Rajesh Makwana 03 March 2016 Only the ethic and practice of sharing can provide the necessary values-based policy framework for planetary rehabilitation – one that compels us to think in global terms, prioritise the needs of the poorest, and recognise that we only have one planet’s worth of resources that must be fairly shared by all people. An edited version of this article first appeared in Tikkun Magazine, the interfaith voice of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control” – UDHR, Article 25.1
Whether catalysed by Pope Francis’ relentless critique of the global market economy, or the wakeup call presented in Naomi Klein’s urgent polemic This Changes Everything, or else the activists calling for ‘system change’ worldwide, there is a growing realisation that Sustainable Development Goals and non-binding CO2 emission targets simply won’t go far enough. Many millions of people now recognise that without reforming the policies that are responsible for widening inequalities and encouraging environmentally destructive patterns of consumerism in the first place, our response to socio-economic and ecological crises will remain inadequate and fail to create the “more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”.
Although periodic negotiations facilitated by the United Nations offer governments a vital opportunity to overcome national self-interest, prioritize the needs of the disadvantaged, and curb environmental damage, these conferences take place within a wider political and economic framework that is structurally incapable of delivering global social justice or sound environmental stewardship. As such, the policies and institutions that drive our economic systems do not embody a basic spiritual understanding of the meaning and purpose of human life, which can be simply interpreted as our collective obligation to serve the common good of all humanity and protect the natural world.
To be sure, an outdated assumption that human beings are inherently selfish, competitive and acquisitive has long defined the politics of domination and control, and still underpins how society is organised and the way the global economy functions. There can be little doubt that the ongoing obsession with prioritising national interests and safeguarding corporate profits at all costs has failed to benefit the world’s poor and led to catastrophic consequences for the environment. As the economist David Woodward recently calculated, it would take 100 years to eradicate $1.25-a-day poverty if governments relied on global economic growth alone – and twice as long if we use a more realistic $5-a-day poverty line. Meanwhile, humanity as a whole has been in ‘ecological overshoot’ since the 1970s, and most people in rich industrialised countries currently have lifestyles that would require between three and five planets worth of resources to sustain if it was the norm across the world.
In recent years it has become painfully clear that aggressive competition between nations, the lobbying power of multinational corporations and the financial interests of an ultra-wealthy elite severely impede the possibility of effective international cooperation. In 2012, the director of Greenpeace condemned the much anticipated Rio+20 Earth Summit as “a failure of epic proportions” and lamented that its outcome document was “the longest suicide note in history”. There has been little improvement since then: after a series of ineffective UN climate change conferences over recent years, governments are widely expected to fail in their objective of keeping global warming below the already dangerous two degrees centigrade threshold. There is also a sizable gulf between the ambition and political feasibility of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly since it is not clear how governments will bridge the $2.5tn a year financing gap.
The path ahead: sharing and cooperation
Transforming the paradigm within which nations attempt to resolve the many pressing crises we face will require moving beyond the aggressive, competitive ways of the past and embracing solutions that meet the common needs of people in all nations. In accordance with Ghandi’s popular maxim that you should ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’, it stands to reason that this process of reforming the global economy should begin in our hearts and minds with a profound realisation that ‘humanity is one’ – in other words, that all people are part of an extended human family that share the same basic needs and rights. This simple spiritual insight must be translated into a heightened empathy for those who suffer needlessly in a world of plenty, as well as a sense of indignation towards the injustice of the world situation and a demand for change. If these reactions are put to constructive use, they can empower us to articulate a new ethos for public policy rooted in an appreciation of ‘right relationship’ as it applies to how we serve our fellow citizens across the globe and protect Mother Earth for the benefit of future generations.
Share The World’s Resources (STWR) is placing great emphasis on the fundamental role that the principle of sharing can play in addressing interconnected global crises. As the organisation’s founder Mohammed Meshabi explains, the new institutions and laws that are needed to heal our divided world must stem from an engagement of our hearts with the suffering of others, and a recognition of the all-encompassing spiritual, psychological, socio-economic and political significance of implementing the principle of sharing as a solution to humanity’s problems. To quote from Mesbahi’s essay ‘Uniting the people of the world’:
“Sharing is inherent in every person and integral to who we are as human beings, whereas the profit-oriented values of commerce are not a part of our innate spiritual nature. The individualistic pursuit of wealth and power results from our conditioning since childhood, nurtured through our wrong education and worshipping of success and achievement. But you cannot condition someone to cooperate and share, you can only remind them of who they are … True power is togetherness and sharing among millions of people, which is unifying, creative and healing on a worldwide scale … When all the nations come together and share the resources of the world, when humanity brings about balance in consciousness and in nature – that is power in the truest sense.”
This relates to new priorities and criteria to counteract the dysfunctional view of human nature that is perpetuated by the mainstream media and reflected in the culture of consumerism. As the NSP emphasise in their Spiritual Covenant, any international program for creating a more compassionate and sustainable world must reflect “the Unity of All Being and our commitment to care for each other as momentary embodiments of the God energy”. Hence with a spirit of repentance for decades of perpetuating global injustice and environmental degradation, our response to the world situation should be one that is based on deep humility and a strategy of ‘overflowing generosity’.
