by Pavel Nováček
Introduction
If the Big Bang theory is valid, our Universe came into existence 15 billion years ago, and our planet 4.6 billion years ago. If the theory of evolution is valid, the first rudiments of life appeared on Earth 3,8 billion years ago and inorganic evolution on Earth changed into organic, biological evolution. Only 40,000 years ago Homo sapiens sapiens appeared and biological evolution changed into cultural evolution.
At that time man was a hunter and gatherer, and he did not affect his surroundings too much. He used primitive tools, he had well-developed speech, he was capable of abstract thought and used fire. It means he could endanger himself or his immediate surroundings
Gradually man - a hunter-gatherer - became a herdsman and a nomad. At the end of the ice age, the climate of the northern hemisphere (15,000 - 10,000 years ago) changed. The herds of animals either died out, or went north. Therefore man had to look for supplementary sources of sustenance. He developed fishing and above all, the gradual domestication of animals occurred.
At that time, man could already affect his environment regionally. The immoderate usage of pasture-land and its subsequent degradation occurred. People had to migrate and look for new territory. Fights between tribes, or the breaking up of tribes, took place. But even if man destroyed his pastures and left, the countryside had enough time to regenerate.
In the Early Stone (Neolithic) Age (10,000 years ago), a big change occurred. Man started to collect, store and sow the grain of some plants and above all he started to settle, especially in warm regions with fertile soil. This change is called the agricultural revolution. At that time, on the whole planet there were about 5 million people.
It was already in the power of man to influence and destroy intensively his environment, both locally and regionally. The Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans managed to devastate a substantial part of the territory of the Mediterranean, above all by the deforestation of vast territories, and also by their over-intensive grazing. Because of intensive irrigation in antiquity, the territory around the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and around contemporary Palestine and Israel, were devastated.
The fundamentals of the development of science and technology were laid down in antiquity in the Mediterranean, the Near East and also China and India. A technologically-orientated society, however, arose from the Mediterranean and spread gradually to the north and north-west of Europe. In the Middle Ages, the land of central and western Europe was deforested and its appearance changed extensively. On one hand, the ecosystems of the mild climate zone are more resistant to anthropogenic influences, on the other hand, European culture was suddenly given a chance to expand in 1492 - they discovered America, which was colonised in the following centuries. Even here, the countryside was deforested and there were similar changes as in Europe.
Until that time, man had been completely dependent on nature and his ability to affect the environment limited. The turning point, however, came 300 years ago. Papin invented, and eight decades later, Watt constructed the steam engine, and the era of the industrial revolution began. Man started to use energy from fossil fuels on a large-scale and he increased his power many times over. The consumption of natural resources and energy increased exponentially.
Exponential growth hides in itself a great danger. For instance, the consumption of electrical energy has doubled every ten years over the last century. In the last 60 years, the consumption of energy has risen by 3 - 4% every year. But if this tendency continued, in 3,200 years we would need the energy of the whole Sun. So exponential growth is not sustainable from a long-term viewpoint.
Our space is limited simply by the size of the biosphere. Our resources of raw materials and energy are limited. The devastation of the environment is a signal that we have reached the limits in using the biosphere on a regional and global scale. There is nowhere to escape. So we must learn to live within these limits.
The consumption of energy from fossil fuels, exponential growth and the consumer way of life, together with imperfect or old fashioned technologies and the methods of economic and political control have caused serious ecological and other problems, which for the first time in history have become really global.
Global Problems
Here we will restrict ourselves only to the shortest characterisation of the problems, or the groups of problems, which we regard as the most essential:
1. Violence in the world. The point is not only the continuing, and even increasing, threat of nuclear conflict when more and more countries, and also terrorist groups, will have access to nuclear weapons, but also organised crime that is becoming in many countries or regions as powerful as the government (Columbia, Sicily, and above all present-day Russia). In this category, we can not only put terrorism (often supported by governments), militant religious fanaticism (as an acute form of religious fundamentalism), ethnic intolerance, but also contempt for human rights which has become so familiar to us in the recent past.
On a local level, above all in cities, crime operates like a cancer initiated by a cult of violence in the mass media and aggressive advertising supporting increasing expectations of an ideal consumer society that cannot be fulfilled in real life (it concerns mainly people in developing countries and the poor in the cities of the developed world).
