How far do we need to go down the drain until we wake up? So many of us are aware of the environmental and social catastrophes we are building, but individual understanding has little influence on the global decision-making process. We do have powerful corporations and the Davos meetings they use to congratulate themselves. But cosmetics, ESG-style, will not prevent us from disaster. A global approach may help. Greed is stupid.

Systemic change is necessary, and unavoidable, but we are used to just pushing things around to see what happens, and to taking large-scale measures only after the catastrophes happen. The New Deal was possible, in the sense that there was political strength for it, after the 1929 disaster had drilled into so many interests that not only Roosevelt was elected, but that he could take measures for structural change. Taxing the financial fortunes and promoting so many investments in infrastructure and welfare was only possible when the pain had spread and reached the well-off.

The global governance institutions we still have were made possible only in the face of the WWII disaster, with over 60 million dead, another similar number of wounded, bombed cities throughout the world, the atom-bomb shock, and an overall feeling we needed global governance institutions. We had Yalta, but also Bretton Woods, and many institutions that made some global-scale regulation possible. But that was 80 years ago, and the global governance capacity has not improved, in spite of the many changes, decolonisation, informatics, global connectivity, virtual money, world-scale corporate giants, communication platforms, global financialisation in the hands of the asset management industry. It is never enough to repeat that our global governance institutions date from the 1940’s.

We presently have 193 UN-member countries, and a tiny nucleus of Security Council members, representing another age. How can we still hope the monetary dollar-based agreement to make sense in 2024? The global environmental challenges were barely envisioned in 1944, the huge inequality presently exploding, and deepening even in the U.S. and other rich countries, were barely discussed. The key feeling was horror, and the key challenge was reconstruction of what had been destroyed, in so many countries. The Marshall plan was only a part of the measures taken, but it provided practical solutions for the most pressing needs. It was a huge help for the countries that needed it, it was partly motivated by the big bear in the East, but the most important is that it simultaneously helped the needing nations, and stimulated the U.S. economy in providing it. It certainly was a win-win solution, stimulating reconstruction and growth on both sides.

Can we presently envision a structural reorientation at the global level? Must we wait for another global financial-crisis and WWIII? We are drowning in statistics on world hunger (800 million) and over two billion in food insecurity, we are seeing fires and flooding everywhere while sceptics are wondering whether there might be something in this climate change claims after all. We are gobbling plastic residues at each meal and stepping on them on every beach, privatised water-management corporations are pouring sewage into rivers and seas everywhere (Great Britain, my God!), high-tech fishing ships are destroying life in the oceans, the Brazilian, Congolese and Indonesia forests are being cut down (it does raise GDP), PFAS chemicals are everywhere, and neither countries nor corporations do anything about it, besides pointing fingers at each other.

Inequality is reaching absurd levels, and we have to watch the absurd meeting of governments deciding to pour 50 billion dollars, a huge sum, into the Ukrainian war, at the same time when Elon Musk was granted a 46 billion-dollar check for personal use. And it's not only the poverty issue, with the gigantic suffering it generates, but also inequality itself, the desperate feeling of being stuck at the bottom, feeding frustration, hate and far-right populism. Even the Pope is preaching for a new economy. We are reaching a moment when the different disasters converge and bring about a civilisation crisis. Will this make structural change possible? The U.S. is basically calling for more war everywhere, drowning the world in military equipment, pushed by the huge military and economic war machine. The Pax Americana overall dominance is a sickening dream. The permanent wars Washington wages will not bring about a coherent world system. We need a global pact.

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Source: UBS, Global Wealth Report 2023 - Leading perspectives to navigate the future, 2024, p.15.

Basically, the so-called Global North has 16% of the population but 56% of accumulated wealth. But according to the report, “the adult population share is more than double the wealth share in Latin America, five times the wealth share in India, and ten times the wealth share in Africa.” (p.15) The riches are up there; the population is down here. China is out of the picture, but is a powerful actor for structural global change. In purchasing power parity, the 2022 GDP is 31 trn dollars in China, 25 trn in the U.S. In 2024, it should reach 36trn and 28trn respectively.1 There is no Pax Americana in view, and a new global power-structure is emerging. Or more wars, and quite possibly the final war.

The issue is not new. I read again the 1980 report produced under the coordination of Willy Brandt, ex-German chancellor and Peace Nobel prize, [North-South: a program for survival].2 The cover of the book presents a global map very similar to the one above, the global divide was there, and it has only deepened. As the report was presented, with much international impact, in the same year Ronald Reagan and Margareth Thatcher were coming into power, with an overall program of more inequality, deepening global divide, in the vision that it is the rich who are the solution, and the State is the problem. In these 44 years since the report was published, we have seen a deepening of the inequality and environmental dramas, so many international conferences and resolutions to face them, but an explosion of corporate power and an erosion of democracies as well as of the global regulation institutions. Technology moving forward, democracy moving backwards.

