During the next 25 years, the population of the earth will increase by 2 billion, 98 percent of whom will be in developing countries. And it will be impossible to handle this development the way we do now. This gloomy description by Gilles R. Garcia, Manager of the World Bank of Europe at the Norwegian Trade College yesterday ended with the observation that the planet is in danger.
For the second year in a row, the student organisation Global Economic Perspectives arranged a conference where international economic questions were put on the agenda. This year's conference looked at globalisation and who benefits from it. Among the main lecturers, in addition to Garcia, were a professor in Politics and expert on globalisation Helge Hveem, and Mary Louise Malig from the Philippines and member of the organisation Focus on the Global South and declared opponent of globalisation.
Letting
the guard down
Garcia however, put himself in the line of fire when he tried to explain why
the global conditions are even worse now than in a long time. Caught off guard
by his debating opponent, Malig, he was unwittingly open about the WB and IMF's
lack of success.
First off, he admitted that 1.2 billion people live on less than 1 dollar a day, and in Africa the per capita income is lower than in 40 years. Not only that, but the absolute poverty has increased.
He also confessed that yes, the WB has supported a long list of dictators through their programmes, and that the privatisation in Russia and in former Soviet republics is a typical example of a too rapid shift of paradigm.
His only supposed redeeming news of globalisation comes from China, where both the relative and the absolute poverty has decreased and the economic growth is considerable, Garcia said.
Dirty
money
Not unexpectedly, Garcia got more powerful criticisms from the anti-globalisationist
Mary Louise Malig, who quickly stated that the WB and the IMF through their
western idea of how things should be done, have done little else than institutionalised
poverty and stagnation.
She thundered that the G7 and IMF are to blame for the Asian crisis, that they destroy the environment through investments without consideration of local conditions, and most importantly, the IMF and WB have chosen to ignore corruption and money laundering.
Garcia, backed into a corner, once again agreed that money laundering is a serious problem:
He even supported it with his own set of statistics: 20 countries today live off money laundry, and a large part of this activity is done in the big international financial markets. So it is not without reason that the USA has worked to delete the problems of money laundry from the agenda, he said.
Garcia also said it was possible to do something about the situation and that the WB should really do their part. First of all he wants a shift of focus away from globalisation and over to the solution to global problems.
He however says that they do not have the formula and that this cannot be presently solved within each country as today's systems have proved to be of little effect. Governments, civil society and private sector have to work together in global networks, and the western world has to understand that our norms and values are not universal. If there is one thing the 11th of September has thought us, it is the importance of understanding cultural differences, he appealed.
* came out originally in Norwegian, translated into English by Sigurd Jorde