“For how much longer do we want to witness the annual palaver of these global conferences on poverty and undernutrition, while nothing is done on an adequate scale to help these tragically neglected people? Is it not true that all the millions of dollars spent on organising such recurring high-level summits over several decades could instead have been used to save many such lives already? Meanwhile, we—the minority privileged who take the human rights of Article 25 for granted—continue to overconsume and waste the world’s food and other essential commodities, instead of demanding that our governments redistribute our nation’s surplus resources to where they are most critically needed.”
– Mohammed Mesbahi, Heralding Article 25

It’s no exaggeration to claim that the world today is besieged by a host of interconnected crises that are destabilising every aspect of life on earth and forcing concerned citizens everywhere to question the distorted priorities of their governments and political leaders. Despite a series of high-level international conferences that have been convened in recent years, little has been achieved to reduce entrenched levels of poverty and widening inequalities, or to curb global carbon emissions and prevent run-away climate change. However, the ongoing failure of UN Member States to safeguard the most vulnerable was most recently demonstrated by policymakers meeting at the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) as they squandered a crucial opportunity to prevent an ongoing and rapidly escalating humanitarian crisis.

The demand for humanitarian assistance is already higher than at any time since the Second World War, with many millions of people now trapped in chronic cycles of life-threatening deprivation. As emphasised in One Humanity: shared responsibility, the UN report circulated ahead of the WHS, conflict and civil war is now the primary driver of this ongoing humanitarian emergency, affecting 125 million people and accounting for 80% of all humanitarian needs. An estimated 43% of the world’s poor currently live in ‘fragile’ situations as a consequence – a figure that will increase to 62% by 2030. Across Africa, the Middles East and Europe more than 60 million refugees have made perilous journeys to escape war and persecution, and many are struggling to survive in temporary encampments without access to basic amenities. At the same time, climate change is displacing many millions more as CO2 emissions continue to spiral and disrupt the biosphere. On average, 218 million people a year are affected by natural disasters alone.

It was hoped that the World Humanitarian Summit – the first of its kind – would signal a turning point for a disjointed and ineffectual humanitarian relief system struggling to cope with an acceleration in violent conflicts and climate-related disasters. To this end, the Agenda for Humanity report that accompanied the WHS articulated five high-minded objectives for collective government action, including preventing conflict, upholding international humanitarian law, and ‘leaving no one behind’. Indeed, the #sharehumanity framing adopted by the UN to publicise the event highlights a key notion that should underpin humanitarian action in the period ahead: that the citizens of all nations are part of one interdependent family, and that preventing humanitarian disasters must therefore be a foremost imperative for the international community as a whole.

Weak commitments without obligation

A number of notable albeit piecemeal outcomes did emerge from the Summit and were welcomed by many in the humanitarian and development sectors, especially organisations working in the Global South. For example, a ‘grand bargain’ was struck to make aid financing more efficient and effective – although the suggested measures are only likely to yield annual savings of $1 billion over a five-year period. A commitment was also made to double the size of the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to $1 billion (a program that allows UN agencies to respond faster and more flexibly at the onset of a crisis), alongside pledges from donors to finally provide humanitarian grants on a multi-year basis.

In addition, governments pledged to reshape the top-down humanitarian system by increasing the amount of funding provided to local and national agencies to 25% (currently a mere 2%), which was commended by non-governmental organisations that have long campaigned for the localisation of aid. Among the many other relatively loose commitments made at the Summit, there was recognition of the need to channel additional funds towards prevention and risk management and provide a greater proportion of aid in the form of cash transfers.

However, specific targets and timelines were not specified for any of the above pledges. And given the current scale of the humanitarian emergency, the vague commitments made at the WHS were altogether insufficient and uninspiring. In spite of the enormous expense and effort involved in convening a global summit of this nature, almost nothing was agreed that could substantially reduce the burgeoning humanitarian funding gap, which has grown exorbitantly in recent years to over $16bn. Nor did governments demonstrate the political will needed to reverse the growing disregard for international humanitarian law and protect civilians in conflict situations – let alone agree on a concrete political framework to curtail protracted civil wars, or tackle a refugee crisis that is overwhelming the humanitarian system.

From the outset, there was concern that the summit was not preceded by substantive intergovernmental negotiations on humanitarian reform of the kind that have taken place before other major global conferences. And despite a sizable turnout of around 8000 people (including 55 heads of state, representatives from UN agencies, civil society organisations and the private sector), most of the world’s most influential leaders were conspicuously absent. Thus it was expected from the beginning that the conference would not materialise the political leadership and agreements needed to uphold the five core responsibilities set out in the Agenda for Humanity.

Humanitarian aid as a substitute for justice

Notably, Médecins Sans Frontières – a Nobel Prize winning organisation working on the frontline of crisis situations – pulled out in advance of the summit stating that they “no longer have any hope that the WHS will address the weaknesses in humanitarian action and emergency response, particularly in conflict areas or epidemic situations.” A vigorous debate also ensued about whether linking humanitarian activity to the broader development framework (a central pillar of the Summit) will ultimately politicise such interventions and make providing assistance in conflict-ridden countries far more difficult – which is pertinent given the overriding need for humanitarian work to remain politically neutral and independent of government influence.

An overarching and long-standing concern is that the UN lacks the power to enforce any of the commitments made at this and previous global summits, not least to ensure that governments follow through on their regular pledges to provide additional funding for humanitarian endeavours. A footnote on a political communiqué signed by summit delegates is revealing in this respect, stipulating that “This communiqué is not legally binding and does not affect the signatories’ existing obligations under applicable international and domestic law.”

In light of the overwhelming moral imperative to share planetary resources more equitably and protect many millions of people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the WHS is yet another reminder of the unsurmountable gulf between the priorities of UN member states and the desperate reality of the world situation. For too long, policymakers have put short-term political and financial interests before the protection of human life, and they have routinely failed to pursue the diplomatic measures needed to resolve protracted global problems. Instead, the inadequate provision of humanitarian aid has been used as a substitute for reforming a global economic and political framework that exacerbates poverty, conflict and climate change – even when humanitarian activities fall far short of their stated objectives.

Share Humanity – photo credit: World Humanitarian Summit 

– See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/blogs/no-recognition-one-humanity-world-humanitarian-forum#sthash.Zm5lNzZL.dpuf

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Buried beneath the sensational revelations making headlines in the wake of the Panama Papers is a simple truth about the importance of fair and effective tax systems: revenues from taxation – whether from company profits, capital gains or wages – are crucial for maintaining nationwide mechanisms of economic sharing that safeguard the basic needs of citizens. Not only does the redistribution of tax revenue allow governments to fund safety nets and public services designed to keep poverty at bay, it maintains the infrastructure needed to facilitate a wide variety of social and economic activities, from public transport and roads, to schools and hospitals.

The unprecedented leak of files from the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal that although people and companies can use tax havens for legitimate purposes, too often such mechanisms are abused by those seeking to avoid paying their fair share of tax, potentially depriving the governments of hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues. Unsurprisingly, the call for all businesses and individuals to ‘pay their fair share’ is increasingly popular among tax justice campaigners in the Global North, where governments lose billions each year from tax dodging – even as they reduce public spending on essential services in order to ‘balance the books’. The rationale for ending tax haven abuse is incontrovertible: recouping the huge sums involved could enable governments to reverse programs of economic austerity, reduce inequality or even help fund innovative public investment programs such as a green new deal.

Globally, economists estimate that $7.6tn worth of assets are held off shore and are thereby avoiding taxation – 25% more than five years ago and equivalent to 8% of the world’s total financial assets. Citizens for Tax Justice have calculated that Fortune 500 companies alone hold a record $2.4tn in offshore accounts, which they argue allows them to avoid almost $700bn in US federal income taxes. Most recently, Oxfam have estimated that the 50 largest US companies have $1.4 trillion hidden in Tax havens, which costs the US government approximately $111 each year. In the EU, governments are reportedly losing out on revenues of between 50-70bn euros ($56-79bn).

Undermining social solidarity and economic development

In a global economy, tax avoidance of this magnitude not only weakens social solidarity and redistributive mechanisms within countries, it severely hampers efforts to reduce global poverty and strengthen international systems of sharing. The research organisation Global Financial Integrity estimates that developing countries lose around $1tn a year in illicit capital flows, much of which is facilitated by tax havens. According to UNCTAD, developing countries lose $100bn a year in revenues from corporate tax avoidance alone – which is a far higher proportion of their GDP compared to rich countries, and only $30bn less than what they collectively receive in oversees aid. Calculations by Oxfam help put this figure into perspective:

“$100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million citizens. [It] is equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.”

Improving international cooperation on tax matters and stemming the perverse flow of capital from the Global South to North would mean that developing countries could potentially channel significant amounts of additional funding into the provision of social safety nets and basic welfare. It would also empower them to end their dependency on oversees aid and finance poverty reduction from their own resources.

Despite the recent Panama revelations, the call for a more transparent, just and effective global tax framework has long been advocated by civil society organisations and a majority of developing countries. Most recently, the proposal was widely discussed during the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) negotiations, when the G77, China and a broad swathe of civil society groups called for an intergovernmental tax body with universal membership to be established under the auspices the United Nations.