2. The explosive growth in the population in non-industrialised countries (80% of the six billion people on the planet live in non-industrialised and mostly poor countries; the population now doubles every 50 years) and on the other hand the ageing of the population (in places even an absolute decline or slow “dying out”) in most countries of the industrial world. If this explosive growth in population continues unchanged, the consequences are clear. But even in developed countries there may be great social unrest in the next 20 - 30 years when the economically active population will not be able to take care of pensioners according to their expectations.
The developed world is faced with the threat that it will become a “ghetto of the rich”, surrounded by the overpopulated, poor, frustrated and aggressive “rest of mankind”. Even inside developed countries, ethnic tension will increase not only as a result of a wave of immigration from poorer and unstable regions, but also because of unbalanced population growth among single ethnic groups.
3. The uneven and unfair distribution of wealth. The North - South divide has replaced the former understanding of the world divided into East and West. Today, 20% of the world’s population live in dire poverty, 20% of “the elite” use 80% of the resources of raw material and contaminate the planet with waste. The equivalent of consumed energy per inhabitant per year is 20 kg of crude oil in Ethiopia, while in Canada it is 10,000 kg of crude oil. It is possible to object that in Canada there are less favourable climatic conditions; in spite of this the rate l : 500 does not seem to be totally fair. (For comparison: the Czech Republic uses an equivalent of 5,000 kg of crude oil per inhabitant per year). The disparity among the population in non-industrialised countries is even bigger. The rate of incomes between the 20% of the population with the highest incomes and the 20% of the population with the lowest incomes is e.g. in Brazil 31 : 1, in western-European countries it is about 8 : 1.
This disparity also causes dissatisfaction and migration of large groups of people, a real threat of a new exodus of nations, and also the growth of religious fundamentalism in regions where the local cultures feel themselves to be endangered by the expansion of the values and the way of life of the Euro-American culture.
4. Destruction of the environment. Under this heading the most vital problems are:
· the threat to the variety of life (biodiversity) - genetic, generic, ecosystemic, and with people, also cultural diversity. Euro-American culture is dominant on the planet; Islamic culture tries to resist it (by means which are sometimes unacceptable to us) but many other cultures, above all those of tropical forests, disappear;
· the threat to and wastage of forests, above all tropical rainforest;
· desertification;
· the threat to the quality of water resources (including seas and oceans), and the threat to the quality of accessible sources of fresh and drinkable water in some regions;
· the threat to the soil (its quality and quantity);
· the pollution of the atmosphere and climate change (acid rain, ozone layer depletion, the greenhouse effect);
· the pollution and threat to ecosystems caused by waste (above all, toxic and radioactive waste, and also vast quantities of communal waste).
5. The total ineffectiveness of political and economic tools and institutions on a supranational scale. The principle of national sovereignty is problematic. It is necessary to decentralise certain powers (the principle of subsidiarity - let everything be decided at the lowest level at which it is possible), to centralise some other powers in the hands of viable and effective supranational institutions (how big a challenge it is clear from observing the present functioning of the UNO and the negotiations concerning the principles of the functioning of the European Union etc.).
In the near future, we will be confronted even with the problems of “biological revolution” (e.g. the possible misuse of the knowledge of genetic engineering), and with the problems connected with the entry of many countries into the postindustrial era (the problem of the rate of employment and the spending of free time, the division of the population into “able” and “unable” to make themselves useful in intellectually demanding employment etc.). But, it is necessary to say that many countries will remain for a long time in the stage of industrial development and that many countries will continue to be in Toffler’s “first wave” - in the agricultural stage of development. This can lead to a new division of the world into post-industrial regions (rich, with a high level of creative, intellectual work), industrial (providing gross industrial production) and pre-industrial (with a predominance of agricultural production and problems with poverty, the rate of employment and competition on the international markets).
Global problems will become increasingly acute, and we will be confronted more and more with the necessity of finding a solution. It means even time is an acute problem.
How should we react to the increasingly acute local, regional as well as global problems? As individuals, and also as a society, we have at least three alternatives.
We could ignore global problems. This would mean that present trends would be preserved, we would not react to them adequately, and the situation would continue to become more acute.
Or we could acknowledge the seriousness of global problems, but sceptically think that we essentially do not have a chance to influence the situation anyway.
But, we could also try to change present trends. One possible active attitude is the formulation and implementation of a strategy for sustainable development. A frequent and natural question following the mentioning of sustainable way of life is „what is the chance of success?“ We are afraid that nobody knows the answer. Even if the chance is only one percent, it is worth trying. In other words, we are not so much responsible for the final result, but we are indeed responsible for our effort.