But at a time when the institutions and policies that underpin the modern world in no way reflect the inner connectedness of all life on Earth, how do we translate this spiritual vision into a political and socio-economic reality that is inherently humane and ecologically sound? It’s in response to this epochal challenge that the ethic and practice of sharing can provide the necessary values-based policy framework for planetary rehabilitation – one that compels us to think in global terms, prioritise the needs of the poorest, and recognise that we only have one planet’s worth of resources that must be fairly shared by all people. Simply put, a response to poverty and climate change based firmly on the principle of sharing would ensure that all people in every nation are able meet their basic needs without transgressing the Earth’s ecological boundaries.
Global priorities based on radical generosity
From these basic propositions of equality and sustainability, STWR have advocated a cooperative and just approach to sharing the world’s resources in our ‘Primer on global economic sharing’. As outlined in this publication, a broad coalition of civil society need to bring pressure to bear on governments to coordinate a global program of wholesale economic transformation under the aegis of a reformed and democratised United Nations. In response to a worldwide public consultation, nations would have to focus on both the immediate and long term measures needed for mitigating the interrelated poverty, environmental and security crises, which would require a dramatic shift in international relations on the basis of true cooperation and economic sharing. Such an aspiration to simultaneously address multiple global issues may seem far-fetched or radical in the existing political context, but it broadly echoes a proposal put forward more than 30 years ago by the Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues. Even though the ground-breaking recommendations set out in the ‘Brandt Report’ were never translated into the necessary inter-governmental policy measures, it was extremely influential in promoting the need for North-South cooperation in an era of fast expanding global interdependence.
Drawing on the Commission’s recommendations, STWR propose that the first pillar of a transformative global agenda should include an international program of emergency relief to prevent life-threatening deprivation and avoidable poverty-related deaths – regardless of where they occur in the world. Such a program needs to be agreed and implemented in the shortest possible timeframe, and will require an unprecedented mobilisation of international agencies, resources and expertise over and above existing emergency aid budgets and humanitarian programs. However, an emergency relief program can only be an initial stage in a broader transformative agenda, in which governments must also agree to a comprehensive plan for restructuring and cooperatively managing the global economy in the interests of all nations. Among the many reforms that should be considered during these negotiations, particular attention should be placed on building an effective ‘sharing society’ within each nation that provides social protection for all; establishing a just and sustainable global food system based on low-impact, ecological systems of farming; and instituting a cooperative international framework for sharing the global commons more equitably and within planetary limits.
There are some obvious parallels between these proposals and the NSP’s inspiring Global Marshall Plan (GMP) initiative – particularly in relation to the GMP’s call for systemic reforms that are based on core spiritual values that must drive social and economic policy in the 21st century. In many ways, the principle of sharing underlines any ‘strategy of generosity and care’ in which the advanced industrial countries of the world use their resources to guarantee that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life, including a quality public education and essential healthcare, while at the same time unprecedented action is taken to repair the environment. Furthermore, an international policy framework based on generosity, solidarity and genuine economic sharing is likely to be the most effective way to address the national security concerns of governments – especially at a time when humanity’s failure to share is continuing to escalate interstate conflicts over land, fossil fuel reserves and other resources.
Perhaps most importantly, both STWR’s vision of an international emergency relief program and the NSP’s Global Marshall Plan share a central focus on completely eliminating poverty and hunger as a foremost global priority, and both place responsibility on rich countries to show leadership in mobilising the full range of resources needed to address this longstanding crisis – from finances and military personal to the active engagement of the world’s citizens through an International Peace and Generosity Corps, as the NSP propose. There cannot be a more urgent international imperative than a coordinated program that seeks to end inhumane levels of deprivation in a world of plenty, especially when more than 800 million people are still classified as hungry (an official figure that may be considerably underestimated). For every single day that nations fail to end this atrocity, around 40,000 people die needlessly from a lack of access to the basic nutrition, clean water and essential healthcare that so many of us take for granted.
Campaigning for ‘what is necessary’
We are often asked whether STWR’s proposals for international sharing constitute a realistic demand from civil society, given that economic policy in most countries is increasingly based on neoliberal ideals that favour privatisation, deregulation and the expansion of market forces within a competitive international framework – one that clearly undermines meaningful cooperation between nations. It is of course true that progressive calls for social and environmental justice will remain politically unfeasible as long as real power continues to be taken away from ordinary citizens and concentrated in state institutions, unaccountable corporations and a minority of high-net-worth individuals. However, it is surely far more unrealistic to think that we can continue on the current trajectory while millions suffer needlessly in abject poverty and ecosystems endure the devastating impacts of unbridled consumerism. From the most realistic and pragmatic perspective, ending poverty in all its forms through sharing the world’s resources is now a moral, economic and geopolitical imperative that governments can no longer afford to ignore, and it must be rapidly achieved at all costs.
To some extent, the very question of political feasibility fails to recognise how many progressive organisations and activists already propose economic alternatives or practise sustainable, democratic solutions for how to organise society and manage the commons. This often requires challenging the status quo and proposing a new vision of society that will necessarily seem radical or unrealistic when compared with the prevailing orthodoxy. For many civil society groups like STWR and the NSP, it’s clear that the only sensible response to the world situation is to focus on what is now absolutely necessary and not what is merely possible to achieve within the current political framework. This determined approach proved to be effective for both the civil rights and environmental movements in the past, and is still in tune with the demands of millions of campaigners that remain focussed on seemingly unrealistic goals in the face of widespread opposition and public apathy.
