Share the World's Resources

Excerpted with permission from Share the World’s Resources

As the 21st Century unfolds, humanity is faced with a stark reality. Following the world stock market crash in 2008, people everywhere are questioning the unbridled greed, selfishness and competition that has driven the dominant economic model for decades. But the economic meltdown is just one of a long series of interrelated crises that have combined to leave billions of people in the Global South without access to the basic necessities of life.

As the devastating costs of climate change and financial turmoil continue to unfold, it is no longer possible to ignore the urgent need for transforming our social, po­litical and economic structures along more just and sustain­able lines.To meet the challenges that lie ahead, we need a new understanding of what it means for humanity to evolve and progress. Our economic systems are based on outdated assumptions about human nature, and must instead become rooted in universal values and ethics that reflect our highest ideals. Scientists now accept that human beings are natu­rally predisposed to cooperate and share – and these simple principles hold the key to transforming economic relation­ships between governments.

Nothing less than a program for survival is required, based on a clear understanding of the interdependence of all nations and the structural causes of poverty, inequality and climate change.

We urgently need to implement new strategies for managing and sustainably consuming the world’s natural resources, and to ensure a more equitable distribution of es­sential goods and services. The task ahead is unprecedent­ed and formidable, requiring a radical transformation of the global economy – but this is the only way to co-create a more peaceful and harmonious world without insecurity or deprivation.

Together, the ideas in this article provide a practical vision of a sustainable future world guided by the enduring principles of cooperation and sharing.

Crisis

We are facing an unparalleled series of crises. The old obsession with protecting national interests, the drive to maximize profits at all costs, and the materialistic pursuit of eco­nomic growth has failed to benefit the world’s poor and led to catastrophic consequences for planet earth. The incidence of hunger is more wide­spread than ever before in human his­tory, surpassing one billion people in 2009 despite the record harvests of food being reaped in recent years. At least 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty, a number equivalent to more than four times the population of the United States. One out of every five people does not have access to clean drinking water. More than a billion people lack access to basic health care services, while over a billion people – the majority of them women – lack a basic education. Every week, more than 115,000 people move into a slum somewhere in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Every day, around 50,000 people die needlessly as a result of be­ing denied the essentials of life. In re­sponse to these immense challenges, international aid has proven largely ineffective, inadequate, and incapable of enabling governments to secure the basic needs of all citizens.

When several trillion dollars was rapidly summoned to bail out failed banks in late 2008, it became impos­sible to understand why the govern­ments of rich nations could not afford a fraction of this sum to ‘bail out’ the world’s poor.

The enduring gap between rich and poor, both within and between countries, is a crisis that lies at the heart of our political and economic problems. For decades, 20 per cent of the world population have controlled 80 per cent of the economy and re­sources.

By 2008, more than half of the world’s assets were owned by the rich­est 2 per cent of adults, while the bot­tom half of the world adult population owned only 1 per cent of wealth. The vast discrepancies in living stand­ards between the Global North and South, which provides no basis for a stable and secure future, can only be redressed through a more equitable distribution of resources at the inter­national level. This will require more inclusive structures of global govern­ance and a new economic framework that goes far beyond existing devel­opment efforts to reduce poverty, de­crease poor country debt and provide overseas aid.

In both the richest and poor­est nations, commercialization has infiltrated every aspect of life and compromised spiritual, ethical and moral values. We urgently need a new paradigm for human advance­ment, beginning with a fundamental reordering of world priorities: an im­mediate end to hunger, the securing of universal basic needs, and a rapid safeguarding of the environment and atmosphere. No longer can national self-interest, international competi­tion and excessive commercialization form the foundation of our global eco­nomic framework.

A sustainable and peaceful future begins with a fairer sharing of the world’s resources, requiring a shift in power relations from North to South, and from financial and commercial interests to the world’s majority popu­lation.

Unity

The multiple crises that confront the world are urging nations to ac­knowledge our global interdepend­ence, and to accept that humankind is part of an extended family that shares the same basic needs and rights. This holistic understanding of our rela­tionship to each other and the planet transcends nations and cultures, and builds on ethics and values common to faith groups around the world. It also reflects the strong sense of soli­darity and internationalism which lies at the heart of the global justice move­ment.

The first true political expression of our global unity was embodied in the establishment of the United Na­tions. Since then, international laws have been devised to help govern rela­tionships between nations and uphold human rights. Cross-border issues such as climate change, global pover­ty and conflict are uniting world pub­lic opinion and compelling govern­ments to cooperate and plan for our collective future. The globalization of knowledge and cultures, and the ease with which we can communicate and travel around the world, has further served to unite diverse people in dis­tant countries.

