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Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
Young people as partners in designing the future
No peace without women
McPlanet.com: environment in the globalisation trap?
PPP: opportunity or risk for development policy?/a>
Myth or realistic policy goal?
After the war in Iraq: UN Security Council in crisis?
8-9/2003
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[ Congress in Berlin ]
McPlanet.com: environment in the globalisation trap?
Below the globe on the mobile phone display stands the question 'Delete?' A thumb lies on the 'Yes' button. This logo illustrated the subject of the congress 'McPlanet.com', held at the Technical University of Berlin, June 27-29, which focused on the question "Is the environment in the globalisation trap?" Pointing out that 80 per cent of global resources were consumed by only 20 per cent of the world population, Wolfgang Sachs, of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy, kicked off by making clear the proportions of global injustice. Walden Bello, of the organisation Focus on the Global South, said he would like to replace the word 'globalisation' with what in his opinion was the (again) more apt term 'imperialism'. Three months ahead of the Fifth World Trade Organisation ministerial conference in Cancún (September 10-14), he called for a radical shake-up of the WTO so that it would better meet the needs of all its 134 member countries. Other speakers, including Bello's deputy at Focus on the Global South, the Australian Nicola Bullard, argued even for dissolution of the WTO because it was not capable of reform.
But those were only differences on detail. Aside from those, the 1,500 globalisation critics and environmental protectionists at the congress agreed on the thesis of the "ecological aggression of the North". In more than 100 workshops and plenary discussions, as well as at a big concluding demonstration, they made a stand against the exploitation of natural resources, a business model that banks only on growth, the growing power of transnational companies, bio-piracy and genetically modified food. They accused the USA of instrumentalising worldwide poverty for the profit interests of its own agro-industry by putting under pressure developing countries which did not accept GM maize as food aid. Attac spokesman Sven Giegold, though, warned against one-sided criticism of America. He said the EU also maintained a system which was oriented on a blatant growth and privatisation ideology as well as on exploitation and militarisation, which was blind in social and ecological terms.
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