Similarly, any concern that proposals for global economic sharing are unaffordable is a red herring. After all, these same financial concerns are quickly set aside by politicians when plans are being made to bailout private sector banks or finance military interventions. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, governments spent $14.3 trillion on their military budgets and the economic impacts of violence and war in 2014 – which is more than 13% of global GDP. In comparison, the 3-5% of world GDP that the NSP estimate is required to end poverty and improve international security is an extremely cost-effective investment, especially since it would reduce the costs associated with regional and international conflicts. Indeed, according to some calculations ending income poverty for the 21 percent of the global population who live on less than $1.25 a day would require as little as 0.2 percent of global income.
As STWR detailed in our report ‘Financing the global sharing economy’, governments have the means to mobilise staggering amounts of additional finance for urgent humanitarian purposes. The report demonstrated that by implementing a range of policy options that already have much support among progressives (such as redirecting a proportion of military spending, taxing financial speculation and ending fossil fuel subsidies) governments could redistribute more than $2.8tn a year to prevent life-threatening deprivation, reverse austerity measures and mitigate the human impacts of climate change. Moreover, the institutional structures, capacity and expertise needed to utilise these additional resources for essential human needs is already in place – all that lacks is a sufficient level of public support to overcome the political barriers to implementing such an emergency program of international redistribution.
Sharing as a common cause that unites us all
There is no denying that these fundamental changes to the international economic order can only become a reality if sufficient numbers of people support this pressing cause. That’s why values-based civil society proposals that embody the principles of generosity and sharing are so crucial at this time: they allow people to be inspired by a vision of the world that resonates deeply with an inner sense of justice and goodwill towards all people. Only through this heartfelt response to the world situation, anchored in a spiritual perception of what it really means to be human, can the possibility of a dramatic shift in global public opinion become an observable reality.
Given the current business–as-usual approach to policymaking, it is likely that the demand for sane economic alternatives will continue to mount until the crises of inequality and environmental breakdown reach a dangerous climax in the years ahead. If in response to these spiralling crises the US government were to put its full weight behind a Global Marshall Plan, civil society organisations operating across Europe (including STWR) would be in a much stronger position to build public support for a similar program to share essential resources across the world. A truly global campaign of this nature would require a fusion of progressive causes and a consensus among a critical mass of the world population about the necessary direction for transformative change. A key task for progressives is therefore to work together in order to mobilise a movement of supporters and build a momentum for change that could one day help create such a tipping point.
In STWR’s most recent report ‘Sharing as our common cause’, we outline how a worldwide movement of movements is already on the rise, driven by an awareness that the crises we face are fundamentally caused by an outmoded economic system in need of wholesale reform. Never before has there been such a widespread and sustained mobilisation of citizens in countries across the world around actions that challenge leaders and influence progressive social change. A renewed sense of idealism and hope is emerging everywhere for a new society to be built from within the existing one, and for a radical transformation in our values, imaginations, lifestyles and social relations, as well as in our political and economic structures.
It’s for these reasons that STWR recently launched the ‘Global call for sharing’ campaign, in order to promote the role that a demand for sharing can play in uniting citizens and progressive organisations across the world in a common cause. As stated in the campaign report, the principle of sharing is already central to diverse calls for social justice, environmental stewardship, global peace and true democracy. Whether expressed in implicit or explicit terms, all of these urgent demands relate to the need for a fairer sharing of wealth, power or resources throughout our societies – from the community level up to the international. Everyone understands the human value of sharing, and by upholding this universal principle in a political context we can point the way towards an entirely new approach to economics – one that is based on overflowing generosity, deep humility, and the spiritual recognition that all life on Earth is an integral part of an interdependent whole.
Rabbi Michael Lerner and the Network of Spiritual Progressives were early signatories to our online campaign statement, thereby affirming “the fundamental importance of strengthening and scaling up all genuine forms of sharing in our divided world”. Moreover, their ongoing work is an important example of how individuals and organisations can help spark public awareness and a wider debate on the importance of sharing in economic and political terms. We look forward to continued cooperation and mutual support with the worldwide community of Spiritual Progressives, and as our campaign continues to gain momentum we would like to invite readers of Tikkun Magazine and supporters of the NSP to also endorse the global call for sharing campaign statement by visiting www.sharing.org/global-call.
We urgently need to move beyond the restrictive political and economic ideologies of the past and embrace solutions that meet the common needs of people in all nations – which will be impossible to achieve without some degree of economic sharing both within and between countries. In an increasingly unequal and unsustainable world in which all governments need to drastically re-order their priorities, a call for economic sharing embodies the need for justice, human rights and sound environmental stewardship to guide policymaking at every level of society.
http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/reports/primer-global-economic-sharing
This report gives a concise introduction to the principle of sharing in relation to the interconnected global crises we face, and makes a simple case for how the world’s wealth, power and resources can be shared more equitably and sustainably.
Part 1 introduces the political economy of sharing, and highlights the many broad and diverse expressions of sharing throughout the world. As these examples demonstrate, sharing has long been central to human civilisation and integral to the healthy functioning of societies. But as systems of sharing are being increasingly undermined, it is critical that we support and scale up the process of sharing within nations and internationally.
