Don Davies: In view of global issues, expanding democratic input through a UN Parliamentary Assembly isn't a luxury, but a necessity

In this latest interview in our series I am talking to Don Davies, a member of parliament for the New Democratic Party in Canada. Don was one of the initial signatories of the international appeal for the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly that was launched in 2007. He is Canada's Official Opposition Critic for International Trade and Vice-Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade. A member of a number of parliamentary groups, he serves on the executives of the Canada-China and Canada-Europe Parliamentary Associations and is a delegate of the Canadian Parliament to the Council of Europe.

We had a great talk about how he got interested in the issue of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, whether there's something to learn from the example of the European Parliament, about the development of democracy and globalization, and how the idea of a global parliament could finally prevail.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

Welcome to the UNPA Audio Blog, Don!

Thanks, it's pleasure to be here! 

Firstly, special thanks for allowing us to have this call smack in the middle of the holiday season. That really is going above and beyond!

Oh, it's a real privilege.

Looking at your resume, you've clearly had an interest in politics set in a broader context for some time. How did you first learn about, and become interested in, the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly?

Well, I suppose, beginning as a young university student, when I began to study international politics. I guess it's been a broad continuation since then, of having my mind and my thoughts gradually expand to the conclusion that as we enter an increasingly globalized world there are so many issues that interconnect us and so many issues that require multinational cooperation, it just seems like a logical step to me that we amend and expand our democratic institutions and structures to deal with those interconnected problems.

You regularly attend conferences in Europe and I guess you've got a first-hand impression now of how the European Union works. Do you think there's something to learn from the example of the European Parliament or of the European Union in general, if we consider global institutions like the United Nations?

Absolutely, I have been a Canadian parliament delegate to the Council of Europe for the last three years and so every year I travel to Strasbourg and get to watch some form of that develop at the Council of Europe. We have a pan European approach to different issues and problems and I think, to be honest, that Europe is leading the world in trying to create structures that transcend national interests and start the process of tackling issues and problems on a supranational basis. I think there's a lot to learn from that process and certainly I do every time I go there.

What are the features of a popularly elected world parliament that make its establishment most attractive in your opinion?

Well, to me, the concepts of democratic institutions are fluid and dynamic. If we think back to the beginning of democratic structures two or three hundred years ago, they start on a very local small basis, and gradually there's been a natural expansion of them. So, I believe that we are on a trajectory that is logical, necessary and inevitable to continue to think about our democratic structures and to make them responsive to the people - not only of our local village or our county or province or state - but now of the world.

So, you know, if you look at certain problems: we are already seeing global cooperation on things like international trade and commerce; there is increasing regulatory harmonization; media and communications transcend national borders all the time.

The need for citizen input into global issues has never been greater. That leads inevitably to the need for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. We are already seeing so much de-facto co-operation on a global level that I think it's only a matter of time before we see that the democratic structures that can give pure citizen democratic input into those issues are accomplished; the need has never been greater! We have environmental and climate change issues, social problems, endemic poverty and under development that I think the nation state has proved to be incapable of tackling because those are issues that transcend national borders. The bottom line is about democracy, and having citizen engagement in the issues on this planet, and I believe that leads inevitably and inexorably to the need for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly.

I completely agree with you and yet, even the creation of a consultative UN Parliamentary Assembly is not yet part of the official reform agenda at the United Nations!  National governments are reluctant or cynical to these ideas. How can they be convinced? I agree with you the case is overwhelmingly logical and compelling. Yet people in power are not convinced. What can we do to convince them?

Well, that is an excellent question for which I'm not sure I have a magic answer. I think the creation of democratic structures has always been one of struggle. It has always been one of challenge because the status quo is always difficult to change; there are vested interests always. There is a comfort in doing things the way they were doing them.  It's a process of some difficulty and I do believe that all great social change comes from a small group of people working diligently who have a good idea. You've heard the phrase "you can't keep a good idea down?" My sense is that the concept of some sort of global parliamentary body is growing. It's an expanding idea and I think that there'll be a tipping point, where more and more parliamentarians around the world like myself and you and others working towards this speak about this issue more, I believe it's sparking the beginning of a concept that will ultimately take root. Ultimately though, it will be up to the demands of the people of the world and, to some degree, on the imperative. I mean if you take something like global climate change: I'm not so sure the concept of an effective parliamentary assembly is a luxury, I think it's a necessity! As that becomes more and more known, I believe people around the world will demand a more effective structure to deal with these issues, that again, nations have proved unable to deal with and are incapable of dealing with on their own.

I love this old Robert Kennedy quote from the 1960s where he said: "Some people look at how things are and they ask why?" He thought we should look at the way things should be and ask "Why not?" I think that's applicable to the situation at hand; we have to look at the way things are and the way things should be and ask "Why can't we create these structures?" There is no reason we can't and the need has never been greater.

In what ways do you think that the government of Canada and the Canadian parliament might support the idea of a global parliament some day?

Well, I think the Canadian parliament is similar to governing bodies around the world, you know, we have those that are thinking of the future and pushing for more democratic and more responsive global institutions and then you have those that are resistant. There is a real conservative (small C conservative) vs. (small L) liberal tension in the Canadian parliament as I'm sure exists in most parliaments. Presently, Canada has a conservative government and they are similar to the United States where there is an instinctive resistance to what they see as a ceding of sovereignty to a larger body. I personally believe that that is a mistaken view and I think it's also a destructive one. I also think it's an a-historical one because it goes completely against the march of history where we do create democratic structures on an ever increasingly large basis because it's necessary. I think that political thinking lags the technological, commercial, environmental and social reality of the world. We're already global! Our democratic institutions are simply lagging the reality. We do have structures in the Canadian parliament like the Inter-Parliamentary Union where there are structures to discuss these issues. However, I don't believe those structures have been as ambitious as they ought to be in putting issues like global parliamentary government on the agenda but those exist and we should be trying to use those processes more and more.

How can we get the message of a global parliament out? What advice do you have for our listeners?

Just that I think the most powerful ideas in politics are ideals of hope and optimism and of creation and democracy. All of those ideas have their counterparts, but ultimately I believe they prevail, and I think people of goodwill and people who care about people wherever they exist on the planet; and care about our planet itself and care about democracy; need to take heart and keep working towards it. I think the work that we are doing today is paving the way for a some very important, necessary and ultimately inspiring changes that will occur in the future.

Thanks very much, Don, for taking the time to talk to us today.

Brian it's my pleasure! Thank you for your time and for inviting me. All the best in the holiday season!

Joan Marc Simon talks about the first Global Week of Action for a World Parliament

Joan Marc Simon has spent the last ten years working at the international level, running campaigns in the fields of governance and the environment. He coordinates the Zero Waste Europe network, is the Spanish coordinator of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) as well as a Council member of the World Federalist Movement.

Joan Marc was strongly involved in the recent Global Week of Action for a Global Parliament and on the occassion of the action week he also published an opinion piece on why a world parliament is needed.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

Welcome to the UNPA Audio Blog Joan Marc.

Hello!

So your activities were central, I guess, to the recent Global Week of Action for a Global Parliament. Can you tell us a bit about how that went?

I have to say that I was central in the beginning because the idea came from our group here in Barcelona, but very quickly I stopped being central. In a way, basically, lots of people spontaneously joined our organization, in particular the coordination committee of the action group has been working amazingly. That is a group of about ten or twelve people from around the world who have joined the committee, and have been helping to organize these actions. In the end, most of the credit should go to them.

I think the action went very well! When we first came came up with the idea I would measure success with having actions in four or five countries - if we cannot guarantee at least a minimum amount of cities it would look quite bad - but to my surprise, right at the beginning, we said "OK, let's have an aim of having ten events in different parts of the world," and we were thinking mainly in the countries were we have contacts, in Europe in the U.S., maybe in India, but it started growing and growing and basically it grew out of all the expectations that we had. We were very happy with the result, we had many events, it's difficult to say how many, but it's at least more than fifty and perhaps close to 100, happening in all the continent's of the world. So, not only in the West, but also in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America etc.

From your prospective, did you achieve the goals you expected?

It was the first time that something like this has ever been organized on a global scale, so our expectations where "Let's try to do something that looks more or less serious." I think that we have achieved this and it was a lot more spectacular than we would have predicted in the beginning.

You've talked about some of the activities in other parts of the world. Can you give us an example something happening in Africa something happening in Asia?

I think that one of the interesting ones was in in the Middle East, where we had Israeli and Palestinian activists going into the street to ask for a world parliament and clashing with the police who did not allow them to demonstrate. So this is actually something a world parliament could help with, for example, to address such a complicated issue as the Middle East. Then there were simulations of a world parliament in Australia, for example, and events in Africa, but I think that this one in the Middle East is quite symbolic because it shows one of the possible ways to address the issues of the Middle East would be to have a world parliament instead of having all of these  bilateral negotiations that lead nowhere.

I'm Irish myself and one of the by products of the European Union has been to take a lot of the heat out of the situation in Northern Ireland. Of course the the Irish and British have done a lot themselves, but by putting both Britain and Ireland in a broader context - i.e. both democracies in a democratic European Union - it does, to some degree, make the conflict ridiculous and this maybe has the potential to do the same thing for many conflicts around the world.

