OneWorld.net (U.S.)

OneWorld.net's take: While the worldwide financial meltdown might keep wealthy countries from meeting their economic commitments to developing ones, the crisis may also lead to a rethink of the global economic system and increase solidarity between ordinary people worldwide, says the chief of a global citizens' organization.

• The $600 billion in rescue packages provided recently by Central Banks in Britain, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Russia, and India could have wiped out hunger from the face of the planet, says food and trade policy analyst Devinder Sharma, adding: "The additional $900 billion that the United States has spent in the past one year could have pulled out the world's estimated 2 billion poor from perpetual poverty, and that too on a long-term sustainable basis. The $700 billion bailout package that George Bush is promising could have wiped out the last traces of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and squalor from the face of the Earth."

• Despite the financial turmoil, some U.S. lawmakers are taking action against world hunger. The recently introduced Lugar-Casey Food Security Act aims to create an emergency food security fund and also authorize funding to aid agricultural infrastructures in developing countries.

• OneWorld.net's food crisis alert will keep you up to date with the latest news, background information, and groups working on hunger around the world.

Financial meltdown or tipping point?

From: CIVICUS (World Alliance for Citizen Participation)

Issued Date: e-CIVICUS 409, 03 October 2008

© CIVICUSDear friends and colleagues,

Did you, like me, watch the recent developments in the world’s financial markets with bemusement? Were you tempted to satirise Churchill and say, “Never in the field of human endeavour has so much pain been inflicted on so many by so few”? Did you yet again wonder what the prevalent exchange rate in human distress is – how many poor lives lost, or childhoods irreversibly stunted, does it take to generate the level of outrage and urgent action that are instantly mobilised to save a failing bank? Was your brain numbed by the staggering sums of money somehow found to bail out these citadels of power and privilege when minuscule fractions of those amounts have not been available to prevent starvation deaths, reduce maternal mortality, prevent conflict, treat disease or even to alleviate the pressures on the middle-classes? Were you struck by the thought that the remedies being prescribed sounded a lot like trying to cure obesity by buying bigger sized clothes?

Did you find yourself hoping against the odds that some thought might finally be given to the fundamental dysfunction and injustice of an economic system designed to privatise gains and socialise losses? That once the immediate crisis is at bay, basic assumptions about the sanctity of unfettered markets, trickle-down theories and myths of self-regulation might finally be seriously challenged? That average citizens in the developed world might finally have had enough of being treated as if they’re too stupid or ignorant to know what’s in their best interests and feel some solidarity with the billions in the global South whose fates are determined in that manner every day? 

Did you wonder whether this crisis represents a tipping point in achieving some understanding of our fundamental connectedness as a species and the need to prioritise the greater common good over the interests of a few? And those technocratic approaches that presume to exclude those most impacted by policy decisions from their formulation might finally be forever discredited? Or that the media could now be held to account over the silencing of the voices that have been warning of the impending disaster while they’ve been celebrating the excesses and extolling the virtues of unlimited greed? That we might apply some learning from this tipping point to the looming planetary one the climate scientists have been crying themselves hoarse about?

Did you lose sleep over the very real prospect that the chances we’re going to meet the long-overdue commitments on development assistance and the MDGs just got even slimmer? But that the many calls for statespersonship from leaders might prevail over narrow, short-term, partisan political interests?

Are you too scouring the lowering clouds for silver linings?

With gratitude, faith and solidarity,

Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General