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Programs Home | Climate Change | Asia-Pacific | Plutonomy | Silos | Rio+20 | False Solutions | Population | Post Capitalism | Technology | Archive Programs
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INDIGENOUS RIGHTS
ACTUALIZATION OF THE UN DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (UNDRIP)The IFG has played a leading role in bringing indigenous issues into prominence within a number of new arenas while educating and recruiting new allies. In this regard, indigenous leaders who helped lead the international campaign to pass the new United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recently mandated IFG to establish a new network to encourage, support, and coordinate efforts by non-indigenous ally organizations to help implement UNDRIP.
Read more - Trade & Finance
TRANSFORMING GLOBAL RULE-MAKING
IFG continues its leadership within civil society’s efforts to democratize the rules governing the international flows of capital, goods, services, technology, and peoples, and to re-localize economies. We bring new voices to the debate, identify key issues that must not be ignored, offer analyses that unify networks in order to address issues collaboratively, and seize opportunities to put universal rights above trade liberalization.
- China
Program
China’s rapid emergence as an economic powerhouse tremendously
impacts many arenas – traditional geopolitical relationships,
the environment and climate change, jobs and livelihoods, and more.
Within China, 1.2 billion lives are being transformed daily. The
IFG China Program aims to establish relationships with labor groups,
academics, rural farming communities, emerging environmental organizations,
and other sectors within China to bring them into the global civil
society network.
Throughout the past year, Dr. Wen has held seminars in major cities and universities in the US, Europe, and China with students, professors, and NGO leaders. Topics included the global environmental crisis, why the US model is neither scalable nor sustainable, neo-liberalism as crony-capitalism, the global resistance to economic globalization, and agricultural reform needed in a post-petroleum age.
Dr. Wen regularly writes and publishes articles in a number of journals. Her writings have been published in Yes magazine (US), Resurgence (UK), Socialist Register (Canada/UK), China Fortune Magazine, and Foreign Theoretical Trend (China), amongst others.
Dr. Wen has been a lead coordinating author for ESAP region (East and South Asia and Pacific Islands) of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. This global assessment project led by the UN aims to focus attention on the problem of how to feed the world’s growing population, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done for the challenge of global warming. The final report was released in 2008. Participants included authors with diverse views on the Green Revolution, the prospects of GMOs, and the impacts of trade.
Dr. Wen participated in the third Asian authors meeting for International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development in Penang, Malaysia. This global assessment project is organized by the United Nations, World Bank, and FAO. Participants include authors with diverse views on the Green Revolution, the prospects of GMOs, and the impacts of trade. While in Penang, she visited IFG colleagues including the Third World Network, Citizen International, and the Consumers Association of Penang to exchange ideas about communication and collaboration with social movements in China.
- The Global Project on Economic Transitions
Chairs: Jerry Mander and John Cavanagh, IFG
It is IFG's view that the world is facing yet another new, terrible challenge, as we leave the era of cheap energy resources, and face the related specters of climate change, peak minerals, peak water and general resource depletion. This new reality is now at the stage that globalization was twenty years ago, with similar dangers. We are eager now to refocus our attention toward building a new international movement toward positive solutions to this crisis, using many of the same principles as in our Alternatives work, and promoting the movement with strategies and tactics very similar to our successful campaign on globalization itself.
In 2006 IFG held the first of several meetings with leading experts on the phenomenon of rapid oil depletion, now increasingly known as “Peak Oil”. The essence is that global oil output has almost hit its peak. Within a few years, the production level will peak, then plateau, and then fall.
Without fossil fuels and cheap energy, the industrial revolution would not have taken place. An energy transition by all societies needs to be undertaken now. The IFG meeting concluded that “business as usual”—in the hope of an easy technological fix, with new energy sources taking over from oil—will not work. Instead there has to be a “power-down”, in which the world makes use of less energy. And this has to be done in a fair way. Countries and individuals that are over-consuming energy have to cut back drastically, so that those who are under-using their share can still increase towards the average permitted level.
Please visit IFG's Global Project on Economic Transitions page for more information on our program and actions that we are undertaking to address this monumental problem.
