Even as the US and other countries batten down the hatches against terrorism and religious totalitarians, there are enough positive signs in other areas to expect 2010 to be better than 2009. The world’s nations have never done as much in the past to work together to share knowledge, technology and best practices to reduce poverty, environmental pollution, disease, violation of human rights and exploitation of children.
The most positive aspect is that these efforts are led and performed by civil society organizations rather than bureaucratic governments or timorous international agencies. Surprisingly, multinational and smaller corporations are starting to realize that ethical behavior towards the communities where they do business brings dollar rewards. It is not charity. Using doing good as a smokescreen to hide predatory profiteering is counterproductive because greed cannot remain hidden long from thousands of voluntary groups and citizen reporters.
As individuals, our main concerns may revolve around local problems, especially unemployment, health care, law and order, and hate-filled terrorists blowing up innocents at our doorstep. But there is a bigger world out there and that world is improving at unprecedented pace.
For instance, world hunger fell faster than ever during the last decade and it is set to decline further in 2010. The world still has at least 1.5 billion people, out of about seven billion, living on the edge of starvation but they are not forgotten or hidden from our scrutiny. Saving people from death or disease caused by hunger and malnutrition are now mainly issues of logistics, money and compassion spreading across borders. Even Africa’s tribal wars causing millions of deaths from famine and disease can no longer be disguised by dictators as the internal affairs of their countries.
We know what to do, we know how to do but we often cannot muster the political will to do what it takes. Governments dither. They use every actual or potential human tragedy to negotiate ad nauseam to win advantage before taking concrete actions. They move quickly only if the catastrophe has already happened but waste and corruption can be colossal during the fog of disaster.
Recent years have changed some of that. Ordinary people are using the communication revolution to band together in civil society groups to start farsighted actions. Their work is overtaking governments and intergovernmental agencies. Their size and wealth is smaller than official bodies but they are showing leadership in holding governments and global institutions to account. Many work across frontiers bringing members together in a fraternity of purpose that is colored not by religious or political faith but the desire to be the change they want to see.
Corporations are less suspicious about co-sponsoring non-governmental groups because of a dawning realization that capitalism should not be just a tool of higher profits and shareholder value. These are early days but the 2008 financial tsunami and 2009 recession have reinforced the point for everyone that capitalism’s greed is useful for economic growth but only up to a point. It has to be tempered with corporate ethics and social conscience. Many top business leaders operating globally have repeatedly emphasized that making profits sustainable over time requires not only innovation and tough management but also doing good. Some estimates say that poor people around the world are an untapped market of $13 trillion. That is almost as big the American economy.
This contribution avoids providing examples to stay neutral and not advertise companies and civil society organizations at the forefront of these positive changes. But they are not hard to find.
The early phase of globalization involved producing wherever costs were lowest even if that meant exploiting children and adults in poor countries working like almost-slaves. The emerging phase of globalization is turning away from this past to take advantage of the knowledge that global markets for almost everything are big enough and rich enough to permit a better life for everyone.
The pie is potentially so large than everyone can have a slice without being downtrodden. These are the possibilities dawning in 2010. We should try to make them real in this new decade.