Global governance

Politics and Justice without borders
Global Dialogue 2007

Building global communities for all life

Global governance

Effective Earth governance requires a greater understanding of what it means to live in a more crowded, interdependent humanity with finite resources and more pollution threatening the global life-support systems. The Global Community has no other choice but to work together at all levels. The collective power is needed to create a better world.

Global governance and Earth management

Introduction
A) Earth management
B) Oil consumption and accountability
C) America, a rogued nation
D) Earth governance
E) Global Community Overall Picture
F) China is next after North Korea
G) Mines and mining the impacts
H) World energy demand
I) The sustainable use of drinking water
J) The global concept of ownership
K) The adoption of world sustainable development
L) Religion and conservation
M) Earth governance
N) The war industry is the mother of all evils
O) Earth Environmental Governance
P) A democratically planned global economy
Q) Profit-based conservation strategies for natural ecosystems

Introduction

The United Nations deal with oppressive regimes in an inconsistent way. Prime Minister Blair seems to be moving towards enshrining the “pre-emptive war” into international law – itself an implicit admission that the current US-UK venture into Iraq was illegal.

Is intermittent war on badly performing states a sustainable or rational way of arranging world affairs? Is this an acceptable New World Order? There must be a non-violent way of curbing the excesses of tyrannical regimes.

George W Bush’s Operation Iraqi Liberation shows that violent overthrow of oppressive regimes causes as many problems as it solves. The arbitrary and illegal actions of the US-led “Coalition of the willing” have caused unprecedented hostility and controversy. Yet on the other hand few people support the idea that the international community should sit back and watch while atrocities and genocide take place as in Rwanda and Kosovo.

This leaves us in the position of using military violence against a state, violence in which innocent bystanders are bound to be injured and killed. In place of this, the world needs a non-violent system that rewards good governance and gives disadvantages to governments that are tending towards oppression and genocide.

First we need a reliable measure of governmental performance. Several models for this already exist. It would not be difficult to develop an instrument of this kind so that each country in the UN could be ranked in order, with well-performing governments with good human rights records at the top, and badly performing countries at the bottom.

The second phase of the process would be to allocate diplomatic advantages and disadvantages to governments in each band on the scale. Those at the higher end of the scale would have least restrictions. Those lower down would be subject to a progressively tougher “smart sanctions” – designed to restrict the regime without hurting the people.

The problem lies in the way governments are accepted by the international community. Anyone who controls the army and the police is the Government. For our leaders, the question is not, “Is this a decent government dedicated to justice” but “Will he align with us or with some other bloc? Will he trade with us? He may be a bastard, but is he our bastard?” Tyranny is tolerated and overlooked by governments when it suits them. When it is expedient or desirable to do so from the point of view of our leaders, the tyrant that we have been supporting may be denounced in the UN and at home.
All the time, our government and those of our allies are presented as “democratic” and therefore above reproach. This simplistic good/bad categorisation is not a true representation of the situation. Standards of Governance range on a continuum from the reasonably good (e.g. Scandinavian) through the indifferent to the thoroughly unpleasant (e.g. Hussein’s Iraq, Burma, Zimbabwe).

We need to redefine what constitutes a legitimate Government, moving its basis from the de facto towards the de jure.

In order to reflect this continuum, a league table of governmental performance should be created, so that governments could see where they matched up to on an objective set of criteria. It would be a measuring rule to rate the quality of governance of any state.

The performance of any institution can be measured using Human Rights

Other factors which could be included might be the following:

*     No use of torture
*     No imprisonment without trial
*     Free and fair elections
*     Free speech
*     Toleration of non-violent political opposition
*     Fair treatment of minorities
*     Non possession of weapons of mass destruction
*     Low Military/Social budget ratio
*     Non-harbouring of terrorists (that is any group of people who are prepared to inflict terror on other people, especially non-combatants, in pursuit of political goals)
*     A convergent economy, that is, an economy in which the ratio of incomes of the highest and lowest parts of the population are tending towards the median.

These indices would be run together into a final score, an Index of Governance, leading to a league table of nations’ performance.

Once the Index is installed, work can be started on the far more difficult task of influencing the behaviour of governments. Diplomatic and economic rights and privileges should be accorded to each country in proportion to their score on the Index of Governance. If the ranking of a country falls, the privileges are reduced. If the position on the index rises, the privileges increase. According to a UN agreed protocol, a failing country will incur penalties on a graduated basis. The penalties will be carefully designed to avoid hurting the people of the country – a lesson learned from the sufferings of the Iraqi people due to the post-1991 sanctions. The sanctions will be targeted onto the elite ruling classes of the country.

