Press Report Europe WSF 2009 - OpenFSM!

Press Report Europe WSF 2009
Green gold should not be funnelled through the IMF but rather through some new entity with an appropriate overseer,
such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). Its authoritative scientific committee, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), should certainly play a major role in setting criteria and evaluating the results.
Countries would apply for funding to implement their national plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In order to
qualify, each country would be required to meet its international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. Complete
transparency in allocating and contracting could be a further condition for receiving money.
How big should a green gold program be? Estimates are that $500bn – or less than half of the global stimulus package
the IMF is currently calling for – would cover the annual cost of protecting the world’s climate.
In terms of job creation, economic stimulus and support for long-term growth – not to mention warding off climate
disaster – nothing is likely to provide bigger benefits than investment in climate protection.
If the world can spend trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, why can’t we use green gold to create desperately needed
green jobs – and bail out the planet?
Dear capitalists, admit you got it wrong (The Economist)
Buoyed up by a crisis and with five presidents in attendance, the international left has ideas for fixing the world
that a neoliberal might recognise
OFTEN mocked for an endless ability to disagree with itself, the World Social Forum—an annual jamboree for NGOs,
anti-capitalists, leftish intellectuals, bohemians and bishops—was unusually united this year. More united, in some ways,
than the recent World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos, a gathering of political and corporate bigwigs to
which the social forum supposedly responds.
While Davos Man was busy looking for someone to blame for his predicament, no such doubts troubled his opposite
number in Belém, a city on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest where mango trees grow so tall that their fruits can shatter
car windscreens when they fall. The culprit was the whole current design of the world economy, promoting competition.
Free trade and free movement of capital needed to be re-thought, participants insisted. Some even had ideas on what
should replace it.
The forum’s main purpose is to bring together social movements (which generally dislike being called NGOs) from
around the world to network. In that respect, it is rather like any other business conference, though some participants
carry spears and wear the feathers of various unfortunate parrots on their heads. The forum is skewed towards Latin
America, especially Brazil. One of the founders of the forum is a Brazilian businessman called Oded Grajew, and its first
meeting was held in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil.
Of more than 5,000 accredited organisations, 4,193 were from South America, roughly ten times the number of African
outfits present. This partly reflects the number and prominence of NGOs in South America and the semi-official role
which some governments give them. This year Brazil’s left-leaning government gave the forum a subsidy of R$120m
($52m)—a piece of generosity that was not universally popular at a time when economic growth may be on the verge of
halting.
As a result, many causes dear to the Brazilian left were well represented. T-shirts demanded asylum for Cesare Battisti,
a left-wing Italian émigré convicted of murder in Rome, who is currently in Brazil. Banners called for Brazilian troops to be
withdrawn from Haiti, where they are doing a good job of containing violence.
A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Madeira river (a tributary of the Amazon) was denounced, and the country’s new oil
find claimed for its people. Plenty of people came from further afield, like the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, with
a Delphic slogan: “We would rather sweat in peace than bleed in war.” And there were swarms of young, largely white
folk who treated the forum like a music festival.
This cacophony sometimes sat awkwardly with the presence of five leftish presidents—Fernando Lugo of Paraguay,
Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil—
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