Globalization under attack...or not (fwd)

Mon, 01 Jun 1998 23:33:52 -0400 (EDT)
Peter Grimes (p34d3611@jhu.edu)

>GLOBALISATION UNDER ATTACK... OR NOT
>
>While there appears to be a difference in the way non-governmental
>organisations in the North and those in the South view
>globalisation and ways of dealing with it, some activists believe
>that globalisation has forced people in developed and developing
>countries into 'a common condition of exclusion', with 'grounds for
>a new solidarity'.
>
>
>By John Madeley
>
>Geneva: It is commonly assumed that non-governmental
>organisations, unlike governments, work together - or that they
>should. But they seem to stand divided - right down the middle -
>over the issue of how to deal with globalisation.
>Recently, NGOs from Africa, Asia and Latin America stole the show
>from their counterparts based in affluent Northern countries by
>convening a conference in Geneva to highlight the impact of free
>trade. In addition, a debate on globalisation dominated NGO events
>in London for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM-2) in April 1998.
>The aim of the Geneva meet was plain from its title - the 1st
>Conference of Peoples' Global Action Against Free Trade and the
>World Trade Organisation. It sought to allow peoples' movements
>from all continents to pool into 'worldwide resistance against
>globalisation' and build up local alternatives.
>It was convened by groups that included Movimento Sem Terra in
>Brazil, the Karnataka State Farmers' Association of India, the
>Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Nigeria, the Peasant
>Movement of the Philippines, the Central Sandinista de
>Trabajadores, Nicaragua, and the Indigenous Women's Network, based
>in North America and the Pacific.
>>From the North, a Spanish-based organisation - Play Fair Europe! -
>played an important role in organising the conference in the city
>that houses the World Trade Organisation.
>But the North's mainstream development NGOs stayed away, possibly
>deterred by pre-conference publicity which said that a hallmark of
>the global alliance would be a 'confrontational attitude, i.e.
>fundamental opposition to the world trading system, since we do not
>think lobbying can have a major impact'. Lobbying is at the centre
>of most Northern NGO campaigns.
>The depth of the South's feeling against globalisation - the world
>as a single market - was considerable in the Geneva meet.
>'Globalisation is destroying millions of livelihoods,' said Sarath
>Fernando of the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform
>in Sri Lanka. 'The alternative is for us to fight back for our
>survival.'
>Farmers from India spoke of how globalisation has led to lower
>tariff barriers on food imports into India, and that the increase
>in these imports was affecting their livelihoods.
>'We want to tell the governments that they are destroying humanity
>with these policies,' said Alejandro Demichelis, of the
>Confederation of Education Workers, Argentina.
>There was nonetheless a wide range of views among the 300
>participants about lobbying and confrontation. The strategies
>appear to stem from analyses of the globalisation process itself -
>activists who think it can be reversed want to confront it; others
>favour alternatives.
>'The process of economic globalisation is irreversible,' said a
>Filipino participant, Clarissa Balan, of the World Student
>Christian Federation. 'We can develop an alternative, parallel
>trading system that is fairer than the main system. If people will
>spend their money on fairly traded products, then this type of
>trade could be a real challenge to globalisation.'
>A manifesto, agreed by the participants, spoke of the need to
>revive traditional knowledge systems and strengthen local market
>systems 'by developing producer-consumer linkages and
>cooperatives'. Only a global alliance of people's movements, it
>says, can implement action-orientated alternatives that can stop
>globalisation.
>The manifesto calls for direct confrontation with transnational
>corporations, and stresses that 'direct democratic action' against
>globalisation should be combined with the constructive building of
>alternative and sustainable lifestyles.
>It also says that 'democratic action carries with it the essence of
>non-violent civil disobedience to the unjust system'.
>Many participants believed that non-violent civil disobedience was
>one way of fighting back against the 'undemocratic nature' of the
>globalisation process. 'Even democratically elected governments
>have been implementing policies of the globalisation of poverty
>without debate among their own peoples or their elected
>representatives,' the manifesto says.
>Civil disobedience against globalisation is already happening in
>both the North and South. In India, farmers have burnt imported
>foodstuff in protest against an increase in food imports - just as
>Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi torched British-made clothes
>in the 1940s.
>In France, 120 members of the French Peasant Confederation forced
>their way into a Novartis factory recently to denature transgenic
>maize seeds in protest against a government decision to allow the
>cultivation of this maize. During the action, the modified seeds
>were mixed up with non-modified varieties.
>In Britain too, small 'direct action groups' have been staging
>imaginative protests against such globalisation-linked issues as
>genetic engineering in food products and the proposed Multilateral
>Agreement on Investment (MAI) that is aimed at easing the path of
>Northern private investments into developing countries.
>While issues such as the MAI are as yet little understood, the
>movement is broadening in Britain - ordinary people are getting
>involved as genetically-modified food is widely seen as a health
>hazard.
>Signs of a North-South NGO divide were apparent at the London
>meetings to coincide with the Asia-Europe summit - held in the
>backdrop of the financial crisis in Asia that is blamed by many
>NGOs on the global free movement of financial capital.
>Several activists disagreed with Britain's International
>Development minister Clare Short's assessment that 'globalisation
>is unstoppable - the genie is out of the bottle. If we demand that
>it stop, it will not.'
>Martin Khor of the Penang-based Third World Network replied:
>'Globalisation is not something that has dropped from heaven. It
>is not inevitable; it is made by human beings taking decisions in
>rich countries. We can change those rules - in the WTO, in the
>World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.'
>An eight-page document brought out by the NGO event and presented
>to British Premier Tony Blair avoids mentioning the word
>globalisation altogether.
>Andy Rutherford of the British NGO One World Action, who helped
>author the document, said: 'It is not a question of evading
>globalisation. The debate on whether globalisation is good or bad
>is a disempowering debate. We have to go beyond those comments.
>Our aim is to constructively engage with leaders in Asia and
>Europe.'
>Khor said if a similar NGO event had been held in the developing
>world, 'I suspect the outcome would have been different. The
>language would have been more pointed, very clear, more critical of
>globalisation. For those of us living in the developing world,
>globalisation is a dirty word. Here (in the North), it is a
>positive word.'
>However, Vandana Shiva, a well-known Indian activist on
>agricultural, food and environmental issues, points out that
>globalisation has forced people in both the North and the South
>into 'a common condition of exclusion'.
>'It's the first time that Northern citizens have experienced this
>- it's a situation we have always experienced, and we now have
>grounds for a new solidarity,' she says. - Third World Network
>Features/PANOS
>-ends-
>
>About the writer: John Madeley is a British development journalist
>and editor of International Agricultural Development. The above
>first appeared as a Panos Feature (30 April 1998).
>
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>
>1752/98

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