Press Report Europe WSF 2009 - OpenFSM!

Press Report Europe WSF 2009
The dramatic downturn gripping the global economy has breathed new life into old questions about how best to
run our economic systems.
Politicians, business leaders and policymakers searched for solutions at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos.
Meanwhile, different debates were taking place at the “alternative” World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil.
There, an eclectic mix of some 100,000 campaigners, thinkers, and working people came to starkly different conclusions
about the causes of the downturn, and how best to address it.
We asked four participants from around the globe to give us their opinions. Click on the links below to read their
arguments.
“The current economic
model which privileges
unbridled competition is
not sustainable”
David Evan Harris
Director, Global Lives
Project
“This crisis has roots in
global overproduction”
Walden Bello
Focus on Global South
“Calls for re-regulation
require a dismantling of
the architecture of
international trade
treaties”
Myriam Vander Stichele
Researcher on
multinationals
“At this point the
capitalist emperor has
no clothes”
Marcos Arruda
Economist
David Evan Harris is executive director of the Global Lives Project and Research Affiliate at the Institute for the
Future
A popular slogan at the Forums in the past has been “another world is possible”. This year, at a moment of deepening
global financial crisis, a global reconsideration and reshaping of economy and society seems to have moved squarely
into mainstream debate. So the slogan may have to be altered to “another world is probable”.
Forum participants who attended some of the hundreds of meetings on the crisis, argued that it was interrelated with the
crises of food, climate and energy, and that any responses to to the crisis must address these issues as well.
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