STWR - Share The World's Resources

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy has called for trade liberalisation and finalisation of the Doha Round to alleviate the global financial crisis. Such a solution would only exacerbate the economic, social and environmental problems facing the world today, argues Myriam Vander Stichele.

Water is the dream capitalist product, with inbuilt scarcity and rarity, indispensibility to human life, and no possible substitutes. All the more reason that this universal good should be placed under democratic control and allocated fairly, says Susan George.

Past pledges of more aid and fairer trade to fight poverty have amounted to very little for the world's poor. More of the same medicine is not the solution - a global shift in priorities is needed to redistribute essential resources to immediately secure basic human needs, argues Davinder Kaur.

The financial crisis puts to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated - providing an ideal opportunity to replace the present system with a new economy dedicated to serving life, writes David Korten. 

The privatisation of the world's natural resources leaves us 'awash with capital but literally running out of nature'. Now, we need a counter narrative to legally protect our global commons, and share our most essential resources, argues a new report by Maude Barlow.

An eruption of war and displacement in east Africa is rooted in historical land tension, a dense ethnic mixture, and the Rwandan government's belief that the area remains a 'mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploited'. But are the DR Congo and Rwanda on the verge of civil war? By Gerard Prunier.

It's the IMF to the rescue! Again. But in a saner world, the IMF would change its tune and advise countries to build up their own economies - perhaps through some kind of green jobs plan - instead of rapidly integrating into a global economy largely built on US consumption, writes Sameer Dossani.