But the fact of our global unity is still not sufficiently expressed in our political and economic struc­tures. The international community has yet to ensure that basic human needs, such as access to staple food, clean water and primary healthcare, are universally secured. This cannot be achieved until nations cooperate more effectively, share their natural and economic resources, and ensure that global governance mechanisms reflect and directly support our com­mon needs and rights.

A more inclusive international framework urgently needs to be es­tablished through the United Nations (UN) and its agencies. Although in need of being significantly strength­ened and renewed, the UN is the only multilateral governmental agency with the necessary experience and resources to coordinate the process of restructuring the world economy. The UN Charter and Universal Dec­laration of Human Rights have been adopted by all member states and embody some of the highest ideals expressed by humanity. If the UN is rendered more democratic and en­trusted with more authority, it would be in a position to foster the growing sense of community between nations and harmonize global economic rela­tionships.

Being Human

Mainstream economists have as­sumed that human beings are inher­ently selfish, competitive, acquisi­tive and individualistic. Such notions about human nature are now firmly established as the principles upon which modern economies are built, and have been used to justify the pro­liferation of free markets as the best way to organize societies.

Particularly since the 1980s, these basic economic assumptions have increasingly dominated public policy and pushed aside ethical con­siderations in the pursuit of efficiency, short-term growth and profit maxi­mization. But the ‘neoliberal’ ideol­ogy that institutionalized greed and self-interest was fundamentally dis­credited by the collapse of banks and a world stock market crash in 2008. As a consequence, the global financial crisis reinvigorated a long-standing debate about the importance of moral­ity and ethics in relation to the market economy.

At the same time, recent ex­periments by evolutionary biologists and neuro-cognitive scientists have demonstrated that human beings are biologically predisposed to cooperate and share. Without this evolutionary advantage, we may not have survived as a species. Anthropological findings have long supported this view of hu­man nature with case studies reveal­ing that sharing and gifting often formed the basis of economic life in traditional societies, leading individu­als to prioritize their social relation­ships above all other concerns. As a whole, these findings challenge many of the core assumptions of classical economic theory – in particular the firmly held belief that people in any society will always act competitively to maximize their economic interests.

The time is now ripe to overhaul our outdated assumptions about hu­man nature, to reconnect our public life with fundamental values, and to rethink the role of markets in achiev­ing the common good.

As a starting point, integrating the principle of sharing into our eco­nomic system would have far-reach­ing implications for how we distribute and consume the planet’s wealth and resources. If humanity is to survive the formidable challenges that define our generation – including climate change, diminishing fossil fuels and global conflict – it is necessary to forge new ethical understandings that embrace our collective values and global interdependence. Most of all, it is time to build a more sustain­able, cooperative and equitable inter­national economy – one that reflects and supports what it really means to be human.

Going Local

For countless generations, eco­nomic activities and social relation­ships within small towns and commu­nities have been closely interrelated. These traditional ways of living and working enabled members of a com­munity to participate in local econom­ic activity and share its benefits more equitably.

Strengthening local economies also has the potential to significant­ly reduce poverty in the developing world. For example, by encourag­ing the building of small rural and city farms, millions of people could benefit from sustainable local food production. An increased focus on domestic markets would also boost opportunities for stable employment in local industries. International aid could assist in this process by em­powering people to re-establish local economies that supply many goods and services to the community. In this way, development efforts can directly focus on securing basic needs, rather than upholding the unequal power re­lationships that underlie a globalized system of finance and trade.

Information Sharing

More self-reliant local commu­nities are a key part of the transition to a people-centred, environmentally sustainable way of life. But the revival of local economies must be part of a wider transformation of the global economy – a process that should also be guided by the principles of coop­eration and sharing.

It is clear that united action on an unprecedented scale is the only option left to humanity. A crucial first step is for governments to redistribute the re­sources needed to immediately eradi­cate hunger and extreme poverty. This fundamental reordering of global pri­orities should form the first part of a more comprehensive program of eco­nomic reform that can provide univer­sal access to essential goods and serv­ices, and end conflict over the world’s natural resources.

Global Reform

Without fundamental reform of the institutions, structures and prac­tices that determine global economic activity, it is impossible to create a fair and sustainable world. An emer­gency program of redistribution must be followed by measures that reduce dependency on international assist­ance and enable countries to become largely self-sufficient in securing their basic needs.

Economic sharing can be directly applied to how we manage the world’s natural resources. Water, seeds, oil, gas, forests, minerals and even the atmosphere are all forms of ‘global commons’ that can be shared more equitably and sustainably. One option is to ensure that such resources are recognized as a shared commons and protected through a ‘trust’ or similar international mechanism.