Wednesday, 20 June 2012
As Rio hosts the Earth Summit's opening today, War on Want is joining forces with more than 100 civil society organisations to launch a campaign for world leaders to put the needs of people and the planet before the profits of big business.
Nothing could better illustrate transnational corporations' disproportionate muscle than to witness the tobacco giant Philip Morris seeking a multimillion dollars fine on the developing country Uruguay for alleged curbs on free trade. The Lausanne-based firm- for which Margaret Thatcher once earned $1m as its political consultant - claims Uruguay flouted its free trade agreement with Switzerland by insisting cigarette packets featured cancer victims' pictures. Income for this south American nation - where one in five citizens live below the poverty line - is just a fraction of the company's value, and this example symbolises why politicians must act to rebalance power relationships.
Yet, while the new French president, Francois Hollande, will attend the summit, the UK prime minister David Cameron will feature among the absentees, together with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and most other G20 group heads. The alibis given by the absentees cite the global economic crisis - as though the speculative greed of financial investors which caused the crisis belongs in a bubble, separate from a gathering committed to sustainable development.
The summit organisers' efforts to lower expectations yields a stark comparison with two decades back at the original Earth Summit in the same Brazilian city. It spawned a legally binding convention on biodiversity, a climate change prelude to the Kyoto protocol, a blueprint for action, a paper linking poverty to environmental degradation, forestry initiatives and new principles for development. Now, with history seldom demanding more radical initiatives, noone can overstate the need for significant advances.
Neoliberal globalisation has opened the doors for the exploitation of the world by huge economic powers. They have taken over our lives and planet by creating a blanket of impunity through the dismantling and systematic violation of laws and signing trade and investment agreements which award investors more rights than citizens. Peoples' freedoms have been violated, the earth and its resources destroyed, pillaged and contaminated, and resistance criminalised, while such firms continue to commit economic and ecological crimes without redress..
The governance and policies of the multilateral institutions - the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation - have long served companies' interests. Moreover, the United Nations and the European Union have been increasingly captured by big business.
Transnationals have commodified life and continue to seize territories, forests and water and transform social and human relations. Health and education, for example, are too often considered the privileges of those who have money, no longer the rights of all people. Amid the global economic crisis, banks have repossessed the homes of thousands of people. In Europe, they have imposed austerity measures which are a replica of the structural adjustment programmes implemented years ago in developing countries. While unprecedented attacks on public services, labour rights and social programmes take place, governments use public funds to forgive the excesses of the markets and financial institutions.
It is we, the 99 per cent, who bear the costs. Yet resistance is growing throughout the world. Every day, more communities, movements and peoples struggle against these companies - often confronting specific firms or sectors - and have won important victories. Even so, we have not managed to halt the advance of corporations, as when defeated in one place, they adjust their strategies and move to another location, where they defy any obstacle that rises in their path.
So, in order to tackle corporate power and the system that protects and benefits transnational companies, there is the urgent need for a concerted response. We must unite our experiences and struggles, learn collectively from success and failure, and share our analysis and strategies for putting an end to the impunity of transnationals. The concrete struggles of our communities against such corporations could be even more triumphant if we are able to unite them with the efforts of other peoples in different countries, regions or continents.
We invite you to join us in collectively building this process of mobilisation towards a global campaign against the power of corporations and their crimes against humanity. Dismantling multinationals' system of control demands coordinated global action, engaging with struggles in various spheres, combining street protests with popular education and activity in parliaments, the media and international forums and organisations. By creating a powerful movement of solidarity and practical opposition against big business, its apologists and promoters, we will begin to build a world free of corporate dominance and greed.