Indeed, and also the fact that you can discuss things is already a start. It's a democratic process that is open, transparent and no one is above anyone else. The case of Northern Ireland is a very good example.

So the global week of action went well. It highlighted and increased the profile of this discussion, because of course, many people are just unaware of this idea: the concept of a global parliament.

So what's next do you think? We're should we go from here?

Now the organisational committee is evaluating what went right and what went wrong. It is clear that we are going to have another action next year, the question is how to capitalize on all of this; we have groups formed spontaneously, that got to know about the action from Facebook or from newsletters here and there and that spontaneously joined the action. So, the question is how do you link up all of these groups around the world who want to work on the construction of a world parliament; create even a better action for next year and also mobilize this support for the UNPA? The UNPA is right now the most advanced idea on how to produce an embryo of what would be a world parliament.

There are many people who have an interest in a global parliament but by far the most compelling undertaking I've seen to date is the UNPA. So apart from that - that it is the most compelling and most successful effort to date - what other reasons do you have for supporting the UNPA? What is the most compelling reason that humanity needs this kind of institution?

In a way it's nothing sophisticated it's just to have, at the world level, a tool that allows us to take democratic decisions in a transparent way. Right now, we're seeing chaos in any kind of international relations you can imagine: from solving conflicts to environmental problems. We are going to heat the world very soon unless we do something about this, and the question is, when we heat the world are we going to let some governments decide for us or will it be the citizens of the world deciding? For me this is the compelling argument in a nutshell. If we are to survive, we must work on this together. Together means everybody, together means people in government, people in opposition, even those minorities that never get represented in government. So a parliament is a tool and that's why I support the UNPA.

Was there anything else you wanted to say or address?

Not at the moment, let see what happens next year. If anybody wants to join forces and start organizing next year's campaign they should get in touch with us.

So that's the plan? To have on the same day, each year going forward, this Global Week of Action for a Global Parliament?

That's the idea. To scale up, certainly do more for sure not less. It's clear that this year we have managed to spontaneously create a kind of core group and that is one of the big successes. Perhaps not the most visible one, but for me it's one of the most important things, because it means you have a core group with which you can engage in planning for the next year and people are passionate about it. I've been in this a long time it's the first time we've had a multinational group, this kind of self-assembling group, which is working towards the same goal. Let's hope it keeps on growing and that we have a fantastic and even better action for next year.

And it seems like social media is just getting better and better to facilitate this kind of thing.

Exactly, the social media has been crucial with all of this! Otherwise communication and actions etc. would have been a lot more difficult.

Just like with Skype, we are basically chatting to each other for free!

That's the amazing thing! That we have organized all of these things with people we have never met and we don't even know what each other look like, most of us! With Skype, Facebook, Twitter and social media we have managed to organize something out of nothingness in the end, and basically without any budget. The budget of this whole action as you can imagine has been zero.

As it tends to be!  Joan Marc, it was a real pleasure chatting to you, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to the UNPA audio blog.

Thank you!

Isabella Lövin: Consensus rule undermines fishery policy and effective global governance

Isabella Lövin has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2009, representing the Swedish Green Party. She is the team leader on the fisheries committee for the Greens in the parliament and she also serves as a member of the development committee.

Mrs Lövin is a journalist and author, most notably of the award-winning book Silent Seas which exposes the shortcomings of the European Common Fisheries Policy. She is one of the co-hosts of the upcoming international meeting on a UN Parliamentary Assembly which will take place in the European Parliament in October 2013. 

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

Thanks for taking the time to join me, much appreciated. I guess the logical place to bait my hook - if you'll forgive a terrible pun/metaphor - is your relentless focus on fisheries policy. You've devoted your entire political work at the European Parliament and beyond to the fight against over fishing. Why is this issue of greatest importance and could you also tell us a bit about the state of global fish stocks?

Well, it so happens that I was elected on this issue. I was campaigning in Sweden only on the issue of ending overfishing and what happened was that I discovered, through research when I was doing my book, writing my book "Silent Seas", the outrageous way that our common resource, the fish, has been managed the last decades since the 1950s, basically. This has been very, very obvious in Swedish waters but I also discovered that this was true for European waters and even the world's waters. Why is it important, why it was so important that I'm still only debating fisheries after, well, ten years?

There are, I think, two issues. One is about food security, and this is really something that is enormously serious, that we are depleting a food resource that is basically renewable forever. We have an increasing population on this planet and what we've done during the last century is to deplete all the big fish, the predatory fish, by between 70 and 90 per cent. So we actually took away this fantastic resource from the world's oceans and it's unsure whether or not we're going to be able to let them grow back - I'm working on that - that is one issue. The second one has more to do with ecosystems and biodiversity. If you look at the planet, if you look at the globe, its 72 per cent blue, it's mostly oceans and this planet is heavily dependent on the well-being of  the ecosystems in those oceans. To produce oxygen, to absorb CO2, all the biochemical things. What we've done by removing up to 90% of predatory fish from the world's oceans is that we actually change the marine ecosystems in a very dramatic way in a very brief time in the history of this planet. This is really worrying because it's decreasing the planet's resilience towards climate change, and all the other, let's say stressors, enormous stresses that we're putting on the oceans: such as the invasion of alien species, because we're moving water around in ships all over the world; we also have  acidification of the world's oceans; we have plastic litter everywhere. I could go one forever...

It's an interesting analogy, to see the seas as a kind of immune system. We're doing some kind of radical genetic manipulation of our global immune system.

I would rather call it an amputation, is not so sophisticated, we've really massacred the world's fish stocks and we have to look this in the eye. 

In your book Silent Seas you refer to this amputation as a tragedy of the commons. What does that concept mean, the tragedy of the commons?

Well, basically it's if you have a common resource that is free for all, it's possible that everyone is fair and you just share this resource and no one is overgrazing or overfishing as the case may be. But what happens is that the logic is that if one fisherman starts taking more than the sea can produce, then all the other fishermen will suffer, and all the other people in the community will suffer. If there are no sanctions, if there are no regulations, there is nothing you can do, then this person goes on - or this nation, it could be nations, it could be different actors - if this goes on the logic is that someone else thinks "Well, I must also hurry to take as much as I can before everything is gone." and then the circus, the race, starts, and everyone tries to get as much as they can as soon as possible. For example, by applying small mesh sizes because others are using small mesh sizes...

...you mean the size of the nets...

...the nets exactly... or it if you have neighboring countries that are fishing for the same fish stocks and one country is not really controlling their fishermen, then in the other country they will immediately start arguing that "We must also be able to fish in the same way as the others are otherwise they would just take the fish and we will not gain anything!" So it's really this matter of a lack of control, lack of cooperation, lack of possible sanctions. I think the world's oceans have been very sadly forgotten by managers, by decision-makers, by politicians and this race to the bottom, this tragedy of the commons, has been going on for far too long in almost all the world's seas.

If we accept that the global fish stocks and their habitat, the oceans, are a global common good, then the only working solution to manage this good will be some kind of effective global regulation. That will probably have to be supranational which frankly sometimes seems synonymous with supernatural. How far are we still away from a global supranational policy with regard to fisheries policy?

I would say quite far away. I've seen negotiations, I've seen debates in fora like the committee on fisheries of the FAO and the work is going extremely slowly. Just to give you one example: There has been a debate for over 10 years now to establish a global list of fishing vessels and still the world's nations cannot agree on such a simple thing which would be incredibly important to combat illegal fishing. Not to mention that we don't have a satisfactory - at all far, far, from it - cooperation on surveillance on international waters. Basically what we have now is some regional fisheries management organisations that take care of management of the most valuable fish stocks (like tuna and swordfish) but these organisations are based on consensus. They are also based on an exploitation logic, not a conservation logic, so it's very, very far from ideal. Essentially, everything today is permitted on international waters unless it's agreed to be forbidden or restricted. This means that you can go out and totally destroy some deep sea species that are still undiscovered; before you get all the countries to agree to manage and protect these species they could already be gone!

There are probably many more examples for the tragedy of the commons and the need for global regulation. Carbon emissions for example might be one of the most obvious ones. However, progress to date on this issue does not leave one with a sense of confidence that the United Nations or the existing framework of global governance are up to the challenge of regulating fisheries, or carbon emissions or any of these issues. In what ways could this be changed through a UN Parliamentary Assembly?

A UN Parliamentary Assembly could contribute to that through a more, let's say, a discussion and debate that comes closer to citizens in the world. Today what's going on in the FAO, in the UN or these climate meetings - it's very hard for citizens to really influence those things through elected members such as occurs in the European Parliament. By the way, I think the members of the European Parliament are an example of what a global parliament could look like.

I feel, and I think my colleagues feel very much the same, that we are much more directly connected to the citizens and also that we today - and I guess it's a very long way for a global parliamentary assembly with decision-making powers - that we actually have decision-making powers [in the EU Parliament] and that means we can take decisions through majority decisions and you don't need consensus all the time. I think when you see what's happening in the world today - if I return to the issue of fishing - if you have to have consensus all you have to have is one country that is totally irresponsible and then you can't progress on anything and protect what should be protected because it's the common heritage of mankind. It should be protected by us! It's in our trust, but it's very difficult to do that as long as you have governments that are not necessarily even representing their people - we have of course very many non-democratic countries in the world as well - I think that a move towards more direct global democracy is something that we have to see.

Could you imagine working more on the issue of a global parliament and effective structures of global governance in the future?

