From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERThe drivers of such changes have included not just workers,campaigners, and NGOs but also institutional investors concernedabout the long-term viability of their investments. So-called‘shareholder advocacy’has become an important factor in pressing forimprovements both in individual companies and more broadly.In the USA, a shareholder resolution that won an unprecedented92 per cent of the vote persuaded the gold-mining giant Newmontto set up an independent global review committee to scrutinise‘the company’s policies and practices relating to existing and potentialopposition from local communities’. 120Such successes remain the exception. The long hard slog of citizenactivism and government regulation is essential to harness the benefitsand curb the threats of globalised business.Globalisation is leading to ever-expanding trade in goods, services,knowledge, and people. These flows are always subject to rules of somekind – even free markets need rules, and the global system is far froma free market. But rules emerge from negotiations and politics: theyare the outcome of power struggles, more than an exercise in logic orthe maximisation of human happiness. In such struggles the powerful,be they corporations or governments, are much more likely to imposesolutions that benefit themselves, often at the expense of the weak.Rewriting the rigged rules of international trade is central to makingglobal governance work for development. The system needs morerules in some areas, such as taxation or migration, and fewer rules inothers, such as intellectual property. Rewriting the rules will need acombination of active citizens, North and South, and assertive, effectivegovernments able to correct the imbalances of power that dog globalnegotiations. If that revision of global trade rules can be achieved,the power of globalisation to deliver sustainable growth with equitycan be realised.352