Here are some examples of possible sanctions:

*     Loss of specified voting rights in UN, with diminution of the power of the country’s vote.

*     Assistance given to democratic opposition groups who support principles of good governance.

*     Tightened border controls, in readiness for smart sanctions.

*     Loss of ability to receive loans.

If the country falls further down the scale, graduated sanctions are introduced progressively, beginning with financial transfer restrictions, then followed by restrictions on trade in:

*     lethal goods,

*     dual purpose technology,

*     chemical weapon precursors,

*     biotechnology,

*     nuclear technology,

*     wines and spirits,

*     tobacco, cars, oil & oil products, and luxury items.

If these measures fail to get the oppressive government to reform, opposition groups who support the principles of good governance will be entrusted and empowered with responsibility for imports of, and fair distribution of, necessities like food and medicines.

The effect will be that all parties know where they stand. If Governments choose to behave badly, they know that there will be a price to pay for that behaviour. Good governance will be rewarded and bad governance will be inhibited on a continuous basis.

This above model runs counter to the aims and practices of the WTO.

The central objection of the anti-globalisation campaign is that globalisation sets free trade above human and environmental values. There is a direct contradiction between the aims of the World Trade Organisation and the aims of the Human Rights, Green and Peace movements. The WTO and associated organisations could be challenged by the anti-war movement to assent to these proposals as their contribution towards the war effort.

The choice before the Global Community is clear: either continue as we are under a regime of sovereign states oppressing their people and going to war with each other, or a community of states who are signed up to a common set of ground rules, and in which good governance is rewarded with power and trading advantages, and poor governance is inhibited with loss of privilege and trading disadvantages. The cycle of violence is endemic in human history. Modern wars are so destructive, whether fought with high explosives or machetes, that we must create a different political framework. This central reality is the motivation that will help us slowly to overcome the self-interest of politicians.

*     the preservation of ethnicity
*     equitable treatment, including gender equity
*     security
*     protection against corruption and the military
*     earn a fair living, have shelter and provide for their own welfare and that of their family
*     peace and stability
*     universal value systems
*     participation in governance at all levels
*     access the Earth Court of Justice for redress of gross injustices
*     equal access to information

Governance of the Earth will make the rule of arbitrary power--economic (WTO, FTAA, EU), political, or military (NATO)-- subjected to the rule of law within the global civil society, the human family. Justice is for everyone and is everywhere, a universal constant.

The Global Community has no intention of changing the status and privileges of state governments. In fact, state governments become primary members of the Global Community. Global governance can only be effective within the framework of a world government or world federalism. There is no such thing as global governance through the work of a few international organizations such as the WTO, the EU, or the United Nations dictating to the rest of the world. These organizations are heading in the wrong direction and are causing conflicts between nations, doing away with democracy, increasing the gap between rich and poor, and creating a culture of violence worldwide, terrorism being a small example of what they can do.

The Global Community allows people to take control of their own lives. The Global Community was built from a grassroots process with a vision for humanity that is challenging every person on Earth as well as nation governments. The Global Community has a vision of the people working together building a new civilization including a healthy and rewarding future for the next generations. Global cooperation brings people together for a common future for the good of all.

Earth governance does not imply a lost of state sovereignty and territorial integrity. A nation government exists within the framework of an effective Global Community protecting common global values and humanity heritage. Earth governance gives a new meaning to the notions of territoriality, and non-intervention in a state way of life, and it is about protecting the cultural heritage of a state. Diversity of cultural and ethnic groups is an important aspect of Earth governance.

Earth governance is a balance between the rights of states with rights of people, and the interests of nations with the interests of the the Global Community, the human family, the global civil society.

Earth governance is about the rights of states to self-determination in the global context of the Global Community rather than the traditional context of a world of separate states.

Although the Global Community ensures state governments that it will obey the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs, it will also stand for the rights and interests of the people within individual states in which the security of people is extensively endangered. A global consensus to that effect will be agreed upon by all nation states.

Effective Earth governance requires a greater understanding of what it means to live in a more crowded, interdependent humanity with finite resources and more pollution threatening the global life-support systems. The Global Community has no other choice but to work together at all levels. The collective power is needed to create a better world.