However, even though donor countries pushed for governments in the Global South to take greater responsibility for mobilising development finance domestically, they once again neglected to enact the concrete measures needed to prevent illicit financial flows and tackle tax avoidance. This failure to empower developing countries to improve domestic revenues was widely decried as a major disappointment during the Financing for Development negotiations in July 2015, especially as it was unclear how governments would be able to meet the ‘Global Goals’ without mobilising huge amounts of additional finance.

In the absence of a more effective and inclusive global tax agreement, decisions on international tax rules continue to be undertaken undemocratically by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Unfortunately, most developing countries have been excluded from the key decisions that have been made on global tax standards thus far, even though they are expected to abide by them. A complex web of thousands of unscrutinised and outdated tax treaties also exist between countries, many of which create additional opportunities for multinational tax avoidance. As Action Aid outline in their recent report ‘Mistreated’, these treaties invariably favour higher income nations and impose an unfair burden on lower-income countries, thereby widening global inequalities. To quote just one of many examples from their research:

“Bangladesh is losing approximately US$85 million every year from just one clause in its tax treaties that severely restricts its right to tax dividends. With an annual total health expenditure of approximately US$25 per capita, remedying this alone could pay for health services for 3.4 million people.”

Towards international tax cooperation at the UN

The Panama Papers demonstrate that the world’s fragmented tax systems are not only ineffective and open to abuse, but they can directly undermine systems of economic sharing and the provision of essential public goods and services. They also make a convincing case for establishing a more inclusive and just global tax architecture that can prevent the worst tax avoidance practices and bolster government revenues – particular in developing countries. Unsurprisingly, calls for governments in rich countries to reconsider the proposal for a global tax body that were originally put forward during the SDG negotiations are once again on the rise.

According to the European Network on Debt and Development, the overall purpose of a UN tax body is to ensure that the international tax system is transparent, coherent and supports equality and development. In the longer term, one of the key tasks of the intergovernmental body should be to establish a legally binding and comprehensive UN Tax Convention that could level the playing field and replace the many thousands of complex treaty systems that currently exist. Central to the entire proposal, therefore, is the need to scale up international cooperation and ensure that all nations are involved in both the decision making and implementation process. Needless to say, the UN is the only forum in which such an inclusive and democratic process could be deliberated, since it has universal membership and provides a voice for all nations.

Even though there remains a robust demand from civil society groups and countries in the Global South for a UN-coordinated tax framework, OECD countries have shown little sign that they are willing to consider such a proposal. In response to the Panama leaks, the European Commission have instead proposed public tax transparency rules for multinationals on a country-by-country basis. But the proposals are weak and ineffectual as they are limited to the EU, do not apply to the vast majority of multinational companies, and only pertain to a small and selective list of tax havens. Similarly, the recent ‘hammer blow’ by European nations designed to expose shell firms and oversees trusts is regarded by campaign groups as lacking ambition and unlikely to ensure that beneficial ownership information is ever made public.

A number of international conferences in the coming weeks present governments with additional opportunities to rethink global tax cooperation and finally work towards an inclusive international solution. These include the latest Financing for Development meeting in New York, an anti-corruption conference in the UK and a World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. However, given the long history of government inaction on this critical issue and the influence of vested interests that benefit most from the secrecy that tax havens provide, it is unlikely that the needed reforms will be forthcoming anytime soon. As movements such as Nuit Dabout in France and Democracy Spring in the US demonstrate, an escalation in peaceful public protest therefore presents an important opportunity for concerned citizens to demand tax justice and a fairer distribution of wealth within countries and internationally.

Image credit: Eric Hill – Flickr Creative Commons

The post Panama Papers: reigniting the debate for a global tax body appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Few debates highlight the many complex issues around how governments should share a nation’s wealth and resources as much as the current discourse on basic income. Also referred to as a citizen’s income, the policy generally refers to the unconditional and universal payment of a regular sum of money to a country’s residents, usually as a replacement for a range of existing state benefits such as pensions, child allowances, tax credits and unemployment payments. Unlike many other policies that challenge the status quo, the scheme commands substantial support across the political spectrum – from progressives who hope it can reduce inequality and improve social justice, to neoliberals seeking to further diminish the role of the state in delivering a full range of welfare services. The idea also has a long historical precedent, with Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mills, Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman featuring among the numerous prominent figures who have supported the idea, in one form or another, since the late 1800s.[1]

More recently, financial and economic circumstances such as mounting unemployment rates, social and economic insecurity and unprecedented levels of inequality, have pushed the proposal back up the political agenda. A Swiss campaign for a citizen’s income gained enough support in 2013 to trigger a forthcoming referendum on instituting the policy, which could result in every citizen receiving the equivalent of $34,000 dollars every year. By January 2014, over 285,000 people had signed the European Citizens Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income, which sparked a much needed public debate on the pros and cons of the policy. With the UK’s Green Party also supporting the measure (despite concerns around how it could be funded) it’s clear that the conversation about how to implement and finance such a scheme is set to expand considerably in the years ahead.

At face value, the idea of receiving an unconditional lump sum of money from the state each week, month or year presents a fair and inclusive solution to the financial constraints many people face in a consumerist society – especially at a time when unemployment and inequality are on the rise. In addition, a basic income could give people the freedom to work fewer hours if they choose, while streamlining inefficient and complicated tax and benefits systems. In response to an escalating environmental crises that extends far beyond the popular discourse on global warming, the measure has also been proposed alongside other policies to pave the way towards a ‘steady state economy’ that is not predicated on endless growth.[2]

However, it is not at all clear whether a state administered citizen’s income would ultimately help or hinder the creation of truly sharing societies, in which ‘freedom from want’ can be achieved within a redistributive economic framework that reinforces the social ties that bind people and communities together. As discussed below, the policy could ultimately play into the hands of those whose idea of individual freedom includes minimising government programs and further deregulating markets, which would ultimately work against the ethic and practice of sharing. There are also important questions around how to fund a basic income that should be explored more fully, especially if the scheme is to be beneficial to citizens in developing countries or even implemented on an international scale to help end world poverty or protect the global commons.

Questioning the political context

A convincing case for an unconditional basic income has long been put forward on the basis of personal liberties and freedoms. As outlined in various international agreements, access to food, shelter, healthcare and a decent standard of living is a basic human right, together with economic security during retirement or when unable to work.[3] Since the state is the primary guarantor of these rights, it is reasonable to propose that an unconditional income is a viable route to securing these fundamental entitlements and achieving a degree of social security. In line with this perspective, Professor Guy Standing argues that basic security for all as an unconditional right is fundamental to securing personal freedom, especially at a time when a new ‘precariat’ class of disaffiliated migrants and temporary workers suffer from systemic insecurity across the globe – largely as a consequence of economic globalisation.[4]

This idea that a basic income can increase freedom by enabling people to work less and devote themselves to more creative pursuits or unpaid work in the ‘core economy’ has a common sense appeal, particularly when job insecurity is on the rise and people are increasingly questioning how to balance their work-life commitments. In his book Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein sets out a convincing case for creating the conditions in which people can pursue work that doesn’t necessarily generate a return, as this will give us the freedom to act on the desire to give freely without financial incentives.[5] Philippe Van Parijs takes a similar perspective on basic income as a route to freedom, arguing that in order to be truly free, people need to have access to the means needed for “doing what they might want to do”.[6] These are convincing philosophical arguments that add further credence to the premise that a citizen’s income would promote equality and social integration, as everyone would receive an equal level of state benefits regardless of their personal circumstances.

However, there are several reasons why the issues of rights, freedom and equality need to be considered from a broader perspective, especially by those who are troubled by the encroachment of neoliberal ideology in policymaking. For example, the New Economics Foundation emphasise a key ideological difference between benefit systems based on social insurance and the provision of a guaranteed basic income for all. As they explain, a basic income is “an individualised measure, not a collective one, focusing resources on providing everyone with an income at all times rather than on pooled risk-sharing mechanisms which provide help for everyone when they need it. This may reduce people’s capacity to act together, by encouraging them to provide for themselves with their income rather than promoting social solidarity, collectively funded services, and shared solutions.”[7]

Given the huge costs associated with providing citizens with an unconditional state income, we should also be concerned that the scheme could compete for funding with other government funded services, such as healthcare, education, childcare support and social housing. Together, comprehensive welfare services such as these ensure that certain basic needs can be universally met without having to rely on commercial alternatives. Rather than implementing new basic income schemes, the aim should perhaps be to scale up social protection along the lines of a proposal by Barbara Bergmann, who recommends that a universal basic income is only considered after a well-funded ‘Swedish-style’ welfare state has first been established. This would include, for example, far more generous allowances for children, pensioners, the unemployed, and those with a disability, or even more generous work leave policies and free university education.[8]

Under the current trajectory of public policy in which welfare services are being subjected to increasing waves of neoliberal reforms, there is clearly a risk that existing mechanisms of redistribution and social solidarity could be severely undermined if replaced by a basic income. Introducing the scheme during a period when welfare services are being dismantled by economic austerity could mean that individuals would be left to pay for essential services at market rates instead, which could of course fluctuate substantially over time and weaken the monetary value of the basic income. Although this approach might appeal to those who favour freedom and personal choice, the individualistic nature of a citizen’s income is also the reason why many free marketeers favour the measure as an alternative to state funded social services. For these reasons, it is prudent to be wary of any attempt to implement the scheme within a political context characterised by laissez-faire capitalism.

