Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
remunerated, that, on the paradisiacal island of Lugano, in Italy, in one year, should
produce a confidential report to later be sent to chiefs of state and international security
agencies that should use its recommendations, suggested with total liberty and
produced with total dignity.
Utilizing the simulation expedient, a Group of Instructors commends a Work
Group to carry out the arduous and challenging task of:
1
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003
1.
identifying the threats to the liberal capitalist system and the obstacles to its
anger and violence in the poor in information (p.32). The poor in information become
dysfunctional, social discards, since their disposition to work and their muscular force
are irrelevant in the era of information. Other disparities can be completely irrelevant
in this dialectic of anger and violence. An example, frequently mentioned by moralists,
concerns the approximate 450 billionaires whose totaled wealth, they say, is equivalent
to the totaled wealth of half a billion people in the Third World... (p. 33).
d) gang capitalism: large-scale crime, parallel economies, traffic of drugs,
contraband of weapons, laundering of money, corruption of every sort. Large areas of
the planet are already outside State jurisdiction.
e) external debt: heavily indebted countries profit far more by exporting
drugs, light arms or emigrants than primary, legal consumer products (p. 36).
f) financial collapse: inherent volatility of the financial markets.
The diagnostic is completed by concluding that, more and more,
economical growth becomes the source of impoverishment; the undesirable social
effects can undermine the economic benefits, the illegal economies are gaining force;
geopolitical disorder; unstable, threatening financial markets.
In the light of this diagnostic, the mechanisms of the outdated and ineffective
international institutions (UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.) are examined, with the exception
of the World Trade Organization, the only organization directly striving to assure that
excluded developed countries and entire non-developed countries participate in the
banquet.
The acuteness of the crisis is configurated: It should not surprise us that
unregulated (or self-regulated) markets be perfectly capable of producing tensions
(high-scale tensions, social agitation, degradation of the environment, financial ruin)
that consume the market itself. In the present model, there are no worldwide shock
absorbers capable of softening these blows. Since we are facing an inherently fragile
system that lack regulations to legitimate it, we cannot help but put ourselves on guard
against a global accident at the beginning of the XXI century, if not before (p. 52).
Based on this diagnosis, the Work Group attempts to synthesize the impact of
the situation by using the well-known equation:
Impact (on the earth) = consumption X technology X population
Limited natural resources and the inexorability of technological growth in the
capitalistic system make the population the key variable, crucial and decisive for the
3
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003
the technology used to produce what they consume and to treat the trash
they produce
The approach adopted by the author permits her to unravel the ideological
dimensions as well as the implications of the founding concepts in the recurring
analyses of globalization. In this way, for example, the consultants choose, as a
measure of impact, the concept of the ecological mark; in other words, the quantity of
ecological resources necessary to subsidize the necessities of a given population with a
certain level of consumption and technology. This method divides the area of the
planets productive ecosystems by the number of world inhabitants.
The consultants believe that this concept is better than that of the load capacity
or burden capacity, since the preferred measure integrates factors such as commerce
and urbanization and turns geography into a truly globalized science.
In the populational dimension, the author takes her logical argumentation to the
extreme: the consultants come upon a worldwide population of approximately six
billion inhabitants... absolutely unfeasible in the analyzed context: In 1948, when
the signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights met in assembly,
approximately 2.5 billion people lived on this planet.
Even then, this objective was utopian; today, it is completely out of the question:
it is impossible to guarantee these rights to six billion people, the greater part of
which live in misery (p. 71).
Although the world population is reducing its rate of growth, projections made
by the United Nations indicate that world population could reach the cipher of 7.2 to 8.5
billion people in 2020!
Furthermore, the greater part of this total is composed of an impoverished and
miserable population, residing in less-developed countries; the great migratory fluxes
only worsen conflicts and poor women want to have a large number of children due to
the economical need for them. However, the aging of the population is a fact and even
the poor manage to live longer.
4
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003
from
ideologically
dominant thought, the author, with her logical expedient, also ironizes the form of
reports of this type, where the objectives and goals must be clearly explicit.
In this case: Starting with 6 billion inhabitants in 2002, our goal is to establish
the cipher of 4 billion in twenty years . The curve would continue to rise at the
beginning but, in the final stage, it would show an annual decline of 280 million in
2005. Five years later, in 2010, it should reencounter its present level of 6 billion. It will
then continue in an absolute and more rapid decline until 2020 (p. 93).
The positive Malthusian checks are necessary because The XXI century must
choose between discipline and control on the one side and disorder and chaos on the
other. The only manner in which to assure the well-being of the greatest number of
people, preserving capitalism, is to diminish the population (p.89).
The modus operandi for the reduction of 4 billion people by the year 2020 is
anchored, on the one side, in the strengthening of the scourges that already involve
humanity at the beginning of this century, represented here by the current configuration
5
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003
of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Conquest, War (with international commerce of
arms and intervention), Famine and the Pest: The conquests, wars, famine and the pest
always served to inhibit the excessive growth of the human race and, even today, have
not lost their importance. We must show how they could be adapted to modern
circumstances (p. 167).
The preventive checks also have their role through the incentive of policies for
the inhibition of reproduction: abortion, masculine and feminine sterilization and
contraception.
The populational diagnosis points to the contrast between rich countries and
poor countries in terms of populational totals, differential growth rates and populational
aging. In this part, the critic is emphatic in relation to the non-anticipated effects of
social policies; in spite of reducing their offspring, the excluded continue to be
excluded, even more so.
At the end, the author introduces herself and defends the idea of the simulation
pointing out her final comments, that is, her personal positions; her position is polemic
regarding the policies of identity; the policies in defense of ethnic, sexual, linguistic,
racial or religious groups can gain strength in detriment of nationality and of the main
identity of each individual as a member of the human species, losing sight of the
notion of citizenship.
According to the author, these movements can exasperate the conditions of
exclusion even more and weaken the possibilities of global struggles, giving force to the
philosophy of divide more to reign better.
The Lugano report is, doubtlessly, a controversial book; it signifies, however, a
vehement statement against the devastating effects of globalization on ample and
growing contingencies of the planets population.
The clever resource adapted arouses the readers interest and the logic of the
reasoning is very attractive. Its principal contribution is exactly the explicitness of
dimensions that are not apparent in the discourse and practices of dominant groups of
the globalized system, but also in the alternative proposals of the unsuspecting who do
not evaluate the implications of their positions, all the way down to the final
consequences.
The scrutiny with respect to the Malthusian logic-reasoning implicit in many of
the discourses and many of the practices constitutes a very relevant contribution,
6
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003
especially considering that this type of criticism is not frequent in demographic studies.
It is a worthwhile debate!
7
: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003