Bretton Woods

THE G20 AND THE WS20:

TWO DECLARATIONS BUT ONE WORLD

Which World is the Real World?

AN AFTERWORD BY THE WS20 CONVENER

 

A review of the G20 Cannes Declaration and the parallel WS20 Declaration gives the impression that there are two different worlds. The world of the G20 is one where the problem is economic instability and financial insecurity, and the remedy is to re-stabilize the economy and overcome the financial crisis. The world of the WS20 Declaration is a world where seven billion people share a small and highly exploited planet and face the urgent need to share it cooperatively, peacefully, and sustainably.

In the WS20 world economic and financial issues are not the real problem: they are manifestations and consequences of the real problem. The real problem is the way the social, political, economic, financial, and cultural system of this planet evolved in the last several decades. This is a multidimensional system that has come to be unilaterally dominated by the economy. In the dominant feature of the system the function of money is to make money, and without money fulfilling this function the system collapses: its persistence depends essentially on accumulating wealth for a powerful minority. However, the continued concentration of wealth entails the progressive marginalization of the majority, and the progressive overexploitation of natural resources and degeneration of the environment.

The growth required for the viability of the system has an endemic problem: it generates social and cultural crises, catalyzes political upheavals—and produces economic instability and financial crises. Concentrating on the latter is like trying to cure the symptom while leaving the malady out of account. Yet this is precisely what the leaders of the twenty richest and most powerful countries of the world propose to do.

The G20’s approach is at best a band-aid covering a festering wound. It will not work even in the medium-term; at the most it will postpone the onset of one or another crisis. But if the processes the trigger the crises continue unchecked, the next crisis will be greater and less amenable to temporary fixes.

For this reason the WS20 recommends that the G20 appoint an independent body composed of ethical and insightful individuals to examine the root causes of the problem and recommend effective measure for coping with it. The Independent Advisory Council (IAC) would make its findings available to the G20 at its 2012 Mexico Summit, and the G20 would place the review of the findings on the Summit’s agenda. The Independent Advisory Council’s findings would be made available to the general public, since in the final count in a democracy it is the people who are to lead. Through the IAC the WS20 intends to provide the information the people need to lead wisely and effectively. 

In the WS20’s view if real progress is to be made toward building a peaceful, equitable, and sustainable world, there is no alternative to this approach.

(Ervin Laszlo, November 8, 2011)