The coming era of leisure

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes famously posited that standards of living would be between four and eight times higher in a hundred years’ time, and that people would need to work a mere 15 hours a weeks.[9] Although Keynes’ era of leisure is still a pipedream for most people despite the tremendous improvements in living standards he rightly predicted, there is evidence to suggest that formal working hours will have to be dramatically reduced in the years ahead. The reductions in wages that would follow such a dramatic shift in employment patterns provides a pragmatic case for the state to provide a supplementary unearned income to all citizens. There can be little doubt that patterns of work are already going through a dramatic transformation: robotic automation, digitalisation, the internet and other technological developments are responsible for significantly reducing the availability of jobs. Much of what is produced is now shared for free – including software, journalism, film, information and music. Although corporate profits are at an all-time high, demand for labour is falling and wages as a share of GDP have been in decline for the past three decades in the UK and the US. People are also living longer and retiring later, while part-time or temporary work, insecure casual contracts, and self-employment are increasingly the norm for those who find themselves precariously underemployed.

As people in developed countries adjust to an economic reality in which there is much less available work, reducing the length of the formal working week might be unavoidable. Since it is unlikely that wages would increase proportionately as we work less, an additional form of income could be necessary in order to prevent millions more people falling below the poverty line. A citizen’s income would also acknowledge and help sustain the indispensable unpaid work that currently takes place in the core economy, including raising children and caring for the elderly, maintaining community relationships and support networks, as well as the various voluntary services provided by individuals and civil society organisations. Paying a basic income to facilitate a shift towards fewer formal working hours or to support the core economy would strengthen interpersonal sharing and reciprocity within communities, and it could mean that people would no longer be forced to do menial or difficult jobs that they would otherwise undertake reluctantly for fear of survival.

Of all the arguments for a universal income scheme, this one is perhaps the most convincing – especially since there is evidence to suggest that working less and sharing available work more equitably across society would have a range of additional benefits, such as reducing levels of consumption and markedly improving quality of life.[10] However, the overall impact that the policy could have on the labour market is far from clear cut. For example, there is the claim that a citizen’s income could be a disincentive for workers, which might be especially problematic in relation to necessary but menial tasks that workers would avoid if they had an alternative source of income.

Putting aside these disputed concerns, the main impact of a citizen’s income on jobs would be to deregulate employment laws. In other words, employers would have little obligation to pay a living wage if governments are already supplementing incomes, and workers would be more prepared to leave their jobs as unemployment would no longer be such a concern for them. Francine Mestrum convincingly argues that the policy would effectively shift labour costs that are currently borne by companies to society as a whole. A basic income could therefore become a subsidy to employers who would no longer feel obliged to pay decent wages or provide adequate benefits to their employees.[11] As such, it is possible that a citizen’s income could be particularly problematic in developing countries that are working towards enhancing working conditions and employment rights.

Streamlining the benefits system

The most practical reason for introducing a citizen’s income is to overhaul and simplify complex means tested benefit systems that are failing their targeted claimants. According to a number of basic income proposals, a new agency could not only provide a standardised benefit but also coordinate a simplified income tax system in order to help recoup costs associated with the scheme. In the UK, for example, a single weekly payment could replace child allowances and the state pension, while eliminating the need for various tax allowances, credits and reliefs. The aim would be to integrate the tax and benefits system and treat everybody in the same way rather than have different rules for claimants and tax payers.[12]

Apart from the obvious financial savings that streamlining the benefit systems would generate, a single universal payment to all citizens would address a range of issues that currently plague welfare services across the world. These include abolishing complex administrative procedures associated with testing the eligibility of claimants, as well as preventing the ‘benefit trap’. Means testing is also widely regarded as a demeaning and socially divisive process that can leave claimants feeling stigmatised or branded as scroungers or even cheats. Many people aren’t even aware of their entitlement to benefits, or they can be confused by the eligibility rules and put off by the possibility of receiving increasingly harsh ‘benefit sanctions’. With almost a third of people not claiming the state payments they are entitled to in the UK alone (amounting to around £10 billion of unclaimed aid a year), it is fair to conclude that means testing is simply not providing the economic security it was designed to deliver.[13]

Despite these unequivocal arguments for redesigning and simplifying state benefits, the big hurdle for implementing a citizen’s income is the problem of cost as the scheme appears unaffordable when translated into concrete figures. The income would need to be high enough to ensure that those who are no longer able to claim most other state benefits could survive above the national poverty line, and this same amount of money would need to be provided to every citizen regardless of their financial circumstances. Even though this would be a huge financial commitment for cash-strapped governments, the UK’s Citizen’s Income Trust have detailed how a basic income scheme can be designed to be ‘revenue and cost neutral’, even though they recently conceded that an unacceptable proportion of poor households would lose out under their proposal.[14] Research suggests that even a revised scheme that reduces any negative impacts would not be sufficient by itself to keep households above the relative income poverty line.[15] Although such a scheme might be more politically palatable, it would also defeat the objective of simplifying the benefits system as a number of means tested allowances would still be necessary.

The great tax shift

Unless alternative means are found to fund a basic income, a truly comprehensive scheme for sharing a nation’s financial resources is likely to remain unaffordable, while a less costly version may not provide a worthwhile alternative to existing benefits. But if funding is the primary issue, why not link the policy to wider reforms for how governments raise public revenue? Campaigners in countries across the world have long advocated for numerous ways in which states could raise huge quantities of additional income for urgent social and environmental purposes, such as implementing higher taxes on extreme wealth and very high incomes, closing tax havens, ending corporate tax avoidance or implementing a financial transaction tax. Alternatively, governments could divert a percentage of their colossal military budgets, or withdraw a proportion of the vast subsidies currently paid to agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry.[16] Similarly, new levies on environmental ‘bads’, such as pollution or waste disposal, could help raise revenues while providing a disincentive to ecologically destructive activities.

While countless civil society campaigns continue to focus on these and other redistributive proposals, a number of even more radical approaches to reforming the way governments raise public revenue are also being more widely discussed by progressives. For example, may proponents of systemic tax reform argue that levies on earnings, employment and profits disproportionately impact those already on low incomes, while encouraging environmentally damaging activities, and penalising the contributions that people and companies make to society. Land value taxation is widely regarded as a logical and fairer alternative to existing methods of raising revenue and, like basic income, it has considerable support among both progressives and conservatives. In accordance with the need to dramatically reform both fiscal and benefit systems, James Robertson has proposed a new social compact in which land value taxation would play a central role in funding a citizen’s income.[17] Robertson’s proposal illustrates the possibility of funding a more comprehensive basic income scheme that would also enable governments to take decisive steps towards creating a more just and sustainable economy. Nonetheless, the political will to pursue these widely supported measures remains conspicuously absent, which points to the need for a more visible public debate about the various means governments can employ to pool and share a nation’s financial resources.

Social dividends from shared resources

In light of the inherent difficulties connected to reforming established tax and benefit systems, it is also worth considering alternative options for establishing a citizen’s income that could have much wider implications for creating a sharing society. Although this approach is rarely part of the popular discourse on implementing a basic income scheme, there are a growing number of proposals for instituting a ‘social dividend’ that is based firmly on the principle of sharing as it recognises that all citizens have a right to income from ‘natural property’, such as land and other resources that are either inherited or co-created by society. The idea can be traced back to the work of the American revolutionary Thomas Paine, who stated that “the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race”.[18] The notion that the earth is our common inheritance was also central to the ideas of the social theorist Henry George in the 19th century, and still maintains strong support among Georgists as well as commons theorists.[19]

As explained by Peter Barnes in his book ‘With Liberty and Dividends for All’, the majority of the wealth that is inherited or created together by society is captured and extracted by the rich rather than distributed fairly among citizens. Meanwhile, the damaging social and environmental costs of this process are largely borne by the public or the biosphere. The simple idea at the heart of most proposals for a social dividend is therefore to charge user fees on shared resources, which can then be distributed to all citizens as a basic right. Although an agency would initially be set up by governments to administer the program, it would operate independently of the private and public sector as a ‘commons trust’ that could conceivably manage a range of shared resources – from land, fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon storage, to the electromagnetic spectrum and intellectual property. According to a calculation by Barnes based only on a specific selection of shared assets, the programme could provide every American citizen with as much as $5,000 a year.[20]

Given the various problems associated with existing basic income schemes, not least of which is funding, issuing social dividends from user fees on shared resources could be a sensible alternative to the tax-funded benefit programs considered above. The social dividend approach would address a number of the concerns that drive proponents of a citizen’s income, such as providing a non-labour supplement to falling wages and incomes, or reducing social and economic exclusion. Moreover, sharing the value of co-owned resources in this way would not necessarily interfere with existing systems of welfare and social protection, which could still be reformed independently to address some of the failings highlighted previously.

