Opinion Editorials, July 2009

On G8, G20 and G192

By Hazel Henderson

ccun.org, July 18, 2008

A powerful new global player has emerged on the world stage :  the Group of 192. Forget the G-7 , the G-8  and the   G-20  must now move over , after strutting out in Washington in 2008 and in London in April 2009.

The G-192 represents for the first time, all the world’s national economies from North  to  South and  East to West.   Long dismissed by financial elites in the now discredited , shrinking global casino, the G-192 met in New York  at  the United Nations General Assembly , June 24-26, 2009.

They  shared  their long-ignored views on The Financial Crisis and its Impacts on Development.

President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann ‘s masterful opening speech laid out an expanded view of the whole human family and our evolution on Planet Earth ( www.EthicalMarkets.tv)  which allowed  for a deeper dialogue among this G-192 than has ever been seen at previous narrower G-7 and G-8 summits.

In many plenary sessions and  round tables , the delegates could give voice to the new paradigm emerging out of the collapse  of Wall Street and the global casino its market fundamentalist ideologies spawned.   This new paradigm downsized finance and placed  its  players  back in their real place as intermediaries and servants, not masters of  the real productive sectors of their economies .  An efficient financial sector should take up less than 10% of a country’s GDP . These new leaders reframed  their economies as sub-sets  of their societies and cultures , with their multiple sources of wisdom, values  and wealth  — beyond money :  their ecological, social and cultural assets interacting with the creative energies of their people ( human capital).

The President’s Commission of Experts , chaired by  Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz, reported its many  sensible recommendations : democratizing the IMF , the World Bank  and the WTO ,a new global reserve currency  to shift away from the volatile US dollar , stricter regulations  over all areas of financial markets , rating agencies, derivatives  and excessive risk-taking .   The experts  also called for a very small tax on financial transactions  to reduce volatility and provide revenues for financing the Monterrey Consensus of 2002 and the Millennium Development Goals : poverty reduction, education, healthcare and the further empowerment of women. The G-192 adopted the Experts’ Report.

Not surprisingly , the mainstream media largely ignore this historic event  and the heads of state of the G-192’s   largest players, the USA and other G-20 member countries , sent lower-ranking officials .   The G-192’s vision spells  the end of their domination of global  policies and that of their incumbent fossil fueled  industrial sectors .

Watch for the G-192’s 21st century  style of distributed network power —unlike the fossilized  elites  at their highly-restricted, choreographed G7 , G-8  and G- 20 summits.  At last the G-192 has a  world platform to air their frustrations  with Anglo-Saxon, neoliberal market fundamentalism  and how this ideology  spread from the University of Chicago through   US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher  to the harsh “ conditionalities “  and double standards of the IMF  and the mis-placed priorities of the World Bank .  The imposition of these policies are now recognized as unjust and harmful, exacerbating the meltdowns  of Asian economies, while  countries like China and Malaysia avoided this pain by using their own homegrown policies.

The G-192 has envisioned a new  world  game .  They see finance  serving people and a healthier, sustainable , just future  for all.  They see huge opportunities in the collapse of the global casino and in the climate crisis , so as  to change course and invest in building  cleaner, greener economies worldwide.  They are now supported by 21 agencies of the United Nations, spearheaded by  UNEP, UNDP and the International Labor Organization  in their launching in 2008 of the Green Economy Initiative, and a Green New Deal for the world.

The G-192  also provided a forum for civil society  organizations , whose policies developed since 2000 at their World Social Forum  and by thousands of grassroots groups , who helped shaped the new vision .   All are now coalescing  to turn the lugubrious debate about the costs to incumbent fossil fuel sectors of mitigating climate  change , to the  positive calculations  of the  massive savings and new wealth and millions of new jobs  that will be created by investing  in Climate Prosperity Bonds ( www.EthicalMarkets.com)

The world is ready for this new vision and welcomes the emergence of all the new leaders of the G-192 .