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¿ø¹® As the 21st Century unfolds, humanity is faced with a stark reality.
Following the world stock market crash in 2008, people everywhere are
questioning the unbridled greed, selfishness and competition that has driven
the dominant economic model for decades. The old obsession with protecting
national interests, the drive to maximise profits
at all costs, and the materialistic pursuit of economic growth has failed to
benefit the world¡¯s poor and led to catastrophic consequences for planet
earth. The
incidence of hunger is more widespread than ever before in human history,
surpassing 1 billion people in 2009 despite the record harvests of food being
reaped in recent years. At least 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty,
a number equivalent to more than four times the population of the United
States. One out of every five people does not have access to clean drinking
water. More than a billion people lack access to basic health care services,
while over a billion people – the
majority of them women – lack a
basic education. Every week, more than 115,000 people move into a slum
somewhere in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Every day, around 50,000 people
die needlessly as a result of being denied the essentials of life. In the
face of these immense challenges, international aid has proven largely
ineffective, inadequate, and incapable of enabling governments to secure the
basic needs of all citizens. Developed countries were cutting back on foreign
aid commitments even before the economic downturn, while the agreed aid
target of 0.7 percent of rich countries¡¯ GDP has never
been met since it was first conceived 40 years ago. The Millennium
Development Goals of merely halving the incidence of hunger and extreme
poverty, even if reached by 2015, will still leave hundreds of millions of
people in a state of undernourishment and deprivation. When several trillion
dollars was rapidly summoned to bail out failed banks in late 2008, it became
impossible to understand why the governments of rich nations could not afford
a fraction of this sum to ¡®bail out¡¯ the world¡¯s poor. The
enduring gap between rich and poor, both within and between countries, is a
crisis that lies at the heart of our political and economic problems. For
decades, 20 percent of the world population have
controlled 80 percent of the economy and resources. By 2008, more than half
of the world¡¯s assets were owned by the richest 2 percent
of adults, while the bottom half of the world adult population owned only 1
percent of wealth. The vast discrepancies in living standards between the
Global North and South, which provides no basis for a stable and secure
future, can only be redressed through a more equitable distribution of
resources at the international level. This will require more inclusive
structures of global governance and a new economic framework that goes far
beyond existing development efforts to reduce poverty, decrease poor country
debt and provide overseas aid. In both
the richest and poorest nations, commercialisation
has infiltrated every aspect of life and compromised spiritual, ethical and
moral values. The globalised consumer culture holds no higher aspiration than
the accumulation of material wealth, even though studies have shown that
rising income fails to significantly increase an individual¡¯s well-being once a minimum standard of living is secured. The organisation of society as a competitive struggle for
social position through wealth and acquisition has led to rampant
individualism and the consequences of crime, disaffection and the
disintegration of family and community ties. Yet governments continue to
measure success in terms of economic growth, pursuing ever-greater levels of
GDP –
regardless of the harmful social consequences of a consumption-driven
economy. Although
the crises we face are interlinked and multidimensional, the G20 and other
rich nations offer no vision of change towards a more sustainable world. The
old formula, based on deregulation, privatisation,
and the liberalisation of trade and finance, was
unmasked by the economic crisis and shown to be incapable of promoting
lasting human development. Multilateral institutions like the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund have failed the world¡¯s poor, and the myth that economic growth will eventually benefit
all has long been shattered. As we also know, endless growth is unsustainable
on a planet with finite resources. This impasse is further compounded by
ecological degradation and climate change – the side-effects of economic ¡®progress¡¯ that disproportionately affect
the poorest people who are least to blame for causing these multiple crises. Humanity¡¯s ability to effectively address these interrelated crises
requires governments to accept certain fundamental understandings that are
instrumental to securing our common future. Firstly, that humankind is part
of an extended family that shares the same basic needs and rights, and this
must be adequately reflected in the structures and institutions of global
governance. And secondly, that many basic assumptions about human nature that
inform the thrust of economic decision making - particularly in industrialised nations - are long outdated and
fundamentally flawed. The creation of an inclusive economic framework that
reflects our global interdependence requires policymakers to move beyond the
belief that human beings are competitive and individualistic, and to instead
accept humanity¡¯s innate propensity to cooperate and
share. This more holistic understanding of our relationship to each other and
the planet transcends nations and cultures, and builds on ethics and values
common to faith groups around the world. It also reflects the strong sense of
solidarity and internationalism which lies at the heart of the global justice
