for IPS -- one that has contributed to social transformation by applying entrepreneurial skills to address a wide array of social challenges at the local level. These leaders are called social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs enter the scene precisely where markets have failed to deliver critical public goods and services, particularly to those who cannot pay. Without market assistance, social entrepreneurs create the social value underpinning the productive healthy societies upon which sustainable development depends. The World Economic Forum uses its leverage such that the scalable solutions of social entrepreneurs can be replicated, improved, and expanded, so that their practical insights can be incorporated into government policy and business initiatives, Schwab writes.

THE DELIBERATE GLOBALISATION OF DEBT AND ITS DIVIDEND OF RUIN

The central component of what has been widely defined as \'\'globalisation\'\' is the transformation of the global economy into one of unsustainable debts in which the finance sector plays a dominant role, writes Anne Pettifor, director of The Jubilee Research programme and former director of Jubilee 2000 Coalition UK. In this article for IPS, the author argues that this transformation was the intended result of government action. The US trade deficit had to be financed, and the US was determined to finance it without lowering living standards or ceding its policy autonomy to foreign creditors. Capital controls had to be lifted so the US could access foreign capital markets. The City of London, backed by the UK government, was only too happy to broker financing for the US deficit, first through the \'\'stateless\'\' Eurodollar market based in London. We should be prepared for the economic, environmental, and social degradation associated with destruction of the \'\'credit bubble\'\', in particular widespread depression and deflation. However, we cannot do so if our analysis of the forces at play in the global economy is wrong, or if we play into the hands of the finance sector by ignoring it. Above all we should be prepared to shape the alternative: a world in which the finance sector and markets in general are once again subordinated to environmental, social, and political priorities, determined locally and democratically.

THE OFFENSIVE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE REACTION OF THE PEOPLES

The upcoming Third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the US, and servility on the part of the international organisations. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and Member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. In this article for IPS, Stedile writes that the objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World,and monopolize access to energy sources and restore profit levels. The US also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas, with which they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia. Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador,Brazil,and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.

OLD AND NEW EUROPE

Just when the leadership of France and Germany was commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, irritated with Paris and Berlin for their opposition to war against Iraq, lashed out at the Franco-German position as simply coming from the \'\'old Europe\'\', writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet professor and Director of European Union Centre at the University of Miami. In this article for IPS, Roy writes that to believe that Lithuania, Slovakia, or even Poland, because of their fast conversion from satellites of the Soviet Union are today the true representatives of Europe is preposterous. In the post-September 11th world, the \'\'old Europe\'\' is the one formed around the nucleus forged by two nations tragically mangled by self-inflicted wars that ended in near suicide (Germany) and humiliation and occupation (France) in World War II. Their leaders concluded that the only way to end their tendency to bloody conflict was to place the means of war under the control of common institutions. The grave danger raised by Rumsfeld\'s remark is that the US might persist in considering the European doubts irrelevant. The risk is that the US will decide to carry out the war by itself and believes that others will follow. Only when the cards are down on the Security Council table or the first shots are fired over Iraq will we know the truth. Until now, fortunately, only words and pots of ink have been launched. It is an improvement, given past experience.