The WorldShift 20 Council offers its alternative to the G20 Declaration in order to call attention to shortcomings in the philosophy of the G20 and introduce a more appropriate holistic and humanistic perspective.To read more, please visit the WorldShift International website
1. Elements of the global crisis
1.1 Financial instability
The current global monetary and financial system is innately dysfunctional on an unprecedented scale; it is approaching a breakdown. Although the on-going crisis is the biggest since the 1930s, it certainly is not the first and without fundamental reform and re-setting it will not be the last. The IMF has identified 145 banking crises, 208 monetary crashes and 72 sovereign debt crises between 1970 and 2010, crises that have repeatedly affected three-quarters of the 187 IMF member countries. These crises feedback to exacerbate each other. A banking crisis can lead to sovereign debt problem (e.g. Ireland), a sovereign debt problem to a monetary crisis (e.g. Greece); and a monetary crisis to a banking problem. Increasing globalization of markets have also become progressively destabilized and dangerously volatile by the lack of effective regulation, over leveraged financing, exponential increases in speculation and hyper-speed transactions.
Until now, governments have kept borrowing from the financial system to bail out banks. They have been tinkering at the margins with regulations, but without any meaningful reform or touching the monetary structure itself. How many crises do we need to experience, or indeed are able to withstand, before systemic problems are addressed with systemic solutions?
1.2 Climate change
Unless decisive measures are taken, the climate changes produced by global warming will come together with such profound synergies that no human power will be sufficient to retain them. They will inexorably synergize in spontaneous interactions and disastrous effect. By the end of the 21st Century, a considerable percentage of the human species may perish due to climate-induced catastrophes, epidemics of diseases sweeping into new terrains, and human conflict and war resulting from the most massive migration of peoples in human history, with hundreds of millions, even billions of climatic refugees moving across the continents. These scientific predictions merit the most sober consideration and urgent large-scale actions.
The year 2011 has seen the most significant melting of the Polar region ice caps since the “perfect storm” of atmospheric and ocean conditions in the year 2007. Ice extent for September 2011 was the second lowest in the satellite record for the month. The last five years (2007 to 2011) have had the five lowest September extents in the satellite record. The linear rate of decline is now -84,700 square kilometres (-32,700 square miles) per year, or -12% per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.
1.3 Nuclear weapons
The abolition of nuclear weapons, in turn, is no longer merely a lofty goal and noble aspiration: it is essential for human survival. Peace is impossible as long as the threat of nuclear war hangs over our heads. A Nuclear Weapons Convention prohibiting the production as well as the use of all nuclear weapons in all circumstances is urgently needed. In a democratic world, such a Convention must be constructed by awakening the public to the threat of maintaining vast arsenals of weapons that could destroy all life on Earth. Such an awakening is already in progress.
In 21 countries, including the five major nuclear powers, polls show that 76 percent of people support negotiation of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons. But powerful military-industrial complexes are trading on the fear that has been purposively foisted on the public. An impartial debate on the subject is almost impossible, and in consequence it is difficult to bring about the consensus needed to initiate democratic measures that could eliminate the nuclear ‘Sword of Damocles’ hanging over our heads.
1.4 Population growth
In the year 1911, the world population was approximately 1.8 billion. In 2011 it has reached 7 billion an increase of almost 400% in just 100 years. The United Nations predicted that World Population could reach 10 billion by 2100, even if the birthrate in all countries slows over time to a replacement level. More than 95 per cent of the future population increase will come from less developed countries (defined as all countries except the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) where the populations are overwhelmingly young.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Argentina yesterday, Greece today—Italy and Spain tomorrow, Serbia, Poland and Hungary the day after? Sub-prime crisis yesterday, banking crisis today, major-power default tomorrow? The economic, financial and political systems that dominate the world are fundamentally flawed. Global economic and financial instability is an indication of a structural malady. Band-aid solutions applied to the symptoms of this malady are not enough. The malady itself needs to be addressed.
THE WS20 RECOMMENDATION
The G20 leaders need to appoint an independent body to examine the structural causes of instability in the world and recommend effective approaches to cope with it. This body is not to represent the governments of the G20 and is not to report uniquely to the governments. It is to be composed of ethical individuals who serve in their own capacity and represent the basic human interest: the interest of every woman, man and child on the planet. They are to report directly to the people, enlisting the cooperation of the world’s foresighted and ethical media.
In a democracy it is the people who lead, and in a global democracy it is all the world’s people who must lead. The world’s people have woken up: they are ready. They are divesting themselves of dictatorships and hierarchies, they are raising their voice and forming networks and alliances through throughout the globe. They know that the world is reaching a watershed, and that the year 2012 will be decisive to deconstruct the old and launch the new.
The malady is real, but the cure exists, individuals who have the integrity and the wisdom to identify the cure exist, and the people are ready to respond and take the lead. The leaders of the G20 could be the catalyst of an urgently needed worldshift. This would be in the leaders’ own interest. A tidal wave of change is coming, and leaders either enable the people to ride its crest or will be swept aside.