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Blueprint for a future |
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'Time to Replace Globalisation with Localisation' - extracted from a paper by Colin Hines, the author of the Earthscan book
‘Localization – a global manifesto’.
The GATT rules administered by the WTO should be revised fundamentally
to become a General Agreement for Sustainable Trade (GAST),
administered by a democratic World Localization Organization (WLO).
Their remit would be to ensure that regional trade and international
aid policies and flows, information and technological transfer, as well
as the residual international investment and trade, would incorporate
rules geared to the building up of sustainable local economies. The
goal would be to foster maximum employment through a substantial
increase in sustainable, regional self-reliance.
Trade union leaders are echoing the agenda of big business by calling
for acceptance of the job destroying policies of the free movement of
goods, capital and labour. Companies such as Aviva (formerly Norwich
Union) appear to be taking them at their word as they sacked 4000
UK workers, a quarter of them due to relocation of call centres to
India.
The three main political parties also call for open markets and the
inevitability of bowing the knee to international competitiveness.
Accompanying this counsel of despair there will almost certainly be
more corporate press releases heralding more job losses that will
damage social and community fabric and harm the environment by
increasing the transportation of goods.
A more hopeful message for the protection of jobs, the social fabric,
community cohesion and the environment would be one of localisation,
the protecting and rebuilding of local economies rather than gearing
economies to out-compete each other internationally. Everything that
can sensibly be produced within a nation or a region should be.
Long-distance trade is then reduced to supplying what could not come
from within one country or geographical grouping of countries, the
historic role of such trade.
Localisation is not about restricting the flow of information,
technology, trade and investment, management and legal structures, but
about a different end goal for such activities.
Globalisation has a clear end goal: maximum trade and money flows for
maximum profit. From localisation’s end goal comes a clear set of
policies and trade rules which would ensure a more just, secure,
environmentally sustainable future through localisation.
There would not be a return to overpowering state control, merely the
provision of government policy providing an economic framework which
allows people, community groups and businesses to rediversify their own
local economies.
The route to localization consists of seven interrelated and self-reinforcing policy areas. The basic steps are:
reintroduction of protective safeguards such as tariffs and quotas for domestic economies;
a site-here-to-sell-here policy for manufacturing and services domestically or regionally;
localising money such that the majority stays within its place of origin;
local competition policy to eliminate monopolies from the more protected economies;
introduction of resource taxes to increase environmental improvements and help fund the transition to localisation;
increased democratic involvement both politically and economically to
ensure the effectiveness and equity of the movement to more diverse
local economies;
reorientation of the end goals of aid and trade rules such that
they contribute to the rebuilding of local economies and local control.
Under these circumstances, beggar-your-neighbour globalization gives way to better-your–neighbour localization.
Such an approach will also help developing countries who, like us, are
told that the only way forward is to downgrade efforts to improve their
local conditions and instead contort their economies to compete with
the likes of China and India. The impossibility of such a strategy is
already obvious in areas like textiles and shoes, soon this will widen
to an ever-increasing range of low and high tech goods and services.
The leaders of rich countries see their future in dominating the global
high tech sector. This ignores the fact that China and India are fast
developing their own highly skilled but low cost expertise in
these high value added areas. Almost 20% of China’s exports are already
classified as high-tech, and with two million graduates a year there’s
every reason to believe that this percentage will grow.
Politicians who assert that Europe can win such an economic race, and
in the process secure the future funding of Europe’s social model,
should be challenged to spell out exactly what it is that Europe will
still be able to export, rather than import from China, and other cheap
labour, hi-tech competitors. Also, given the rising tide of Chinese
imports, and resulting European job losses and declining tax revenue,
what are the implications for public sector finances.
Trade could make a valuable contribution to achieving job and food
security and poverty alleviation globally, but to achieve this,
international competitiveness and reductions in trade barriers have to
be replaced by a combination of internationalism together with new
rules to allow elected governments to protect their domestic
agriculture, industry and services. The gradual reintroduction of
import controls, allied to domestic policies and redirected aid and
trade rules that prioritise the rediversification of local economies
world-wide, is the only way to protect livelihoods and reduce poverty.
This involves replacing the present emphasis on gearing economies
globally to out-compete each other with a new goal of maximising self
reliance and ensuring that trade rules are governed by a pro poor
approach.
For example: to give effective help to Africa’s poor producers of cash
crops it is vital to make sure that the exporting nations and their
producers have as secure a level of earnings as is feasible. To achieve
this will require measures to ensure that guaranteed quantities of -
say - coffee from specified exporting countries are purchased by
specified buying countries. The transactions must also take place
within a guaranteed range of prices. This would provide economic
security for all, not only for the rich north. Poor countries could
also then prioritise the meeting of their basic needs rather than the
provision of ever-cheaper exports.
In response to their restive and increasingly insecure populations,
governments are likely to return to protective barriers. But this
features nowhere at present in the thinking of leading politicians in
this country, though some American politicians and unionists are
pressing for protection. The present Government’s supportive
acquiescence to evermore open markets will really sink any chance of a
fairer and more secure future for Britain. UK manufacturing is
disappearing to Asia and Eastern Europe, followed by call centres and
other services and yet the idea persists that our future lies in
out-competing Asia in hi-tech exports - truly the final colonial
delusion.
Globalisation’s increasingly adverse effects will eventually result in
massive public support for a party that offers protection and security
from this process. #
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