poverty and to meet higher environmental and social standards and so on. In other words, what is needed are all those traditional strategies which were once available to governments during the 60s and 70s to keep all three engines running but which are now denied them. In other words, what we need is not just rules, but GOVERNANCE. However, to give such powers to the WTO, or even to the UN, when neither institution has any form of direct, democratically elected parliament would be to court global dictatorship � benevolent or otherwise. And that is where the Simultaneous Policy � "SP" for short - can help.

The SP technology represents a practical means by which all of us can work together to escape the present vicious circle of destructive competition and transit to a framework of international cooperation which eliminates the down-sides of globalisation leaving us all with the benefits. It allows us to democratically develop a range of measures to re-regulate global capital markets and transnational corporations, to then gradually bring politicians around the world to adopt those measures in principle and then, finally, to get them implemented by all, or virtually all, nations simultaneously. But the stipulation of "implementation by all nations simultaneously" should not be understood as a pre-condition �cast in stone�. By removing governments' and business�s key objection to being first to �go it alone�, and thus eliminating their fear of becoming uncompetitive, SP instead represents a new and vital consensus-building strategy. It provides the critical basis upon which governments can readily say "yes" instead of "no" to policies like the Tobin Tax or any other policy whose unilateral implementation might threaten their international competitiveness.

And how to achieve this quantum shift in international relations? Since the adoption of SP represents a citizen�s commitment to vote for ANY political party or politician � within reason � who also adopts SP, mainstream party politicians will increasingly have the incentive to do so or risk being unseated at future elections. For the adherence by all parties to market and corporate demands has severely narrowed the differences between them, so the number of voters needed to swing an election one way or another is becoming relatively small - as the last U.S. Presidential election showed. And it is the adoption of SP by that �critical number� of voters in each parliamentary constituency in each country which is the aim of the SP campaign. By not being a political party but instead by bringing existing parties into competition with one another to adopt SP, the International Simultaneous Policy Organsation hopes to become a novel and decisive political phenomenon capable of ushering in a new era of global cooperation and mature international community in which individual nations are freer than they are today to pursue independent economic and social objectives and to protect our planet.

I therefore hope you�ll want to investigate the SP technology further and look forward to your questions and enquiries.

May 2002� John Bunzl � Founder and Director, International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)

P.O. Box 26547, London SE3 7YT, UK SP Campaign Website: www.simpol.org

E-Mail: [email protected]

Notes, for a talk delivered in Cambridge:

"Prosperity for the South via Access to Northern Markets� - Globalisation's Cruel Smokescreen.

Time for the Alternative of Localisation

Colin Hines

During the 1999 anti WTO 'Battle of Seattle' third world speakers made it clear that export led growth was damaging their social and environmental fabric. Sara Larrain, a Chilean grass roots environmentalist who stood for President on a manifesto based on a two year community consultation process, asked exasperatedly 'why is it that people from the north think exports benefit us, they are wrecking our environment and increasing inequality?'

Yet Ministries of Development, UN Agencies and to their shame many development NGOs are virtually united in their belief that exports to the North are a route for funding improvements for living conditions of the poor in the South. The same approach has now been expanded to the former communist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe. Yet the NGO movement's own research and that of, for example, the World Bank� shows that with the exception of the Newly Industrialised Countries (NICs), pre the 1997 Asian crisis, the position of the majority in such export dependent countries did not improve and in many cases worsened. In cash crop exports, the position is even clearer due to decades of experience of the adverse effects. Cash crops worsen land tenure, deprive small farmers of a living, result in increased numbers of landless and neglect of the rest of a nation's rural infrastructure.

'You can make more money by growing food for export' might on the surface seem a sensible aim. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work. With more and more countries fighting for the same markets, producers are forced to drop their prices in order to compete, resulting in not more money for farmers, but less. One of the most significant examples of this is coffee, the world's most valuable export after oil. With the 'aid' of World Bank loans, Vietnam invested heavily in this crop, and as a result tripled its coffee output between 1995-2000. This made it the second largest producer after Brazil. All well and good for the Vietnamese economy, one might think, but what of the farmers in the other 49 Third World countries that produce coffee? As a result, world coffee prices have collapsed and 20 million farmers worldwide now see their livelihoods at risk.