There is an urgent need to counteract the ill-effects of globalisation with legally binding labour, environmental and health standards, writes Trevor Sargent
Peter Sutherland has urged (Irish Times Business News, Saturday May 17th, 2003) that "emotion is not the basis on which to evaluate the effects of current globalisation policies on poor nations". I agree - but let us talk facts.
Worldwide, liberalisation of trade is vastly enhancing the ability of transnational corporations to roam the planet freely in search of places where labour, environmental and health standards are weakest. Indeed, a recent study comparing national GDPs with the annual revenues of transnational corporations shows that half of the 100 largest economies in the world are now corporations. There is now more bonded slavery in the world than before slavery was officially abolished in the 19th century.
The TV programme Race to the Bottom, filmed in the sweatshops of Bangladesh, showed clearly the immorality of the globalised textile industry.
In Uganda, coffee farmers receive 14 cents for a kilo of beans which, following processing by a multinational roasting company, sells for $26.40 in Western shops - a massive 7,000 per cent more than the farmer gets for it. As in colonial times, a large portion of Southern countries' production and resources continues to flow northward.
Since the 1940s, international trade has grown twelve-fold, amounting to some $5.5 trillion annually. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor is widening year by year, fuelling international tension which benefits nobody except the arms industry.
In light of these stark facts the Green Party/Comhaontas Glas is supporting the campaign for trade justice which was launched recently by development agencies and others, including Amnesty International. We do not believe the World Trade Organisation should be allowed to liberalise trade further, but instead, rules on labour, environmental and health standards need to be made legally binding. This should be the position of the Irish Government and the EU at the WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, in September. So far, no Government position has been outlined.
Meanwhile, those dependent on globalisation need a metaphorical safety net in the face of global economic recession. Such a safety net would be the development of local markets selling locally produced necessities, such as food to serve local needs. The growth of farmers' markets in Ireland and elsewhere is an example of this important trend, which is also called localisation.
Farmers' markets go some way to reversing a damaging trend, i .e. the shrinking percentage of the price of food that farmers receive. Such markets also build relations and trust between producer and consumer as well as encouraging production of a more diverse range of crop varieties.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), over the last century, 75 per cent of the world's agricultural diversity has been lost as a consequence of the globalised food system. Lack of local food economies also cost human life. Daily, the numbers dying of starvation worldwide are equivalent to the loss of life were 600 jumbo jets to crash every day.
The globalised food system is also costly in terms of transportation demands and energy. This wreaks havoc by pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It is estimated that a kilo of blueberries imported by plane from New Zealand produces the same quantity of carbon dioxide emissions as boiling a kettle 268 times. A typical plate of food in the US today has accumulated some 1,500 miles from source to table. On average, each item of food now travels 50 per cent further than it did in 1980. Just as the planet is finite, so are the reserves of oil for transport and indeed for agrochemicals.
So, whatever benefits globalisation brings to some people in the short term, there is a need to counteract the problems it creates with legally binding rules to ensure proper labour, environmental and health standards.
As this will be of little consolation to the poorest people in the face of global recession, climate change and resource wars, there is an urgent need for strategic localisation of goods and services, especially food. This will happen in any significant way only when people as internationally well placed as Peter Sutherland make a start by endorsing the merits of local food economies.
• Trevor Sargent TD is leader of the Green Party/Comhaontas Glas and party spokesman on agriculture and food