Green alternatives for a globalized world

Weltsozialforum Porto Alegre 2003

Die Publikation kann von dieser Seite herunter geladen werden (PDF, 12 S., 719 kB).

aus dem Editorial von Barbara Unmüßig:

For many years all those of us who are critical of the corporate-driven form of globalization have known that what the World Economic Forum, the WTO and all the formal and informal organizations which govern the world are doing to our planet and
the people who live upon it, is wrong.

Unlimited free trade may be excellent for big business but it is fatal for peasants and workers in the South and even in the rich countries. Climate change due to traffic and industrial emissions may be good news for farmers in the USA who benefit from
higher temperatures, but it wreaks havoc on Africa or Southern Asia.
Yet beyond protests we didn’t know how to respond. We lacked a coherent alternative proposal and an alternative forum where to express our ideas and make them heard. In only two years, the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre has established itself as the principal forum for all those who want globalization to be socially and environmentally sustainable, those who do not believe in trickle-down but in bottom-up, those who see poverty not as a deplorable collateral damage of development but as a logical consequence of the ruinous distribution of wealth.
Porto Alegre is not an alternative summit to one of the many ”official“ conferences where the really important guys meet. Porto Alegre is the official Social Forum in its own right. Porto Alegre is a market place for ideas and a platform for discussions. It is being heard beyond the circles of grassroots organizations and leftist intellectuals. As the municipality of Porto Alegre proves that there is an alternative to traditional government, the World Social Forum is producing a rainbow of ideas how to redirect social and economic policies both in the South and in the North.We should not expect a complete draft for an alternative economic order to spring up in a year or two. But we can help a socially just and environmentally sustainable world order to take shape.

Aus dem Inhalt:

• Editorial, Barbara Unmüßig
• Leapfrogging into the solar age, Wolfgang Sachs
• Will Cancún become another Seattle?, Silke Helfrich and Raúl Moreno
• The Heinrich Böll Foundation
• Make globalization ecological, equitable and social, Christine Scheel
• The economy is not just a matter of male experts, Interview with REMTE
• ”Give Us Back Our Livelihoods“ A Voice of the Poor in Thailand, Nitaya Kijtewachakul
• Globalisation by intervention: international enforcement of human rights, Azra Dzajic and Srdan Dvornik
• Workers’ trafficking into Israel. Compiled by Roy Wagner, Kav LaOved
• Agenda: Activities of the Heinrich Böll Foundation at the World Social Forum 2003
• Addresses