From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERPowerful states are inevitably tempted to bend institutions of globalgovernance, but they do not always succeed. Public pressure canpersuade the more enlightened leaders to put building a stable and fairglobal system ahead of their own short-term self-interest. Moreover,the rule of law through international institutions can become capableof influencing even the most powerful of nations as, for example,when the WTO ruled against US cotton subsidies in 2005 because ofthe damage they do to producers in other countries.The global balance of power is shifting rapidly, as the world enterswhat some have hailed as the ‘Asian Century’. A new ‘global middleclass’ of increasingly assertive developing countries, led by China andIndia, is challenging the dominance of Europe and North Americain global institutions, while a range of regional organisations andinitiatives such as the African Union or the Shanghai CooperationOrganisation is creating a more varied political geography than thetraditional global–national divide.Global governance systems must adjust, and rapidly, to this newgeometry of power, and yet the WTO is frozen, regional trade agreementsare proliferating and introducing profoundly unfair trade andinvestment rules, the G8 is failing to keep its promises on aid, and thethreat of climate change dwarfs the pallid attempts at an internationalresponse. At the time of writing, a looming financial crisis hangs overthe global economy, threatening an even greater test of the ability ofglobal institutions to cope with change and instability. This century,humanity will either sink or learn to swim together.294