1993

Column #45: James Stanford, Free Trade and the Imaginary Worlds of
Economic Modelers. Free
traders commonly make extravagant claims for the numbers of new jobs that
removal of trade barriers will generate. These are produced by computer
simulation models of world’s that exist only in economist’s imaginations.

Column #46: Vandana Shiva, The Greening of Global Reach.

The global projection of local interests is the primary cause of the
global ecological crisis. Efforts to globalize environmental concerns seek to
draw attention away from this reality, redefine the consequences of
environmental destruction as causes, and place responsibility for corrective
action in the hands of the very same rootless institutions that are intent on
assuring their own roles in creating the crisis are overlooked.

Column #47: Paul Wangoola, We Are Africans.

From the early slave trade, on through colonialism and structural
adjustment, outsiders have been intent on linking Africa into a dependent
relationship with the global economy. Africans are now rethinking these
relationships and calling for a more independent relationship with the global
economy that allows for the creation of an African family economy.

Column #48: Jorge G. Castañeda and Carlos Heredia, NAFTA:
A Bad Agreement. There
are good and bad trade agreements. The European nations have recognized that
commercial integration cannot be addressed separately from social and political
integration. Such recognition is essential to a good agreement. NAFTA deals only
with commercial integration, neglecting a wide range of basic social and
political issues. It is a bad agreement.

Column
#49: Winifred Armstrong. "Sustainability Requires New Economic
Concepts."

#49: Winifred Armstrong. "Sustainability Requires New Economic
Concepts." Concludes that both poverty and environmental
destruction are a consequence of a failed economic framework. Cites the
observation from her African tour that African countries could be
providing their people with satisfactory and sustainable lifestyles, if
they used an alternative economic framework to the one imposed by
international agencies.

Column
#50: Vadana Shiva, "Ecological Recovery and the Feminine
Principle." Because of its denial of the feminine principle
of regeneration, development has become a threat to life itself. There is
a great deal to be learned from the survival expertise of the women of
more traditional societies where a central concern for life in the

Column
#51: Mary E. Clark, "The Backward Ones." Contrary to
prevailing social theory, humans evolved to belong, not to compete.
Violence is not inherent in human nature. To the contrary, it is a
response to the absence of opportunities for social bonding that are

Column
#52: Gar Alperovitz, "Economic Restructuring: Through Community and
Employee Ownership." While world leaders discuss solutions to
the global economic crisis at the level of the international economy,
people all around the world are creating an alternative economy based on
community based ownership. Thousands of examples are thriving in the

Column
#53: Manus van Brakel and Maria Buitenkamp, "Northern Lifestyles:
What is Equitable & Sustainable?" The main obstacle to
sustainability is overproduction and overconsumption in wealthy countries.
A Netherlands study has calculated per capita shares of the sustainable
product of the ecosystem and suggested approaches to organizing societies

Column
#54: William E. Rees and Mark Roseland, "From Urban Sprawl to
Sustainable Human Communities." Urban sprawl based on
unrestricted use of the automobile is a major contributor to
unsustainability. Transportation planning has primarily involving
responding to congestion. A new approach is needed in which transportation
and spatial planning are integrated to reorganize urban space around

Column
#55: Karen Christensen. Creating a Community Economy." A case
study of a rural town in the United States provides examples of
initiatives to create a community economy. These range from creating
community currencies and a local fund for affordable housing to the

Column
#56: Kristin Dawkins and Chirag Mehta, "Getting Prices Right: Only a
Partial Answer." Advocates of market solutions have advocated
full cost pricing as a way of using market forces rather than regulation
to address environmental issues. While an important concept, it requires
strong governmental intervention and can never be more than a partial

Column
#57: Kristin Dawkins, "The Global Economy: A Bad Deal for
Women." While the trends
toward globalization of the economy have had devastating consequences for
women, few women, especially in the North, are aware of the extent to
which many of the conditions creating increasing hardship for them result
from international trade and investment policies. Women’s organizations
need to address these policies.

Column #58: Stephen Viederman, Sustainability: Principles Behind the
Vision. The
environment is not just another special interest. It is the foundation of our
existance. The need for a new vision cannot wait for our leaders. We must move
head as citizens to create a new society. 

Column
#59: Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, Grassroots Environmentalists: the Poor
Fight Back. Broad
and Cavanagh report that in the Philippines it is often the poor who are putting
their lives on the line to protect the environment from predatory assault by the
wealthy. 

Column #60: Mike
Nickerson, Beyond Growth to Maturity. Once an individual reaches maturity
further development centers not on physical growth, but rather on social,
cultural, spiritual, and intellectual growth.

Column #61: David Morris, "Why Not Fair Trade Agreements?" Morris
challenges the basic premise that more trade is necessarily better and sets
forth a number of principles that would lead to trade agreements that would
better serve the community interest.

Column #62: Helena Norberg-Hodge, "The Psychological Road to
‘Development.’" Drawing on her long involvement with an ancient
culture in Kashmir, Hodge illustrates how the integration of a self-reliant
traditional economy into the modern market economy has actively impoverished a
proud people psychologically, as well as economically. This story is more fully
documented in a highly recommended book and videotape. For more information
write ISEC c/o Green Books, Foxhole Dartington, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EB, Great
Britain.

Column #63: A. V. Krebs, "Corporate Agribusiness: Monopolizing
Sustenance." Massive agribusiness corporations have substantially
monopolized the growing, processing and distribution of food in the United
States and nearly eliminated the small farmer in the United States. Already well
established globally, they are counting on trade agreements such as GATT and
NAFTA to further extend their power over the food on which we all depend.