Part 2 outlines how humanity’s continued failure to share is largely responsible for creating what can only be described as a global emergency. This includes the growing tragedy of poverty amidst plenty, the climate and ecological crisis in all its dimensions, and the intensifying conflict over the world’s finite natural resources. Altogether, this leaves the international community with one remaining option: to finally place sharing, cooperation and ecological preservation at the forefront of policymaking and global governance.
Part 3 proposes an alternative approach to managing the world’s resources based upon economic sharing and international cooperation. This process must begin with an unprecedented programme of humanitarian relief to prevent life-threatening deprivation and needless poverty-related deaths as a foremost priority, followed by a major restructuring of the global economy to address the structural causes of our present social, political, economic and environmental crises.
As the conclusion of this report makes clear, we cannot wait for governments to rethink the management of an economic system built upon massive inequality, unsustainable consumption and competition over scarce resources. Given the entrenched vested interests and structural barriers that obstruct progress, the hope for a better world rests with the participation of the global public in a call for reform that extends beyond national borders. Hence it is imperative that millions more people recognise what is at stake and take the lead as proponents for change – a solution to the world’s problems depends on our united demand for a just, sustainable and peaceful future.
Part 1: What is economic sharing?
Many examples demonstrate how economic sharing has long been central to human civilisation by strengthening the social fabric of communities, improving levels of wellbeing across society and promoting social equity. But despite such notable exceptions, the fact of our global unity is still not sufficiently expressed in our international economic and political structures. The critical question facing humanity today is whether we choose to support and scale up these systems of sharing on local, national and global levels, or whether we allow them to be further undermined and dismantled by those who are ideologically opposed to putting sharing at the centre of policymaking.
The political economy of sharing
Contrary to the common misconception that people are individualistic and selfish by nature, anthropologists have shown that gifting and sharing has long formed the basis of community relationships in societies across the world. A recent spate of scientific research has built on this evidence to demonstrate that as human beings we are naturally predisposed to cooperate and share in order to maximise our chances of survival and collective wellbeing. Without the act of sharing and reciprocity, there would be no social foundations upon which to build societies and economies.[1]
In this light, it is not surprising that the principles of sharing and equality are important components of many of the world’s religions, as well as many secular movements such as humanism. In broadly similar ways, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and numerous other faiths all expound the importance of sharing wealth and other resources fairly, as well as the need to protect the vulnerable and those who are less well off in society. For millennia, the principle of sharing has aligned closely with the moral values and ethics that should underpin the fabric of society.
Yet despite the prevalence of sharing throughout the natural world and in family life, we have largely failed to create a global community of nations in which sharing is embodied in our international economic and political structures. Rather than seeing the family of nations as a unit and accepting that the principle of sharing must play a key role in governing our collective use of available resources, the global economy has been built on the opposing and misguided objects of national self-interest, aggressive competition and materialistic acquisition.[2]
After centuries of colonialism and the exploitation of weaker countries by the more powerful, a tremendous imbalance exists in living standards between the so-called developed and developing worlds, which is a crisis that lies at the heart of present-day world tensions. As the global economy increasingly hits natural resource limits and planetary thresholds, a very real threat to human survival is now posed by escalating conflicts over land, energy reserves and other key industrial inputs, notwithstanding the ecological consequences of overusing the Earth’s finite resources.
Global democracy
If our collective failure to share resources within and among nations is responsible for increasing inequalities and exacerbating many of the other crises we face, then it stands to reason that we need to find ways of reforming our political and economic systems by bringing them more in line with the principle of sharing. From such a common sense perspective, the term ‘economic sharing’ can be used to describe the application of this principle to how economies are organised and resources are distributed, which could include everything from land and energy to knowledge and technology. Furthermore, the concept of sharing applies to democratic forms of governance in terms of how equally power is distributed both nationally and globally, which has potentially dramatic implications for participatory politics and global democracy – not least for the major institutions that determine the rules of economic globalisation.[3]
In both economic and political terms, ‘sharing’ can be a direct path to the fulfilment of basic human needs and rights, and is naturally aligned with the concepts of social and economic justice. As long recognised by progressive campaigners, social justice cannot be achieved by market mechanisms or charitable giving and requires the implementation of redistributive government policies, effective laws and regulations. Relating the principle of sharing with economic policy in this way is important for debates around income and wealth inequality, in which it points to the need for distributive justice and long-term structural solutions that cut to the heart of how we organise societies.[4]
However, economic sharing is not an ideological construct or ‘ism’ that is accompanied by a specific set of policies or procedures. The principle of sharing is ubiquitous in society and precedes the doctrines of capitalism and socialism by millennia, hence it is not beholden to any current or historical political philosophy. This is not to say that existing political concepts and economic policies do not reflect or even embody the principle of sharing, as they do in many cases.[5] Applying this simple principle to the field of political economy can also help to navigate between the divisive ‘isms’ that still drive much of the debate on how States can guarantee social and economic rights for all people.[6]
Humanity urgently needs to move beyond the restrictive ideologies of the past and embrace solutions that meet the common needs of people in all nations, both now and for future generations – which will be impossible to achieve without some degree of economic sharing. In an increasingly unequal and unsustainable world in which all governments need to drastically re-order their priorities, a call for economic sharing embodies the need for justice, human rights and sound environmental stewardship to guide policymaking at all levels of society.