Sustainable Development
According to The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) sustainable development is a development which satisfies the needs of the present without threatening the need of future generations to satisfy their own needs... In the widest sense, the strategy of sustainable development is concentrated on the attainment of harmony among human beings and between mankind and nature.
Josef Vavroušek (1993) thought that sustainable development, or a sustainable way of living should make an effort to find the ideals of humanism and a harmony in the relationship between man and nature. It is a way of life which looks for a balance between the freedoms and rights of each individual and the individual’s responsibilities towards other people and nature as a whole, including responsibility towards future generations.
From the above-mentioned definitions it is clear that sustainable development does not aspire to become an all-encompassing vision, a new “religion”, which would solve all the problems of the world and establish heaven on Earth. A sustainable way of life, above all, means:
A demand that everyone on Earth should be able to satisfy at least his/her basic needs. As basic needs, we can consider food, drinkable water, clothes, shelter and also the possibility of satisfying these needs in a dignified way, i.e. by working. But, we could also include here the right to a hygienically acceptable environment of man. At the same time, the understanding of basic needs should be extended to cover needs of a non-material character - i.e. relationships among people.
However particularly with material needs there is an essential problem - where is the limit of their satisfaction? When do we have enough? This was impossible even for once so ambitious communism to answer, even at the theoretical level: “To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.” Is, however, a car a justifiable need? A yacht? A flight to the Moon? So far it seems that our desires, understood as needs (and these then as needs to which we have a right), far outstrip our ability to satisfy them. So we will have to change our attitude. Our needs could be satisfied only to the extent to which our planet, “a spaceship”, from which at least in the near future there will be no escape, is capable.
A demand that even future generations of people could satisfy their needs and live dignified lives at least to the extent to which we can. This is a big challenge. Over the course of history more and more groups of inhabitants have gradually asserted their rights. Both slaves and serfs, then later black people and other “non-whites”, asserted their rights against the whites; then democracy as majority rule appeared, but later, also on the contrary, the right of minorities vis á vis the majority, the rights of women etc. appeared. But these rights were always acknowledged after a clash, under pressure, after a struggle which was led by violent or non-violent means. Maybe for the first time in history, we are now starting to think of the rights of the generations to come, those that cannot yet defend and assert themselves.
A demand for balance between the freedoms and rights of the individual and his responsibility. In the words of Josef Vavroušek: “Freedom of the individual does not end only where the freedom of another individual starts, but it ends also where the destruction of nature begins.” The last century was, among other things, characterised by liberalism. But if our freedom and our constantly increasing opportunities are not counterbalanced by responsibility and also by the ability to foretell the consequences of our actions, then we will inevitably cause suffering to ourselves and to nature.
A demand to respect the rights of other living beings. It is again a challenge which was not here in the past, or which we did not admit when “conquering” the world. We have three possible ways of reacting to this challenge:
a) to continue to claim that “might is right”, to conquer the world and assume the role of “master of all living creatures”;
b) to become a responsible custodian of the planet and, within the limits of the possible, to take care of organic and inorganic nature;
c) to consider other beings as equal (a strictly bicentric view).
I personally prefer the second possibility. Even this “compromise”, however, will put heavy demands on our behaviour, such as the strong limitation of the consumption of food derived from animals, in the long term maybe even conversion to vegetarianism.
A demand for harmony (or at least an approach to it) of relationships between man and organic and inorganic nature. The point is not an extremist demand for change in the regularities and natural function of ecosystems and nature, but a consistent accomplishment of the heritage of A. Schweitzer: a respect for life and nature. In this sense it is for instance, unacceptable to tolerate the gulf between the rich and the poor not only inside a single state, but between rich nations and poor nations.
A demand to learn from the future and the precautionary principle. In the past, our learning was based on the process of experimentation. It is high time to adopt anticipatory learning, i.e. learning based on anticipating the possible consequences of our actions. For instance, we are still not sure whether the threat of the greenhouse effect is real and the model calculation right. In spite of this we must act as if it were absolutely real. The consequences of our making a mistake would be so far-reaching that they would threaten and maybe destroy the whole of civilisation.
In a similar way, we will have to relate the precautionary principle to the consumption of non-renewable resources, above all of fossil fuels. These were formed on Earth over tens of millions of years, and we can deplete them in the course of several decades in the most primitive way - by burning. In reality, they may one day be replaced by other sources of energy, but until that day comes, we must economise on fossil fuels in a sustainable way.