Barnes also reminds us that while the idea of reforming tax systems remains problematic and contentious, distributing income from user fees appeals to both liberals and conservatives. The programme could be set up as a self-financing commons trust that operates outside of the public and private sector, and managing the fund would neither inflate nor deflate the size of government. Like taxes, user fees on ecologically damaging activities would also provide a disincentive to both producers and consumers, effectively internalising environmental costs into the price of products. Additionally, a social dividend would be an effective way to integrate the principle of sharing into the way nations govern the use of co-owned assets, as it gives form to the notion that natural resources should be managed in the interests of all people and future generations – which is clearly a prerequisite to creating a more equal and sustainable world in the 21st century.

From national to global dividends

Sharing the value of co-owned resources is not just a theoretical premise; the practice has long existed in Alaska where 25 percent of all mineral lease rentals, royalties, bonuses and other payments received by the state are placed into a permanent fund that is currently worth over $53 billion.[21] The fund was initially set up by the government of Alaska in 1976 and is now managed on behalf of its citizens who receive an annual dividend from the income it generates, which amounted to $1,884 in 2014. Unsurprisingly, the fund is popular with residents and acts as a crucial economic stimulus, while being transparent and cost effective to manage. Moreover, in stark contrast to when the fund was first established, Alaska now has one of the lowest rates of inequality and relatively low levels of poverty compared to other US states. For these reasons, the Alaska Permanent Fund provides a unique example of the benefits of sharing resource dividends directly with citizens, and is regularly referred to by campaigners working on a wide range of progressive causes.

The Alaskan model also has important applications for low income countries, particularly those that struggle to reduce extreme poverty or are afflicted by the ‘resource curse’ – the paradox of countries being rich in mineral wealth but unable to achieve sustained economic development. For example, the economist Paul Segal argues that governments in developing countries should distribute rents due on their natural resources directly to all citizens as an unconditional cash transfer.[22] Such a program would provide incentives for people to register with the fiscal system, strengthen state capacity, help ameliorate the institutional causes of the resource curse, and reduce corruption. Sharing the value of resources in this way would be entirely in accordance with universally adopted human rights covenants which state that “All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources”.[23] Most importantly, Segal highlights the considerable impact that a social dividend derived from resource rents could have on extreme levels of human deprivation. According to his calculations, this measure alone could halve global poverty if implemented internationally by all developing countries, and he concludes that the scheme “would be easier to implement than most existing social policies”.[24]

This same model could also be applied to fund basic income schemes in developed countries that have sizable reserves of oil, gas and other industrial minerals, such as the US. As Segal notes, prior to the systematic privatisations that characterised the 1980s, just such a proposal for ‘A People’s Stake in North Sea Oil’ was floated in the UK by Samuel Brittan and Barry Riley. More recently, economists have proposed similar models for a basic income funded by resource revenues for Nigeria, Iraq and Bolivia. According to a study by World Bank economists, a universal basic income in the form of a ‘direct dividend payment’ derived from just 10 percent of national oil revenues would be sufficient to close the poverty gap in Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and could half the poverty gap in larger countries such as Mozambique and Nigeria. The report’s authors explain how it would also be possible for a proportion of these revenues to be used by governments to fund public goods, which could further help reduce poverty and enhance social welfare.[25]

The discourse on how to fairly distribute the value of a nation’s co-owned resources is critical, especially in relation to creating effective sharing societies without poverty or extreme inequality. But the process of deriving social dividends from shared resources need not be confined to the nation state, and could even be used to fulfil the entitlement of every human being to a fair share of the global commons. For example, Alanna Hartzok outlines how a Global Resource Agency could feasibly collect resource rents from the exploitation of shared resources such as ocean fisheries, the sea bed, the electromagnetic spectrum, and even outer space.[26] The resulting fund could be further bolstered through levies on activities that damage the commons, including carbon emissions and other forms of pollution to the oceans and atmosphere. In a globalised economy characterised by a vast array of economic processes that fall outside the jurisdiction of national territories, such a mechanism could clearly be an indispensable source of finance for underfunded global governance bodies such as the United Nations and its affiliated agencies. The finances raised could also support the provision of global public goods or help meet other international priorities such as providing disaster relief, ending hunger or mitigating climate change. Furthermore, this international model of economic sharing could also distribute a proportion of the revenues generated as a global citizen’s income based on an equal share of the value of global resources. Since rich countries are responsible for the vast majority of resource consumption and pollution, an international citizen’s income raised through user fees on the global commons could also amount to a sizable redistribution of wealth in favour of citizens in the Global South.[27]

Another international route to raising the finance needed to eradicate extreme poverty is suggested by Professor Thomas Pogge, who proposes that all human beings should be recognised as having an inalienable stake in the world’s natural resources and that they should therefore be entitled to a share of the value of any natural resource (such as crude oil) regardless of where it is extracted.[28] He calls this share a Global Resource Dividend (GRD) and proposes that it is fixed at 1% of gross world product, which currently comes to $780 billion per annum.[29] Pogge suggests that it would make sense to differentiate between natural resources by collecting larger shares for those that are most damaging to the environment (like coal). In this way, he argues that the GRD could help avert ecological harm while enabling the world’s poor to share in global economic growth and reduce their financial disadvantage. Pogge’s original proposal does not constitute a universal citizen’s income, as it selectively targets the dividend to provide those living in extreme poverty with up to $250 a year. According to his calculations, however, if the GRD was used to create a truly universal basic income “the poorer half would still get an income boost of over 20% on average … The income of the poorest quarter would go from currently 0.9% of gross world product to 1.15%, a tidy 28% raise.”[30] There can be little doubt that a global citizen’s income financed through resource dividends would have a transformative impact on those who live below the global poverty line, and could even be considered as an adjunct or alternative to conventional development assistance.

Expanding the public debate on basic income

If the ultimate intention of a citizen’s income is to secure the basic right of all people to live in dignity and fully develop their capabilities, it is clearly in relation to the very poorest in society (and across the world as a whole) that any form of basic income would be most beneficial. In this respect, the evidence suggests that a citizen’s income based on resource dividends presents an important systemic solution to poverty that has the potential to counterbalance the injustice of a global economic model in which wealth predominantly flows to the richest 1% of the world’s population. The policy also has significant ecological implications in relation to the emerging ‘degrowth’ debate on the impossibility of pursuing endless economic growth without irreversibly harming the environment.[31] In line with this perspective on the limits to growth, resource dividends for all could facilitate the necessary shift away from unsustainable patterns of production and consumerism, and stimulate a much needed public debate on the nature and purpose of work.

There are clearly many convincing arguments for how a citizen’s income based on resource rents could play a pivotal role in establishing a truly sharing society in which the fulfilment of people’s basic rights are not limited to their capacity to earn wages. However, it should also be apparent that any form of basic income or social dividend is not a panacea and should only be implemented as part of a comprehensive program of progressive reforms. As Share The World’s Resources emphasises, the objective of public policy should be to establish systemic forms of sharing that decentralise and devolve political power and embody the fundamental right of all people to a fair share of the wealth and resources that are created by nature or society as a whole.[32] Thus unless any basic income scheme is implemented as part of a broader policy agenda to address the structural causes of inequality and environmental crises, its longer term benefits would remain questionable.

Although there is growing support for social dividends funded by user fees, any call for reforming the way collective resources are managed is unlikely to gain political traction at a time when the institutions of central government increasingly embody market principles, and proposals for radically restructuring economic systems are still generally outside of mainstream political debates. Furthermore, it is difficult to overstate the power and influence that fossil fuel corporations could wield over policymakers who are considering setting aside a proportion of co-owned wealth for the benefit of citizens, especially in resource rich countries where user fees would have a negative impact on corporate profits.[33] Clearly, if resource dividend schemes are to be implemented more extensively, it would be necessary to challenge the neoliberal consensus that currently dominates public policy at the governmental level as well as in global institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

But despite the expected resistance from those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, it is reasonable to assume that policies seeking to share the value of common pool resources would be extremely popular with voters, especially if they were more closely linked to existing calls for a citizen’s income. If the proposition also had more support from within civil society and among progressive parties, there is every chance that such policies could rapidly move up the political agenda. As the media continues to highlight basic income schemes with increasing frequency, there has never been a better time to broaden the public debate to include alternative ways to fund the proposal – particularly if this draws attention to systemic methods of supplementing personal incomes through policies based on redistributive justice and the principle of sharing.

The post From basic income to social dividend: sharing the value of common resources appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The real crisis is not the influx of refugees to Europe per se but a toxic combination of destabilising foreign policy agendas, economic austerity and the rise of right-wing nationalism, which is likely to push the world further into social and political chaos in the months ahead.

Razor-wire fences, detention centres, xenophobic rhetoric and political disarray; nothing illustrates the tendency of governments to aggressively pursue nationalistic interests more starkly than their inhumane response to refugees fleeing conflict and war. With record numbers of asylum seekers predicted to reach Europe this year and a morally acceptable humanitarian response nowhere in sight, the immediate problem is more apparent than ever: the abject failure of the international community to share the responsibility, burden and resources needed to safeguard the basic rights of asylum seekers in accordance with international law.