Sharing locally and nationally
Through its many expressions, the process of economic sharing already underpins a huge variety of practices, institutions and policies that operate at the local and national level. One of the most familiar examples of sharing is in the form of charitable giving by individuals and organisations, or else through volunteering efforts and other philanthropic activities. In many ways, charity constitutes an elementary form of sharing, albeit an important one given the entrenched social and environmental problems that exist across the world. However, sharing in the form of philanthropy is widely criticised for its lack of democratic transparency, and for addressing the symptoms of inequality and not the underlying structural causes. For such reasons, charity and philanthropy is often regarded as a substitute for real justice that allows governments to escape some of their broader responsibilities to citizens and the world as a whole.[7]
Other well-recognised examples of economic sharing on the local level include the use of land in agricultural communities, which was traditionally shared by farmers who managed it cooperatively as a commons. The right to save and share seeds has also played an integral role in farming practices around the world, even though major agribusiness corporations are relentlessly pushing to outlaw this practice through patenting laws.[8] Despite the increasing exclusion of small-scale and family farms that results from the current globalised food system, the tradition of sharing is also promoted in community supported agriculture (CSA) projects in which the responsibilities, risks and rewards of producing food are shared between farmers and the local community.[9]
In recent years, a resurgence of community-led initiatives in both rich industrialised and less developed countries embody a process of economic sharing in different ways. These include the many cooperatives in the food and retail sectors, where employees participate in the decision-making process and often share in the proceeds of business activity.[10] Many trusts have also been created at local levels that successfully manage land and other shared resources, such as forests, without intervention from the State or private sector.[11] The practice of economic sharing is also evident in local sustainability initiatives across the world, which often work to redistribute economic activity among communities and build alternatives to unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.[12]
The sharing economy
More recently, the ‘sharing economy’ movement has rapidly grown in popularity throughout Western Europe, North America and other regions, which encompasses everything from online crowd-funding initiatives to food banks, mutual aid societies and gift economies. In particular, collaborative consumption has emerged as a new economic model that allows people to share various goods and services with their peers via internet-mediated sharing platforms, in everything from cars and food to office space and professional expertise. As the many proponents of the sharing economy maintain, ‘accessing’ rather than ‘owning’ resources works to save money, build community and utilise resources more efficiently, while reducing levels of personal consumption and carbon emissions in the process.[13]
Yet sharing is even more fundamental to how we organise our societies than these examples demonstrate. For instance, the process of participatory democracy can embody the principle of sharing as it seeks to share political power more equitably with citizens. And arguably the most advanced form of economic sharing that exists in the modern world is the pooling of a nation’s financial resources to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare, education, social security and other essential public services.
Social welfare systems in developed countries are far from perfect and not always efficiently administered, but they represent a natural evolution of the human propensity to share that builds on practices that have been familiar to people for millennia. They are also an expression of social justice, solidarity and equitable wealth distribution that can reduce inequalities and strengthen social cohesion within countries. Moreover, systems of universal social protection are widely supported by many millions of people who have long recognised the role that effective ‘sharing economies’ can play in creating a fairer, more just and healthier society.[14]
All these and many more examples demonstrate how economic sharing has long been central to human civilisation by strengthening the social fabric of communities, improving levels of wellbeing across society and promoting social equity. The critical question facing humanity today is whether we choose to support and scale up national and local systems of sharing, or whether we allow them to be further undermined and dismantled by those who are ideologically opposed to putting sharing at the centre of policymaking.
Global economic sharing
We live in a globalised world where the crises we face, from wealth disparities to climate change and resource wars, affect all nations to a greater or lesser extent. Systems of worldwide communication, trade and finance mean that people in different countries live highly interconnected and interdependent lives, yet the benefits of economic activity remain extremely skewed in favour of high-income countries. Given this reality and the enormous discrepancies that exist in levels of affluence between rich and poor nations, any process of economic sharing cannot be limited to a solely national context and must be actively applied on a planetary scale.