Column #64: People’s Research Institute on Energy and Environment, "From
Economic Growth to Quality of Life." A citizen policy research
group in Japan concludes that slimming, not growth, is the key to moving the
Japanese economy toward sustainability. Slimming would include a radical
reduction in Japanese exports.

Column #65: William E. Rees and Mathis
Wackernagel, "Cities, Trade and
Ecological Deficits." Cities inevitably have an ecological
footprint far larger than their political boundaries. Their often substantial
ecological deficits are masked by exporting them to distant peoples through

PCDForum Articles

Article #1: David C. Korten, Power, Poverty, Economic Integration
& Bretton Woods.

Policies advanced by official
agencies place the interests of the powerful ahead of the interests of the poor.
The fact that their decision making is secret is cause enough for concern. Deep
democratic reform is needed in international rule making.

Art The
Bretton Woods institutions were created to advance a commitment to an integrated
global economy in the belief that this was the key to universal peace and
prosperity in the modern world. The globalization agenda is moving into its
final phase with the current round of GATT negotiations. Unfortunately, the
actual consequence is growing poverty, social disintegration, and ecological
destruction, as the final constraints to the ultimate concentration of
unaccountable economic power in the institutions of transnational capital are
removed. These agreements should be rejected out of hand pending a basic
rethinking and extensive public debate.

Article #2: Walden
Bello, Toward a People’s Pacific. A Pacific region in which the United
States is militarily dominant and Japan is economically dominant is inherently
unstable. A vertical pattern of economic integration in which most participants
serve mainly as markets and sources of cheap labor, materials, and technology
for a Japanese economy that controls the capital and technology and reaps the
bulk of the profits does not serve the interests of the Pacific peoples. Three
proposals are put forward: demilitarization; the creation of a new economic
block based on preferential reciprocal relationships not extended to the United
States and Japan; and formation of a Regional Congress of NGOs.

Article
#3: Eknath Easwaran, The Compassionate and Thrifty Universe. Traditional village life lacked many
of the material advantages of modern life, but it also had less poverty and
provided greater social and spiritual rewards. 

Article #4: David C. Korten, Free Trade and the American Dream. The world is being told that free trade is the key to achieving the
American dream. Ravi Batra, in his recent book The Myth of Free Trade, notes
that America’s industrial success was a function of vigorous competition within
well-protected domestic markets. So long as the United States was protectionist
and enforced anti-trust regulations to keep domestic markets competitive, wages
and living standards grew steadily for the average American. Since it became an
open economy in 1973 and weakened anti-trust enforcement, wages and living
standards have fallen steadily for 80 percent of American families. The world is being told that free trade is the key to achieving the
American dream. Ravi Batra, in his recent book The Myth of Free Trade, notes
that America’s industrial success was a function of vigorous competition within
well-protected domestic markets. So long as the United States was protectionist
and enforced anti-trust regulations to keep domestic markets competitive, wages
and living standards grew steadily for the average American. Since it became an
open economy in 1973 and weakened anti-trust enforcement, wages and living
standards have fallen steadily for 80 percent of American families.

This piece
was the collective product of the reflections of Asian NGO leaders affiliated
with the PCDForum who gathered in Baguio, Philippines in October 1992 for a ten
day retreat to reflect on Asia’s development experience and its implications for
future NGO strategies in the region. It’s conclusions became the foundation of
the Forum’s subsequent analysis and the subsequent book When Corporations
Rule the World. It concluded that conventional development theory is based
on a false premise regarding the nature of progress. The need is not for an
alternative theory of development, but rather a theory of a just and sustainable
society that embraces the spiritual dimension of life and community.

Wilson Campos as Interviewed by Alicia Korten. "A Seat at the Table:
Central American Small Farmers Challenge Structural Adjustment and Free
Trade."ASOCODE is an alliance of 4 million small farm households
from throughout Central America. These household find their very existence is
being directly threatened by structural adjustment programs imposed by the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the U.S. Agency for International
Development. Convinced that they cannot fight these forces successfully, Central
American farmers are trying to adapt to export agriculture, while doing their
best to preserve the region’s food self-reliance in the face of policies
intended to render their countries import dependent for food. They find they
need time, however, to develop the new skills and organizational capacities
required both to grow new crops, and to capture the value added in processing
and marketing through farmer run cooperative enterprises. They call on the
people of Northern countries to support their cause against the policies being
imposed by Northern governments.

Anonymous. "WHAT IF…..?"This unattributed piece was
passed to me recently with the suggestion I share it with the network as a
contribution to the lighter side of the trade debate. It raises the hypothetical
question, "What if there were a conspiracy of the world’s business elites?
What strategy might they pursue to gain total power?" It then suggests an
answer in the diabolical scheme outlined in a hypothetical memo by the
fictitious, but brilliant Harry Winters, Staff Economist for the fictional
International Business Roundtable. Its all good fun—except that current
history conforms in every consequential detail to the Winters’ plan. I didn’t
find that part very humorous. This piece is in the public domain and may be
freely reprinted and distributed without attribution.

Bishan Singh, "Economic Colonialism." For Southern countries, globalization of the market advances a modern
form economic colonialism.

Bishan Singh, "Development and the Youth
Culture." A dysfunctional youth culture is one indicator of the
social disintegration advanced by the growth-centered development model.