Of immediate concern across the European Union, however, is the mounting pressure that policymakers are under from the far-right and anti-immigration groups, whose influence is skewing the public debate on the divisive issue of how governments should deal with refugees and immigrants. With racial intolerance steadily growing among citizens, the traditionally liberal attitude of European states is fast diminishing and governments are increasingly adopting a cynical interpretation of international refugee law that lacks any sense of justice or compassion.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which was implemented in response to Europe’s last major refugee crisis during World War II, states that governments need only safeguard the human rights of asylum seekers when they are inside their territory. In violation of the spirit of this landmark human rights legislation, the response from most European governments has been to prevent rather than facilitate the arrival of refugees in order to minimise their legal responsibility towards them. In order to achieve their aim, the EU has even gone so far as making a flawed and legally questionable deal with President Erdogan to intercept migrant families crossing the Aegean Sea and return them to Turkey against their will.

Instead of providing ‘safe and legal routes’ to refugees, a growing number of countries on the migration path from Greece to Western Europe are adopting the Donald Trump solution of building walls, militarising boarders and constructing barbed wire barriers to stop people entering their country. Undocumented refugees (a majority of them women and children) who are trying to pass through Europe’s no-longer borderless Schengen area are at times subjected to humiliation and violence or are detained in rudimentary camps with minimal access to the essentials they need to survive. Unable to travel to their desired destination, tens of thousands of refugees have been bottlenecked in Greece which has become a warehouse for abandoned souls in a country on the brink of its own humanitarian crisis.

Ostensibly, the extreme reaction of many EU member states to those risking their lives to escape armed conflict is tantamount to officially sanctioned racial discrimination. Unsurprisingly, this unwarranted government response has been welcomed by nationalist parties who are now polling favourably among voters in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland. The same is true in Hungary, where the government has even agreed Nazi-era demands to confiscate cash and jewellery from refugees to fund their anti-humanitarian efforts.

There can be little doubt that the European response to refugees has been discriminatory, morally objectionable and politically dangerous. It’s also self-defeating since curtailing civil liberties and discarding long-held social values has the potential to destabilise Europe far more than simply providing the assistance guaranteed to refugees under the UN convention. Albeit unwittingly, the reactionary attitude of governments also plays directly into the hands of Islamic State and other jihadi groups whose broader intentions include inciting Islamophobia, provoking instability and conflict within western countries, and recruiting support for terrorism in the Middle East and across Europe.

Dispelling nationalist myths of the far-right

With the public increasingly divided about how governments should respond to the influx of people escaping violent conflict, it’s crucial that the pervasive myths peddled by right-wing extremists are exposed for what they are: bigotry, hyperbole and outright lies designed to exacerbate fear and discord within society.

Forced migration is a global phenomenon and, compared with other continents, Europe is not being subjected to the ‘invasion of refugees’ widely portrayed in the mainstream media. Of the world’s 60 million refugees, nine out of ten are not seeking asylum in the EU, and the vast majority remain displaced within their own countries. Most of those that do settle in Europe will return to their country of origin when they are no longer at risk (as happened at the end of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s when 70% of refugees who had fled to Germany returned to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Albania and Slovenia).

The real emergency is taking place outside of Europe, where there is a desperate need for more assistance from the international community. For example, Turkey is now home to over 3 million refugees; Jordan hosts 2.7 million refugees – a staggering 41 percent of its population; and Lebanon has 1.5 million Syrian refugees who make up a third of its population. Unsurprisingly, social and economic systems are under severe strain in these and the other countries that host the majority of global refugees – especially since they are mainly based in developing countries with soaring unemployment rates, inadequate welfare systems and high levels of social unrest. In stark comparison (and with the notable exception of Germany), the 28 relatively prosperous EU member states have collectively pledged to resettle a mere 160,000 of the one million refugees that entered Europe in 2015. Not only does this amount to less than 0.25% of their combined population, governments have only relocated a few hundred have so far.

The spurious claim that there are insufficient resources available to share with those seeking asylum in the EU or that asylum seekers will ‘take our homes, our jobs and our welfare services’ is little more than a justification for racial discrimination. Aside from the overriding moral and legal obligation for states to provide emergency assistance to anyone fleeing war or persecution, the economic rationale for resettling asylum seekers throughout Europe (and globally) is sound: in countries experiencing declining birth rates and ageing populations – as is the case across the EU as a whole – migration levels need to be significantly increased in order to continue financing systems of state welfare.

The facts are incontrovertible: evidence from OECD countries demonstrates that immigrant households contribute $2,800 more to the economy in taxes alone than they receive in public provision. In the UK, non-European immigrants contributed £5 billion ($7.15 billion) in taxes between 2000 and 2011. They are also less likely to receive state benefits than the rest of the population, more likely to start businesses, and less likely to commit serious crimes than natives. Overall, economists at the European Commission calculate that the influx of people from conflict zones will have a positive effect on employment rates and long-term public finances in the most affected countries.

A common agenda to end austerity

If migrant families contribute significantly to society and many European countries with low birth rates actually need them in greater numbers, why are governments and a growing sector of the population so reluctant to honour international commitments and assist refugees in need? The widely held belief that public resources are too scarce to share with asylum seekers is most likely born of fear and insecurity in an age of economic austerity, when many European citizens are struggling to make ends meet.

Just as the number of people forcibly displaced from developing countries begins to surge, economic conditions in most European countries have made it politically unfeasible to provide incoming refugees with shelter and basic welfare. Voluntary and compulsory austerity measures adopted by governments after spending trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis have resulted in deep spending cuts to essential public services such as healthcare, education and pensions schemes. The resulting economic crisis has led to rising unemployment, social discontent, growing levels of inequality and public services that are being stretched to breaking point.

The same neoliberal ideology that underpins austerity in Europe is also responsible for creating widespread economic insecurity across the Global South and facilitating an exodus of so-called ‘economic migrants’, many of who are also making their way to Europe. Economic austerity has been central to the ‘development’ policies foisted onto low-income countries for decades by the IMF and World Bank in exchange for loans and international aid. They constitute a modern form of economic colonialism that in many cases has decimated essential public services, thwarted poverty reduction programmes and increased the likelihood of social unrest, sectarian violence and civil war. By prioritising international loan repayments over the basic welfare of citizens, these neoliberal policies are directly responsible for creating a steady flow of ‘refugees from globalisation’ who are in search of basic economic security in an increasingly unequal world.

Instead of pointing the finger of blame at governments for mismanaging the economy, public anger across Europe is being wrongly directed at a far easier target: refugees from foreign lands who have become society’s collective scapegoats at a time of grinding austerity. It’s high time that people in both ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ countries recognise that their hardship stems from a parallel set of neoliberal policies that have prioritised market forces above social needs. By emphasising this mutual cause and promoting solidarity between people and nations, citizens can begin overturning prejudiced attitudes and supporting progressive agendas geared towards safeguarding the common good of all humanity.

From a culture of war to conflict resolution

It’s also clear that any significant change in the substance and direction of economic policy must go hand-in-hand with a dramatic shift away from aggressive foreign policy agendas that are overtly based on securing national interests at all costs – such as appropriating the planet’s increasingly scarce natural resources. Indeed, it will remain impossible to address the root causes of the refugee crisis until the UK, US, France and other NATO countries fully accept that their misguided foreign policies are largely responsible for the current predicament.

Not only are many western powers responsible for selling arms to abusive regimes in the Middle East, their wider foreign policy objectives and military ambitions have displaced large swathes of the world’s population, particularly as a consequence of the illegal occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the ill-conceived invasion of Libya. The connection between the military interventions of recent years, the perpetuation of terrorism and the plight of refugees across the Middle East and North Africa has been succinctly explained by Professor Noam Chomsky:

“the US-UK invasion of Iraq … dealt a nearly lethal blow to a country that had already been devastated by a massive military attack twenty years earlier followed by virtually genocidal US-UK sanctions. The invasion displaced millions of people, many of whom fled and were absorbed in the neighboring countries, poor countries that are left to deal somehow with the detritus of our crimes. One outgrowth of the invasion is the ISIS/Daesh monstrosity, which is contributing to the horrifying Syrian catastrophe. Again, the neighboring countries have been absorbing the flow of refugees. The second sledgehammer blow destroyed Libya, now a chaos of warring groups, an ISIS base, a rich source of jihadis and weapons from West Africa to the Middle East, and a funnel for flow of refugees from Africa.”

After this series of blundered invasions by the US and NATO forces, which continue to destabilise an entire region, one might think that militarily powerful nations would finally accept the need for a very different foreign policy framework. No longer can governments ignore the imperative to engender trust between nations and replace the prevailing culture of war with one of peace and nonviolent means of conflict resolution. In the immediate future, the priority for states must be to deescalate emerging cold war tensions and diffuse what is essentially a proxy war in the Middle East being played out in Syria. Yet this remains a huge challenge at a time when military intervention is still favoured over compromise and diplomacy, even when common sense and experience tells us that this outdated approach only exacerbates violent conflict and causes further geopolitical instability.