Absolutely, I think it's a very exciting challenge. Really, I think many people would see that as a utopia but I like those kinds of concepts so I would really think it would be very interesting to work with that. 

Well, thank you very much Isabella, much appreciated that you chatted with us.

Thank you very much for chatting with me too Brian.

Johan Galtung on the era of accelerated history and a multipolar world order

Today we are talking to Professor Johan Galtung, a Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. He founded the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, serving as its director until 1970, and established the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1969 he was appointed to the world's first chair in peace and conflict studies at the University of Oslo. He resigned his professorship in 1977 and has since held professorships at several other universities; since 1993 he has been Distinguished Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Hawaii.

Johan Galtung is a longtime supporter of a world parliament and one of the first signatories of the international "Appeal for the Establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly".

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

So, the first question I wanted to ask you relates to your really interesting prediction about the fall of the Soviet Union which turned out to be correct and you also made a prediction about the fall of the United States and you said that that might happen in 2020. From our perspective, it would be interesting to hear your views on how that would affect global governance, perhaps generally, and specifically with regard to the U.N. parliament idea, if the U.S. had such reduced power? 

OK, Brian, let me just correct you a little bit. I didn't predict the collapse of Russia but of the Soviet Empire and that is what happened and I have not predicted the end of the U.S., but the end of the U.S. Empire and it is not for the year 2020, it's already coming very, very quickly as the U.S. does enough stupidities to accelerate it. You are asking now for the implications. Well, I think we are not ready for globalization. There will be a stronger United Nations - they will be strengthened because they are right now crippled by the Anglo-American hegemony which will be reduced - but I think between global governance and what we have today is a regionalisation. What I see, Brian, is an upsurge of the regions Latin America and Africa, Europe (we already have South Asia and we have to some extent East Asia) and the Islamic world. They will come very quickly and that is what we have to somehow manage.

Another thing that struck me looking at your CV, so to speak, is that you have engaged in quite a lot of mediation in hundreds, or over 100 conflicts, and at various levels of governance over many decades and I guess it would be very interesting to hear what you've drawn from that in terms of lessons or life experience?

If I should concentrate it in one or two sentences, dialogue with all parties and that means all parties, even if you don't like them. It's not about if you like them or not that matters, what matters is that they are party to the conflict. Point two: You try to find out what their goals are. What do they want? Often it is much more simple than their rhetoric. Point three: You test those goals for legitimacy: Are they legal? Are they in accordance with human rights? With basic human needs? If they pass those tests, then comes the final stage - try to bridge legitimate goals; try to find something that all the parties will find reasonable. But again, I repeat: only the legitimate goals not illegitimate goals. This requires creativity and my experience - if you want it in one sentence - is this: If you formulate what Americans call a compelling solution that is the best thing you can do, but it has to be based on dialogue with the parties ...

... and can you think of any specific examples?

Well, one example which is simple and pedagogical. Ecuador and Peru had been fighting since 1941 about a 500 square kilometers zone high up in the Andes. Some 54 years later, in 1995, I was asked by the Ecuadorian ex-president to come up with a solution: "How do we draw the border?" he said. "We're fighting. We've had four wars. We have sacrificed lots of young men's lives." My proposal - after understanding what they stood for: they stood for exactly the same thing "The zone is ours! The zone is ours!" but that was slightly mutually incompatible - my proposal was: "Your excellency, how about not drawing a border at all? But administer the contested territory as two-state solution with a nature park?" Well, they did better than that, they made a joint economic zone that came in 1998, almost three years after I put that proposal forward, and it's a blossoming zone and most people have even forgotten the wars. So it's a question of some creativity and putting something new forward. That's why we call it Transcend, to go beyond.

You're a longtime supporter of the U.N. parliamentary assembly idea, that idea has been around for quite a while, what is it about this concept that attracts you that makes you want to support it?

Well, it's democracy. It makes it possible - we are seven billion people but not all of them have the right to vote in the world, to express their opinions. You see, what we have now, if you will, would be like if you take the United States as an example. An assembly, a United States general assembly, which will consist of senator's from each one of the 50 states appointed by the state leadership. Well, fortunately the United States has something more than that, they have the possibility of voting; of citizens even voting on specific issues on some occasions. So it is to go to that second stage, bringing the world citizens in. We have two enormous places in the world where this has happened: the Indian Union and the European Union. If the Indian Union and the European Union can organize this - though they're not so good at participation - the world can do it. I'm enthusiastic about it.

Exactly, I have to confess to a certain lack of objectivity on the subject myself! OK, so I thought we'd wrap up with this Transcendent International organization of which you are, I think, the founder of or at least pretty central to. Can you maybe tell us a little bit of about that? What its function, its purpose is?

We're just having the 20th anniversary now. It was founded in 1993 and there were four ideas from the very beginning. Transcend peace service - which is essentially mediation, mediation of conflict, of trauma mediation, of building equitable and harmonious relations. In other words positive peace, if you will. The second one is of course education and training so we have transcend peace university online at www.transcend.org. That is where you can find everything and Transcendent University press which has published some 22 books by now on all these kinds of issues and the third pillar is dissemination. We have Transcendent Media Service which has had about 10,000 postings and I write an editorial every Monday which seems to be quite demanded; it's actually copied one way or the other in about 70 countries. The fourth one is research. Right now we're working on the octagon model. The world is getting multipolar. It was bipolar for a short period, then it was unipolar during the U.S.-dominated phase, but it is getting very multipolar and we think there are eight and we're exploring the dangers and the opportunities.

Sorry, eight different poles?

Precisely, I can read them all for you if you want?

Yes, that would be interesting. I'd certainly like to hear that.

OK, we start with the good old United States - it's still there - Russia, India, China and then we come to the OIC the organization of Islamic cooperation very, very important and after that one we have Africa and Latin America and you know there's something called BRICS: Brazil, R is Russia, I is India, C is China and S is a part of Africa and you have BRICS being the emerging, if you will, economies and the West meaning the United States and the European Union being the declining economies. It's a dramatic world, and its happened so quickly, Brian! So insanely quick! It's accelerated history!

I was in Berlin in 1989 a couple of days after the wall fell and the whole thing was just amazing. Now my daughter - she is 18 - but she only has the vaguest notion of the Soviet Union and yet that's the world I grew up in and it's just been swept away!

Unbelievable, and then if you go ahead in time you find the end of apartheid in South Africa ...

... indeed, quite stunning, and also extremely fast and very hard to predict ...

... precisely, precisely, so we humans are not that bad despite our reputation, our reputation is horrible!

Quite so, I guess we do have a bad reputation, but sometimes we do manage to deliver the right goods.

Showing some openings, lights at the end of the famous tunnel ...

... that are not trains!

And what is after the tunnel? My answer is - there is another tunnel! But in the meantime we will ever learn better how to master it.

Professor Galtung that was fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.

My pleasure indeed, all the best you.

Gabriela Michetti: On the split between real and fake economy and the promise of a world parliament

In this interview we are talking to Gabriela Michetti, a member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies since 2009. Before entering national politics, she was deputy head of the government of Buenos Aires, the second-largest metropolitan area in South America. She has a degree in International Relations and worked as an adviser at the Argentine Ministry of Economy.

Recently, Mrs Michetti took over the position as Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Advisory Group of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. We thought that this would be a good occasion to talk to her about that proposal.

This interview is a slight departure from our usual format. I put the questions in English, Deputy Michetti answers in Spanish and Fernando Iglesias is on hand on to translate to English. Thanks, Fernando!

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

Welcome to the UNPA podcast, Deputy Michetti.

Thank you, Brian.

Deputy Michetti, can you tell us a bit about how you first came across the idea of global democracy and the proposal for a UN Parliamentary Assembly?

I will speak in Spanish and Fernando will translate, ok?

Sure, that's perfect.

My first consideration on the question of global governance is that it is impossible for it to exist without some kind of mechanism of representation for all the citizens of the world. National states have been overcome by a number of global processes and they are far away from being able to keep up with the pace of the evolution of global society. So the question is how to manage this kind of trouble if national states are not able to manage and/or face the new challenges of globalization in the present world. One of the more troubling problems is the problem of the increase of inequalities in the global world in which almost all of the wealth of the world is in the hands of the richest 12% and almost 60% of the global population is living on under 4 dollars a day of income.

Among the many other problems we have to face: there is the trafficing of people, arms and drugs and this is another example of the kind of global trouble that national states are not able to face. The same could be said of the international organizations in which the concentration of power is even more worrying. For instance in the G8 - with no democratic mechanism - most of the important crises of the world are being managed by the most powerful states in the world. That is why I do agree on the need of promoting some kind of world parliament among the global population in order to give democratic representation to the citizens of the world and include not just nation-states but also organizations like cities that are closer to citizens. These have to be represented at the global level.

To take a very concrete and personal example of how our current international institutions function: Argentina experienced a tough economic crisis which finally escalated in 2002. What was the role of the International Monetary Fund in this?