On the national level, an effective process of economic sharing can help governments to realise their long-standing commitment to protect socio-economic rights by ensuring that all people have access to essential goods and services. A majority of UN member states have already adopted a number of legally binding human rights instruments that embody these commitments, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.[15] On the international stage, however, there is a huge disparity between those rights enjoyed in the richest countries – such as the right to food, the right to adequate housing or the right to an education – and the daily infringement of these basic rights for millions of men, women and children in less developed countries. This reality points to the need for governments to finally recognise their extraterritorial human rights obligations by sharing resources more equitably on a global as well as a national basis.[16]
In a climate and resource constrained world, a process of global economic sharing can also play a major role in addressing environmental crises and reducing interstate conflict over vital resource interests. As many environmentalists propose, ensuring that all nations can access resources equitably without transgressing ecological thresholds will require a ‘fair shares’ approach to managing the global commons. In the longer term, sharing finite resources more equitably and sustainably will necessitate a new global governance framework that will have immense implications for the way we extract, distribute and consume the Earth’s produce.[17]
The emergence of global sharing
History provides some important examples of the recognition that humanity must work cooperatively as an international community in line with the principle of sharing. The establishment of the United Nations after the Second World War was one of the first major expressions of sharing in political and global terms, as it facilitates international cooperation on a wide range of issues including peace and security, economic development, social progress and human rights.[18] Not long after the UN was created, a major exercise in cross-border economic sharing was kick-started by the United States government, which embarked on a massive transfer of financial resources to a number of European countries that had been devastated by war. Although historians debate how altruistic the ‘Marshall Plan’ was, it demonstrated the great potential of international resource sharing that has inspired many proposals for a ‘global Marshall Plan’ today, mainly in the form of a massive relief effort for developing nations.[19]
A more contemporary example of global economic sharing is Official Development Assistance (ODA) that OECD countries have been providing to developing nations since the 1960s, although foreign aid comes with so many associated problems that it cannot be considered a true or effective form of economic sharing on an international level.[20] A further example is the important precedent in international law known as the Common Heritage of Mankind, which enables certain cultural and natural resources to be recognised as ‘shared commons’ that should be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations, and held in trust for the benefit of future generations.[21]
Despite these notable exceptions, the fact of our global unity is still not sufficiently expressed in our international economic and political structures. Rather than scaling up and strengthening diverse forms of global economic sharing, the world’s ‘operating system’ is still based on the competitive geopolitical interests of the most powerful and wealthy nations. At the same time, the main institutions that set the rules for international trade and finance – the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation – are all widely criticised for being undemocratic and furthering the interests of large corporations and rich countries.[22]
A more inclusive international framework urgently needs to be established through the United Nations and its relevant agencies. The UN is the only multilateral and fully representative global institution in existence with the necessary mandate and capacity to coordinate the process of restructuring the world economy, despite being in need of significant reform and democratisation (particularly by abolishing the Security Council with its arbitrary power of veto, and renewing the UN’s independence as a forum for economic policy-making). After more than 60 years, the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights still embody some of the highest ideals expressed by humanity. If the UN is fundamentally renewed and entrusted with more authority, it could be in a position to foster the growing sense of community between nations and facilitate economic sharing on a global scale.[23]
Part 2: Why nations need to share
Our failure to share resources internationally has led to the creation of a global economic system that is inherently unjust, highly unequal and environmentally unsustainable. Humanity is now facing a series of interrelated global crises as a consequence that includes massive poverty and rising levels of inequality, climate change and the ecological crisis in all its dimensions, as well as ongoing conflicts over the world’s dwindling natural resources. The following section outlines the extent of this global emergency and the need for an alternative approach to managing the world’s resources based upon economic sharing and international cooperation.
A global emergency
Despite the wealth of scientific evidence that demonstrates how human beings are naturally predisposed to cooperate and share, mainstream economists and politicians still base much of their decision-making on the assumption that people are inherently selfish, competitive and acquisitive. This one-sided perspective of human nature has defined centuries of aggressive empire building and the politics of domination and control, and it still underpins how societies and nations are organised and the way the global economy functions.[24]
The influence of this ideological approach to economics is apparent in the policies of governments on both sides of the political spectrum. The dominant trend in most countries is to overemphasise the role of market forces in shaping society by downsizing the State, rolling back government regulations and encouraging the privatisation of public resources. With the pursuit of economic growth driving policy decisions, social progress is largely dependent on promoting consumerism regardless of the social and environmental costs.[25]
Since the 1980s, a radically different approach to international development took shape under the guise of economic globalisation and ‘structural adjustment’, which aimed to remove all barriers to economic activity between nations and limit government intervention so that market forces can drive the global economy. With increasing vigour over recent decades, almost all governments have pursued policies that favour large-scale corporate activity, debt-fuelled finance, reduced barriers to global trade and increased capital flows between states. As a result, trade between countries remains premised on national self-interest, international competition and a ‘survival of the fittest’ attitude to business that has shifted economic power towards transnational corporations and largely unaccountable global institutions.[26]
The ‘neoliberal’ ideology that institutionalised greed and self-interest may have been discredited by the global financial crisis in 2008, but it continues to dominate policy discourse and practice in both the Global North and the South. Previous economic ideals based on egalitarian values, redistribution and social rights have been replaced by a new ‘common sense’ that takes for granted the supposed naturalness of the market and the primacy of profit-making – assumptions that continue to set the parameters of public discussions and media debates. Commercialisation now permeates almost every aspect of life, and has drawn entire populations into a financialised and marketised view of the world that disinclines a majority of citizens from perceiving an alternative to the status quo.[27]
Sharing as a solution to global crises
Yet the world situation today starkly challenges the vision that expanding the free market and private ownership will create greater economic efficiency and social well-being. The economic freedom promised through the liberalisation of market forces has, in reality, resulted in a freedom for the very few and a contradiction of the core free market promise – that increased wealth will be shared. Our failure to share resources internationally has led to the creation of a global economic system that is inherently unjust, highly unequal and environmentally unsustainable. Humanity is now facing a series of interrelated global crises as a consequence that includes massive poverty and rising levels of inequality, climate change and the ecological crisis in all its dimensions, as well as ongoing conflicts over the world’s dwindling natural resources.[28]
It takes little imagination to see how nations could apply economic sharing as a solution to these critical global issues. In simple terms, a just sharing of the world’s wealth, power and resources is fundamental to bridging the gap between rich and poor countries and meeting basic needs for all. Establishing a new international framework for sharing natural resources more equitably and sustainably (such as land, minerals and fossil fuels) is also essential for safeguarding the environment, ending centuries of inter-state conflict and fostering global solidarity.
