Responding to a Planetary Emergency: Global Partnerships and Global Struggles

It is not just because it is 2012. The threat of radical climactic change is now not just a mere scientific proposition. The world's worst polluter, the United States, was the last victim of a severe weather disturbance - hurricane Sandy a.ka. the "Frankenstorm" - which battered New Jersey and several other states in the East Coast. Ironically, it came just weeks after defeated Republic presidential candidate Mitt Romney mocked President-elect Barack Obama for promising "to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet".

The UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 18 in Doha, Qatar on the last week of November to the first week of December this year is seen by some as our final hope to save world - our final hope to deeply cut global greenhouse gas emissions to prevent catastrophic global warming. As such, movements around the world prepared as coordinated "Global Week of Action" this week to reiterate its message to the governments of the world - in particular, to the recalcitrant governments of the North.

It is thus fortunate that I was invited to speak on "MDG 8- Global Partnership" for the “MDG Youth Training Program” being organized by MDG Achievement Fund in partnership with UP-NCPAG Student Government. The training seeks to educate university students on the MDGs and provide them an opportunity to draft an action plan for the MDGs. This is a good opportunity to encourage our students to join the Global Week of Action and champion an effective global partnership to stop climate change.

Here is my presentation:

Responding to Planetary Emergencies through Global Partnership, Global Struggles: Climate Justice and MDG 8 on Prezi

You may also click here to download. The presentation is derived from the materials of Jubilee South - Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development.

Why Change the World?

"In the end, the primary source of this deep anthropological crisis is the thinking that human beings, at their very core, are disconnected from amongst themselves and the rest of its reality."

------------------

Purpose

Don Quixote. Pablo Picasso. 1955

Since humanity appeared in the face of the earth, the earth underwent a massive transformation like any other that happened to it for over four billion years. Humanity’s curiosity transformed rocks to highways, wood to intricate sculptures, minerals to trains, ships, computers and power grids. The emergent order originally imposed by billions of years of natural selection has been replaced by an artificial, intelligent order imposed by the human mind.

A human being’s instinct is to know, to test, to explore. Whether exploring the seas and under it, or staring at the skies and beyond it into space, or traveling deep into tropical forests in order to retrieve an herb (which chemical components one can later discover by observing its cells in a microscope), or detailing the anatomical features of our bodies, or testing the limits of artistic expressions – humanity’s impulse is always to increase its understanding and discover the profundity of the universe, the human psyche, and the subconscious.

For this purpose, we develop tools to one, increase our time spent learning and exploring by efficiently producing what we need for convenient survival (e.g. food, shelter, and leisure); and two, increase our capacity to learn by developing instrumentation and computational tools to aid our process of learning (e.g. microscope, personal computers, the paintbrush). Even as we are connected to the universe, we inevitably transform it in our search for meaning and knowledge. Whether our actuations destroy or preserve the earth, for instance, is subordinated to our unquenchable thirst for understanding and its prerequisite – convenient and harmonious survival. We developed genetic engineering to mass manufacture food; upon learning that it may have adverse effects on health, we also further developed past knowledge on organic agriculture to produce healthy food. We developed hydrocarbons that fuel our four-stroke engines; we also developed ecological restoration techniques to mitigate effects of global warming.

No to World Bank in Green Climate Fund!

October 7, 2011

Blog Action Day for Climate Justice

No to World Bank in Green Climate Fund!

The World Bank is recognized as one of the main drivers of the current unsustainable economic and development model that have brought the planet at the edge of collapse. Its internal governance is undemocratic and not representing the voices of the poor countries, which suffer most of the impacts of climate change. Its policies and programs are part of the problem and cannot become today the needed solution. We must make our voices heard and get the WORLD BANK OUT OF CLIMATE FINANCE!

You too can register your opposition against World Bank's intervention on climate change financing. Just follow the four simple steps below:

1. Click here.
2. Look for the 'Sign the Email'-box.
3. Put your name, email, and organization (or country, if signing as individual)
4. Click send.