The enormous crisis that Argentina suffered in 2001 – 2002 was in part a responsibility of national politics. However, it was also the result of negative policies developed by international institutions like the International Monetary Fund.  So, at the end of the '90's Argentina was facing a problem with the value of its currency which was too high. We should remember that during 2006 a document from December 2001 was declassified and it covered a dialogue between the director of the IMF and the Argentine minister of Finance, Mr. Carvallo and Carvallo was asking for help. He needed about 8 Billion dollars for Argentina but the conditions that the IMF put on the table was for Argentina to “dollarise” their economy - making the US dollar the currency of the economy - when Caravallo was asking for some kind of basket so as not to have too much pressure on competetiveness. The answer of the IMF was “No” to the basket of currencies and the crisis developed further in the weeks that followed.

During the 90's the role of the IMF in keeping the convertibility, meaning the basic rule of the Argentine economy the rate of exchange between the dollar and Argentine peso, was 1 – 1 and this was the central cause of the crisis and at the end, when the outcomes of this policy where evident in December of 2001, the functionaries of the IMF without consulting with the central committee decided not to release a part of the credit already designated for the Argentine economy, about 1.2 billion dollars, and this was the real beginning of the crisis with dramatic consequences for our country.

So would it be accurate to say that, to some degree, the crisis was precipitated by how the international institutions behaved?

So, I think that the chaos of the crisis was caused by national policy on the economy while the same time the attitude and policies promoted by the IMF made the crisis deeper and precipitated the final resolution at the end of 2009.

How do you think something like a UN Parliamentary Assembly might make a difference in that kind of situation specifically and generally in terms of global economic and financial governance going forward?

The current institutional framework is showing right now that it is insufficient to cope with the challenges of the modern global economy and we can see similar episodes occurring almost every week! That is why we need some kind of world parliament in order to give a voice to the citizens and also to the small political organizations in cities and provinces. If we are able to develop some kind of world parliament we can develop a global approach to global crisis and provide new solutions with more efficacy because these solutions and interventions would be not just representative of the few or the most powerful but made on behalf and in defense of the interests of the smaller and the less powerful.

Do you see any kind of parallel between what's happening in the Euro zone now and what happened in Argentina in 2001?

Well, one of the similarities between these two crises is the split between the "real" economy and the financial economy and this is very similar. This is all about this division we have developed in recent years between the real production of goods and their distribution on one hand and some kind of "fake" economy on the other that is not representative of real production or goods. And this is not just a problem of the Argentinian economy but for the world. This obsession of some human beings for irrational personal enrichment. On the other hand also the collusion between the economic powers and the political governments have led to these kinds of crisis because of the high number of the links between the political and economic power.

Finally, to take that theme a little further, we have this divide between the real and the fake economy but there is also a divide between global north and south. Since you Deputy Michetti, are representative of the Global South, I thought it might be interesting to hear your views on that divide: does it exist, is it real, what are it's causes? What can we do about it?

There is an amazing quantity of different and valid approaches on the question of the North-South division. One of the approaches is the anti-colonialist approach which supports the idea of the domination of the Southern countries by the north. That the problems of the South are a result of this domination. Another approach suggest the retardation of the South is due to local cultural tendencies which some sociologists have put on the table. They suggest that the problems of the South are intrinsic to the culture. There been extensive reflections on the difference between Catholic and Protestant ethics. So the approach are very different in my opinion all of these approaches and visions of the problems of the South are contributing factors. But in my opinion the most important thing beyond looking to the past and the culture, the real center of our attention should be to look to the future and have a strategy to avoid these kinds of inequalities in the future.

So that is why all those who think and dream for a better world. A more equitable and peaceful world, which includes all human beings. We should think about alternatives to the current governance or rather lack of governance. In this situation in which the project of the UN Parliamentary Assembly will be a good strategy to correct this imbalance and lack of global governance.

Deputy Michetti, thank you so much for taking our call. Was there anything else you wanted to say today?

Just to say, thanks to you Brian for this interview. It's an honor for me to be part of the UNPA-Campaign and I'm going to do my best in order to keep this campaign on track for the future.

Great, I look forward to seeing how that develops Deputy Michetti.

Halina Ward on democracy, sustainability, and a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

This interview in our series is with Halina Ward, the director of the London-based Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development which has initiated an international manifesto that was published recently (here's our report: "Manifesto highlights connection of sustainability and democracy 'at all levels'").

Halina has been the director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD) since 2009. Before joining the foundation, Halina was director of the Business and Sustainable Development Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. She has also worked as a senior fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs; as a Senior Consultant for the consultancy Environmental Resources Management, and as a solicitor practising commercial environment law.

In this interview we explored the somewhat counter-intuitive relationship between democracy and sustainability. We also talked about the proposal for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and its role in the international manifesto.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

On Wednesday 20th March, an international manifesto on democracy and sustainability was launched. We are speaking today with Halina Ward, the director of the Foundation on Democracy and Sustainable Development in London from where the idea originated and which was the organisation behind the international consultation process for the manifesto.  Welcome to the UNPA audio blog, Halina!

Thanks very much, Brian. It's good to be here.

Halina, first of all, can you tell us what this manifesto is about? What's the main message?

The manifesto is basically about the idea that sustainability, so healthy environment and fairness for everyone now in the future, needs democracy and it works the other way round as well - democracy needs sustainability - and so it's a manifesto that's about the practical steps that, as people around the world, we can take to make sure that democracy adapts and evolves and works better when it comes to delivering a healthy environment and fairness for everyone - not just now but also in the future - and it's got six principles and every principle has a set of commitments that go with it.

Well, for many people the connection between democracy and sustainability may be counter-intuitive. They might argue that more participation and more democracy actually makes it harder to come to decisions and to take action. How would you typically respond to that type of charge or question?

You do sometimes hear - particularly after a few drinks in various drinking venues around the world - you do sometimes hear environmentalists in particular bemoaning democracy kind of saying ...

... if only we could get rid of the people, if only people would stop insisting on having their say ...

... exactly, if only we were like China, if only we were more authoritarian, we could achieve so much more, so much more quickly!

Because they're [China] doing so well on the environmental front?

Well, there are a number of reasons why I don't think that's a very good argument. But, for starters, if you think about the challenges of sustainability, environmental and social justice, and economic development, and all integrated, and if you think about the kinds of challenges we are now facing - massive demographic shifts, climate change, resource scarcity, you name it - these are not the kind of challenges that any one authroitarian system is ever going to be able to fix. For starters, we really have to harness the creativity and the capacity for innovation of people around the world and democracy is the best system to enable that process of reflection and innovation and ongoing accountability and progress to take shape and to advance sustainability. That's one reason. For another reason, democracy is the only political system in play that really respects the rights of all people as individuals and as equals and it's actually long been established anyway, within the sustainable development movement, which is very closely related to the idea of sustainability that if we're going to get to sustainable development, we need wide rights of public participation and access to information and access to justice and these are really core elements of democracy.

The manifesto sets out a global plan for action, you've got a very specific plan, could you maybe take us through - probably not the whole thing - but some of the key actions that you are suggesting?

The actions are called commitments; because the manifesto is designed to have global reach we couldn't get too specific on the actions - with one exception which I shall come to - so we're asking people to make commitments to take action in the areas that are addressed by the commitments - but I'm digressing a bit I apologize - let me just mention a couple of the principles. So the manifesto begins with the idea which we've already discussed a bit: that sustainability itself needs flourishing democracy and it says democracy must never be a sham, that democracy is much more than elections and voting, and so many people in day-to-day life under the great pressures of daily life and great cynicism around political decision-making too often think that democracy is just about going to the ballot box once every four years - if you bother to go to the ballot box - and putting an X in the box - of course, that isn't democracy and if we see democracy as narrow in that sense ... it's deeply disempowering apart from anything else ... so that's principle one: sustainability needs democracy itself to flourish.

Then the manifesto goes on to - what for me personally is perhaps at the heart of the current problems with the practice of democracy, not the ideal but the practice of democracy - which is that that insistence or perception that democracy is about electing representatives once every four or five years by putting your X in the box or thumbprint on the paper, that sense, that limited sense of democracy has a tendency to drive a kind of a short-termism: where elected representatives are thinking about where they are in the election cycle; how long it is to go; what they need to give away or what it is they need to do to get re-elected and it's not just elected representatives! I don't mean to say that they are at the root of all of our problems, far from it, there's also a short-termism in the cultural values in many parts of the world as well where we think that we are very often electing representatives to do the right thing by us as individuals or for our immediate family rather than to make tough decisions about what is for the good of fairness, if you like, and a healthy environment for the people now and in the future so that's a couple of the key principles and it all needs to be underpinned by education.

Then another one of those great thorny points of tension between democracy and sustainability is this tendency for liberal democracy to go hand in hand with, if you like, mainstream economic liberalism ...

... that basically capitalism, to use an old fashioned word, rampant capitalism has bestrode the scene for the last 30 years and that was facilitated through democracy but of course it can also be reined in by democracy, it's a question of the will of the people ...

... those are your words rather than mine and they're very powerful words. So there is this sense that politicians very often think it is their job to simply deliver more, that democracy is about delivering more, and more in terms of prosperity and possessions and consumption and of course we live on a planet with finite resources and can't go one constantly delivering more where the more that's delivered is a measured by economic growth ...

... GDP or ...

... exactly and so there is a principle which ended up being the principal about making sustainability a central goal of governments where the problem that the principle is getting at is partly - or in large measure - that problem the governments all too often put narrow indicators on prosperity and success above the things that matter to people in the round. Happiness and so on.