E) Global Community Overall Picture

To each global ministry was added the 'Global Community Overall Picture' which describes the situation in all nations of the world, and we divided the world into five different regions: North America, Latin America & the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and Asia & Oceania. Each global ministry has a description of what is happening in the different regions. They are actual facts concerning issues we have discussed during both global dialogues in years 2000, 2002 and 2004. Issues of the coming global dialogue are also included in this project. Our work is too create a plausible scenario(s) of what the world could be between now and a million years.

This project will help humanity understand itself better.

Certainly our work is sound. We have already produced very valuable and original tools to help humanity: the Vision of Earth in Year 2024, the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of the Global Community, the Earth Court of Justice, global ministries, and we stood for the values we promoted no matter how big was the opponent. Now is time to expand our work for the good of all humanity.

Send your scenario. We will have workshop sessions on the scenarios in Global dialogue 2006.

F) China is next after North Korea

Everyone asks so now what is next? Is invading Irak the end of the invasion of the Middle East? Is North Korea part of the invasion?

Was getting their hands on the best oil in the world the only reason of the invasion?

What is next?

China is next. We all knew that from the beginning. Americans need a playground for wars. They want their television screens live filled with war stories. Another 'Cold War' is on the horizon. It will be good for the American economy. Imagine the money the war industry will be making with the break up of China, a stable nation economically and politically, a government that can keep over 1.2 billion people living together peacefully.

G) Mines and mining the impacts

A study made by the Global Community of the ecological accounting and balance sheet for mining has shown that minerals are obtained in a way that:

*    uses too much energy
*    generates too much pollution and causes significant health and safety problems
*    degrades permanently the environment during extraction, refining, and smelting of minerals
*    encourages poor regions to yoke their futures

It would be much less costly to recycle discarded materials. It makes no sense to spend so much energy trying to find new mines when there is an enormous amount of useful metal in cities and landfills. For instance, why do we need to keep gold in safety deposit boxes, bank vaults, and jewelry boxes? There is more gold in boxes than in underground mines.

Mines have transformed landscapes and the lives of local people who live near mineral deposits. Entire communities have been uprooted in order to make way for mine projects. People had to forsake traditional occupations and suffer the effects of living beside a mine that poisons their water supplies or pollutes the air they breathe. Local people who got jobs in a mine had to trade health problems for an income. Prostitution and drug use are serious problems at mining sites.

In fact, mineral dependence reduces economic growth in developing countries. Extracting raw materials for export is far less lucrative than processing the materials or manufacturing finished goods. By extracting minerals, countries are essentially running down their stocks of nonrenewable resources.

Mineral exporting-countries become heavily indebted to international lenders and much of what they earn from minerals and other exports never enters the national economy but is used instead to service the external debt. These countries have typically invested little in social services, such as education and health care, and are beleaguered by conflicts over resources and political instabilities.

Even though social, economic and environmental costs of mining are high and mineral prices are low, mining operations are still expanding. Mining firms have profited from direct and indirect subsidies handed out to them by governments. Mining firms benefits a lot from the cheap fuel and from the roads and other infrastructure made available to them. Even more surprising, mining firms do not usually pay royalties or taxes on profits, and governments provide immunity to companies against compensation claims. The final hand-out of public money occurs when mines have to close down or are abandoned, and governments and taxpayers are stuck with cleanup after companies have gone bankrupt or just walked away from poor projects.

H) World energy demand

World energy demand can be largely fulfilled by renewable energy technologies. There is however a strong opposition to change arising from the fossil fuel industry and from governments of most oil-producing nations and major fossil fuel users such as the United States and Britain.

There are significant advantages of shifting away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy and toward greater reliance on renewables. Decreasing the impacts of global warming is certainly the most significant advantage. Global carbon emissions must be reduced at least 70% over the next hundred years to stabilize atmospheric CO₂ concentrations at 450 parts per million (ppm). The sooner societies begin to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, the lower will be the impacts and the associated costs of both climate change and emissions reductions.

Other costs of conventional energy production and use are:

1.    degradation of the environment through resource extraction
2.    air, soil, and water pollution
3.    acid rain
4.    biodiversity loss
5.    fuelling of the war industry, and therefore a threat to peace and Earth security and, in consequences, a threat to the global life-support systems
6.    global economic losses due to natural disasters are in line with events anticipated as a result of global warming
7.    nuclear power is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity and is responsible for nuclear accidents, weapons proliferation, and nuclear waste problems
8.    political, economic and military conflicts over limited resources such as oil become more important as demand increases
9.    reliance on fossil fuels create less jobs; renewables create four times more jobs
10.    fossil fuels do not bring electricity in many poor countries but renewables can; no electricity means no access to education, clean water, improved health care, communications, and entertainment

The United States represents 25 percent of current global emissions, and 36.4 percent of industrial-country 1990 emissions. Withdrawal from negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol dealt a blow to the Global Community efforts to battle climate change.

