Building the Basic Foundations of Global
Sustainability
(Note: This is the intent,
plainly spoken, with no room for doubt.)
By Lucio Munoz
"It is safe to say,
given current world wide and local development efforts, including security
efforts, that the search for true sustainability has now become a widespread
goal, and therefore the identification of practical approaches to support its
implementation and monitoring is right now a pressing need. This paper points
out, based on a general overview of commonly mentioned sustainability/security
concerns, the need to design a world system that allow
us to move step by step toward global sustainability."
Being unsustainable is about
insecurities. Hence, security/sustainability issues can be seen as having
social, economic, and environmental components as described below.
Social concerns: Uneven
social development or access to social services is a core sustainability issue
within and between countries. Access to education appears to be the prominent
issue in less developed countries while access to health care seems to be the
relevant issue in developed countries. However, in all countries children
development is increasingly being seen as the foundation to induce a more
socially responsible future, a future based on individual/personal
self-reliance. Hence, schools can be used as the front line to ensure kids
learn to be responsible when taking care of themselves and their families and
their communities. If this way is chosen, then social sustainability should
start with the implementation/promotion of education and healthcare programs
for all kids, a basic social need.
Economic concerns: Another
major sustainability issue is access to economic opportunities as the formal
private sector appears to have a permanent comparative advantage over the
informal private sector. Hence, it seems that current private sector
development initiatives must be geared to specifically support informal private
sector development so as to expand the private sector blanket as wide as
possible in all countries, as it is the informal private sector the one that
contains without a doubt the widest segment of the poor population. If this way
is chosen, then economic sustainability should begin with the implementation of
informal private sector development programs, a basic economic need.
Environmental concerns:
Recently, the need to achieve environmental sustainability has reached deep
into previously only economically oriented institutions like the World Bank,
which appears now to be engaged in achieving various forms of eco-economic
sustainability all over the world. However, the need to adjust these
development strategies to reflect social goals at the same time appears to be
increasing in relevance as social security/poverty issues are recognized as
relevant development barriers. Given the above, environmental sustainability
requires the inclusion of socio-economic responsibility in its programs, a
basic environmental security need.
The Power Of
Financing
Addressing each of the
security issues mentioned above, or any combinations of them, requires access
to proper levels of financing/asset transfers in most cases, which brings to
the picture the power of financing in shaping sustainability concerns. If
financing is available only to the rich, then the expected outcome will be
pro-rich growth. If financing is controlled by the private sector, then the
expected outcome will be pro-private sector growth. These tendencies should be
expected to hold or persist at the global level too. The discussion highlights
two pressing current needs: a) the need to ensure that financing reaches the
poor; and b) the need to ensure that the public sector has the proper level of
control of local and global finance to ensure it can fulfill efficiently its
local and global regulatory/market monitoring responsibilities.
The Need to Address All
Security Issues Simultaneously
Widespread agreement in the
notion that addressing only one security issue (e.g., environmental security)
while leaving the others unattended (e.g., social security issue/poverty) is
not a winning strategy, indicates that there is a growing need to deal with at
least basic social, economic, and environmental security concerns
simultaneously through proper levels of financing locally and globally. Yet an
efficient global institutional capacity to ensure sustainability outcomes does
not exist right now. The international institutional framework in existence
(WTO, FAO, World Bank, UNDP, IMF, etc.) is not concerned or consistent with
sustainability per se. In addition, there is not a formal systematic plan
towards global security/sustainability.
Step By Step Approach Toward
Global Sustainability
Given the urgent need to
move forward in flexible and increasing, but responsible ways in at least
meeting some basic needs, a four stage approach can be envisioned, probably through
the United Nations.
The organizational
development stage (short term): This stage towards sustainability should
reflect the need for the creation of a publicly controlled financing system,
The Global Public Development Fund (GPDF), to promote the tenet that the best
interest of humanity should be the paramount goal of global development and to
regulate and police privately controlled global financial systems/markets. The
GPDF fund should have three systematically coordinated umbrella organizations/divisions:
The Public World Poverty Fund (PWPF) to tackle social/poverty issues; The
Public World Environmental Fund (PWENF) to deal with environmental/ecosystem
degradation issues; and The Public World Economic Fund (PWEF) to take care of
economic development issues. Such a public institutional world structure would
be in a position to ensure that the current economic or eco-economic
globalization process, apparently inconsistent with the public interest,
reflects sustainability principles (a) through effective regulation and
incentives geared to minimize negative local and global social, economic, and
environmental externalities, and (b) through effective, responsible public
action.
The implementation stage
(medium term): The second stage toward sustainability should deal specifically
with directing public and private global development funds to support and
monitor basic foundations of sustainable living world wide such as: investing
in the education and health of all children; investing in the development/promotion
of the informal private sector; and investing in meeting the socio-economic
stability of key environmental programs on deforested and forested areas. Here,
an efficient public/private local and global partnership needs to be
developed/encouraged to be able to transform traditional pro-unsustainable
forces into advocates of sustainability.
The monitoring stage (medium
to long-term): The third stage should be focused on the ongoing monitoring of
the implementation stage with the goal of maximizing investment efficiencies in
the delivery of the basic social, economic, and environmental programs selected
and implemented.
The expansion stage (very
long-term): Once the basic social, economic, and environmental investments are
being effectively delivered, then investment should be orderly expanded
gradually (little by little) to reach all social, economic, and environmental
sectors worldwide.
The resolution of these
security issues points to the need to ensure financing access to the poor and
financing control to the public sector so as to ensure the existence of market
inclusion and market efficiency worldwide. This security/sustainability
arrangement could be handled through the United Nations and its success will
need the promotion and development of an effective public/private sector
pro-sustainability partnership.
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Lucio Munoz is an
independent, qualitative and comparative researcher in
ON-LINE COLLEGE COURSES:
Restoration Ecology The College of Natural Resources
at the
http://www.SustainableDC.org/su18003.htm
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