Sharing the burden, responsibility and resources

Given the deplorably inadequate response from most EU governments to the global exodus of refugees thus far, the stage is set for a rapid escalation of the crisis in 2016 and beyond. Some ten million refugees are expected to make their way to Europe in 2016 alone, and this figure is likely to rise substantially with population growth in developing countries over the coming decades. But it’s climate change that will bring the real emergency, with far higher migration levels accompanied by floods, droughts and sudden hikes in global food prices.

Although largely overlooked by politicians and the mainstream media, the number of people fleeing conflict is already dwarfed by ‘environmental refugees’ displaced by severe ecological conditions – whose numbers could rise to 200 million by 2050. It’s clear that unless nations collectively pursue a radically different approach to managing forced displacement, international discord and social tensions will continue to mount and millions of additional refugees will be condemned to oversized and inhumane camps on the outer edges of civilisation.

The fundamentals of an effective and morally acceptable response to the crisis are already articulated in the Refugee Convention, which sets out the core responsibilities that states have towards those seeking asylum – even though governments have interpreted the treaty erroneously and failed to implement it effectively. In the short term, it’s evident that governments must mobilise the resources needed to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to those escaping war, regardless of where in the world they have been displaced. Like the Marshall Plan that was initiated after the Second World War, a globally coordinated emergency response to the refugee crisis will require a significant redistribution of finance from the world’s richest countries to those most in need – which should be provided on the basis of ‘enlightened self-interest’ if not from a genuine sense of compassion and altruism.

Immediate humanitarian interventions would have to be accompanied by a new and more effective system for administrating the protection of refugees in a way that is commensurate with international refugee law. In simple terms, such a mechanism could be coordinated by a reformed and revitalised UN Refugee Agency (the UNHCR) which would ensure that both the responsibility and resources needed to protect refugees is shared fairly among nations. A mechanism for sharing global responsibility would also mean that states only provide assistance in accordance with their individual capacity and circumstances, which would prevent less developed nations from shouldering the greatest burden of refugees as is currently the case.

Even though the UN’s refugee convention has already been agreed by 145 nations, policymakers in the EU seem incapable and unwilling to demonstrate any real leadership in tackling this or indeed any other pressing transnational issue. Not only does the resulting refugee fiasco demonstrate the extent to which self-interest dominates the political status quo across the European Union, it confirms the suspicion that the union as a whole is increasingly devoid of social conscience and in urgent need of reform.

Thankfully, ordinary citizens are leading the way on this critical issue and putting elected representatives to shame by providing urgent support to refugee families in immediate need of help. In their thousands, volunteers stationed along Europe’s boarders have been welcoming asylum seekers by providing much needed food, shelter and clothing, and have even provided search and rescue services for those who have risked their lives being trafficked into Europe in rubber dinghies. Nowhere is this spirit of compassion and generosity more apparent than on Lesbos and other Geek islands, where residents have been collectively nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for their humanitarian efforts.

The selfless actions of these dedicated volunteers should remind the world that people have a responsibility and a natural inclination to serve one another in times of need – regardless of differences in race, religion and nationality. Instead of building militarised borders and ignoring popular calls for a just and humanitarian response to the refugee crisis, governments should take the lead from these people of goodwill and prioritise the needs of the world’s most vulnerable above all other concerns. For European leaders and policymakers in all countries, it’s this instinctively humane response to the refugee crisis – which is based firmly on the principle of sharing – that holds the key to addressing the whole spectrum of interconnected social, economic and environmental challenges in the critical period ahead.

Image credit: Freedom House, Flickr public domain

The post The global refugee crisis: humanity’s last call for a culture of sharing and cooperation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

An edited version of this article first appeared in Tikkun Magazine, the interfaith (and secular-humanist) voice of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. You can subscribe to Tikkun at www.tikkun.org and join the Network of Spiritual Progressives by visiting www.spiritualprogressives.org.

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.

This is the approach we have taken at Share The World’s Resources (STWR), where we place 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.”

These are views that the US-based Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) no doubt broadly share, as they relate to the need for a new ‘bottom line’ 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.

Image credit: Shutterstock

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As geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East and the world teeters on the brink of a new Cold War, it’s clear that the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear warfare is for governments to fulfil their long-held commitment to the “general and complete disarmament” of nuclear weapons – permanently. A bold and essential step towards this crucial goal is to decommission Trident, the UK’s ineffective, unusable and costly nuclear deterrent submarines. Renewing Trident would not only undermine international disarmament efforts for years to come, it will reinforce the hazardous belief that maintaining a functional nuclear arsenal is essential for any nation seeking to wield power on the world stage.

Needless to say, modern nuclear bombs are many times more destructive than those dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War, and would result in a host of immeasurably devastating impacts on the natural world and human life if they were deployed today. The extent to which nuclear weapons currently proliferate the globe is therefore alarming and underscores the need for radical action on this critical issue. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, nine countries (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possess a total of 16,000 nuclear weapons, of which 4,300 are deployed with operational forces and 1,800 are “kept in a state of high operational alert” – which means they can be launched within a 5 to 15-minute timeframe if necessary.

However, these figures don’t tell the full story. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, five other European nations host US nuclear weapons on their territory as part of a NATO agreement, and 23 additional countries rely on US nuclear capabilities for their national security. Furthermore, the spread of nuclear technology and the illicit trade in nuclear weapons means that any state can potentially develop or purchase nuclear-grade weapons, which confirms the widely held view that a number of other nations unofficially harbour nuclear warheads, and many more could do so in the years ahead.

Fading visions of nuclear disarmament

The abundance of nuclear weapons and related technology highlights the weakness of the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has only made limited progress on nuclear disarmament since its inception in 1968 despite near universal membership. With high levels of nuclear stockpiles still in existence, there is also a very real risk of unintended but deadly consequences. According to a report by The Royal Institute of International Affairs, there have been 13 instances of nuclear bombs being ‘accidently’ deployed since 1962 by Russia, the US and other countries – mainly due to technical malfunctions or breakdowns in communication. As international disarmament efforts diminish, such risks are set to increase alongside the growing likelihood of targeted terrorist attacks on existing nuclear facilities.

It’s clear that Trident, like every other nuclear weapons system, is a relic of a bygone age that simply cannot guarantee the safety of any nation at a time when global terrorism and climate change pose a far more urgent threat to national security than other states with nuclear weapons. As the columnist Simon Jenkins puts it, “All declared threats to Britain tend to come either from powers with no conceivable designs on conquering Britain or from forces immune to deterrence.” Indeed, most countries of the world (including 25 NATO states) don’t maintain their own nuclear stockpiles, and yet they have been just as successful in ‘deterring’ nuclear war as the UK.

Moreover, the International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law, which means that their use would be illegal in virtually any situation. Given that it is close to unimaginable that a so-called world leader would ever deploy nuclear weapons (on ethical and legal grounds, as well as for fear of retaliatory consequences) their value as an effective deterrent is unjustifiable and deeply flawed. The farcical arguments employed to rationalise building and maintaining such weapon systems are amusingly summarised in a Yes, Prime Minister comedy sketch from 1986, which aired soon after Margret Thatcher first inaugurated the Trident missile system in the UK:

Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.

Hacker: I don’t want to obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.

Sir Humphrey: But it’s a deterrent.

Hacker: It’s a bluff. I probably wouldn’t use it.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don’t know that you probably wouldn’t.

Hacker: They probably do.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn’t. But they can’t certainly know.

Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn’t.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn’t, they don’t certainly know that, although you probably wouldn’t, there is no probability that you certainly would.

Redistributing vital public resources

Given that the nine nuclear-armed governments together spend an astounding $100bn a year on nuclear forces (mainly via private corporations), those who play a significant role in sustaining this appalling industry are also likely to be profiting handsomely from it. In the UK, for example, strong support for renewing Trident comes from the lucrative and influential defence industry as well as the many banks, insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers that invest heavily in companies producing nuclear weapon systems. According to some calculations, 15 percent of members in the UK’s House of Lords “have what can be deemed as ‘vested interests’ in either the corporations involved in the programme or the institutions that finance them”.

In both moral and economic terms, spending such vast amounts of public money on producing these weapons of mass destruction is tantamount to theft as long as austerity-driven governments profess to lack the funding needed to safeguard basic human needs and ensure that all people have sufficient access to essential public services. While estimates for the cost of renewing Trident vary considerably, it is likely that the initial outlay will be in the region of £30-40bn ($42-56bn), although this figure could rise to as much as £167bn ($234bn) over the course of its lifetime.

Rather than wasting these vast sums on the inhumane machinery of warfare, some of it could be used to provide emergency assistance to desperate refugees and asylum seekers that the Tory government has shamefully neglected, or to shore up overseas aid budgets that are being syphoned away to cover domestic refugee-related expenses. As the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calculate, if £100bn ($140bn) from the Trident budget was spent bolstering vital public services instead, it would be enough to “fully fund A&E services for 40 years, employ 150,000 new nurses, build 1.5 million affordable homes, build 30,000 new primary schools, or cover tuition fees for 4 million students.”

