|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
Plutonomy | Asia-Pacific | Climate Energy | Rio+20 | Continuing ProgramsIFG PROGRAMS 2011-2012
• THE RISE AND EMPOWERMENT OF GLOBAL PLUTONOMY AND THE SUBJUGATION OF DEMOCRATIC STATES
As IFG intensifies its "inside" work to change institutions, we will also support "outside" efforts to build power of peoples' movements. Increasingly few, stupendously wealthy plutocrats have lately made enormous strides toward dominating global governance, finance and national democracies, while actively undermining traditional democratic expressions, such as collective bargaining rights, clean air protections, and services for social safety nets. The wealth of these individuals is so great that we begin to see a kind of global “neo-feudalism” evolving, where they themselves become the pivotal arbiters and factors shaping economies, politics, media, and many other elements of once democratic systems. The laws and regulations that have permitted such wealth concentration have themselves been shaped by the very special interests that benefit the most, while the public treasury is almost ignored. This situation must be reversed.
• ASIA-PACIFIC PROGRAM GLOBAL FOCUS: THE REGION, A RISING GEOPOLITICAL BATTLEGROUND
The titanic U.S.-China struggles for global economic and political leadership have begun, and are largely playing out in the Asia-Pacific regions in terms of enormous trade and resource battles, intimidating militarism and forward base construction, continued colonialism and suppression of Pacific sovereignty movements, all of it with vast negative environmental and social consequences. The recent Chinese threat to no longer export its “rare earth” minerals---absolutely crucial to high-tech industries throughout the world---was a warning shot across the bow. The reaction of U.S. officials was as if a new Pearl Harbor had happened; military potentials were quickly obvious. The situation was finally calmed, but this region is filled with such examples: the great conflict between U.S. and Chinese interests over natural gas resources in Indonesia; the jockeying among Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China, Taiwan, and India and Russia (and the U.S.) over strategic waters, islands, and resources; the many uprisings among colonized Pacific island nations wanting to break-away from U.S. military presences (focused on China) which are hugely oppressive---including Guam, Tinian, the Mariannas, Okinawa, Jedju, and also the U.S. controlled Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean, where the local population was moved en-masse off its homeland to make way for a U.S. base. (Hawaii and Alaska are also involved; Alaska is home to 166 U.S, military bases, and fully a third of Hawaii is devoted to military bases.)
• CLIMATE CHAOS AND GLOBAL RESOURCES CRISES. FOCUS ON UNFCCC MEETING IN DURBAN
Nations of the world now seem utterly paralyzed in addressing fundamental core conundrums related to climate change and the advancing global resources crises. They are nearly universally torn between, on the one hand, the indisputable desperate realities of this moment, and on the other hand, their commitments to sustaining an economic growth model based on corporate globalization, that has reached its inevitable limits. Even if they fully recognize the problem—energy scarcity, resource depletion, the end of hyper-growth and expansion, the need for equitable wealth redistribution, etc.— their efforts at mitigation are seriously stymied by a simultaneous commitment to corporate profits and growth, and industrial expansion, which is nearly always ultimately climate unfriendly.
• PREPARATIONS FOR RIO +20 REVERSING THE FAILURES OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION
The original Rio summit nineteen years ago promised “sustainable development” involving transformations of global production and consumption patterns, and the achievement of global equity. These efforts begun in Rio have effectively failed. Meanwhile, the rise of the WTO greatly empowered global corporations, sustaining only the rights of capital over all other concerns. Our goal is to reveal the inherent problems of today’s resource-intensive economic model, and set an agenda toward economic transformation. Another important goal is to give support to the global justice movement, and bring their concerns from “outside” the process to “inside.”
Continuing Programs
• FALSE SOLUTIONS PUBLICATIONS SERIES
IFG has become a prominent convener, publisher and voice in identifying and de-legitimizing “false solutions” to climate change and global resource depletions while also naming and presenting viable clean, safe and economically sound alternatives.
June 2011, IFG released False Solutions report (#5 in the series), titled Nuclear Roulette, on the intrinsic insanities of going nuclear, made ever more vivid by recent events.
• POPULATION DOES POPULATION MATTER? BRIDGING THE COMMUNICATIONS GAP BETWEEN KEY COMMUNITIES ON THE IMPORTANT ISSUE OF ADJUSTING TO GLOBAL CARRYING CAPACITY
This subject has become a “third rail” issue that most do not want to touch, but the IFG is raising the question: Does Population Matter? A recent convening and report create a space where differing views from North and South (and within the North and the South) can be shared in a safe atmosphere of honest and open dialogue with the intention of creating deeper understanding, and, ideally, effective policy alternatives.
• POST CAPITALISM STEPS TO NEW ECONOMIES OF SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, JUSTICE AND PEACE
We strongly doubt the continued viability of capitalism and its accompanying doctrines such as hyper economic growth. We feel it is crucial to openly discuss this and propose alternative models. IFG has amassed some of the world’s leading thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines and political perspectives and engaged them in an ongoing strategic conversation, leading up to a proposed series of public events and publications addressing the essential issues of the post capitalist era.
Globalization Background & Analysis
(more)
Climate Energy | Asia-Pacific | Plutonomy | Silos | Rio+20 | False Solutions | Population | Post Capitalism | Technology | Archive Programs