The Global Community is interested to enact renewable energy policies that:

a)    are consistent and long-term to allow industries and markets to adjust
b)     provide access to the electric grid
c)    educate and inform the public
d)    encourage individual and cooperative ownership of projects
e)    establish standards
f)    incorporate all costs in the price of energy sources

I) The sustainable use of drinking water

There is a need to add a sociological, political and anthropological dimension to current debates on the sustainable use of water in the Mediterranean region: Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Crete, Lebanon, Malta and Iraq. More specifically, the impacts of human activities on the management of water supplies can have on local populations.

In order to continue living as a species and achieve sustainability we must re-establish our connections with Nature.

The Global Community should develop and implement a program for the restoration of the hydrological cycle on all continents and the cooling of the planet. The effect will be to stop the drying out of continents.

J) The global concept of ownership

The Global Community needs a basic clarification of First Principles on the concept of "ownership", starting with the principle that the land and natural resources of the planet are a common heritage and belong equally as a birthright to everyone. Products and services created by individuals are properly viewed as private property. Products and services created by groups of individuals are properly viewed as collective property.

We can hatch many birds out of one egg when we shift public finance OFF OF private property and ONTO common heritage property. From the local to the global level we need to shift taxes off of labor and productive capital and onto land and natural resource rents. In other words, we need to privatize labor (wages) and socialize rent (the value of surface land and natural resources). This public finance shift will promote the cooperatization of the ownership of capital in a gradual way with minimal government control of the production and exchange of individual and collective wealth. Natural monopolies (infrastructure, energy, public transportation) should be owned and/or controlled or regulated by government at the most local level that is practical.

The levels of this public finance shift can be delineated thusly: municipalities and localities to collect the surface land rents within their jurisdiction. Regional governing bodies to collect resource rents for forest lands, mineral, oil and water resources; the global level needs a Global Resource Agency to collect user fees for transnational commons such as satellite geostationary orbits, royalties on minerals mined or fish caught in international waters and the use of the electromagnetic spectrum.

An added benefit of this form of public finance is that it provides a peaceful way to address conflicts over land and natural resources. Resource rents should be collected and equitably distributed and utilized for the benefit of all, either in financing social services and/or in direct citizen dividends in equal amount to all individuals.

A portion of revenues could pass from the lower to the higher governance levels or vice versa as needed to ensure a just development pattern worldwide and needed environmental restoration.

In the area of monetary policy we need seignorage reform, which means that money should be issued as spending by governments, not as debt by private banking institutions. We also need guaranteed economic freedoms to create local and regional currencies on a democratic and transparent basis.

It was suggested to promote a rotation of Public Employment, so that it can become equally shared and of real common belonging. On the day in which this new social system would come to the fore, no longer, for example, public forces (persons that today are also them assumed for life, becoming so faithful keepers of oligarchyc States) will rage against the demonstrators. The seeds of a new society, without monopolization and exclusion, based instead on equal sharing and full participation by all, will take root. On that day even such ambitious aims as to see every woman, every man on Earth having a work, and therefore an income, minimum guaranted, will become much more easily attainable.

K) The adoption of world sustainable development

The Global Community promotes the adoption of world sustainable development and for strong international cooperation to achieve world sustainable development. Global cooperation can facilitate native people's acceptance of rational policies, financial assistances and advanced technologies provided by the international community and that international cooperation also can contribute to regulating world population distribution, improving low population quality of backward countries, protecting and exploiting natural resources, developing those products and industries which can cause lower consumption of natural resources and energy sources with light pollution of environment, and keeping environmental stability and ecological balance. In a word, international cooperation greatly contributes to world sustainable development.

L) Religion and conservation

Most conservationists now believe that it is essential that there be comprehensive discussion not only of environmental policies, but also of the ethics underlying environmental protection. The Global Community looks at the importance of the environment in the main sources of Islamic instruction, namely the Koran and Prophet's Hadiths (teachings). These texts turn out to be on the side of conservation, the emphasis being on respect for creation, the protection of the natural order and avoidance of all wasteful activities which may cause injury to the environment. These positions are contrasted with the views expressed by political Islam, which has become influential in a large part of the Muslin world and rejects the conservation measures advocated by Western writers.