From this truly common sense perspective, a new economic paradigm based on sharing rather than competing for the world’s resources presents a pragmatic way forward for the international community in light of the major crises we face. At the same time, it presents a revolutionary challenge to the status quo that necessitates a drastic departure from a prevailing ideology based on economic selfishness, rampant commercialisation and purely materialistic goals.
Global poverty and inequality
The most pressing reason for establishing an international framework that facilitates economic sharing is to create a more equal world where basic human needs are met universally. Governments first committed to this goal in 1948 when the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states in Article 25 (1): “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”[29]
More than 65 years later, achieving these basic entitlements for all the world’s people still remains a distant hope and vague aspiration of the international community. Even in many of the richest countries poverty rates have been rising for a decade, and the situation is rapidly deteriorating as austerity measures are rolling back social safety nets and weakening essential public services. Five years after the financial crisis of 2008, for example, about 50 million people in the US – 1 in 6 of the population – were officially hungry, even before dramatic cuts to government food assistance programmes.[30] Across Europe, where the social gains of previous decades are now under sharp attack, analysts have been forewarning of a divided continent with entrenched poverty for more than a decade.[31]
Nothing describes the dangerous shift away from the practice of sharing within societies more than the growing levels of hunger and needless deprivation in the affluent parts of the world. But there is no escaping the fact that the impact of extreme poverty remains generally far more severe in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, among other low- and middle-income regions. Despite rapid advancements in standards of living for a large proportion of the world population in recent decades, an unacceptable number of people are still denied access to the basic necessities of life.
Even if the Millennium Development Goal for halving extreme poverty is met, around one billion people will officially live without adequate means for survival in 2015 – although unofficial estimates are even higher.[32] Altogether, 95% of people who live in developing countries survive on the equivalent of less than $10 a day (comparable to what $10 would buy in the United States) – an almost impossible task for someone living in a high-income country.[33] The controversial ‘dollar-a-day’ measure of poverty also fails to reflect the harsh reality of life for millions of people in the majority world, not least in the fast-growing slums of developing cities.[34]
Poverty amidst plenty
In an interconnected global society with an abundance of wealth, technological capacity and expertise, it is morally reprehensible and economically short-sighted not to have ended extreme poverty decades ago. But this will be impossible without simultaneously redressing levels of global inequality, which have steadily increased since the 1980s when corporate-driven policies of economic globalisation were widely adopted. In order to tackle this growing crisis of ‘poverty amidst plenty’, far greater emphasis must be placed on reforming the unjust policies and institutions that maintain a divided and increasingly unequal world.[35]
Today, highly biased regimes of international trade, finance and taxation mean that at least ten times as much finance flows from developing countries to the rich world than is provided by donor governments as overseas aid.[36] As a result of these unjust arrangements of the global economy, the wealthiest 20 percent of the world’s population enjoy nearly 83 percent of total global income, whereas the poorest 20 percent receive a mere 1 percent.[37] In recent years, this concentration of wealth has become increasingly extreme, with one percent of the richest people in the world owning $110 trillion – 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.[38]
This astonishing misdistribution of wealth and income highlights just how distorted the world’s priorities are when many millions of people still cannot access the essential resources that others take for granted. As global justice campaigners often repeat, the underlying causes of this gross inequity are political in nature as they stem from the policy choices that governments make, the institutions that govern economic relationships, and the unrivalled power and influence of the world’s largest corporations.[39]
Without reforming these structural conditions, international aid and other forms of financial redistribution will never be an adequate means for ending poverty or reducing the gap between rich and poor. If the global economy is to serve the interests of all people, it must be primarily geared towards guaranteeing the fulfilment of social and economic rights in perpetuity – founded upon a genuine form of multilateral cooperation and economic sharing.
The environmental crisis
A call for greater economic sharing has long been at the heart of the international debate on climate change and sustainable development. The crux of the issue is how to ensure that the world’s finite resources are consumed fairly and at a rate that does not exceed the regenerative and absorptive capacity of the biosphere. Whether discussed in terms of ecological footprints or ‘fair shares’ in a world of limits, all people should have an equal right to share the earth’s resources without irreversibly damaging the planet or depriving future generations of access to these resources.