Exactly and not just looking at GDP but not looking at the GDP distributed across the population to see how that distributes. It's brilliant if you have a great GDP but if all that GDP bunches at the top of the pyramid then no one else is even benefiting from it.

Absolutely and sustainability has inherent within it this idea of equity - fairness - between people who are alive today as well as towards future generations and just one thing that is perhaps worth stressing: I don't see that there are inherent trade-offs between fairness as between people who are already alive today versus fairness towards people who have yet to be born and you can put it very crudely and simply: if we don't tackle inequality in the present it will simply be replicated down the generations so we have to tackle inequality in the present as a means to achieve fairness towards future generations as well.

Right, so democracy, a very engaged and active type of democracy is at the heart of the manifesto. Do you see yourself as supportive of the idea of something like a parliamentary assembly at the United Nations level which is perhaps a slightly more staid kind of institution compared to the kind of thing you are promoting?

Well, the manifesto itself falls back on an old tried and tested definition of democracy as "rule of the people, by the people, for the people" and that I think is still a powerful and good starting point and within it, yes, it emphasizes deliberation, particularly the principle that knowledge must be inclusive. It emphasises participation and accountability, but it doesn't, I don't think it in any way undermines the role of representation. That said, at the same time, there is a principle of "nothing about us without us" that is a final principle which recognizes that in our globalized and interconnected world decisions taken in one place can have an impact on people in other countries and other places and in that way our globalized world demands that democracy spills out of its national borders.

So we've basically got a situation now where we have national parliaments, we have some supra-national regional parliaments emerging, and then there's this talk about a parliamentary assembly at the at the global level and that all hangs together and makes sense within the perspective of what you guys are promoting?

So the manifesto has got principles and then it's got commitments which go with the principles and one of the commitments that goes with the principle of "nothing about us without us" is "we support the creation of a parliamentary assembly at the U.N." and what it says it is "as the first step toward a system of global democracy" - now you can argue with that the language "as the first step" because you need the helluva lot of movement before you can get to a parliamentary assembly!

If I can explain the genesis of this a bit? There were a number of responses in the consultation process which pointed towards the Campaign for the UN Parliamentary Assembly. There were a number of proposals from the UK for the reform of the House of Lords but if you're drafting a manifesto with a global reach you can't put commitments within it that are so heavily tied to a particular set of jurisdictions, those of the United Kingdom. At the global level it's a little bit different and we had a number of consultation responses that pointed towards the existence of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. I suspect it's probably because the UNPA/KDUN [Committee for a Democratic U.N.] supporters were very active in submitting responses to the consultation process and in a sense those consultation responses informed that commitment. So it's not in the principle, it's in the commitment, and what we ask when people sign on is that they endorse the general direction of change in the manifesto and commit to take at least one action in order to implement one of the commitments. So the manifesto isn't saying "you have to agree with the idea of a UN Parliamentary Assembly to sign up to this" at all; but it's there in the menu of commitments that we invite people to consider implementing ...

... ah, that's fantastic, excellent ...

... and it's attached to a principle which says the scale and effects of sustainability challenges demand that democracy burst out of its national borders.

And that can take many shapes. Obviously the particular shape that the UNPA-Campaign is promoting is this idea of a global parliament at the global level but to some degree that's a very concrete manifestation. There is also a lot of interconnecting tissue that is then made up of people engaging and making their views heard and exchanging ideas ...

... and there are so many other ways in which to democratizing international decision-making as well. For starters, if we had much more inclusive, deliberative processes at the national level, about the positions that our governments take to the international level that would be a very positive step along the way ...

Absolutely, of course there is a big disconnect there right now.

... and there are lots of other ways of connecting people across the borders of sovereign states - if you like - to start to engage with one another directly the global civil society movement is one way. I find there is something quite symbolically attractive - I'm speaking now as an individual who happens to have signed onto the manifesto - there is something symbolically rather attractive in the idea of having a group of representatives of the people rather than governments shadowing UN decision-making processes.

Oh yeah, obviously I'm an enthusiastic supporter so I'd hardly be saying something different, but the thing that I love about the idea of the UNPA is its moral authority. Here would be an institution that would have representatives elected by all the people of the world where the people of the world have had their say. Whether it had actual power or not, if it made a pronouncement, if it said "we really think you should go this way, rather than that way.", that carries tremendous moral weight even if it doesn't have actual legal weight at a given point in history.

And for me, one of the key things, is that it should be made up of people whose job it is to behave as people. With all of their differing values and all of their human characteristics - if you like - rather than "I am the elected representative for Southeast Europe" or "I am the elected representative for Central America" and so on.

Absolutely, so they behave as humans not as a regional clones.

And in the manifesto it says that for decision-making at the international level, democracy, rather than the self-interest of individual governments or groups of governments, should be the basis for an engagement.

Well, then you're definitely on the same page as the UNPA-Campaign to a very significant degree. Halina, listen, we've run overtime, this is a very pleasant chat I could definitely go on here for hours but I think we'd better rein it in and and wrap it up if that's alright?

So the manifesto is sitting on a web site that has lots and lots of other resources and the URL is www.democracyandsustainability.org and we're inviting people to visit the website, read the manifesto - which is available in seven languages, I hope people will be up for translating it into more than that - and if you agree as an organisation, as an individual, as a network or an alliance with the general direction of change in the manifesto, and if you're up for making a commitment to take at least one action, to try to implement one of its commitments, then join that democracy and sustainability platform. The the proof of the pudding, in a sense, is when we start collecting together peoples experiences experimenting with the manifesto and implementing it. The manifesto is supposed to be a living document it's not the end, it's it's the start of a process, and I'm quite sure that the text will change over time. We're really trying to bring a very diverse group of people together to share and embark on a process of experimentation.

Halina that sounds amazing! Thank you very much Halina, it was a pleasure chatting to you, it really was.

Thanks a lot, cheers Brian!

Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Vital that U.N. adapt and democratize to secure international peace

The Campaign's UNPA Audio blog is very proud to present our interview with Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian politician and diplomat who was the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1992 to December 1996. An academic and former Foreign Minister of Egypt, Boutros Boutros-Ghali oversaw the UN at a time when it dealt with several world crises, including the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan Genocide.

In November last year, the former Secretary-General celebrated his 90th birthday. From the very beginning in 2007, he was a strong supporter of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Among other things, he was also President of the Organization of the Francophonie and President of the South Centre, a joint think tank of countries of the Global South. The former Secretary-General gave us a concise and focused insight into his thinking about the future of the UN and what it's priority should be if international peace and democratization is to be secured.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview 

It is an awesome honor to have on our little podcast Dr. Boutros-Ghali, sixth Secretary-General of the U.N.  Welcome to the UNPA audio blog Mr. Secretary-General.

Thank you!

I know you're an immensely busy man so we'll skip the small talk and get straight to the questions!

You were Secretary-General during a very turbulent period.  Looking back today what was the most challenging part during your time of as the Secretary-General of the United Nations?

The most challenging part was that it was a new situation. It was the first period after the Cold War. Relations between the member states of the United Nations during the Cold War were different from the relations of the member states after the Cold War. The re-adaptation of the United Nations System to the situation after the Cold War was the most difficult problem; it was not clear to everybody what ought to be done. That there would be more civil war than international war, that the solutions to a civil war are different than the solution of an international confrontation.

With hindsight - obviously it's very easy looking back - but with hindsight, with the information we have today and that you have today, is there something you'd have done differently during that period?

I don't know because on a theoretical basis it is very easy to say I would've done it in a different way; we have 15 years, 20 years of experience, so already our situation is better than the situation of somebody who is confronted by a problem for the first time in his life.

In your agenda for democracy you emphasized the connection between national and international democratization. Do think the energy of the Arab Spring could finally help to push forward the democratization of the U.N.?

No, because first of all I disagree with the expression the Arab Spring. Secondly, it is just one part of the world. We have 100 to 200 countries and the Arab countries represent only 5 percent of the family of nations; this is number one. Number two, we are still at the beginning of this evolution. It is very difficult to to give you an opinion. Let us wait at least one or two years before we predict what will be the result. Will it reinforce the process of democratization or, on the contrary, will it prove that the democratization does not work in certain parts of the world? But this does not appear today, it needs time. We agree that if you have a disease it will take you two or three years to find a solution to overcome the problem of your health; for a nation it will take more so give us time and in the next few years it will be more easy to answer to this question.

So you're a longtime supporter of the concept of the U.N. parliamentary assembly. Do you think that this idea resonates in the global south and with the Arab world in particular?

I don't know if it will have any results but certainly that this will help; as long as we contribute to the internationalization of the problems; as long as we are taking consideration of the problem of globalization; that the national problems of tomorrow, or even certain national problems of today, can not be solved on a national basis, it must be solved on an international basis. So here this re-adaptation is essential if we want to achieve peace and if we want to achieve the democratization of international relations.

Do you think we're going to get there? Are we on the right path do you think?

Again, my answer would be we're still at the beginning of a very long road. How many years did it take to recognize the sovereignty of the state? How many years did it take to create an international organization like the League of Nations? If you read the first books which appeared 200, 300 years ago about the importance of creating an international organization - the League of Nations was created only in 1919! So it'll take time.

Secretary-General that's all I had for you. Was anything else that you wanted to specifically address or tell the listeners of our podcast?