- Alternatives
to Globalization
Chair: John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy
Studies
A peaceful, equitable and sustainable future utterly depends on the outcome of escalating conflicts between two competing visions: one corporate, one democratic. The millions of groups and individuals around the world who argue that global economic elites have appropriated from citizens and local and national governments the right to determine and nurture their own economic options see the problems as intrinsic to the global economic design, requiring drastic revision or abandonment.
The first phase of IFG alternatives work (1998-2002) centered on North-South dialogues focused on alternative policies, visions, and models. As part of this dialogue, we began to catalogue the vast array of existing and proposed alternatives to economic globalization at the local, national, and global levels. This phase culminated in the 2002 publication of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible, which has already been or is being published in Korean, Spanish, German, Chinese, and other languages. It is an attempt to answer the popular question "If you are not for globalization, then what are you for?" and also to provide an overall synthesis that can move the present global citizens’ movement forward in promoting new solutions.
In October 2004, IFG released the second updated edition of Alternatives to Economic Globalization. With this report, the IFG has begun a three year international process of conducting regional seminars to elaborate regional perspectives on alternative global economic governance and to communicate those alternatives to policymakers. The first of these meetings was held April 2004 in Santiago, Chile. At the end of the three year process, a new consensus document will be offered to the public, media, governments and other bureaucracies as a guide for future activity and policy.
- Food
and Agriculture Program
Co-Chairs: Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation
for Science Technology and Ecology and Debi Barker, IFG
One of the most crucial, yet still insufficiently noted consequences of economic globalization has been the myriad impacts resulting from the conversion of smaller, locally based farming to a global industrialized agricultural model. This system of industrial agriculture has a direct connection to the safety and supply of our food; public health issues; as well as the health of our environment. This trend is advanced by the new rules of trade as expressed in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organization and other agreements, as well as through the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Codex Alimentarius.
The IFG's Food and Agriculture Program was formed to articulate the full range of consequences of this rapid global conversion to industrial agriculture, to develop international cooperative strategies to counter this dangerous trend, and to clearly articulate successful alternative models.
In 2007 IFG released The Rise and Predictable Fall of Globalized Industrial Agriculture, a report that focuses on creating a new agricultural paradigm that favors local, sustainable production and consumption—this is needed to counter both the Group of 21/22 (umbrella group of large developing countries formed during WTO negotiations) and the U.S./EU positions on agriculture currently being promoted in the WTO.
Download the report
Indigenous Peoples and Globalization Project
Chair: Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Tebtebba Foundation
This project aims to examine and publicize the multiple impacts of the globalization process on the most marginalized of all populations, native peoples. Today, millions of native people still live traditional lifestyles, each with a distinct culture, language, knowledge base, identity, and view of the cosmos. The impact of globalization is strongest on these populations perhaps more than any other because these communities have no voice and are therefore easily swept aside by the invisible hand of the market and its proponents. Globalization not only discounts native peoples, it is driving them closer and more rapidly toward extinction.
This project works with indigenous leaders from around the world to develop a broader and more detailed understanding of the multiple ways in which the globalization process is impacting these communities. This project also seeks to build new capacities among the leadership of indigenous communities to understand the global forces directly impacting their ways of life and identify opportunities to address those forces at various levels.
In 2003, IFG released the "Indigenous Peoples and Globalization" map, depicting the many ways economic globalization threatens indigenous cultures across the world (ie. dams, biotechnology, oil drilling). In July 2005, IFG released the report Paradigm Wars - Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization, describing the impacts of globalization on indigenous peoples and their resistance to it. A second edition of Paradigm Wars was published by Sierra Club Books in October 2006 and is available at local bookstores.