So, the transformation of society to a sustainable way of life means essential changes in its functioning. But is the vision of sustainable development applicable globally? I think it is. On one hand, as was said, it does not have the aspiration to become “a new religion” or in the worst possible case, an ideology that unites people and makes them happy, whether they want it or not. On the other hand, we believe that the principles of sustainable development correspond to “the law of naturalness”. This law of naturalness is generally valid, and the English philosopher C.S. Lewis explains it in the following way: The ancient philosophers used to speak about the law of “right” and “wrong” and called it “the law of naturalness”. Its core was the idea that in the same way as solid bodies follow the law of Earth’s gravitation or as organisms follow biological laws, also the being named man has his own law - of course with the essential difference that a solid body is subject to the law of gravity whether it wants to be or not, while man can keep or break the law of human naturalness according to his choice ...I know, there are people who will object that the idea of the law of the naturalness of decent behaviour as something familiar to everyone is not well-founded because in various civilisations and at various periods of time there have been different moralities. This, however, is not true. The fact that their moral principles differ from each other never means a total difference. If somebody takes the trouble to compare the moral precepts for instance of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, he will be surprised how similar they are to each other and how similar they are to our precepts. We can differ as to whom it is necessary for man to be unselfish - whether only to his family or to his compatriots or to everybody. But they always agree that they cannot put themselves first.
The weakness of the present rulers lies, not in their personal qualities, but is a consequence of the disintegration of the institutions on which power depends.
Alvin Toffler
I am convinced that in the present-day world, when our planet is for the first time in its history covered by a thin, but nevertheless global, skin of a single civilisation, to a certain extent we are all responsible for the world as a whole, and that not only can we not lie our way out of this responsibility, but we must not lie our way out of it.
Václav Havel
We live in extraordinary times. The 20th century is nearing its end and we are preparing to enter the third millennium. The 20th century was one of violence and anarchy - two world wars, communism, fascism, later the manifestations of ecological crisis, organised crime etc., but at the same time it was a century of marvellous scientific discoveries, of flights to the Moon. It was a period of emancipation and the granting of equal rights to people in many parts of the world. In the developed world a civic society is in the process of development, i.e. a society of citizens who are able and willing to take responsibility for the administration of common affairs into their own hands and to participate in the controlling, or self-controlling, of society.
A new quality is being born. We have discussed the vision of development for the 21st century - the vision of sustainable development, or a sustainable way of life in the first part of this article. We share the conviction that there lies before us another fundamental qualitative change - the transformation from a world order based on the strength of individual nation states to global governance.
Is however the transformation to global governance possible and realistic? Is it not only a dream? Is it not a waste of energy? No, it is not.
Concerning any act of initiative ...there is one elementary truth - numerous ideas and splendid plans were not realised because nobody knew about them: at the moment when we make an obligatory decision, even Providence will step out in our direction.
W.H. Murray
Great ideas appeared and were implemented at certain moments of change. These include e.g. the foundation of the United States of America, the abolition of slavery in the same country, the foundation of the United Nations Organisation after World War II, and the reconstruction of Europe and Japan through the Marshall Plan. It is necessary to have courage for great visions and to be prepared for them.
It is very important for the coming changes to happen in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, way. The treachery of the revolutionary way was clearly expressed by Joseph Conrad:
In a real revolution, it is not the best ones who come into prominence. Violent revolution first comes under the control of fanatics and tyrannical hypocrites. Then it is the turn of arrogant intellectuals, who never get anywhere. They then become the leaders and heads (compare this with the example of Slobodan Miloševič in Yugoslavia and Radovan Karadžič in Bosnia - note by P.N.). You must have noticed I have not mentioned mere rogues. At the beginning there can be high-principled and just, noble and faithful, unegoistic and intelligent people, but the movement slips out of their hands. They are not the leaders of the revolution. They are its victims: disgusted, disillusioned victims, often the victims of bad conscience. Grotesquely born hopes, caricatured ideals - thus is the success of the revolution defined.
To learn to be reasonable custodians of the Earth is our fate. This assumes global governance. For extra-terrestrials the division of the Earth into states would seem to have no sense. Astronauts usually have the same feeling when they can see our blue planet from outer space. Now we want to divide also the seas, oceans and the nearest reaches of space. A man with entrepreneurial spirit from San Francisco has even started to sell building sites on the Moon and Mars. It is said there is great interest in them. This is comic, but it says something about our way of thinking: to parcel out, own and exploit.