In light of the pressing need to decommission nuclear stockpiles and redistribute public resources in a way that truly serves the (global) common good, the upcoming vote in the UK Parliament on renewing Trident presents an important opportunity for campaigners and concerned citizens to raise our voice for a just and peaceful future. Many thousands of protesters are expected to unite on the streets of London this Saturday 27th February in a joint demand to end the UK’s Trident program and share public resources more equitably. As CND point out in their scrap trident campaign, it’s high time the UK government complies with its obligation under international law to eliminate our nuclear arsenal: “By doing so we would send a message to the world that spending for peace and development and meeting people’s real needs is our priority, not spending on weapons of mass destruction.”

• Sign CND’s scrap Trident petition
• Watch the scrap trident campaign film

Image credit: Surian Soosay, Flickr create commons

The post Scrapping Trident and transitioning to a nuclear-free world appeared first on P2P Foundation.

• STWR’s overview of the day’s discussions is available here.
• Read the World Goodwill newsletter where this transcript was originally published.

Why is there a need for sharing?

The reality is that we are in the midst of a global emergency. We have all heard the statistics: how the richest 1% of the world population will soon own as much as everybody else in terms of assets and wealth. There is essentially a growing level of inequality in the world, and going against the general understanding, there are actually more people living in poverty than ever before. The situation with climate change was in the news recently. We know that we have already exceeded the 1 degree increase in global average temperatures and we are on course for a 4 degrees increase by the end of the century. And there is an escalation of conflicts over scarce resources. So we need to find ways of globally sharing wealth and natural resources more equally and in a way that is cooperative and doesn’t lead to conflict.

What is the right way to structure the market: should it be through limited companies, or are there other models that are more able to share in an equitable fashion? Put in another way, will we have iPhones in paradise?

I think there is a problem when it comes to companies growing in size to the extent that they become the Apples of the world. I admit, I have an iPhone and I am pragmatic in that respect, we need what we need. But I think we need to be careful about this idea of abundance and recognise that it is not just necessarily a material abundance that we should be after but a spiritual abundance. Abundance for me is ensuring that everybody has access to what they need to survive and to live. We have to recognise that at the moment we are consuming natural resources 50% faster than the earth can replenish them. The planet is in ecological overshoot. So, if we really want abundance, we need sustainable abundance. We need to use resources within the finite carrying capacity of the planet.

What is the eco-economy model that will lead us further?

In a nutshell, it is an economy based on the principle of sharing, whereby we recognise that there is one planet worth of resources that we need to share and we distribute the resources in such a way that all people’s needs are met. There are many reports from ecological economists, and Oxfam has published a report referred to as ‘the Doughnut report’ that looks at planetary and social boundaries. We just need to bear in mind the reality of abundance. 75% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day. That is not what they can spend in their own country, but what that $10 can buy in America. And there are 47,000 people who die every day because they don’t have access to the basics. So we need to temper this idea of abundance with the reality of the world situation.

I am sure many people have heard about the commons movement which proposes a third category of ownership. Everything that is essential to life would be shared, everything outside this could be publicly or privately owned. Do you see any hope of this happening and how?

Essentially I agree that the commons movement embodies an aspect of sharing, and there are many other examples that take a similar approach, whether we talk about the transition town movement or local currencies. The problem we have and the reason that things are getting worse is because even though there is a recognition that sharing is fundamentally who we are and therefore must be how we organise ourselves, the systems and institutions and policies which underpin the way that the economy works are all based on the old ways of self-interest. There is an idea of homo economicus, this idea that we are all self-interested, competitive, individualistic, utility maximisers. It is this idea that still informs policy making, not only within our country, but even global institutions. How does this emerging tendency towards sharing and commoning express itself in a world which is still underpinned by the fabric of national self-interest, competition and greed?

What keeps coming to me is community. It possibly falls within all of us to create that community of sharing. Do you believe that we will need to come out of this paradigm or is it individuals that will take the community and develop that within themselves? 

My short answer is that we need both. There is already this growing movement towards creating the alternative, and I already mentioned the transition towns, the commons movement, the sharing economy and the gift economy and everything else. This is great and very empowering for individuals and communities to connect with each other using new ways of organising. But it is not enough, it doesn’t change the system. We also need to reclaim democracy. We need to rethink how the world’s resources are redistributed, because there are massive political issues there, there are structural issues that need to be addressed. By us coming out of the system and creating the alternative, we are not going to address these structural political, social, economic issues at all levels of society and it is really important that we do both. Often we have people who are working for transformational change, structural change, justice etc. who aren’t engaged in creating the alternative and vice versa. We need to link both of these approaches.

I am all for sharing but how it is to be done matters. I have this company and I have this top job going for £100.000 and I will ask for applications and 27 applications come. Only one will get in, the other 26 will remain unemployed, so what do I do? In India they say you should renounce everything, sell everything. We have done a lot of experiments in society with sharing and welfare, with a lot of unintended consequences. What can we do differently about sharing so there aren’t any unintended consequences from sharing?

There is a massive shift globally towards not-for-profit models and co-operatives, where decision-making is more evenly distributed among stakeholders, and profits are shared more evenly amongst stakeholders too, they are not extracted by shareholders. These sort of models have been emerging for a very long time and there are 1 billion people globally who are now part of a co-operative. The second question around how do we share, there is literature here, you can go to our website, there are different ideas on how to establish systems that are broadly in line with the principle of sharing. Also, systems of welfare and social protection, there are problems with them, but essentially they are far better than not having them. They are very important in the developing world, where many countries are still lacking effective systems of welfare and social protection. So it is really important to strengthen and scale up these mechanisms within counties, and we need such systems in place globally as well. Exactly how we go about that is almost a secondary discussion, because at the moment we are moving in exactly the opposite direction. We need to demand something different and that is happening globally.

The point I am going to make is, to me the word share is a 2-way thing, somehow the sharing has to retain the self-respect of the person that is shared with to enable them to give something back to retain their self-respect. Your organisation hopefully enables us to move on from that muddle that is just donating.

This is not about charity, it is not about giving individually. In fact there is a lot of literature that suggests that charity is part of the problem, because it maintains the status quo. The issue is justice, sharing really means justice. Our focus is how to create a just and sustainable world. It is about creating the economic, social and political systems that systemically embody the principle of sharing.

Your founder wrote a report that focuses on how article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could be used, and this goes back to justice, as a touchstone for how you would establish systems of sharing. 

We are still exploring and developing this idea. The real question is how do we create change? We do need a global movement of citizens who are on the streets demanding change from their governments. There is evidence to suggest that the number of protests for social and economic justice have really escalated over the last decades, and we need people who are coming together with their heart open in the spirit of sharing, demanding common sense from their governments. Article 25 states that everybody has the right to the essentials of life. This is nowhere obvious in the world, in probably no country in the world. If we can’t even achieve that, what hope have we of addressing climate change? So this has got to be the starting point.

A lot of people talk about a coming global economic crash. How do you see something emerging from that to create a new economy?Also, someone mentioned humanity being at a turning point in terms of more people awakening to the Christ Consciousness. My question has to do with the concept of ownership and stewardship. How does your organisation bring the concept of stewardship into the concept of sharing?

I think that when we talk about ownership we think about my iPhone, but there are things that clearly need to be stewarded rather than owned by the nations of the world or local communities. That is what the commons is focused on. The stewardship of common resources is not about ownership; but that doesn’t mean that we can’t own our own table and chairs. That is a different level of ownership. When it comes to things that really matter in the world, stewardship is preferable over ownership. On the bigger question on how change happens, the manifestation of the Christ principle, the realisation that we are one humanity, we are heading there. It could be, sadly, that another global economic crisis, a big crash, could catalyse that process. If that does happen, then we either resurrect the old system and it happens again, or we work together democratically to hash out a new system based on different principles, and undoubtedly sharing has to be part of that discussion.

Three points, first, how about the new ways of sharing that we see that align with the law of least resistance, for example AirBnB, Uber for instance. Secondly, your view on mobile phones provoked me a little bit. Especially in Africa the mobile phones are a very strong driver of increased justice, and distribution of new technology such as access to micro loans and the penetration of access to mobile phones in many countries in Africa is up to 80%, they leapfrogged beyond many things to get there. The third point relates to your comments on stewardship. The place to start with sharing is knowledge and education. 

Firstly, sharing is absolutely very much part of what it means to be human: evidence from anthropological and behavioural sciences demonstrates that sharing and cooperation is hardwired into us from a very early age. From an evolutionary perspective we wouldn’t have been able to evolve as a species if we weren’t able to share. In terms of AirBnB and Uber, they call themselves sharing economies, I take some issue with that, they are essentially renting rather than sharing. Mobile phones, yes you are right, there is a difference between the pragmatic use of mobile phones where necessary as a way of helping development, and our throwing away our phones every few months for the latest model, that is a massive waste of resources. There is a better way of doing it.

Do you have any final comments? 