I believe we must pay more attention to international affairs, that I know that the member states are more interested in their internal problems than international problems and this is normal; but if we want to attain peace at the international level, we must pay more attention to international affairs, we must pay more attention to foreign affairs and this is the real problem: that certain countries which have the power, which have the capacity, are not very much interested in international affairs or in foreign affairs because they believe - rightly or wrongly - that to solve their internal problems is more important. I believe we must pay more attention - in our education - about the problem of foreign affairs.

Secretary-General, thank you for taking our call it was a pleasure chatting to you!

And I thank you for your interview, thank you.

Bob Brown advocates a global parliament: "I have trust in the common sense of seven billion people on the planet."

This week's interview is with Bob Brown, former senator and former leader of the Australian Greens. Bob was elected to the Australian Senate on the Tasmanian Greens ticket, joining with sitting Greens Western Australia senator Dee Margetts to form the first group of Australian Greens senators following the 1996 federal election. He was re-elected in 2001 and in 2007. He was the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia. To promote Green and environmental issues, he established the Bob Brown Foundation last year.

In October 2003 Bob was a subject of international media interest when he was suspended from the parliament for interjecting during an address by US President George W. Bush. Bob is a long-time supporter of a global parliament and a UN Parliamentary Assembly. In a prominent speech in June 2011 he suggested that Australia should take the lead in the efforts for global democracy.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview 

Today I'm very honored to speak to Bob Brown, former senator and leader of the Australian Greens. Bob was in office for nearly 16 consecutive years in the Australian Senate. Welcome to the audio blog, Bob!

Thank you Brian, nice to be here.

So I'm going to kick straight into controversial stuff here! I read that you were suspended for disrupting George W. Bush's address when he was addressing the Australian Parliament? That struck me as an act of genuine global politics; can you maybe tell us a bit about that?

In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, George Bush was addressing the Australian Parliament and I simply stood up when he got to Iraq and - very directly but politely - informed him that if he was to abide by international law, the world would respect him and that, secondly, there were two Australian prisoners in Guantanamo Bay at the time and that he should have them released to the Australian jurisdiction; as he had the two U.S. nationals taken from Guantanamo Bay to be dealt with by the U.S. courts.

That caused a great deal of pandemonium and they tried to suspend us, and actually physically blocked me and my fellow Greens the next day from entering parliament, and that was quite unconstitutional. If it had been challenged in the High Court it would've been found to be illegal.

What were the reactions like afterwards?

Hostile. My staff met me after I'd spoken to Bush and said that the phones had been in melt down and very, very hostile with a lot of right wing commentators and so on saying that I should be "punched in the face" and "taken out the back and thrashed" and so on; but after the usual lapse of a few days, it turned around and very soon we were getting 90% support. I think there is no other issue in the parliament which has been a continuing source of people coming up to me in the street and saying: "Good on you that you stood up against George Bush when he was in parliament!" So, very tough at the time, but the feedback has been tremendously rewarding.

There is a difficulty sorting out the the difference between the office of President of the United States - or any other country - and the person who occupies it and when George Bush came into the Australian Parliament you could have heard a pin drop; there was just an extraordinary reverence - which was and is accorded to the office of the President of the United States - but the incumbent happened to be a belligerent person who - as we know since - broke the Geneva conventions and international law and has left a trail of great pain and suffering around the world in his wake. I was aware of that at the time, and prepared to take the consequences, because it was an opportunity that required some action and I took it.

So you're a strong advocate of "one man, one vote," and you are also a strong advocate of a global parliament, and I'm sure you've encountered resistance to this idea - the idea of "one man, one vote" at a global level  - and it usually takes the form of "You don't want the Chinese to run the world, do you?" or "The developing world will criminalize homosexuality! Is that what you want?" so how do you counter that kind of fear?

The fortunate thing is that the logic is with the argument of "one person, one vote, one value, on one planet." So one simply has to have faith in the logic of the argument. In much the same as the suffragettes were right when they advocated the vote for women even though they were spat on, vilified and treated very poorly by other women! The ultimate argument, the reasonable argument, was on their side, so it is and always has been with extending the franchise to everybody. Extending democracy is the same. The argument for democracy  has a number of very eminent and wonderful people in China at the moment in prison, if not in the Gobi desert breaking rocks in labor camps. The argument is with them, and ultimately will be won, and there will ultimately be a broader democracy in China, but not yet.

The same argument I've been dealing with in Australia - about the idea of a global democracy based on "one person, one
value and one vote" - the strongest opposition to that comes from people who are in support of the global market, removing barriers between countries when it comes to trade, but the very same people want to increase barriers when it comes to the movement of people! It's very discriminatory and sometimes has a racial basis as well. We have to be aware of that and that the future of the world depends on us treating each other with respect, with equal respect, no matter where we come from or who we are; and yes there is always the argument that a global vote - for example to decriminalize homosexuality - might go the wrong way but you either believe in democracy or you don't.

I think there is a very strong argument that if people were given the vote we would have a much better world than the one we have. I always cite the argument that if for example one 10th of the spending on arms each year could be diverted to giving children food, and water, and a school to go to, it would end the dire poverty which so many millions of children live in around the planet and I'm sure people would vote for that; but under the current system, when we have defacto global governance, most powerfully used by multinational corporations from all the countries who have power around the world, well, I just think it's no substitute for the idea that people should be enfranchised.

So, basically, what you're saying is that we essentially have global government, we're already there, it's just not democratic, it's not transparent, is that what you hinting at?

Absolutely! The World Trade Organization is often cited, it has an enormous bureaucracy, it hosts talks aimed at removing trade barriers, its reach is global; as is that of the World Bank; so is the global reach of Rupert Murdoch's News corporation which has news interests purveying a one sided view of the news  - and a very opinionated view of the news - right around the world. Many other corporations, Coca-Cola, Exxon, just to name a few, have global reach and are  much more powerful than many single governments around the world and nobody seems to complain about that. So we have, if you like, privatization of global governance and it's high time it was made a public institution as any democracy would have it.

So we have a situation where we actually do have a kind of global governance just not one that most people are conscious of. Whats your take on an incremental approach to a U.N. parliament? What are the steps and the time-frames you favor or consider workable to get us from here to there?

I think incrementalism is one way of going at it and I would never oppose it and that's why I moved in the senate to support the idea of the People's Representative Congress at the United Nations. The United Nations is the best representative - it represents countries even though it's not democratic in the idea of people voting for those representatives - it's the best representative body we've got, but it's way short of a global parliament elected on an equal franchise and I think while we should support incremental moves we must always have at the forefront the goal, the ultimate goal, which is a global parliament based on an equal vote of everybody on the planet which deals with international issues while leaving domestic issues for each domestic jurisdiction to deal with.

One last question for you then. It may seem an odd question but it's relevant I think. In the U.S. tens of millions of people subscribe to a religion or theology that sees global governance of any kind as a prelude to the end of the world or believe that global governance will be run by evil people, controlled by evil powers; this concept - the concept of global government or a global parliament in any event - is quite a tough sell in those quarters. So has the concept been a tough sell in Australia? What are the reasons for that if that is the case?

Well, I was quoted as promoting "one world government" by a right-wing think tank in an Australian newspaper just last week and I had to correct it - in the Financial Review - I've never used that term because it's pejorative. But I'm not concerned about people from a religious point of view. It's always been that there have been people who have quoted from the Koran, or the Bible, or the Talmud, or whatever scripture in every religion for and against something; I think that the better minded majority will ultimately win out in the end. We only have to go back to the civil war in the United States - to the Gettysburg address in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln - where he was under fire from people in the South quoting the scriptures to say that slavery was ordained by God. Ultimately it was illogical and is now not supported in the general view of people right around the world.

Lincoln, by the way, did speak up for democracy in his Gettysburg address - the war was in defense of democracy - so that it should not be extinguished from the Earth, he used the term "from the Earth" at the time because he thought the United States was a stronghold of democracy which was a very fragile thing.

Who knows whether the United States will take up the lead role in promoting global democracy? One tends to think that it will come from elsewhere; because it does take people who have suffered the threat of having it taken away from them or who have never had it. But, we don't know. All I have is trust in the general common sense of seven billion people on the planet; that we have to live together, with each other, or we ultimately have a nasty future in front of us. We can have a very great future but we have to be able to settle the great global questions through the ballot box; it is democracy or guns and any right thinking person will opt for democracy in those circumstances.

And we see it growing around the world; it is far from perfect but it's the best option we have and the unarguable logic is that ultimately global democracy is the best way for we human beings to secure the future of the planet.

Listen, Bob that's all I had for you!

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for taking my call, much appreciated.

Well thank you for the work you're doing, and I wish you every success!

Fernando Iglesias: Democratic supranational institutions are needed to avoid a global cataclysm

Last week I spoke to Fernando Iglesias, a writer and a member of the Argentinan Parliament from 2007 to 2011, who was recently elected as chairman of the the council of the World Federalist Movement. His books include "La modernidad global", an analysis of the "complex dynamics of globalization" published in 2011. Fernando is also a professor at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires and during his term in the Argentinian Parliament, he was also Co-Chair for the Global South of the Parliamentary Advisory Group of the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly.

We talked about world federalism, regional integration, global challenges, the role of the nation-state, the meaning of global democracy, global change and what the future might look like. The discussion was supposed to last five minutes but instead we ended up talking for over twenty!