The problem with global governance is that the representatives of supranational organisations feel even less responsible towards the citizens than the politicians at local, regional or state levels. Then in the UN there is great corruption and ineffectiveness, which we will mention in the chapter on UN reform.
In the past, governance and law were nearly exclusively in the sphere of national interests. The system of nation states has functioned for about 400 years and it was, above all, a system for the balance of colonial powers. In the course of the last fifty years, there has been an artificial bipolar system, East - West.
Democracy was defined, above all, in the sense of the role of national government and regional self-government and the enforcement of the rule of law was perceived as the duty of national justice. This is not enough any more. Today, the most obvious trend is globalisation (the creation of a "global village"), which is accompanied by individualisation and the atomisation of society. Not even the United States of America is able today to check the movement of its currency, and of course also ecological problems (the decline in ozone, the greenhouse effect, ecological refugees etc.) contribute to the necessity to find a solution at the global level.
Global governance is usually perceived as the relationship between governments. This, however, is not enough. Global governance must also include the activity of non-governmental organisations, civic movements, churches, supranational corporations, academic bodies and the mass media. Sovereignty is the foundation stone of present international relationships. However, considering the global commons, it is necessary to limit sovereignty or to apply it collectively. The most serious threats to national sovereignty and territorial integrity have today not external, but internal roots (tribalism in African states, tyrannical regimes etc.). Therefore it is necessary to adjust the understanding of sovereignty in such a way that the rights of individuals, of citizens, would be balanced against the rights of the state, and the interests of nations would be balanced against the interests of the global community.
The sociologist, Arnold Toynbee, stated that in the atomic age national sovereignty equals mass suicide. National or state sovereignty represents too often the narrow egocentrism of leaders, who protect mainly their own positions. We can confirm this observation with our own experience with the division of Czechoslovakia in 1992.
The recognition of the responsibility towards something higher than one's own country is difficult. The instinct to own territory is common to all animal species. However, with Man, the ability to recognise responsibility has gradually broadened in the course of history - it was a responsibility towards family, relatives, towards a community, later towards a country and now we are at the threshold of the recognition of our responsibility towards Mankind. The whole of history is evidently imprinted with our acceptance or rejection of responsibility towards the Creator. It is interesting that many futurologists agree that the 21st century will be a century of the search for a nearly lost spirituality.
To manage the acceptance of global responsibility and the resulting global governance, we will need a leadership which will be able to see beyond the next election period and also beyond the nearest state border.
We need a government which will be proactive not only reactive (reacting only to current events), which will be capable of innovative learning (learning from the scenarios of possible futures), not only learning from experience.
If individual states are going to fight for power, for primacy, when everybody considers the satisfaction of national interest, even at the expense of others, to be a main virtue, there will be no winners. All of us will lose and egoism will make an instrument of self-destruction out of the human spirit.
In view of the complexity of global problems and escalating tensions in the developing countries and between the developing and developed countries mutually, the situation seems to be desperate, even precarious. However, during the course of history there has appeared many times an idea which is ingenious in its simplicity, which, when it was realised, became a catalyst for positive far-reaching changes. The implementation of the Marshall Plan is an excellent example.
After World War II, Europe and Japan were in ruins. It would have taken them decades to extricate themselves from this situation by their own efforts. For that whole period, Europe and Japan would have been centres of instability and conflict. The United States, which was not strikingly affected by the war, decided to provide vast investments which made possible a quick reconstruction of the countries destroyed by the war. Thanks to the Marshall Plan, Europe and Japan have lived through more than fifty years without a war (disregarding the recent war in Yugoslavia). Nations which thrive are less likely to wage war because they have a great deal to lose by conflict. Those who are poor and in deadlock will be more inclined to accept a violent solution.
The Marshall Plan, which was known as A Programme of European Revival, shows how a grandiose vision can be successfully transformed into the shape of a particular activity.
The Plan concentrated on removing the obstacles which prevent the development of national economies - the revival of infrastructure and removal of trade barriers. It was long enough to contribute to a fundamental change in the orientation of development, it was not just one of many "development" programmes.