Today we have the 2030 Agenda, 17 Sustainable Development Goals, well-designed, approved by all nations (with the U.S. in an in-out yoyo), and clearly unattainable in the present trends. But looking back at what became known as the Brandt Report is sobering. In the summary of recommendations, the report starts with the poorest countries issue: “An action programme must be launched comprising emergency and longer-term measures, to assist the poverty belts of Africa and Asia, and particularly in the least developed countries.” The second item concerns hunger and food: “There must be an end to mass hunger and malnutrition,” based from financial flows for agricultural development, and a set of other measures. The report continues with recommendations linked to environment protection, to “the terrible danger to world stability caused by the arms race, the need for social and economic reforms in the South, complementing the role to be played by the international environment.”

The report summarises recommendations concerning commodity trade, with more local processing, industrialisation and world trade regulation. Particularly interesting is transnational corporations issue: “Legislation, coordinated in home and host countries, to regulate transnational corporation activities in matters such as ethical behavior, disclosure of information, restrictive business practices and labor standards”. The world monetary order needs urgent reform, with an international currency: “Such a currency would replace the use of national currencies as international reserves”, a clear reference to the absurd dollar dominance, clear even at this time. It would need participation of the South “in the staffing, management and decision-making of the IMF.”

Overall, the report stresses the need for “a new approach to development finance,” giving “a greater role in decision-making and management to borrowing countries,” and creating a “World Development Fund” with universal membership and decision-making more evenly shared between lenders and borrowers, and using money raised on taxing “international trade, arms production or exports, international travel, as well as global commons, such as sea-bed minerals.” All this demands a strengthening of the UN system and various multilateral organisations.

Does all this sound familiar? Well, I participated in the Rio-92 world summit, then the Rio+20, and presently in the up-hill battle for the 2030 Agenda in Brazil. The fact is that we, as other countries, are drowning in the inequality and environmental disasters, while having to listen to grave considerations from the corporate world, presently strongly linked to politics, big media, think tanks, even a good part of the academy. Since the 1980 Brandt Report, with a clear presentation of the challenges and necessary measures, 44 four years have elapsed, and we are still talking. Which COP are we preparing, COP29? The last one was in Dubai, we were discussing oil and climate change. In Dubai.

This world organised for the 15% is not working. China, presently the top economic power, will not be brought down with Taiwan arms support mimicry by the U.S., Russia will not leave the world-map, India had no trouble leaving the dollar for trade in oil, the Brics is rapidly expanding, Dilma Rousseff is heading the New Development Bank, also called the Brics bank, President Lula is working on a powerful initiative to stitch the Global South countries’ interests. And the populations in the developing countries are presently conscious of the absurdity of their poverty. Brought down to understandable numbers, the 110trn dollar world GDP is equivalent to 4,200 dollars per month per four-member family. Our problems are not economic, but of social and political organisation.

A key issue is what happens in the United States, economically more fragile, but a military giant. And it has reached a level of inequality that clearly opens the way for far-right populism, boosted by the tragical 2010 change in the Constitution which allows big money to elect politicians. The blood is drying and clotting into a different political, economic and cultural system, unequal, authoritarian, and led by the global corporate power that links the arms industrial and military complex, the GAFAM world-scale communication dominance, the global surveillance capacity (GAFAM, NSA, CIA, Five Eyes, you name it). It is a dangerous mix. So many top-grade politicians lying through their teeth about the election results and so many issues, in such a huge military power, is scary.

Inequality has social impacts, particularly for the poor, but also in terms of political power of the rich. No democracy can work when you get deep into inequality, among others because the rich will strive to improve their power to extract more riches. The graph below is explicit:

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Source: Visual Capitalist, 5 Undeniable Long-Term Trends Shaping Society’s Future

From 1990 to 2019, practically 30 years, we see in the darker dominant colour the evolution of the top 10% share of wealth in the U.S. In lighter colour below, the share of the 50%-90%. And barely visible at the bottom, the millimetric line shows the evolution of the bottom 50%, half the U.S. population stagnating at the bottom, seeing their kids with no perspectives. Frustrated and mad, they know they are left out, and become a huge client for hate speech and right-wing populism. This, obviously, is not limited to the United States. But the military and political weight of the U.S. threatens the global world balance.

Why do I get back to the Brandt Report, a 1980 document? Because besides showing the obvious measures needed for a global world-scale sustainable development, it shows the obvious way out: the Marshall plan for Europe stimulated development at both ends. A global development initiative for the Global South would have a similar impact, of representing for the richer countries a new economic frontier, a stimulus for more production, more jobs and development on both sides. An effective global pact is not about money for the poor, but a down-to-earth reminder that orienting our financial, economic and technological capacities to where they are most needed is the most efficient path not only to avoid the catastrophe, but to generate global prosperity, Global North included.

Generating development and jobs in poorer countries is much wiser than building walls and crying out against imigrants. The catastrophe is looming in the Global-North as well, a political nightmare. But try convincing Elon Musk… Yes, I call these kinds of guys high-tech assholes. We need structural change.

Notes

1 IMF, World Economic Outlook, 2022.
2 Brandt Report, [North-South: a program for survival], MIT Press, Cambridge, 1980.