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview 

Today I'm speaking to Fernando Iglesias, a former Member of the Argentinan Parliament and current chair of the World Federalist Movement. Welcome to the UNPA Audio blog!

Hi Brian, nice to hear you.

We've been trying to get a hold of each other for a while. We finally managed to get together, that is excellent. In July you were elected as the chair of the council of the World Federalist Movement. For our listeners, could you say in a few words what the World Federalist Movement is about?

I was elected chair of the council of the World Federalist Movement and this is a big responsibility as it is the first time someone from the South has been elected, this is a sign of the times.

The World Federalist Movement is a very important movement that tries to put on the table the question of the political organization of our global world, meaning the idea of federalism which was thought of as being  a way of organizing national states. It is also a great idea to be applied to the global world, meaning we should have federalism at the regional level, maybe the European Union is the best example - but we need also to have federalist structures at the global level. Then we need to reform the United Nations, create new agencies and establish the rule of law at the global level. The basic contribution of the World Federalist Movement is the existence of political union inside the European Union - which was originally only an economic project; meaning the European Parliament for example, and also the campaign for the establishment of an International Criminal Court was an initiative of the World Federalist Movement at the beginnings of the 1990s...

...can I stop you there very briefly? The World Federalist Movement has important programs on the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect. So what do you think is the next important milestone in the world federalist strategy - from that point of view - from the International Criminal Court, Responsibility to Protect-point-of-view?

I think we should move towards two other goals, in addition to the development of the International Criminal Court and Responsibility to Protect - these two goals are, in my opinion, the campaign for regional integration, meaning defending and promoting European regional integration now, but also using this model for different regions of the world which in different ways need something similar; need more political union; need more agreement on the common interests of their citizens...

...sorry, Fernando. So the European Union is a good example of the way things are going? Which other regions do you think could go the same way or in the same direction?

I think that there are many aspects of European integration that should be extended to other regions. Not the general model which can change according to the local situation. When I say European integration I mean a model of political integration with supra-national institutions, a supra-national parliament, a supra-national court of justice; meaning also the economic development but also the welfare state. It's very important to defend the European welfare state and not just to defend it inside Europe but to promote this kind of welfare state all over the world.

This year you initiated a manifesto for global democracy that was signed by a large number of intellectuals from around the world, and you are also working on regional integration and a UN Parliamentary Assembly. So you've talked a bit about regional integration. Now how do you connect that to the UN Parliamentary Assembly? What does that look like?

A basic fact of the last 20 years was the globalization of the economy and finances without the globalization of politics; particularly democratic institutions. So we are living in an imbalanced world in which finances and economy are very, very strong and politics is not. So we need to regulate the global market and we need to make technological improvements, this benefits all human beings all over the world and that is why we need - in one way - to build this kind of supra-national institutions, we need to democratize globalization. Meaning building democratic institutions above the national and state level, meaning the regional and global levels; that's why we need a regional integration on the one hand and a UN Parliamentary Assembly on the other hand.

So just to clarify: basically what you're saying is that on the one hand we have an integrated unified or nearly unified global economy but on the other hand we have no political accountability and that is the big imbalance...

...this is one of the problems; and the crisis of 2008  - which is still continuing - shows that you cannot manage a global economy through international agencies; you need global agencies and you need these global agencies to be democratic, like the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. These are the kinds of agencies that should be created inside the United Nations. We need these kinds of agencies not only for economic reasons but also for ecological reasons; we need also to stop nuclear proliferation; and we need to make decisions about a lot of global crises and global trouble we are facing now; like criminality; trafficing of drugs and people. That's why we need to build these kinds of global institutionsm, just as we built national institutions some centuries ago.

And yet the manifesto you initiated starts off with a statement that politics is standing still and resists the trend of globalization and it seemed, perhaps 15 years ago, that the nation-state was on its way out, that the nation-state was doomed, but now global politics has become very nation-state centric again. How do we explain this? How can a UN Parliamentary Assembly help us overcome this national-centric global governance model?

The first thing we need is an explanation. Why are we coming back to the past? I think that the world is facing now a kind of challenge; the kind of challenges that Europe faced at the beginning of the past century. When the international crises and global crises started at the beginning of the 20th century, the first reactions were to be nationalistic: "our country," "our family," needs to be kept safe from international affects. The problem is: if you continue this way you're going to face the same kind of scenario of the European crisis during the first part of the past century when everybody was focused on their own country.

Then you have protectionism, you have nationalism, then you have crazy men like Hitler and Mussolini starting to develop big armies and you need to do the same; and you know, we know where all these forces go. So we need to stop that and apply a different logic in which you keep national states - but you integrate national states and national interests into a more complex order which is global. Which is regional on the one hand, but which is global - and this is the challenge of the 21st century. Because, if we don't find the way of managing nuclear proliferation, global warming, financial crises, in a common way - in a participative and democratic way, we're going to have the same kind of craziness.

Fernando, I have one last question for you. You've touched on this idea of a kind of a hierarchical structure. The nation-state at the bottom, regional institutions in the middle, and the UN Parliamentary Assembly on top. Is that kind of what you're looking at? Is that an accurate portrayal of the structures you envisage?

Well, I think there are so many processes going on. For instance the G20. Ten years ago, the discussion was if global institutions were meant to be! But now the real question is: these institutions which already exist - meaning the World Trade Organization, G20, and the United Nations Security Council etc. - the question is if these organizations are going to be democratic or not; and this is a repetition of the history of the world. Because national powers were not democratic at the beginning they existed - and then they became democratic through the work of organizations, citizens etc. 

So we need to start something similar. We need to think about developing democratic agencies. For sure the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would be perhaps the most emblematic one; but we also need regional parliaments; and a real court of justice; and we need also the International Criminal Court to be more balanced and be strengthened in order to judge criminals, crimes against humanity - like the war in Iraq, for instance. So there are so many ways.

What is very clear now is that there is a general dissatisfaction about the way politics exists at the global level and we need new answers, so, of course, a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly - by the way, I was the chair of the parliamentary advisory group of the South for many years and work together with the people who are developing this amazing initiative. We need to push on with the participation of people, the participation of citizens of the world , and this kind of initiative is crucial in order to put this on the agenda.

The American Revolution, the French Revolution these were all - even to some degree I suppose the Russian Revolution in 1917 - these were all critical pivotal points. What is the equivalent breakthrough moment for global democracy? Is there some kind of critical mass? Is there some key pivotal moment? Has it maybe already happened? What would such a breakthrough look like?

Well, firstly, I wouldn't put together the Russian Revolution with the French and American Revolutions. Focusing on these two last ones, the French Revolution and the American Revolution appeared in a moment of history that was very clear. It was a change from a civilization which was based on agriculture and had a particular way of political structure, meaning monarchy and the Pope etc., very hierarchical powers. Then the techno-economic environment changes from agriculture to the industrial revolution and then, of course, the old structures were not able to cope with the challenges of the future, so I think that the French and American revolutions were a way of adjusting the political system to the new conditions that were created by industrialisation and now we are facing exactly the same thing; because we are changing from the industrial society to a new global society of knowledge, information, Internet, mass media, communication, innovation. So the old structure of industrialism - meaning basically national states and secondarily international organisations - are not able to cope with the challenge of the future. If we're not able to change, and change in a fast way, we are going to face a very critical situation and I have to say that at the moment the initiatives are all very valuable but are still very far away from the objectives we need to achieve.

It sounds like you're saying the breakthrough moment has already occurred, the Internet, social media and the ability for many millions of people to contact each other and exchange ideas; that information revolution is already underway and that to some degree is what is pushing the agenda forward.

Yes, yes, of course, of course! I mean nobody knew that the Soviet Union was going to fail till the moment it failed and these kinds of ongoing processes - you are building a critical mass and you don't know that something is really happening until it happens - like in the Arab Revolutions, the Arab Spring, whatever.

Anyway, I think the real question now, for me, is: are we going to be able to develop these kinds of new structures as fast as the techno-economic situation changes the world? Because we are clearly  - and this is another assumption of the global democracy manifesto about the delay in politics - we're facing an amazing change in the techno-economic aspect of life but the change in politics is very slow in comparison. So the problem is: we're in a similar situation to which Europeans were a century ago and could face a big catastrophe before we arrive at the correct conclusions.

We need real input from civil society, from the citizens, from the political system in order to change the order and build new institutions, so this is the real question: whether we are going to arrive at these new democratic global structures before a big crisis occurs or after? Millions of lives, maybe the future of humanity, is at stake.

So we can do this the hard way or we can do it the easy way. The easy way is to recognize our shared interdependence and to act on it to create relevant institutions. The hard way is to have some kind of global war or some kind of global ecological collapse and emerge out of that and do the same thing anyway?

Yes, this is the point of history in which I think we are... I could be wrong...

...no, I agree. I think you're right. We're very much on the same page...

...in any case, if we're going to face a disaster, the point is to compare the end of the First World War and the end of the Second World War. At the end of the First World War, the political decision was to keep the politics and institutional organization of politics at the national level and the results of such a wrong decision was the Second World War.