The former US senator and current vice-president, Al Gore, in his book Earth in Balance (1992), set forth the idea of a new, this time global, Marshall Plan which would help to solve the present, above all ecological, problems and mitigate the tension between the developed and developing countries. He assumes that the economically strongest states, above all again the USA, would be donor countries. However Europe, today stabilised and strong, and Japan should participate as well. Al Gore does not believe in co-ordinated global efforts (global governance) when he insists:
Many supporters of common global efforts tend to consider the existence of a supranational authority to be inevitable. This idea, however, is not only politically impossible, but nearly impossible to realise. A political problem is evident: this idea causes such resistance that the aims themselves of our efforts stop being discussed. This is true especially in the USA, where they frantically protect their individual freedoms. The administrative problems with such efforts would have to be gigantic.
Despite the above quotation, I am convinced that a reformed UN should be engaged in a global Marshall Plan, that a global Marshall Plan should be part of global governance. (Nor do I know why the institutions of global governance should be more dangerous for the individual freedoms of citizens than state institutions). This does not, of course, exclude the activity of nation states. On the contrary, it would be suitable for a global Marshall Plan to have more levels and to be co-ordinated. Part would be realised at the global level, where the source of income would be part of a future "global tax" (in the European Union the member states also return a part of their revenue into a common purse and from it then mainly the development of less developed regions of the European Union is supported). Part would be used at the national level, as is suggested by Al Gore, or at the supranational level (e.g. the European Union could prepare its own "Marshall Plan"). Part of a global Marshall Plan would be realised at the level of towns and villages (even today e.g. Sheffield in England finances a school education project in a partner region in Malawi), non-governmental organisations, or also churches etc. The decisive point will be whether the particular levels will be purposefully co-ordinated (not vertically and hierarchically to control, only horizontally to co-ordinate).
Now there is a good opportunity for a global Marshall Plan. On one hand, it would be a nice entry into a new century and millennium, on the other hand, after the victory of western democratic principles over communism, the acceptance of a global Marshall Plan has become realistic.
The great risk of a global Marshall Plan is that the countries which should participate in it are well-known for their great cultural, political and economic diversity, so the situation will not be as easy and clear as in democratic, and nearly culturally unified, Europe. In addition, it is necessary to take into consideration the existence of extra-state units, such as Kurdistan, Kashmir etc.
Briefly, Al Gore's specific proposal for a global Marshall Plan is as follows:
The world’s effort to save the environment must be organised around strategic goals that simultaneously represent the most important changes and allow us to recognise, measure, and assess our progress toward making those changes. In my view, five strategic goals must direct and inform our efforts to save the global environment.
1. The stabilising of world population.
2. The rapid creation and development of environmentally appropriate technologies.
3. A comprehensive and ubiquitous change in the economic “rules of the road“ by which we measure impact of our decisions on the environment.
4. The negotiation and approval of a new generation of international agreements.
5. The establishment of a cooperative plan for educating the world’s citizens about our global environment.
The plan should have as its more general, integrating goal the establishment, especially in the developing world – of social and political conditions most conducive to the emergence of sustainable societies – such as social justice; a commitment to human rights; adequate nutrition, health care, and shelter; high literacy rates; and greater political freedom, participation, and accountability.
In the 19th century the flow of British capital enabled the development of the United States. After World War II, a similar role in Europe was played, on the contrary, by the Marshall Plan. Now it is time for a new, global "Marshall Plan".
There are three preconditions which qualify the development in all the countries which a global Marshall Plan should concentrate on. These are education and skills (crafts), infrastructure (transport, telecommunications, etc.) and effective public administration (state authorities).
One of the main aims of a global Marshall Plan is to employ people, the most valuable resource of a country, especially in jobs beneficial to the public. In this way, among other things, there will be a strengthening of the ability of the market economy to create jobs and absorb labour.
Assistance to developing countries within a global Marshall Plan should be provided selectively, after their acceptance of the basic conditions of global governance (respect for democratic rules, the acceptance of the principles of a market economy, etc.) and with the precondition (obligation) that these countries will operate as catalysts for assistance, and will be later willing to help others.
A global Marshall Plan would be orientated, above all, towards the moderation of the abyss-like differences between the North and the South. Former communist countries accepted, and still accept, limited development assistance. There is nothing wrong with this. After several decades of communist rule, whole regions have been devastated (above all ecologically), and in addition, our experience with "real socialism" might have warned and discouraged other, now rich and developed, countries from such an experiment. If there had not been the events in Hungary in 1956, if there had not been the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968, could e.g. France have become a communist country? Who knows?
Former socialist countries should, however, definitely build up their own resources and institutions for providing development assistance and co-operation. For a peasant from Somalia, the difference between the standards of living of a Czech and a German will be seen as completely unimportant, but the difference between his standard of living and that of a Czech or a German is enormous.
