By Vandana Shiva
22 February 2002
On 30th Jan 2002, the U. N. General Assembly proposed a `Draft outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development" for the Financing for Development Summit to be held in Monterrey, Mexico, on 21 and 22nd March 2002.
The "Monterrey Consensus"
has the following "leading actions".
Mobilizing domestic financial resources.
All the actions point to acceleration of economic globalisation and widening of the gaps between rich and poor. It is not about mobilizing finances for people's development and sustainable development but mobilizing public resources for private sector benefits.
The action of "mobilizing domestic financial resources for development" is not about increasing people's security, and improving livelihood and employment opportunity. Instead, mobilizing domestic resources is viewed as vital for "encouraging the private sector and attracting and making effective use of international investment".
To attract foreign direct investment "countries need to continue their efforts to achieve a transparent, stable and predictable investment climate, with proper contract enforcement and respect for property rights". In other words the Bechtels and Enrons should continue to have full opportunities to free investment, even if they bankrupt countries, their employees and even themselves. Bechtel should have the right to sue Bolivia after people's movements threw it out for privatising the water of Cochabamba and attempting to making super profits from selling water.
Enron should have a right to sue India, and claim "compensation" for electricity it could not sell from its Dabhol Power Plant because it was beyond the purchasing power of people and inspite of the project itself being another example of Enron's corrupt practices. The Monterrey consensus is about the rights of the Bechtels and Enrons, not the people of Bolivia or the people of India.
It does not address the crisis of corporate control and corporate corruption as a major source of hemorrhaging of the wealth of communities and countries. It does not address how monopolies in seeds and agricultural trade are impoverishing farmers, pushing the poor to starvation and draining rural communities of their natural and economic resources.
In spite of the evidence that globalisation, trade liberalisation and structural adjustment programmes have increased poverty and inequality and deepened underdevelopment, the Draft outcome reaffirms the commitment to trade liberalisation and states that:
increased trade and foreign direct investment could boost economic growth and could be a significant source of employment.
The Monterrey consensus is in fact coercively and undemocratically arrived at Doha consensus. As the declaration states,
to ensure that world trade supports development to the benefit of all countries, we encourage the members of the World Trade Organisation to implement the outcome of its Fourth Ministerial Conference, held in Doha, Qatar, from l9 to 14 Nov, 2001."
Official development assistance too has been made subservient to corporate globalisation:
ODA can be critical for improving the environment for private sector activity and can thus pave the way for robust growth.
There are no people in the
Monterrey declaration. The calls of Jubilee 2000 on Debt and the movement for
the Tobin Tax have found no reflection in the Monterrey consensus which focuses
on investment and trade and liberalisation. It is the MAI and Doha in the cloak
of "development". The Monterrey Summit should be called "Financing
for globalisation" not "financing for development".