Establishing New Forms of Governance

To accomplish the vision of a world of greater equality and diversity in harmony with the environment, we should work for a global structural policy that is rooted in common interests and the need to protect our global commons. Implementation of this policy would take place at global, national, and local levels along the lines of subsidiarity, which holds that policies should be decided at the lowest levels of competent authority and adequately represented. Broad and open discussion on all levels must lead to a wide group of leaders at the international level agreeing and collaborating on basic global policies. Wise translation and implementation of these policies into national and local legislation and administration must take place at national and local levels.

Multilateral diversity involves not only geographic, cultural, and economic representation, but an equal proportion of women and men as well. Equitable governance will not be achieved unless there is a huge increase of women involved at every level of local, state, and global decision-making.

Join the discussion in the Establishing New Forms of Governance forum.

National and local governance

Rich countries

Rich countries must recognize their responsibility for global environmental problems, which have resulted from increased production as well as from the increasingly wasteful lifestyles of their populations. Such consumption patterns are already overstraining the carrying capacity of the Earth. Extrapolated to a more equitable world without poverty, where everybody is free to choose his or her lifestyle, the present consumption patterns of rich countries would lead to total ecological disaster. The modern high-consumption lifestyle is in no way a role model for sustainable international development and must fundamentally be changed. The credibility of rich countries depends heavily on this transformation, and it is, therefore, only on the basis of these structural changes that international cooperation can flourish.

Join the discussion in the Rich Countries forum.

Developing nations

Developing countries are responsible for realizing their full potentials for development. They alone have the legitimacy, understanding and power to create their own unique path to development. By ensuring good governance at national and local levels, and taking responsibility for their own growth, developing countries establish the preconditions for fair global rules and development assistance that can provide them with access to the fruits of globalization.

Peace and the prevention or settlement of conflicts are preconditions for political stability, and therefore, crucial for a country or region to be able to make proper use of its resources and build up infrastructure. Given peaceful conditions, socio-economic and political reforms should aim at the realization of good governance and the rule of law, the generation of democracy, the creation or enhancement of regulations on competition, the eradication of corruption, the empowerment of women and the respect for fundamental human rights. Policies toward these ends will have an effect both on unlocking the potential of market powers for human and social development, and in laying the foundation for democratization.

By organizing themselves through regional cooperation, developing countries can join their forces and interests to attain stronger and more stable levels of development. Increased cooperation among regions also creates greater regional political stability, provides neighboring nations the opportunity to create regional trade blocs with reduced tariffs and larger economies of scale, and enhances their collective bargaining power in international negotiations.

Join the discussion in the Developing Nations forum.

Global Governance

The process of economic globalization has reduced the power and autonomy of states and the prospect of democracy in various ways. Most states have increasingly less room to maneuver in bringing their domestic economies into social and environmental harmony through sovereign parliamentary decisions. However, the influence that powerful states continue to wield through their decisions in intergovernmental agencies is also often not subject to domestic parliamentary scrutiny.

To regain the primacy of politics over market forces, national governments have to form a new framework for global economy and its most rapidly evolving segment, financial markets. This requires national governments to adopt a global perspective and leave, at least in part, the state-centered perspective behind. This unified framework has to put ecology, society, and culture at the heart of the world economy. It has to go far beyond guaranteeing the rights of private capital, like property rights and contracts, and recognize the rights of public capital, including the largely non-monetized but inherently valuable sectors of global public goods and the global commons.

Guidelines for the concrete design and implementation of this new framework must not be decided from the top. Rather, they must become the subject of broad public discussion and transparent decision-making at the international level.

Possibilities for participation by all relevant stakeholders are crucial for the acceptance and implementation of global decision-making by those same stakeholders. A new global governance system will thus include more actors than the present 190+ national governments and their intergovernmental organizations. Other stakeholders such as civil society and the private sector should play an active role in facilitating more equitable and participatory forms of governance, especially at the global level.

Join the discussion in the Global Governance forum.

Convergence of international rules and institutions

International negotiations must aim at the convergence of international rules and institutions especially among the WTO in world trade, the International Labor Organization (ILO) in work and social issues, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) on environmental problems, and other agencies in the fields of governance, peace-keeping, human rights, aid and financial regulations.

These regimes should mutually enforce and balance each other, leading to a new system of checks and balances at the global level. In case of conflict between the WTO's rules on world trade and multilateral agreements for the enforcement of human rights or peace-related, social and environmental goals, the multilateral agreements should be given priority. Such convergence would be a major breakthrough in global governance. To create this convergence, international labor and social standards, as well as international environmental standards, should become part of the rules governing world trade. One way to achieve this would be to make the ILO Core Labor Standards binding under WTO rules, thereby allowing the use of the WTO sanction mechanism to pursue the violation of ILO norms. Following this same logic, non-compliance with multilateral environmental agreements would be judged as a violation of WTO rules, which would then enhance the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements through tariff reductions for products, technologies, or services that serve the multilateral environmental agreement, and through border tax adjustments for nations that do not comply with the agreement. As a first step in this direction, the WTO could introduce a labeling system that transparently shows whether, during the production and trade of a product, core social and environmental standards were violated. An alternative towards the same end would be to strengthen other existing institutions such as UNCTAD and UNEP with compliance mechanisms.

Join the discussion in the Convergence of International Rules forum.

Democratization and participation

International institutions and rules have to be reformed so that the world's poorer states can participate equally in global decision-making. This initial step towards democracy at a global level is necessary both in order to join forces to tackle global problems and to remove deep-rooted feelings of political paternalism. A mutually agreeable framework for global policymaking should be characterized by greater pluralism, transparency, and accountability. It would create a parliamentary dimension for the United Nations system and require multilateral organizations to consult more directly with civil society movements, science and business associations.

Most importantly, the representation and participation of developing countries must be improved at the most powerful international organizations. In the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, whose decisions affect the lives of billions of people, voting rights must be rearranged in a way that guarantees parity between rich and poor nations. Together with the WTO, the world's financial 'twins' have to become better integrated into the United Nations system, and incorporate the principles of transparency, openness, and plurality into their work. The legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council would also benefit from equal participation in decision-making.

Participants should represent all the world's regions - a reform that would also lead to better integration of these regions into peace-keeping procedures.

Civil society organizations across the world are already instrumental in planning and implementing policies for sustainable development at all levels, from local to global. Yet, their participation in decision-making should be elevated to more aptly address social and individual interests. One step towards this goal is to give civil society organizations, business associations, and trade unions consultative status with the WTO, IMF, and World Bank.

Join the discussion in the Democratization & Participation forum.

Strengthening of international institutions

In order to enable international institutions, such as UN agencies, to improve both the management of cross-border problems and regulation of the global commons, they need to be strengthened. This may include both the provision of additional financial resources and the transfer of decision-making and responsibility from governments to intergovernmental agencies where necessary and reasonable. At the same time, national sovereignty and parliamentary authority must also be respected and guaranteed.

At the United Nations, for example, states should formally provide global peace-keeping instruments, as agreed upon in the 1992 Agenda for Peace, especially for multilateral interventions in the case of significant eruptions of violence.

In addition, the world community should enable the United Nations to strengthen its review of individual states' compliance with declarations and agreements made under the auspices of the UN. Giving the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) a mechanism allowing for compliance management would accomplish this goal. Other effective means of strengthening the UN would be transforming UNEP into a World Environmental Organization to coordinate and enforce multilateral environmental agreements, and giving the United Nations Development Program more power over existing multilateral development efforts. Both expansions would require endowing these agencies with new legitimacy and greater financial and personnel resources.

Join the discussion in the Strengthen International Institutions forum.

Finance >>