Why should the industrialised states help within a global Marshall Plan? Naturally because of simple human solidarity, and also in their own interests. The idea that we fortify ourselves behind a new iron or electronic curtain, that we create "a ghetto of the rich" and nobody will be allowed in and we will live satisfactorily is naive, wrong and dangerous.
Another reason is the fact that the industrialised countries colonised the rest of the world, they took from there the resources of energy and raw material (this is true to the present day) and cheap labour, they polluted the environment and destroyed the culture. There is now no sense in forcing the developing countries to follow the same path of development, the opposite is true. It would be fair to offer the developing countries education and developed technology (the UN could buy it from the developed countries through a global tax within the Marshall Plan) so that they could avoid the phase of primitive industrialisation.
Another reason for assistance is to help in providing a feeling of self-confidence. Poor people and poor states usually take their poverty, even unconsciously, as their own fault. The inability to extricate themselves from poverty leads to frustration and this then leads to extremist feelings, aggression, violence and chaos. If we help them to succeed we will help them, above all, to regain a feeling of dignity and self-confidence, and those who trust themselves are broad-minded and tolerant towards others, while those who have many complexes kick out at those around them. So one of the missions of a global Marshall Plan should be to help people and nations to regain self-respect and self-confidence. Dignity, self-respect and self-confidence are very important, and it is necessary to give people a chance to apply and develop these abilities.
If developing countries gain real access to education and high-quality technology, the strategy of development through a global Marshall Plan may be successful. In the past, art and culture were developed in tropical and subtropical regions - see the Great Rift Valley in Africa, which is the cradle of Mankind, or the Mediterranean, the cradle of our European civilisation, but also e.g. the development of civilisation in India 900 - 1,000 years ago.
In more northern parts, we were engaged in a "fight" for survival with Nature. However, this disadvantage gradually changed into an advantage - we learnt to be hard-working, creative, efficient and we cultivated land and adapted it to our needs. Thanks to science and technology, we were able to master matter to a high degree, and this enabled us to go on developing. We should make these preconditions for creative work and "mastering matter" available to the countries of the South. We can rank here achievements such as air-conditioning, irrigation, or generally the transformation into a post-industrial stage of development.
A global Marshall Plan assumes vast investments. At the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 in Rio, developing countries asked annually for $125 billion, which is 0.35% of the World Gross Product, just for the implementation of Agenda 21 (an action plan for transformation to sustainable development). This demand was not fulfilled, but it would not even be a good thing to fulfil it without further preconditions. Such assistance, provided generally and without other conditions and control, is tempting and easy to misuse. The siphoning-off of capital, thanks to which rich elites have enormous financial sums in their accounts abroad, is a great problem in developing countries. Usually, this siphoning-off of capital increases proportionately to the assistance provided from abroad. Another problem is that half of the debts of developing countries are a consequence of the purchase of arms and military technology.
So, a global Marshall Plan has to enforce co-operation through contracts rather than assistance. One great idea comes from Tom Lovejoy from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington - to exchange "debts for Nature". Most of the countries are not able to pay back their debts, often not even their interest (30 - 50% of the total exports of some developing debtor countries is used to pay interest), so the outstanding debts are irrecoverable. The debts will not be forgotten, but a country in debt will promise in a contract that it will use the equivalent of the debt in its own currency to take care of Nature and the environment, primarily to save ecosystems of global importance. In Brazil this means, above all, the Amazonian forest. Its protection is in the vital interest of all the inhabitants of the planet and the Brazilians would do this service for themselves and also for us as a part of this agreement. This is logical because in Europe and North America we have cleared a large percentage of forest (in England there remains only seven per cent of the original area of forest) and developing countries sometimes object that we have no right to ask them to behave in a different way than we did in the past.
An exchange of debts for Nature is an example of a simple, but wonderful, idea which can help to solve the present strained relationship between the North and South. It is also much more dignified to conclude a contract than to be entirely dependent on gifts in the form of development assistance.
In developing regions, the payment of allowances (e.g. because of unemployment) should thus be conditioned by participation in jobs beneficial to the public. There could also be e.g. the planting of trees suitable for the regions considered. However, again it is important to complete the task, it is not enough to pay only the money for planting. At the moment of payment, the people will probably stop taking care of the trees, or they themselves will use them as firewood, so a contract has to be concluded on maintenance and treatment, and the main sum should be paid when the trees are able to survive independently, without attendance and protection by Man.
