Seeds of Change
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- Written by Elizabeth Fraser & Anuradha Mittal
- Category: Articles
Over a decade ago, Dollars & Sense published the article “Genetic Engineering and the Privatization of Seeds,” by Anuradha Mittal and Peter Rossett, on genetic modification and its impact on the world food system (March/April 2001). In it, the authors asked, “will biotechnology feed the world?” while providing an overview of the landscape of corporate control, widening inequality, private property claims, and growing farmers’ resistance around the world. This article acts as a follow-up, highlighting some of the key developments in recent years.
For most of history, farmers have had control over their seeds: saving, sharing, and replanting them with freedom. Developments in the course of the 20th century, however, have greatly eroded this autonomy. Legal changes, ranging from the Plant Variety Protection Act (1970) in the United States to the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), have systematically eroded farmers’ rights to save seeds for future use. By the end of 2012, Monsanto had sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in the United States for patent infringement, winning over $23 million in settlements. Here, we describe some of the key developments further intensifying corporate control over the food system. It is not, however, all bleak news. Civil society groups are using everything from grassroots protest to open-source licensing to ensure that the enclosure and privatization of seeds comes to an end.
The suffering of others: IFC's (WB) violations of human rights all over the world
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- Written by Oxfam International
- Category: Articles
Increasingly, development money is being channelled through third parties such as banks or private equity funds.
The world’s leading proponent of this financing model, the International Finance Corporation, spent $36 billion this way in just the four years leading up to June 2013.
But what does this ‘hands-off’ form of development financing mean for people? Are the risks to communities and their livelihoods just too high given the weaker social and environmental protections entailed?
This report tells the human story behind the high finance and statistics, and asks whether reforms to this model of lending have gone far enough to protect communities.
Africa's Rising Debt is Unsustainable
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- Written by GhanaWeb
- Category: Articles
Dr. Fanwell Kenala Bokosi, Executive Director of The African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) -- a civil society organisation that advocates for debt cancellation, has described Africa’s rising debt as “unsustainable”.
“Accumulating debt is not the way forward, and the rate at which it is building up is unsustainable. Firstly, when you acquire debt you have to pay more than you get because it comes with interest; and secondly, debt makes it difficult for you to do the things you want,” he said.
Why Fighting Illicit Capital Flows is not a priority?
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- Written by Marina Ponti/Social Watch
- Category: Articles
An interesting report named “Illicit financial flows, human rights and the post-2015 development agenda” has been submitted to the Human Rights Council on 9 March 2015 under the agenda item “Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, in political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development”.
The report outlines how illicit financial flows undermine the enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights and emphasizes the need for political action.
Read more: Why Fighting Illicit Capital Flows is not a priority?
From Basic Income to Social Dividend: Sharing the Value of Common Resources
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- Written by Rajesh Rakwana/Share the World's Resources
- Category: Articles
It’s time to broaden the debate on how to fund a universal basic income by including options for sharing resource rents, which is a model that can be applied internationally to reform unjust economic systems, reduce extreme poverty and protect the global commons.
Few debates highlight the many complex issues around how governments should share a nation’s wealth and resources as much as the current discourse on basic income. Also referred to as a citizen’s income, the policy generally refers to the unconditional and universal payment of a regular sum of money to a country’s residents, usually as a replacement for a range of existing state benefits such as pensions, child allowances, tax credits and unemployment payments. Unlike many other policies that challenge the status quo, the scheme commands substantial support across the political spectrum – from progressives who hope it can reduce inequality and improve social justice, to neoliberals seeking to further diminish the role of the state in delivering a full range of welfare services. The idea also has a long historical precedent, with Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mills, Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman featuring among the numerous prominent figures who have supported the idea, in one form or another, since the late 1800s.[1]
Read more: From Basic Income to Social Dividend: Sharing the Value of Common Resources
Tackling illicit capital flows from Africa
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- Written by acsc/eurodad
- Category: Articles
Following the 2015 report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, chaired by the former South African President Thabo Mbeki, there has been much greater awareness across Africa of the magnitude of illicit financial flows and their implications.1 Now, more than ever, policymakers at the national, regional and global levels must address the core issues surrounding illicit financial flows, which reduce Africa’s ability to finance its development: unfavourable natural-resource governance models, tax avoidance and tax havens, as well as weak national financial institutions. The upcoming Third International Conference on Financing for Development, to take place in Addis Ababa from 13 to 16 July 2015, is an important opportunity to address illicit financial flows, their drivers and the resulting governance challenges.
Who's afraid of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank?
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- Written by Charles Kenny/Bloomberg
- Category: Articles
This week, Germany, France, Italy, and the U.K. all signed up to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The AIIB, a Chinese-led multilateral fund with about $50 billion in capital to invest in public infrastructure, is opposed by the U.S. because it will compete with institutions where America has considerably more influence—organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. An Obama administration official complained about “constant accommodation” of China by the U.S.’s European allies, and the president’s National Security Council issued a statement expressing concern over the AIIB’s environmental and governance standards.
Read more: Who's afraid of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank?
The IMF's Role inn the Ebola Crisis
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- Written by Julia Robinson et al./Bretton Woods Project
- Category: Articles
As 2015 began, the world received a sobering message. Not only have the number of Ebola cases exceeded 20,000, but in some affected countries, especially Sierra Leone, the virus is still spreading. The death toll now tops 8,000 and the usual answers to how this outbreak got so huge so quickly – poverty, bad governance, cultural practices, endemic disease in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – are giving way to a deeper questioning of the poor public health response. Critics are turning to the structural causes of weak health systems and increasingly showing that international lending policies, including and especially those employed by the IMF, should carry much of the blame.
Why is Africa underdeveloped?
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- Written by Center for Global Development
- Category: Articles
Kingsley Moghalu, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, believes that Africa’s development potential lies in the hands of Africans themselves and that underdevelopment is due to the lack of a suitably ambitious worldview. He lays out his ideas in his book Emerging Africa and, in our latest CGD podcast, Moghalu expands on the lessons learned from his time in office in Nigeria and on Africa’s development future as a whole.
Message from Alexis Tsipras to the World Social Forum
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
Dear friends and comrades,
Fourteen years ago, at the beginning of the new millennium, the World Social Forum came to the fore as the response of the people to the globalization of the markets. It was deliberately meant as versatile meeting of movements, trade unions and associations from around the world, looking for progressive solutions to global problems: poverty, social inequality, lack of democracy, racism, environmental destruction, and absence of economic and social justice. By using dialogue among equals, as well as horizontal processes, it provided proof that social forces from different parts of the world, which may be militant against different problems, can still converge around common goals and so formulate an alternative vision and blueprint for the planet. With values like these, condensed in such slogans as "people before profits" and "another world is possible", the World Social Forum was the space in which ideas and modes of action were born and grew which would eventually question the global neoliberal supremacy.
Read more: Message from Alexis Tsipras to the World Social Forum
Global Social Justice at the World Social Forum in Tunis
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
The World Social Forum will take place from March 24 to March 28 in Tunis.
The opening march will take place on March 24, at 4 pm, Bab Saadoun Square toward the Bardo Museum. The slogan will be : 'PEOPLES OF THE WORLD UNITED AGAINST TERRORISM'.
Read more: Global Social Justice at the World Social Forum in Tunis
