09-13-2005

GLOBALIZATION NEEDS BALANCE OF GLOBAL SOCIAL ACTION
NON-GOVERNMENT NETWORKS ARE BEST BET FOR CHANGE

Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, was recently interviewed for Global Viewpoint by Euripedes Alcantara, editor of Veja, at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y. On Sept. 15, Clinton convenes the first meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York along with Bill Gates, Kofi Annan and others.

By Bill Clinton

Global Viewpoint: You were, for many people, a symbol of the positive side of the process of globalization of the economy. Recently, you said that the world needs to enter the post-globalization phase. What does that mean?

Bill Clinton: The globalization of the economy has had very positive effects, but a lot of people have not benefited from it. The only way to broaden these beneficial effects is to bring civil society to the scene. I think time has come for non-governmental organizations, companies, workers’ associations and international organizations to try to develop a social and environmental policy that is in keeping with the challenges and opportunities created by globalization.

The global economic system alone cannot solve all the problems, either locally or globally. Issues such as environment and the increase of poverty and inequality cannot be confronted only by the market forces. Therefore, I think it is not very realistic to imagine that we can have a globalized economy without the counterpart of a global social action. My idea is to contribute to the creation of a global civil society with partnerships that transcend national and regional borders.

Global civil society has rapidly expanded since the end of communism. If you look at what happened in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, you will see that three major and little-celebrated phenomena are giving shape to the contemporary world. The first one is the fact that, for the first time in history, more people are living under democratic governments than under dictatorships. The second one is the geometrical expansion of the Internet. The third one is the consolidation of NGOs as action organizations with global reach. 

The boom of use of the Internet as a citizenship tool has been vital. The Chinese, for instance, used the Internet to force their government to acknowledge the seriousness of SARS and take the necessary measures to prevent the progress of that epidemic. After the terrible tsunami that razed Southeastern Asia at the end of last year, 30 percent of Americans made donations to the victims. And half the donations were made via Internet.

If you add to this the networks and linkages between the NGOs in developing countries and in wealthy countries, then we have a very optimistic scenario for change.

Global Viewpoint: What might be some concrete examples of these networks?

Clinton: The boom of the NGOs goes from the Bill Gates foundation, which spends billions of dollars in health treatments in India and Africa, to the smaller organizations that grant micro-credit in Latin America, in Africa and in Southern Asia. Well, what I think I can do to help is to provide all these people with the opportunity to focus their actions so as to make them more effective. I hope to create an environment in which entrepreneurial, labor and political leaders and NGOs can sit together and say, “Well, these are the things we must begin and end within a year; these are the areas we think are vital for our common future.”

Global Viewpoint: With such grand projects and so much money, do you worry about corruption?

Clinton: Projects do not need to be great. They have to be functional. Brazil, for example, has at least two successful cases that may serve as a model for the rest of the world. One of them is the program of distribution of antiviral medicine for AIDS patients. The medicine reaches even the more distant populations, including indigenous patients who do not even speak Portuguese. This is something extraordinary. No other country in the world has a project comparable to Brazil’s.

Another program of which Brazilians must be proud of is the one in which mothers of poor families periodically receive an amount of money as an incentive to keep their children at school. I believe that there are many ways to finance projects without running the risk of fostering corruption. For this, the quality of people is fundamental. In many countries of the extinct communist bloc, there are many times 20 or 50 people who are really skilled in the government, in the middle of a rotten bureaucracy that no longer works. What can we do? Identify the good people and help them. I agree that, when a government is dishonest, help is equivalent to throwing money down the drain.

Global Viewpoint: In other words, good people in the right place can make a difference?

Clinton: Yes. Even in countries without a very effective governing system, there are helpless but clever people who are managing to survive even when everything conspires against them. When a good network of NGOs arrives in a place like this, their work can save many lives, establish companies and promote economic growth.  

Global Viewpoint: Won't growth that raises the consumption standards of hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa hasten the depletion of natural resources and create environmental disaster?

Clinton: The shortest answer is yes. But the longest is that it is possible to create wealth without destroying the environment. This is the great challenge. All over the world, water reserves are diminishing, fertile soils are being eroded and seed production is showing a downward trend. South America is one of the few regions in the world that was able to increase the production of soy and other seeds thanks to technology and the abundance of fertile lands. But this is an exception. The rule is the shortage of water and of arable lands.

Therefore, one of the dearest purposes of my initiative is to find ways to turn environmental preservation into a path to attain economic prosperity. Otherwise, the reaction of people, let us say, in China and India may be very negative. They might think that environmental preservation is an ambush by Americans and Europeans to prevent their countries’ economic growth. For this reason, we have to stimulate the use of solar energy, of eolic energy, and help to popularize highly productive cultivation techniques that will help us preserve water and the soil. Thus, people will understand that preservation makes them richer, not poorer.

Another beneficial effect of raising the standard of living and consumption of the population is shown by statistics: As countries grow rich, population growth diminishes. When we know that the greatest population impact in the planet is in the countries that shelter the big forest reserves, the importance of helping them grow rich becomes clear.  

(c) 2005, VEJA
Distributed by Tribune Media ServiceS, INC. (Distributed 9/13/05)