D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 3, May/June 2002, p. 4-5)

If it needed any further proof after the mass protests in Seattle, Davos, and Genova that a new global social movement is in the making, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre has provided it. More than 50 000 people gathered in February in that southern Brazilian city to campaign for a different type of globalisation. But the goals of the new movement remain difuse, as the following assessment shows.

French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn characterised the World Social Forum more aptly than anyone else. The people in Porto Alegre did not necessarily have the right answers, he said, "but they ask the right questions". Interestingly, he made his remark at the New York meeting of the World Economic Forum, against which the World Social Forum was created as a direct counter-event and challenge.

With the motto "Another world is possible", this year's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was a colourful mass event which in its diversity, creativity and quality is probably unique at the present time. There were 51,000 visitors (three times as many as in the previous year), 15,200 registered delegates from 132 countries (including 8,500 from 2,300 different organisations in Brazil), 2,600 trade union representatives from South Korea to Zimbabwe and Mexico, and 2,400 journalists from 33 countries. The participation of younger people was noticeably large. But despite its enormous size, the Forum showed no sign of the sterile ceremonial or commercialisation which can often be seen at big conferences.

Porto Alegre - capital of the
alternative world

Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil's most southerly federal state, Rio Grande do Sul, was for six days clearly dominated by this multinational conference. On the way to the Forum's venue, the Catholic University on the outskirts of the city, the participants passed high-rise apartment blocks draped with banners covering several storeys that said "Another world is possible", and the backs of city buses carried advertisements for the Forum. The city of 1.3 million was visibly pleased that for a few days the World Social Forum was drawing attention to it around the globe. The city council, run for the last 10 years by the PT, the Socialist Workers' Party, this year once again gave strong financial support to the project. The mayor and the state governor took part in a number of events.

Given the wealth of separate events - 28 major conferences and about 800 seminars - the Forum's 150-page catalogue in newspaper format was the sheet anchor for orientation. The Catholic University's space was not large enough to accommodate all the events, so several big conferences - some of them attended by 2,000 people, and most of them providing simultaneous interpretation in two or three languages - were held elsewhere. At times the alternative venues were unusual locations such as the military police gym.

It was in this gym, at a conference on Global Governance - with the panel at a table in the middle of the hall and the audience sitting on the opposite terraces - that one of the leaders of the globalisation critics movement, sociologist Walden Bello from the Philippines, cut short the German panellist, Peter Wahl, of the German NGO WEED. Wahl had just said it was possible that given continuing or increasing pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Fund could be prepared to change its policies. "With all respect," retorted Bello, "to wait for that would be a pure waste of time." Wahl's suggestion of strengthening the democratic character of the United Nations by giving civil society organisations such as ATTAC seats and votes, also got nowhere with Bello. He said he was for 'deglobalisation', while the European ATTAC movements felt that sounded too much like 'antiglobalisation' and wanted to have nothing to do with it. Bello would prefer to see the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and IMF abolished, but probably knows full well that only changes in their working are realistic.

Topics ranged from privatisation of water supply to protest actions against genetically modified seeds and questions of procedure if developing countries were unable to service their foreign debt.

In one of the seminars, the participants criticised the development of genetically manipulated seed as being a means to exploit traditional farmers. They said farmers in developing countries who were forced to take out loans were often pressured by their banks to use the newly developed varieties because they produced higher yields and were more resistant to pests. But the other side of the coin was that a 'terminator' gene was built into the new seed which ensured that nothing could be saved from its harvest for the following season's sowing, which had been the custom in most developing countries for centuries. Jean-Pierre Berlan, of the French Agricultural Research Institute, said the new plants were a "triumph of the laws of profit over the laws of nature".

Unlike other events of similar size, where it is hardly possible, the Forum ended without a binding joint communiqué. But there were several documents from various groups, such as the declaration of the social movements which certainly expresses the opinion of the vast majority of those gathered in Porto Alegre. For example, point 3 of the 16-point declaration says: 'This (neoliberal) system produces a daily drama of women, children and the elderly dying because of hunger, lack of health care and preventable diseases. Families are forced to leave their homes because of wars, the impact of "big development", landlessness and environmental disasters, unemployment, attacks on public services and the destruction of social solidarity. Both in the South and in the North vibrant struggles and resistance to uphold the dignity of life are flourishing.'

In Porto Alegre, Europeans and North Americans were in a minority at almost all events of the multinational conference. Italy, with 900 delegates, provided the strongest contingent of the European countries. The German participation was rather modest with 120 people attending (after all, a small country like Senegal sent 80 people). But it was 10 times larger than at the first conference in Porto Alegre in 2001 because several German trade unions were represented for the first time. The German Section of ATTAC was there, of course, but it was outnumbered by the Evangelical Development Service (EED), which sent 15 delegates. The EED had the far-sighted idea of inviting to Porto Alegre 12 people from its partner organisations in developing countries. This enabled extra representatives of NGOs in Nepal, Mali, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Georgia to be there.

Low German participation

The interest of German political parties was noticeably low. Only two Social Democrat MPs and one from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) were at the Forum. Neither the Greens, who years ago used to give the debate on globalisation important imputs, nor the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) or the Free Democrats (FDP) were represented. Peter Hesse, an entrepreneur and member of the CDU Development Policy Committee, said he "still felt a bit exotic" in Porto Alegre. But he said he was leaving the Forum with the impression that the movement of globalisation critics was "in the process of developing into a social force that is to be taken seriously". He advised the CDU urgently to add to the plurality in participation wanted by the Forum.

The noted American professor of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, had already accorded the World Social Forum great praise on its opening day. He spoke of the "first realisation of another idea of globalisation, which addresses the interests of the people".