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make it possible to tax companies and individuals according to their wealth, their income, their spending through value added tax and their land. Part of this taxation will be used to compensate the poorer sections of society for any price rises and by shifting taxes away from employment to encourage more jobs.

Democratic Localism

A diverse local economy requires the active democracy of everyday involvement in producing the maximum range of goods and services close to the point of consumption. To ensure the broadest distribution of the ensuing benefits will simultaneously require wider, political, democratic and economic control at a local level. A Citizen's Income will allow involvement in the economy as a matter of right. Political funding will be strictly constrained and power will pass from the corporations to the citizens. This will involve the encouragement of maximum participation in defining priorities and planning local economic, social and environmental initiatives. This will require a balance of involvement of the state, community networks and organisations and citizen's movements.

Trade and Aid for Localisation

The GATT rules at present administered by the WTO should be revised fundamentally to become a General Agreement for Sustainable Trade (GAST), administered by a democratic World Localization Organization (WLO).� Their remit would be to ensure that regional trade and international aid policies and flows, information and technological transfer, as well as the residual international investment and trade, should incorporate rules geared to the building up of sustainable local economies. The goal should be to foster maximum employment through a substantial increase in sustainable, regional self-reliance.

The residual long distance trade in foods or other items which cannot be produced in a region eg coffee, tea, bananas, should follow the principle of 'Fair Trade Miles', combining the requirements of 'fair trade' with 'food miles'. (The former covers goods produced predominantly by small farmers for a fair price and in a way that furthers environmental protection. The latter means producing as closely as possible to the market in order to minimise transportation and hence the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.)

'Fair Trade miles' need to be linked to a guaranteed quantity of goods to be purchased by each buying country, within a guaranteed range of prices. This would allow the exporting nations to have as secure a level of earnings as is feasible with which to contribute to the overriding goal of re-diversifying local production

Finally 'Localisation' is not about trying to put the clock back. Globalisation is doing that as it reduces the security, basic needs provision and employment prospects for billions for whom things had been improving since the second world war. It could return us to a path that advances the majority and doesn't mire them in cruel insecurity. It is not against trade, it just wants trade where possible to be local. The shorter the gap between producer and consumer, the better the chance for the latter to control the former. Adverse environmental effects are more likely to be experienced through long-distance trade and lack of consumer control over distant producers. Local trade should significantly lessen these problems and make possible the tighter regulation required.

Why Should this Radical Change Come About?

The widespread resistance to globalisation can be built upon to help fashion a viable localist alternative. There are already countless people and groups strengthening their local economies from the grass roots up. The greatest spur to consideration of such radical local alternatives at the governmental level will be the need to respond to global economic upheavals and the deflation, the job losses and inadequate consumer demand that will come in its wake. Equally crucial in shaping a different localist imperative amongst politicians will be the pressure that the politically active can bring to bear. This must shift from just fighting separate issue-specific aspects of globalisation to realising that their individual successes can only be secured as part of an overarching change to localisation, but in an internationally supportive manner.

Just as the last century saw the battle between the left and the right, what needs to become the big battle of this next century must be an alliance of localists, red-greens and small 'c' conservatives pushing a localist agenda, defeating the doomed globalists of the political centre. So, with apologies to Karl Marx and Margaret Thatcher, the rallying cry should be:

' Localists of the World Unite-There is an Alternative'.

Colin Hines is an Associate of the International Forum on Globalisation. His book: 'Localization- A Global Manifesto'� was published in Summer 2000 by Earthscan. (�10.99)

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