You may wish to visit the World Bank Out of Climate Finance! website here for campaign details and updates. Please see below a statement of some groups on the matter:

Two Pre-SONA Talks on the Philippine Economy (@ UP Diliman)

Economics students and would-be policy makers cannot afford to miss these two events - two talks (in the University of the Philippines Diliman) on Philippine development prospects and outlook days before President Benigno Aquino III's second State of the Nation Address (SONA). From two contending ideological camps, the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) which espouses a developmentalist state and the UP School of Economics (UPSE) which retains its neoclassical foundations, we stand to learn more about the dynamics of the Philippine economy, the interaction of government, firms, and the consumers.







See details below.

People Power and Prosperity

, I recently gave a presentation at the Forum on People Power and Poverty Reduction (Celebrating the Silver Anniversary of EDSA 1) organized last February 23, 2011 at the Institute of Social Order (ISO), Ateneo de Manila University. This was organized by several NGOs in coordination with the Cabinet Cluster on Poverty Reduction (which is composed of secretaries of DSWD, NAPC, among departments). I gave a presentation on economic alternatives (after the one by Freedom from Debt Coalition President Ric Reyes on a critique of the "EDSA Economy" - check it out here).

I began by saying that maybe, all government interventions should go beyond the meager dream of poverty reduction and the proverbial "providing food for the table". Our generation (EDSA Babies - Generation Y) ought to have dreams more ambitious than that. I then proposed that the theme of an economic alternative should be, instead of poverty reduction, prosperity - the creation of spiraling wealth that will increase incomes, employment and productivity. We should go beyond palliative economics and instead address the roots of poverty.

It is with this thought in mind that I delivered my presentation:

Towards a Modern and Prosperous Philippines on Prezi

(If it doesn't appear in your browser, try clicking the Read More link below)

The presentation was also to promote FDC's HANEP 2020 - an alternative national economic development program that focuses on creating an equitable and just Philippine society by promoting asset reform, ecologically-sound industrialization, and technological leapfrogging. The document is in its very early stages, and is currently being refined through FDC's internal processes and consultation with sectors. You can view the draft at the end of this blog entry (a Scribd document).

Conversations on the Economy

Through Facebook, three of my good friends, Bonn Juego, Marvin Beduya (please visit http://synthesistblog.com), and Michael Ocampo, and I have been discussing interesting issues on the economic profession, the economic schools of thought, the status of mainstream economics, and other thoughts on heterodox evolutionary economics (Nelson and Winter had been mentioned several times in the course of the discussions). Looking at heterodox economics is important specially in the light of its failure to aid development of Southern countries and explain the current economic ailments of the Northern developed countries.

What is considered mainstream economics? What schools of thoughts constitute the mainstream? It is instructive that mainstream economics is sometimes called as the neoclassical synthesis (the term was supposedly developed by John Hicks and popularized by Paul Samuelson), being largely Keynesian on macroeconomics and neoclassical on microeconomics. But the mainstream is still evolving, incorporating elements of Milton Friedman's Monetarism (as practiced by Paul Volcker),  new classical economics by Robert Lucas (Chicago), Thomas Sargent (Stanford), and Robert Barro (Harvard), and supply side economics promoted by the likes of Arthur Laffer and manifesting in Reaganomics and Thatcherism of the 80s.

I hope this conversation will contribute in promoting interest on the history of economic thought and starting  debates and discourses amongst Filipino economists, political-economists, and students of development on the current status of mainstream economics and alternative schools. It is now more than ever that we should discuss what constitutes an effective economic development strategy for the Philippines, and this begins with the discussion on the warring schools of economic thought.

An alternative platform by Ted Alwin Ong

Young activist James Matthew Miraflor of the Freedom from Debt Coalition painstakingly prepared a discussion paper together with his team which serves as guide for an alternative economic platform for the country.