In the meanwhile there were many people - Altiero Spinneli, Lionel Robbins - who were working hard keeping the mind on the need of creating some kind of federal union of Europe and to overcome the national paradigm. At the end of the Second World War, we have a catastrophe which was even worse than the first but the right idea was inside the minds of many politicians - Schumann, Jean Monnet - and the united Europe was built and the result was - even if there are many things to say, Europe is in crisis etc. - Europe has had a long period of peace and social progress and economic development for sixty years. So the problem now at the global level is this: at least if we're going to face a global crisis, we need to develop the right ideas for changing the world before or after the crisis.

Absolutely, let's hope we go the easy way! We do it the easy way so we don't have to go through the birth canal of some kind of violent conflagration or ecological collapse or something before we realize that we really all have to pull together.

Fernando, thank you for chatting to me, I appreciate you taking my call.

Frank Biermann: 19th century global governance not fit to tackle climate change

This Monday, the 18th UN Climate Change Conference started in Doha, Qatar. On this occasion, I've interviewed Frank Biermann, one of the world's leading experts on global environmental governance. Frank is a professor of political science and of environmental policy sciences at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and visiting professor of earth system governance at Lund University, Sweden. He's specialized on the study of global environmental politics, with emphasis on climate negotiations and United Nations reform, among other things. Frank pioneered the concept of Earth System Governance which has evolved into a major global research programme which he is presiding. Not least, he's also a signatory of the international appeal for a UN Parliamentary Assembly.

If tackling climate change has a "coal face", this is where Professor Biermann spends much of his time, and I was very lucky to squeeze 15 minutes out of his packed agenda before he was due to head off to France and then on to Doha. 

For most of the 15 minutes we spoke about climate change and Frank elaborated on how our 19th century system of global governance is failing to resolve this major 21st century problem.

[display_podcast]

Audio transcript of the interview

I'm talking today to Professor Frank Biermann, the Chair of the Earth System Governance Project, welcome to the UNPA Audio Blog Professor Biermann!

Thank you so much.

I know you have a busy schedule so I'll get right to it.

Given your involvement in the Earth System Governance Project, I imagine, you are one of the scientists in the world who is thinking most about how the international community's response to the challenge of climate change could become more effective. Now we've had years, strictly speaking we've had decades, of negotiation and yet a post-Kyoto protocol, for example, is still in total limbo. So if you look at the climate talks and the UN, what are the main flaws, basically, what's going wrong?

Yes, thank you very much. Well I think there are many, many scientists in the Earth System Governance Project that are active on these issues so I'm only one of many of them. Truly I spend my time thinking about how negotiations on climate change can be improved and how we can reach a better progress on these matters because time is short and we have now passed 400ppm climate carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. So therefore we really have to speed up our efforts in trying to get emissions reduced quite urgently.

If I look at the negotiations in the past couple of years and also the current ones that are now going on, one key problem is still, of course, that there is a tremendous lack of political will in many governments to really address these issues and really take us forward. This might improve now, it's possible, with a second term for Obama, we have a new government in China and maybe also the European Union is a little bit more relaxed in the next couple of months from the financial trouble on the continent. So maybe there is a window of opportunity to have a little bit more political will and space for new initiatives in these countries. But I think there are many things that also can be done, for example, outside the intergovernmental process which means a stronger involvement from the private sector, a stronger involvement of local activities, cities are becoming very active, there are various movements in many places that take this forward even though governments are still not making that much progress. So maybe it's wrong to look only at the intergovernmental negotiations; it's also very important to look at what happens outside the conference halls of the climate conference of state parties and what happens on the ground. 

Nonetheless I think it's also important to have some long-term reforms in the intergovernmental process and this is what we have outlined in our work in some of the papers within the Earth System Governance Project where we argue that what is needed is, for example, stronger reliance on majority voting, on qualified weighted majority voting, which is not currently the case in the climate negotiations, maybe also stronger involvement of civil society in international negotiations, giving them a stronger role to play there, maybe also a better science-policy-interface and finally maybe also a stronger role for UN agencies like the United Nations Environmental Program which has not really proven to be a very powerful actor in the last 40 years.

So you sound a bit more upbeat then, you think, we are basically making some progress?

Well, slowly. I think that certainly the progress at both the global level and at the local level is not enough. I'm a professional in this field and sometimes I'm optimistic and sometimes I'm pessimistic, it's like a doctor in a way, so certainly I mean the progress is not sufficient to fully address this problem and that's clear; climate change is one of the biggest issues in the 21st century and we are not addressing it properly.

You wrote an article for Science magazine earlier this year and in that you mention a "constitutional moment" in world politics and global governance being really required to move this thing on, could you perhaps elaborate on what you meant by that? By a "constitutional moment"?

Well, we felt in this community that wrote this article, it was written by 32 social scientists, all from different countries, different continents, and all specializing in global environmental governance, and while we put this together as a kind of assessment of the state of the art of the social sciences on international sustainability governance, we felt that politics - especially at the global level - is still very much almost like it was in the 19th century. It's all very much an intergovernmental system, caught in a system where we have some 190 nations and each nation is struggling to present and protect its own parochial interests and we felt that we needed a step change in the intergovernmental system and we had a number of proposals like majority voting, like a couple of stronger UN agencies, like a stronger involvement of civil society and all of this together reminded us of the constitutional moment like we had it in 1945 where, kind of, every three months there were major conferences where major agencies were set up; the Bretton Woods system, the UN system, an attempt at a trade organisation. Many international agencies have been set up, human rights standards have been set, so many things happened in this time and today this is also needed. Well, knowing, of course, that these constitutional moments are always linked to revolutions and war...

...or crises of some kind...

...and this we don't have, luckily, so the challenge is in a way...

...or unfortunately...

...well, many scientists say the crisis is already there, it's just not realized by decision-makers, melting ice shields etc., so this is what we meant, we need a step change from the 19th century to the 21st century and this was written for the Rio conference, the Rio+20 conference, held in June this year and as we all know, also not much happened there.

In that article you stressed that we needed to get beyond consensus rule to rely more on qualified majority voting, weighted voting mechanisms, so given that almost all proposals for a UN Parliamentary Assembly consider that the seats would be apportioned, taking population size or other factors into account, would you agree that a parliamentary assembly could be a key institution to help us move beyond the current focus on consensus rule?

Well, I think there are two different discussions, I mean the one discussion is: who is representing countries? Right now it is the executives, it's the heads of government and their diplomatic services and foreign offices who are representing countries and then the alternative, one alternative, would be to have a stronger role for a parliament that would either be directly elected, which is very far-fetched, or like an assembly from national parliaments and this is kind of the question: who is representing the countries; are the parliamentarians or the executive? The other question is the voting: do you have voting, and if you have voting, how do you vote? If you have voting, you can't have a system where the prince of Lichtenstein and the prince of Monaco have the same votes as China; that is simply not acceptable. So you need to have some form of weighting voting - but how to do this? We have no consensus, I mean there are some papers, including from the movement for the parliamentary assembly, many studies have been done in your community which I think are very important studies and I very much encourage everybody to work more and to publish more and to reach a consensus on what could be the models of weighted voting in the future. There are some examples, like the World Bank, which is an example that many countries of course would not accept - it is weighted according to the financial investment in the bank so this kind is what many developing countries would not accept. There are some others, the IMO, some form of weighted voting and many ideas are out there, I think this is something we have to move forward.

I've got one last question for you, strictly speaking a two parter, can you explain - because frankly it boggles my mind - why large parts of the U.S. Republican Party deny the reality of climate change and the basic science behind it and do think that climate change denial played an important role in the outcome of the election?

Well, I mean climate change was hardly mentioned by either candidate for the presidency. I am not sure whether this strong denial of scientific research by the republicans - not only in climate change but also in many other issues, like creation etc. - it's possible that this has kind of pushed off some swing voters and we know that Romney has kind of  lost many people in the middle ground and maybe further analysis will show that many of the more moderate people in the middle ground, in the swing states, that they have been put off also by this anti-scientific approach by parts of the Republican Party, of course not the entire party, but quite a few people in this group in the Tea party and the Republican Party who have this strong denial of scientific processes and scientific research.

Actually, before I let you go perhaps you could briefly define Earth System Governance. I will be including a link but I thought it would be instructive to hear that directly from you if that's OK?

Earth system governance is a new concept, a new paradigm, that has been developed in our community, the scientific community, the last couple of years and it's kind of a shift in focus. A shift in focus from environmental policy that was just more like the surroundings of the human species; to a new idea that the entire earth system is in a process of transition. Mainly because of human action and that therefore the target of this governance system, this governance process, has to be the protection of the entire earth system in all it's interrelated parts and this is, kind of like, a new way of seeing the planet and new way of how to see environmental policy. So we felt that the term environmental policy or global environmental policy is no longer sufficient to really describe what is at stake. So for this reason the term earth system governance and the Earth System Governance Project is a network of researchers, many researchers across the globe, we have various types of affiliations, research fellows, lead faculty members, we have a global alliance of earth system governance research centers and this all around a science plan which is online available where we have put out a number of research questions we believe are crucial for the next 10 years. This was founded in 2009 and we want to kind of wrap it up in 2018 and we have a science plan with questions we feel are very important and many of these questions are ones that we have addressed in this interview. So it's a very open network and for those who are listening to this interview they can go to the website and we're very keen to work together with more people it's very open to anybody who deeply feels about the planet in any way and wants to be engaged as a researcher and find out what's going wrong and what we can do better.

Thank you, Professor Biermann!

Thank you.

Website of the Earth System Governance Project