M) Earth governance

The Global Community believes that we have the responsibility of managing Earth. The partnership of government, civil society, and business is essential for an effective global governance based on global concepts, the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of the Global Community. One cannot talk about the governance of the Earth without talking about the most influential bodies or institutions of the world that actually govern or rule the world today, or have the power to change it and actually do change the world in many different ways. So we will talk about the United Nations, the major global economies or planetary economic blocks, the richest people and corporations on the planet, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, religions, the debt of the poor nations, the restoration of the planet and the global life-support systems. And of course we will also talk about sound solutions to the world problems.

N) The war industry is the mother of all evils

O) Earth Environmental Governance

Earth Environmental Governance can only be achieved successfully within the larger context of sustainable developent and Earth management. All aspects are inter-related and affect one another. A healthy environment is essential to long term prosperity and well-being, and citizens in Global Community demand a high level of ecological protection. This is the 'raison d'etre' of the Scale of Human and Earth Rights. On the Scale, primordial human rights and the protection of the global life-support systems (ecological rights) are on top of the Scale. They are the most important aspects. Primordial human rights are those human rights that individuals have by virtue of their very existence as human beings: to live, have security, eat, drink fresh water, breath clean air, and have shelter. These rights are separate categories than ecological rights, the right of the greatest number of people, economic rights, social rights, cultural rights and religious rights. Ecological and primordial human rights are the only rights that have existed unchanged throughout the evolutionary origin of our species. Any major change would have threatened our very existence. All other human rights listed here are rights created by human beings and can be changed depending of new circumstances; they are not stagnant but are rather flexible and adaptive, and they can evolve. Ecological and primordial human rights of this generation and of future generations are therefore much more important than any other human rights existing now and in the future.

P) A democratically planned global economy

Implemented through the Global Community with built-in mechanisms for optimum input and oversight guaranteed to all member-states, a democratically planned global economy offers the Global Community a practicable starting point for achieving:

(a)     a healthful, sustainable environment for every global community citizen,
(b)     universal health care, publicly supported,
(c)     education for all based upon individual capability,
(d)     creative/productive employment for every global community citizen, and
(e)     post-retirement security.

This effort will lead over time to an escalation of human values and symbiotical relationships transcending money centered economics.

Q) Profit-based conservation strategies for natural ecosystems

The Global Community is promoting a methodological approach to an economic valuation as a framework incentive to enforce profit-based conservation strategies for natural ecosystems. Biodiversity and Protected Areas exist neither in isolation nor independent of human activities. For local communities, this may mean conservation represents a hindrance rather than an opportunity for sustainable development and thus lead to increasing avoidance of the regulatory framework in effect. Changes are needed to conservation practices in order to create a broader consensus around objectives and practices. One means of doing this is to ensure people adopt profit-based conservation practices.

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[ Global governance ] [ Reforming the United Nations ] [ Global ministries ] [ Earth security ] [ Global Community Assessment Centre ] [ Greenhouse gas emissions ] [ Global warming ] [ Climate change adaptation ] [ Global response to events ] [ Global co-operation ] [ Models of global governance ] [ Restoration of the planet, our home ] [ Universal health care ] [ Employment for every global citizen ] [ Education for all global citizens ] [ Drinking water, clean air and food for all ] [ Eradicating poverty ] [ Earth environmental governance ] [ Our overpopulated planet ] [ Global economy and trade ] [ Earth Court of Justice ] [ Corporate social responsibility ] [ A global regulatory framework ] [ Mgmt of world financial institutions ] [ New way of doing business ] [ Global tax ] [ Settling of disputes between nations ] [ Abolition of weapons of mass destruction ] [ Management of Earth resources ] [ Global warning systems ] [ Preventive actions against polluters ] [ Agriculture and needs of the G. C. ] [ Cattle and beef industry ] [ Forest industry and paper manufacturing ] [ Profit-based conservation strategies ] [ Cities: power, rights and responsibilities ] [ Projects and programs ] [ Code of conduct for corporations ] [ Media ownership and global regulation ] [ Corporate accountability ] [ Crude oil future ] [ Fossil fuels ] [ Alternative energy ] [ Genetically modified foods ]

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Send email to gdufour@globalcommunitywebnet.com with questions or comments about this web site.

Copyright © 2004 Global Community WebNet Ltd.