We need to consider how we can become involved in trying to create the alternative, and in demanding change from our governments. If Christ was in the world today, surely he too would be demanding justice for those people who currently don’t have access to the resources that we take for granted? There are 17 million people who die needlessly every year, and fortunately, there are millions of NGOs, civil society organisations and campaigns out there, providing anyone who wishes to serve with abundant opportunities.

Image credit: Pinterest

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During the course of 2015, the continued success of Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit and other commercial giants of the so-called sharing economy provoked a robust critique from environmentalists, social activists and other commentators about the nature and purpose of this fast-emerging new economic model.

In broad terms, the contours of this increasingly nuanced debate are clear: some advocates assert that the sharing economy has the potential to prefigure a post-capitalist future by dramatically reforming the way goods and services are owned, produced, exchanged and consumed. Others remark that sharing economy platforms often commercialise social functions that are traditionally undertaken for free, and are restructuring the nature of employment along far more precarious lines. Put simply, the dispute hinges on whether or not the sharing economy challenges or merely reinforces the fundamentals of neoliberalism.

These contrasting viewpoints have been catalogued and examined in a recent paper by Chris Martin published in the journal Ecological Economics, in which he also reviews a range of perspectives expressed by Share The World’s Resources (STWR), Shareable, OuiShare and other organisations that comment regularly on this topic. His research mainly serves to map the full diversity of opinions on the sharing economy, and it provides a useful overview of the wider discourse in that respect – albeit in an academic format.

The author rightly identifies STWR’s concern that sharing economy platforms often reinforce a narrow and highly individualistic economic paradigm, and that proponents of sharing should therefore align their activities to the more progressive vision of establishing a ‘sharing society’. In Martin’s analysis, a sharing society is “built upon resource sharing at the local and national scales (e.g. public services) and at the international scale (e.g.  transferring resources from developed to developing countries)”. He goes on to explain that making a convincing case for establishing a truly sharing society will require advocating for “the values of social justice, environmental justice and equality”.

Moving towards a sharing society

Despite concerns about the commercialisation of sharing, there is growing hope that the sharing economy can emerge as a more comprehensive social and political concept that can be employed to reshape entire cities along more sustainable lines, and even improve access to public services. As Duncan Mclaran explains in a recent article, “the sharing economy and its intermediaries are only a part of a broader sharing paradigm. Sharing fundamentally relies on reconnecting people and rebuilding social capital, it offers a vehicle for rediscovering public services such as libraries, as well as creating new community facilities such as shared kitchens and workspaces.”

These themes are more fully explored in the book Sharing Cities (co-written by Mclaren and Julian Agyeman), in which the authors explore case studies of the growing list of cities that are adopting the sharing economy model on a municipal basis. Drawing on these examples, they argue that the ethos and practice of sharing does have the potential to challenge neoliberal capitalism by building urban commons, shifting human values, and fostering more civic engagement and political activism.

It will be interesting to see how the sharing economy debate unfolds in 2016, especially in light of a deteriorating global economic situation in which the demand for a more just and sustainable global economy is likely to be on the rise. For STWR, it’s therefore more important than ever that this important conversation about how to integrate the principle of sharing into the way we organise society takes a global perspective, one that is based on the urgent need to address the pressing social and environmental challenges confronting humanity.

As we highlight on our sharing economy resources webpage, “the growing support for the sharing economy indeed has the potential to change the way we understand and address the many crises we face, but it has to be a genuine form of economic sharing that addresses the power structures and politics that maintain an unjust status quo.”

For more information about STWR’s perspectives on the future direction of the sharing economy, please visit our sharing economy page, where you can find a full list of relevant articles and blogs. 

Image credit: Flickr creative commons

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There is no true ambition or justice in a global climate deal that undermines the principles of sharing, equity and justice. But after the ‘COP-out’ negotiations in Paris, there is still every hope that the growing power of the people’s voice can usher in a more equal and sustainable world.

Now that all the world leaders, diplomats, lobbyists, and NGOs have returned home after COP21, environmental campaigners are still taking stock of the new climate deal agreed in Paris. In many ways, the newspaper headlines heralding a ‘major leap for mankind’ and ‘the world’s greatest diplomatic success’ were justified. The aspirational goal to keep temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is certainly more ambitious than expected, and much has been made of the ultimate goal of ‘net-zero human emissions’ in the second half of this century.

Despite the fanfare, however, it’s impossible to call the Paris Agreement an actual success in terms of environmental sustainability or global justice. Green groups have widely argued that the 1.5C aspiration is meaningless without concrete measures for hitting it, while the individual emissions reductions promised by world powers will not be sufficient to prevent global temperatures rising beyond 2C. We are still headed for a catastrophic rise of 3C, and even these existing pledges are not legally binding. So far from being ambitious in any real sense, there are no longer binding targets or meaningful carbon cuts obligated on rich countries—which is almost a step backwards from the Kyoto Protocol (itself deemed inadequate in 1997).

There is also no justice in an agreement in which no new money is pledged to help developing countries adapt to climate change and move beyond fossil fuels. The pre-existing pledge of $100 billion per year of climate finance is about one quarter of the sums needed, according to civil society analysis, and this again is non-legally binding and couched in vague language. As campaigners have long reasoned, it is not a question of aid, loans or charity; it is about the historical debt of rich countries to the majority world. Yet this was far from the basis of the Paris negotiations, where the obligation was shifted back onto poor countries and proposals for climate reparations were pushed off limits. At the same time, the final agreement dropped any reference to human rights or Indigenous rights in the main text.

A growing call for ‘fair shares’

On a more positive note, a global call for sharing is now a central theme among civil society activists who focus on environmental justice issues. Indeed the crunch point in the Paris talks involved—as ever—the vexed issue of how to share responsibility for climate change between developed and developing countries. Campaigners have meticulously articulated how fairness and equity is key to the success of any climate negotiations, as reflected in the major ‘fair shares’ civil society review of government pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Demands for rich countries to remember their #FairShares at COP21 was even a rallying cry of protesters who staged actions outside the talks.

As anticipated, the final agreement did not include a clear reference to a global carbon budget as a basis for targets, which is imperative for any discussion about how to fairly share the Earth’s atmospheric space between rich and poor countries. The talks spelled out no vision of equity or fairness; on the contrary, the United States did everything it could to undermine the landmark principle of equity in the UNFCCC negotiations—known as Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities—by using bullying tactics and bribery to get its way.

Instead of addressing the root causes of climate change and committing to the measures needed to reduce inequality and overconsumption, most world leaders continue to sanction an unjust economic system that is fuelled by fossil fuel extraction. There is an obvious contradiction in major industrialised nations signing the Paris deal on one hand, while pushing for environmentally damaging trade deals such as the TTIP and TPP on the other. As widely pointed out, there was no mentioning in the text of the word ‘fossil fuel’ (let alone the need to keep 80% of fossil fuels in the ground), and there was no reference to the global military industrial complex that is next to the fossil fuel industry in its global GHG emissions.

The polluters’ great escape

The latest climate agreement will be remembered in history as “the Polluters’ Great Escape”, according to one progressive analyst, since it weakens the rules on rich countries and promises no fundamental changes in how the global economy is structured. Far from discussing the difficult political, economic and social changes that are needed to tackle climate change in the near and longer term, the door is also opened once again to carbon markets and other false solutions that suit big corporations.

For all these reasons and many others, the real hope for building a more just and sustainable economic system falls ever more firmly on the shoulders of ordinary, engaged citizens. The last words of many environmental activists following COP21 can only be repeated: that the main obstacles to change are not scientific or technical, but social and political. That history will not be made in convention centres and government institutions, but on the streets in massive peaceful protests and direct actions. That we as people of goodwill are not yet strong enough to dismantle the power of global corporations, but there is increasing evidence that the movement for transformative systemic change is growing apace.

So even if the Paris Agreement failed to reflect the principles of sharing, justice and equity in anything near to their true form of global expression, the great challenge of the 21st century—to fairly distribute the planet’s resources within environmental constraints—has never been more clear or urgent.

As STWR’s Mohammed Mesbahi comments: “There are many committed activists who campaign with passion and intelligence about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, to switch to renewable energy resources, to protect the commons, to live more simply and so forth. But they are a comparatively small number of people trying to do a job that requires the backing of the whole population. They’re on their own trying to do the job for everyone else, which doesn’t make sense when you listen to the warnings from scientists who say we’re heading for a climate catastrophe. Those scientists are not just talking to the governments: they are talking to us, you and me, the people of the world.

“Every family should be its own government when it comes to environmental issues today. We should become our own presidents and prime ministers who each plays their part in working to save our planet, as if we are all ambassadors for humanity.

“Most of all, we must carry on organising more protest actions, until those protests catch on and get bigger and bigger. We have observed how world leaders make many promises during these global summits, then go home and put on another mask for the business of making profits for global corporations. Hence we have to persist until those politicians understand that their agenda of commercialisation is incompatible with protecting and healing the environment.

“We have to scale up our existing demands for shifting money away from fossil fuels and armaments, towards climate finance and renewable energies. We know we have all the technology, all the ingenuity, all the money. But governments will not shift their priorities without enormous pressure from the public that is expressed through constant and peaceful mobilisations.”

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