With a new lease on life in the wake of the financial crisis,
the IMF is now enforcing damaging economic reforms on those countries already
struggling with the effects of the collapse. Instead, such harsh restructuring
should be applied to the institution itself, writes Jayati Ghosh.
Carbon trading has the backing of corporate lobby groups that argue it is the sole way to secure an international emissions reductions deal. Yet this
market-driven solution will only delay the fundamental task of rapidly phasing
out fossil fuels, warns Oscar Reyes.
Neither conventional fossil fuels nor alternative energy
sources can be counted on to sustain current levels of economic growth. In
order to begin a managed transition to a post-fossil fuel society, growth as we
have known it can no longer drive the economy, argues Richard Heinberg.
The anchoring of peace-building to economic globalisation
has failed.
A new approach is required in international state-building – one
which abandons the privatisation of security and its connection to neoliberal
market strategies, says Oliver P. Richmond.
Instead of pursuing endless growth, the economy should be built on human values which foster a just and stable society. This will require a moral and cultural shift to the principles of family and community, suggests the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams.
As the Copenhagen climate summit draws near, a growing movement
is calling for rich countries to pay reparations to poor countries for the
climate crisis. Settling the ‘climate debt’ could fund the transfer of green
technology essential to saving the entire planet, says Naomi Klein.
Our growth-driven economy is now using more ecological
capacity than the planet can regenerate. Systemic reforms are required to
ensure equitable access to the world’s resources and to avert a global
ecological crisis, argue Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver.
Instead of a monoculture of mega-banks deemed too big to
fail, the financial system should form a highly diverse ‘ecology’ of
institutions that are adapted to the complexity and long-term goals of
the economy, says a report by the New Economics Foundation.
Press release: Civil society
organisations have called on governments attending the World Summit on Food
Security (16-18 November) to support the use of food reserves as an essential
step towards achieving universal food security.
Three decades after its inception, the ‘Tobin tax’ has
finally entered the mainstream political debate. Campaigners must now ensure its
primary purpose remains to redistribute finance away from the failed banking
system and toward benefiting the world’s poor, writes Anna White.