A teach-in was held in New York City in November 2006 on Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization - A Celebration of Indigenous Sovereignty: Victories, Rights and Cultures. Over 30 speakers - indigenous and other speakers - came from all over the globe to discuss the negative impacts of globalization on indigenous communities and their courageous resistance to it. The event was created in collaboration with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz' Tebtebba Foundation, a Philippine-based indigenous rights organization, along with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues, in order to bring greater attention and awareness to issues related to indigenous peoples facing the onrush of globalization. The purpose of the event was to:
- Support the passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This process has been underway for over two decades, and the declaration would protect indigenous sovereignty, collectivity, culture, and the rights to live in and sustain ancestral lands as they see fit;
- Discuss the rise in political power of indigenous peoples, especially in South America, where they have brought great political transformation, including the election of indigenous leader Evo Morales as president of Bolivia;
- Launch the new edition of Paradigm Wars, which contains articles on every phase of the global struggle for indigenous rights, and the stories of resistance.
IFG will continue to work with indigenous peoples and highlight their struggles and successes. The Indigenous Peoples and Globalization program will promote the writing and thinking of individual contributors to Paradigm Wars in order to raise the public profile and understanding of the ideas, issues, and key thinkers of the global movement for indigenous rights. Read more
- The Problem of Globalized Media
Chair: Jerry Mander, IFG
The IFG is now working toward launching an exciting new program to highlight a growing problem area that has thus far been too little noticed by globalization activists: the rapidly accelerating global corporate concentration of media ownership, and the grave impacts on democracies and consciousness throughout the world. It is our view that the performance of mass media has recently become so degraded, with rampant commercialization, trivialization, repetition, and homogenization—as well as sharply declining standards for journalistic integrity—that no progressive movement will succeed without addressing media issues, and putting them onto the front burner of their concerns.
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Environmental Impacts of Economic
Globalization Program
Chair: Victor Menotti, IFG
The IFG formed the Committee on the Ecological Impacts of Economic Globalization to analyze the systemic effects that globalization policies have on the natural world and to galvanize action to help roll back and to halt rules that favor economic interests in isolation from longer term environmental interests, and indeed, the health of our planet.
- Forests and Globalization
Working Group
Project Director : Victor Menotti, IFGIn 1999, the IFG organized the first international meeting on the effect of the WTO on forests. This training and strategic planning meeting laid the foundation for an international campaign that led to the defeat of the "free trade wood products agreement" within the WTO, which would have increased wood consumption by as much as four percent, according to forest industry consultants. The IFG's Forests and Globalization Working Group helped the international forest conservation community monitor trade talks, inform others about threats to forests, assist NGOs in addressing these threats, mobilize public support, and advocate for strong policies to protect forests.
- Committee on the
Globalization of Water
Chair: Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians
Responding to an intensifying global water crisis, the IFG formed the Committee on the Globalization of Water and published a report, Blue Gold - The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply. The report addresses such questions as: Who owns water? Should anyone? Should it be privatized? What rights do transnational corporations have to buy water systems? Should it be traded as a commodity in the open market? What laws do we need to protect water? What is the role of government? How do ordinary citizens become involved in this process? (Click here to download.)
- Technology
and Globalization Program
Co-Chairs: Jerry Mander, IFG & Andrew Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment
The dynamic interaction that exists between technology, globalization and centralized global power is arguably the most important condition of the new millennium, although until now, it has been rarely debated publicly or exposed to democratic processes. Among the factors are industrial agriculture, military/space technology, transportation technologies, telecommunications, biotechnology, energy systems, eugenics, nanotechnology and other new technologies. In 2001 IFG held a highly successful teach-in on technology and globalization at New York City's Hunter College. Go to our archived events for more information about the Teach-In.
- Committee on Global
Finance
Chair: John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies
The Committee on Global Finance has analyzed the bigger picture of global finance and investment; its impacts on national economies; effects on humanity and the environment; the role of currency speculation; and the relationship between finance, trade and investment, and transnational corporations. Part of this work includes developing economically viable alternatives to the current global system and planning ways to implement them. Please see IFG's Alternatives to Globalization program for further analysis on alternatives.
- Committee on Corporations
Chair: Tony Clarke, Polaris Institute
This committee brought together citizens groups and researchers in an effort to combat the emergence of de facto global corporate governance of the economic and political scene. The committee addressed issues such as GATT and the MAI through conferences, teach-ins and publications, and coordinated activities and strategies.