Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth

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6.4.3. Finance
• Churches and congregations should use money and manage their
finances according to biblical standards. This would include
investments only in businesses following social and ecological justice
as well as in alternative banks which do not apply interest rates
higher than the real growth of the economy, which do not engage in
speculation, nor in helping money owners to avoid taxes. We also
call upon the WCC to develop an ecumenical code on these issues.
• Churches and specialized ministries reaffirm their commitment to
the campaign for debt cancellation and the control and regulation
of global financial markets.
Churches and congregations are supposed to:
• work on global financial systems that link finance and development;
• break the dominance of international financial institutions and
transnational corporations by calling national governments to regulate
transnational corporations, and for a more active role for transformed
multilateral bodies;
• open up space for communities and governments to exercise democratic
control over critical financial issues that affect people’s lives; this
includes the audit of financial debts as a means to identify illegitimate
and odious debts;
• advocate to reverse the flow of financial and ecological wealth from
the South to the North by canceling illegitimate debts and devoting
0.7% of industrialized countries’ Gross National Income to Official
Development Assistance, not as an act of charity but as restitution for
past exploitation; and
• seek redress for injustices such as illegitimate debts and unfair trade
conditions for capital retention for poverty eradication and
development.
6.4.4. Ecology
Churches and congregations should
• care for the web of life and the rich bio-diversity of creation;
• become engaged for a change of unsustainable and unjust patterns of
resource extraction and use of natural resources, especially in respect
of Indigenous Peoples, their land and their communities;
• support movements, groups and international initiatives defending vital
common resources against privatization, such as water and biodiversity;