movement. International Unity The
first true political expression of our global unity was embodied in the
establishment of the United Nations in 1945. Since then, international laws
have been devised to help govern relationships between nations and uphold
human rights. Cross-border issues such as climate change, global poverty and
conflict are uniting world public opinion and compelling governments to
cooperate and plan for our collective future. The globalisation
of knowledge and cultures, and the ease with which
we can communicate and travel around the world, has further served to unite
diverse people in distant countries. But the
fact of our global unity is still not sufficiently expressed in our political
and economic structures. The international community has yet to ensure that
basic human needs, such as access to staple food, clean water and primary
healthcare, are universally secured. This cannot be achieved until nations
cooperate more effectively, share their natural and economic resources, and
ensure that global governance mechanisms reflect and directly support our
common needs and rights. At present, the main institutions that govern the
global economy are failing to work on behalf of humanity as a whole. In
particular, the major bodies that uphold the Bretton
Woods mandate (the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation) are all widely criticised
for being undemocratic and furthering the interests of large corporations and
rich countries. A more
inclusive international framework urgently needs to be established through
the United Nations (UN) and its agencies. Although in need of being
significantly strengthened and renewed, the UN is the only multilateral
governmental agency with the necessary experience and resources to coordinate
the process of restructuring the world economy. The UN Charter and Universal
Declaration of Human Rights have been adopted by all member states and embody
some of the highest ideals expressed by humanity. If the UN is rendered more
democratic and entrusted with more authority, it would be in a position to
foster the growing sense of community between nations and harmonise
global economic relationships. Being Human Establishing
more inclusive structures of global governance will only remedy one aspect of
a complex system. Another key transformation that must take place is in our
understanding and practice of ¡®economics¡¯ so that government policies can become closely aligned with
urgent humanitarian and ecological needs. The
economic principles that have fashioned the world¡¯s existing global governance framework - particularly in relation
to international trade and finance - can be traced back to the moral
philosophy of Enlightenment thinkers during the emergence of industrial
society in Britain. Drawing on the ideas of these early theorists, mainstream
economists have assumed that human beings are inherently selfish,
competitive, acquisitive and individualistic. Such notions about human nature
are now firmly established as the principles upon which modern economies are
built, and have been used to justify the proliferation of free markets as the
best way to organise societies. Particularly
since the 1980¡¯s, these basic economic assumptions
have increasingly dominated public policy and pushed aside ethical
considerations in the pursuit of efficiency, short-term growth and profit maximisation. But the ¡®neoliberal¡¯ ideology that institutionalised greed
and self-interest was fundamentally discredited by the collapse of banks and
a world stock market crash in 2008. As a consequence, the global financial
crisis reinvigorated a long-standing debate about the importance of morality
and ethics in relation to the market economy. At the
same time, recent experiments by evolutionary biologists and neuro-cognitive scientists have demonstrated that human
beings are biologically predisposed to cooperate and share. Without this
evolutionary advantage, we may not have survived as a species.
Anthropological findings have long supported this view of human nature with
case studies revealing that sharing and gifting often formed the basis of
economic life in traditional societies, leading individuals to prioritise their social relationships above all other
concerns. As a whole, these findings challenge many of the core assumptions
of classical economic theory – in
particular the firmly held belief that people in any society will always act
competitively to maximise their economic interests.
If
humanity is to survive the formidable challenges that define our generation – including climate change,
diminishing fossil fuels and global conflict – it is necessary to forge new ethical understandings
that embrace our collective values and global interdependence. We urgently
need a new paradigm for human advancement, beginning with a fundamental
reordering of world priorities: an immediate end to hunger, the securing of
universal basic needs, and a rapid safeguarding of the environment and
atmosphere. No longer can national self-interest, international competition
and excessive commercialisation form the foundation
of our global economic framework. The
crucial first step towards creating an inclusive world system requires
overhauling our outdated assumptions about human nature, reconnecting our
public life with fundamental values, and rethinking the role of markets in
achieving the common good. In line with what we now know about human behaviour and psychology, integrating the principle of
sharing into our economic system would reflect our global unity and have
far-reaching implications for how we distribute and consume the planet¡¯s wealth and resources. Sharing the world¡¯s
resources more equitably can allow us to build a more sustainable,
cooperative and inclusive global economy – one that reflects and supports
what it really means to be human. *¼ö½ÅÀ» ¿øÇÏÁö ¾Ê´Â ºÐÀº sngmoo@cycleconomy.org·Î ¿äûÇϽñ⠹ٶø´Ï´Ù. |