ANNUAL REPORT 2001

TNI

July 2005

The deepening legitimacy crisis of neo-liberal globalisation opens up new possibilities for alternative paradigms and propositions for how to achieve a more sustainable and humane world to be taken seriously. This is the challenge of the moment for the movement for another globalisation.

The TNI Alternative Regionalisms project is concerned with the potential of people-oriented regionalisms as an integral part of an alternative system of global economic governance.

Towards an Alternative Economic Strategy

TNI fellow Walden Bello has outlined in a number of articles over the past few years, and most recently in The Global Conjuncture: Characteristics and Challenges, written with Nicola Bullard in 2001, the basis for an alternative economic strategy particularly in respect of the developing world which he calls de-globalisation. This, he is at pains to stress, is not about withdrawing from the international economy, but about reorienting economies away from an emphasis on production for export and towards production for the local market. They advocate the following:

drawing most financial resources for development from within rather than becoming dependent on foreign investment and foreign financial markets
carrying out the long-postponed measures of income redistribution and land redistribution to create a vibrant internal market that could serve as the anchor of the economy
de-emphasising growth and maximising equity in order to radically reduce environmental disequilibrium
not leaving strategic economic decisions to the market but making them subject to democratic choice
subjecting the private sector and the state to constant monitoring by civil society
creating a new production and exchange complex that includes community cooperatives, private enterprises, and state enterprises, and excludes transnational corporations
enshrining the principle of subsidiarity in economic life by encouraging production of goods to take place at the community and national level if it can be done so at reasonable cost in order to preserve community.

Alternative Economic Governance

Bello and Bullards strategy consciously subordinates the logic of the market and the pursuit of cost efficiency to the values of security, equity and social solidarity. They argue, however, that such de-globalisation and re-empowerment of the local and national can only succeed if it takes place within an alternative system of global economic governance.

Bello and Bullard are staunchly opposed to efforts aimed at supplanting the current centralised global system of rules and institutions with another centralised system, albeit one premised on different principles. Instead, they argue for the deconcentration and decentralisation of institutional power and the creation of a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic system of institutions and organisations interacting with one another at national, regional and international levels, and offering multiple checks and balances. Such a system, Bello and Bullard propose, would support the formation of new international and regional institutions dedicated to creating and protecting the space for devolving the greater part of production, trade, and economic decision-making to the national and local level. It is within such a system of global economic governance, they believe, that the nations and communities of the South (and the North) will be able to carve out the space to develop based on their values and needs.

Indeed, Bello argues here and elsewhere, this is not all that new. It was under such a system that a number of Latin American and Asian countries were able to achieve a modicum of industrial development in the period from 1950 to 1970. And it was under such a plural-istic system, a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that was limited in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic to the special status of developing countries, that the East and Southeast Asian countries were able to become newly industrialising countries through activist state trade and industrial policies that departed significantly from the free-market biases enshrined in the WTO.

Key to this vision would be the strengthening of such diverse actors and institutions as UNCTAD, multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labour Organization and evolving regional economic blocs such as Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR), Southern African Development Community ( SADC), ASEAN Free Trade Association (AFTA) and South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC). A key aspect ofstrengthening, of course, is making sure these formations evolve in a people-oriented direction and cease to be regional elite projects. This is the objective of TNIs Alternative Regionalisms project.

Project Activities

The project was launched in January 2001 at a workshop organised during the first World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Representatives from the consortium of activist research institutes collectively undertaking the project made presentations from their respective regions. They discussed the rationale behind the project, analysed the evolution of regionalisms, and mapped the nascent social movement organisation around alternatives at regional level. A follow up workshop, more specifically focused on the role of the EUs bilateral and multilateral trade and investment negotiations with countries and regions in the South, is planned for the second WSF in January 2002.

The second major activity of the year was an international seminar co-organised with the Research Centre for International Political Economy ( RECI PE) of the University of Amsterdam. This seminar provided an opportunity for the TNI team to draw on the knowledge and expertise of progressive academics working specifically on the subject ofnew regionalisms.

Cross-regional Exchange

One of the objectives of the Alternative Regionalisms project is to facilitate crossregional exchanges of information, analysis, strategies and alternative propositions South-South, as well as with organisations in Europe attempting to challenge the corporate-driven nature of the European Union (EU) from a domestic as well as international perspective. An opportunity arose with the Mexican-European Encuentro on trade and investment liberalisation organised in November by Red Mexican de Accion Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC). RMALC, a partner in the TNI project, has substantial experience both in regional organisation through the Hemispheric Social Alliance and in developing and popularising alternative policies on a range of relevant socio-economic issues.

TNI was able to play a dual role at the Encuentro by helping to facilitate contact between Mexican and European activists with a common agenda, as well as by introducing the experiences of the Asia-Europe Peoples Forum (AEPF) to the Mexican networks. TNI is a co-founder of the AEPF, which provides a forum where social movements, development NGOs and allied intellectuals from both regions can discuss strategies aimed at achieving peace, democratisation, environmental sustainability, equity and socio-economic security. Such strategies include exposing the extent to which the European Union undermines the possibilities for such people-oriented alternatives through its international trade and investment agenda with Asian countries (please see more under the Asia section of this report).

Meanwhile, throughout the year TNI fellows Walden Bello and Dot Keet continued to document regional struggles against free trade agreements, multilateral development banks and the impact on the peoples of developing countries. They are working alongside other fellows working on critiques of neo-liberal economics and the development of alternative paradigms as well as TNI projects such as those focused on the World Trade Organisation and on the energy sector.