To date, governments have abysmally failed to agree on a policy framework for capping carbon emissions and equitably sharing the remaining ‘carbon space’ of the atmosphere among all nations.[40] But climate change and environmental pollution is only one aspect of a much wider ecological crisis that has resulted from our over-exploitation and degradation of the natural world. Approximately 60% of the planet’s ecosystems have been significantly degraded by human activity in the past 50 years, which starkly indicates the rapid loss of biodiversity worldwide that is threatening human well-being and civilisation as we know it.[41]
Humanity is currently consuming natural resources at a rate 50% faster than the planet can replenish them, and as a result we already require the equivalent of one and a half planets to support today’s consumption levels.[42] Yet demand for resources of all kinds is increasing exponentially, especially for food, oil, land and water. Hence the issues of resource scarcity and environmental limits have risen up the global agenda in recent years, and are becoming ever more pressing due to both a growing population and rising affluence in emerging economies.[43]
Fair shares
However, the challenge of sharing the planet’s resources is inherently linked to the huge imbalances in consumption patterns across the world. Currently, the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population – most of whom live in rich countries – consume 80% of global resources, and are therefore responsible for the vast majority of climate change and environmental destruction. Meanwhile, the poorest 20% of the population lack sufficient access to essentials such as food, clean water and energy, and account for just 1.3% of global resource consumption.[44] It is also the poor that suffer disproportionately from the harmful effects of climate change and resource depletion, which further contributes to growing inequalities and often increases poverty and social conflict.[45]
This leads to serious issues around fairness and equity in the discussions around planetary boundaries and sustainable limits. If the world’s finite resources are to be made accessible to all people but consumed at a sustainable rate, high-income countries will clearly have to reduce their use of natural resources considerably in order to enable poorer nations to grow their economies and improve their material standard of living. At the same time, poor countries will have to aim towards a less materially intensive model of development than compared to today’s industrialised nations, in accordance with international environmental objectives. [46]
There is no way around this basic adjustment needed to achieve equity-based sustainable development, which will ultimately require reconceptualising notions of prosperity and wholesale economic reorganisation. Creating a sustainable and just world will remain impossible to achieve unless we change patterns of production and consumption that deplete natural resources, erode biodiversity and pollute the atmosphere, and until we place the rights of Mother Earth before commercial interests.[47] Such a transformation may seem unachievable within the current political and economic context, but the certainty of irreversible damage to the Earth’s life-support systems leaves the international community with one remaining option – to place economic sharing and environmental stewardship at the forefront of policymaking and global governance.
Conflict over resources
An alarming consequence of humanity’s continued failure to share resources is the escalation of interstate conflict over land, fossil fuel reserves and other key industrial materials. Almost every government now assigns a great strategic significance to resource security, particularly in relation to oil and gas supplies. The result is a new global landscape in which competition over vital resources is becoming the governing principle behind the accumulation and deployment of military power. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons continuing unabated, however, any intensification of the struggle to secure the world’s untapped natural resources increases the likelihood of a catastrophic war among the major industrial powers.
The need for a vigorous military role in protecting energy assets abroad has long been a presiding theme for many of the world’s nations, and remains increasingly central to both foreign policy and national security strategies.[48] Between 1965 and 1990 alone, 73 civil wars over resources occurred in which more than a thousand people a year died,[49] and at least 18 international conflicts have been triggered by competition for resources since then.[50] Many analysts also maintain that securing key resource interests was a key factor justifying intervention in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, as well as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.[51]
Even today, the possibility of future violent conflict grows as nations race to control oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, the East and South China Seas, around the Falkland Islands and elsewhere. As governments continue on their current trajectory of aggressively competing to control the planet’s scarce natural resources, a number of factors all but guarantee a further escalation of violent conflict in the immediate future. This includes a growing world population and a rapidly expanding consumer class in developing countries, which is spurring an enormous increase in demand for energy and raw materials. The impact of climate change will also further exacerbate resource scarcity by dramatically constraining access to food, water, land and other vital resources over coming decades.[52]
A cooperative approach
Despite a distinct lack of public debate on this issue, there can be little doubt that a viable resource security strategy for the 21st century must be based on an alternative framework of international cooperation and resource sharing rather than national self-interest and recurring conflict. While there are various options for how such a framework could function, it would be essential to establish robust and impartial international institutions in order to ensure equitable access to the world’s existing resource stockpiles, alleviate shortages in times of acute scarcity or emergency, and guarantee universal access to critical commodities. Working through the UN system, the international community could also reduce the pressure on global fossil fuel reserves by channelling investment into renewables and sharing alternative energy technologies as they emerge.[53]
A cooperative approach to resource security is not only necessary for avoiding conflict and addressing social and environmental crises, but it would also salvage significant financial resources from global military budgets and foster goodwill among nations. Even to engage in the formidable process of negotiating such a strategy, governments will have to overcome the zero-sum, nationalistic impulses that currently dominate what is essentially a ‘winner takes all’ global resource acquisition paradigm – particularly in relation to fossil fuels. At the same time, policymakers must be prepared to mitigate rapidly escalating consumption rates that drive the unsustainable demand for energy and raw materials. In the end, this will mean fundamentally rethinking the dominant economic model that requires ever-higher levels of consumption for its continued success, and adopting new industrial processes that are not dependent on supplies of finite resources.
However idealistic it may seem to envisage cooperative solutions that can prevent future conflict over land, water or fossil fuels, humanity faces an unavoidable choice: either to find ways of sharing the environmental commons more equitably, or to continue on the path of intensified resource competition and risk further economic trauma, the acceleration of climate change, and the eventual possibility of a third world war.
Part 3: How can global sharing work?
At this critical juncture in human history, only a united global public can pressure governments to reorder their distorted priorities, cooperate more effectively, and share the resources of the world more equitably. As outlined in the sections below, a crucial first step is for UN Member States to implement an international program of emergency assistance to end life-threatening deprivation, followed by a longer-term transformation