As the threat of another famine haunts Africa, this time in the Sahel region, it is high time we finally accepted that global food systems are broken. Fixing them requires a new focus on small farmers, food reserves and long-term planning, argues Olivier De Schutter.
The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability presented its final report to the Secretary-General on 30 January 2012 in Addis Ababa. The 22-member Panel was established in August
2010 to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable development and
low-carbon prosperity.
The world
is about to get simultaneously bigger and smaller depending on the field
of human activity concerned. It won’t be a return to provincialism and
a hierarchical society, but this radical
re-ordering won’t be easy and may at times be violently
resisted, says Jason F. McLennan.
It is now critical for us to recognize that long-term energy and climate realities will impose
limits on the global movement of goods. Global trade will not disappear, but as it wanes and as supply chains
shorten, the importance of regional and local economies will increase, write Fred Curtis and David Ehrenfeld.
Beware the havoc that
power without oversight and democratic control can wreak. The world's poor are not begging for charity from the rich – they're asking for justice and fairness, says Robert Newman.
The path to peace in the Middle East demands a nuclear-free region and a just settlement of the Israeli/Palestine
conflict, but such hope will only happen if an as yet non-existent Global Occupy Movement turns
its attention to geopolitics, writes Richard Falk.
International protest should remain active until a reorganization of the financial markets has finally been achieved and thus the core questions regarding a better and fairer global order can be tackled. Sustainable development is still an option, according to a paper by the Global Marshall Plan Initiative.
Failure of policymakers, especially those in Europe and the United States, to address the jobs crisis and prevent sovereign debt distress and financial sector fragility from escalating, poses the most acute risk for the global economy in the outlook for 2012-2013, says World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012.
It is easy to question the morality of wealthy nations once aware
of the consequences of a debt based monetary system; however, the beneficiaries
of Third World debt are not the people in richer nations, nor the
nations themselves. Such a system benefits
no-one, explains Mira Tekelova.
The future of the Arab spring and the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street movements is very difficult to foresee, but one thing is certain: the fight to break the infernal cycle of debt is a vital one. If it is not energetically pursued, there is little chance of
overcoming the next neo-liberal offensive, writes Éric Toussaint.