In the social movement, this paper is now known as the National Economic Platform or “HaNEP 2020.” The document is a by-product of different analyses covering various issues which significantly affect our people and nation. By collecting and consolidating the different analyses from the country’s social and political activists, James was able to formulate a fitting alternative platform from what we have today.

The “HaNEP 2020” was submitted to President Benigno S. Aquino III by FDC as an Agenda outlining demands for changes in the debt and public finance policy, the power industry, the water sector, and government’s stance on climate negotiations and responses to climate crisis.

Read more. http://www.thenewstoday.info/2010/09/16/an.alternative.platform.html

New Economics for a new administration

by Walden Bello*

THE dominant feature of the Arroyo administration was pervasive corruption, but its most destructive legacy in the long term will probably be its policy failures.  The ascent to power of a new president, backed by a new Congress, provides the opportunity for a fundamental shift in policy in order to end poverty and relaunch the Philippines on the road to development.

The policy paradigm of the administration was one it inherited from previous administrations. This was a promarket, neoliberal approach the key prongs of which were accelerated trade and financial liberalization, deregulation and privatization.  In addition, Arroyo continued her predecessors’ policy of fully servicing the foreign debt, dealt with the ever-widening budget deficit by imposing a 12-percent value-added tax that hit mainly the middle class and the poor, and left it to the market to address poverty and income inequality.

With its promarket orientation, the Arroyo presidency followed the lead of previous administrations in refusing to pursue an industrial policy, reducing budget support for agriculture to a minimum, and radically bringing down tariffs on both agricultural and manufacturing imports. Abandoned to global market forces as the administration embraced the ideology of globalization, the economy was channeled to the massive export of labor, export-oriented, low-value-added manufacturing, particularly of electronic components, and providing personnel for the outsourced operations of transnational corporations like call centers.

Appeared in:

Perspective, Business Mirror : July 30, 2010

Viewpoints/Columns, Inquirer.net (Afterthoughts) : July 29, 2010

Freedom from Debt Coalition

FDC on SONA: Keeping an eye on Aquino’s commitment to change

PRESS STATEMENT
Freedom from Debt Coalition
11 Matimpiin St., Pinyahan, Quezon City 1100, Philippines
Phone: +63.2.921.1985 | Telefax: +63.2.924.6399 | Website: www.fdc.ph

Keeping an eye on Aquino’s commitment to change

The new administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III begins with an extremely high trust rating of 88 percent – higher than any of the post-dictatorship presidents. This is a measure of people’s belief in the commitment of the Aquino administration to reverse the anti-poor policies implemented during the regime of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. 




We in the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) submitted to the President an Agenda outlining demands for changes in the debt and public finance policy, the power industry, the water sector, and government’s stance on climate negotiations and responses to climate crisis. This is in the context of a looming fiscal crisis due to the record-breaking deficit and empty public coffers left by the Arroyo administration, electricity prices soaring past major Asian cities save Tokyo, a water crisis that is pushing Filipinos to desperate extremes, and a looming La Niña that might bring us another devastating Ondoy.

Proposals to Resolve the Recurring Oil Crisis in the Philippines

I have written a piece, originally for Palag Na! but later for Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Transportasyon (PMT), that is meant to consolidate and give a framework for proposals, both popularly demanded and what we managed to come up with, to resolve the recurring oil crisis in the Philippines. This is in the context of the oil price crisis of mid-2008. But the proposals, I think, remain valid even if the financial crisis and the global recession eroded the price of petroleum recently.

As with any alternative, the long-term and strategic changes needed is inevitably tied with the short-term and the mid-term - so the short-term measure of regulating the domestic downstream oil industry is inevitably related to the mid-term measure of supply-side management and industrial structure and the long-term vision of demand-side management towards oil independence, assuming oil to be a finite resource. Realizing these proposals, of course, must be accompanied with better service standards from the end of the transportation industry (and workers) themselves, something which can be developed later on.