There are many other fields of co-operation suitable for a global Marshall Plan.
One of the possibilities is global negotiation on the limits of the emission of carbon dioxide. Negotiations on emissions have started in the United States. For a certain region, there is defined a general maximum possible level of emission. Individual firms are given quotas whose sum exactly equals the maximum possible level of emission. The firms can negotiate with these quotas. A firm which decides to buy modern and clean technology can sell its share (or part of it) to another firm which is not able to fulfil the given limits, or it always has the possibility of selling its share to the state, which will buy it. So the state gradually buys these quotas and in addition, every year it reduces slightly the maximum possible level of emission. Thus, the quality of the environment is improved and firms are forced to gradually introduce clean workshops and clean production. The others will go bankrupt.
Why not introduce something similar on a global scale? It is obvious that it would be very difficult to implement, but it would be just. States producing a great amount of carbon dioxide, or other (above all greenhouse) gases, would be forced to buy the quotas from a state (through the UN) which will not use its quotas. The point under consideration is not necessarily money, the developed countries as payment for their violation of the quotas could provide e.g. modern technology or know-how which would prevent developing countries from introducing dirty forms of production similar to those which existed in Europe and in America approximately from the beginning of the century up to the 1960s. There would be a great problem with the definition of global quotas e.g. for the production of carbon dioxide. However, it might be best to use the analogy of architects designing a bridge. Even they, according to the precautionary principle, will not design supporting pillars in such a way that they will be able to bear only the exactly assumed load. Rather they make the pillars capable of bearing a multiple load. Similarly we too, when unsure, should define annual maximum possible global emissions (e.g. of carbon dioxide) by expert estimation and then ensure them by a sufficient tightening up of this limit. When a bridge falls down it is a bad thing, but when we threaten the functioning of the biosphere it is much more serious.
We can continue this consideration and not only try to calculate the annual limits but also try to define the quotas from a historical point of view, let us say during the last fifty or a hundred years. We will find out that today the developed countries have used the bulk of this limit in comparison with the developing countries.
Let us assume that e.g. Great Britain has used 95% of its historical limit of CO2, while e.g. Mozambique has used nearly nothing. So then, Great Britain should quickly stop the production of CO2, which is impossible, or it should buy from Mozambique part of its historical limit for money, for technology, for know-how, for development projects, for planting forests which bind CO2 etc. The question of negotiation with these limits would be co-ordinated at the level of global governance (and within a global Marshall Plan), in a similar way as in the United States, this negotiation is co-ordinated by the federal government or by individual states of the Union.
In a similar way, we could think of not only greenhouse gases, but also of the extraction of non-renewable sources of energy and raw material and the production of waste.
Preferential attention within a global Marshall Plan should be paid to Africa - a continent whose position seems to be nearly hopeless. Here, it will be necessary to discover a new, so far unknown, attitude which will become the key to the development of Africa. Maybe the Republic of South Africa will become the motor for Southern and later also Central Africa, if it is able to cope successfully with the very difficult task of the transformation from apartheid into a democratic society. Today, some farmers are leaving for neighbouring countries (e.g. for Mozambique or Angola) where they rent land. They, with their abilities, could become a catalyst for changes which at least would bring self-sufficiency in food to this region.
The Africans want a new system which would be in agreement with tradition, and this system is tribal organisation. The attitude of the West does not satisfy the needs of tribes and rural communities. Therefore, a restructuralisation of the heritage of the colonial organisation of Africa is necessary. The countryside is too often bled by the corruption of elites and by paying back debts to the state. There is no suitable technology for rural communities such as cooking stoves using solar panels. Therefore tribalism should be accepted as one of possible instruments of positive change in Africa.
The last example we will mention is Siberia. It is a region with enormous natural resources, almost inaccessible, which even the ambitious Soviet power did not manage to cope with (though it managed to seriously damage the Siberian ecosystems). Today, people live in poverty, without prospects. The factories for processing wood and fish are all closed down, deserted and deteriorating. Russia does not have and will not have in the near future, the investments for renewal, which would allow a dignified life for the peoples living here.
For multinational companies it is not a sufficiently lucrative place to invest. Crime, alcoholism and hopelessness are on the increase. Is this not a challenge for global governance and a global Marshall Plan, of course in co-operation with the Russian government? Siberian taiga and tundra are, like the Amazonian rain forest, ecosystems of global importance and within global governance there should exist the possibility of investing and employing people in certain, above all environmentally "friendly", projects.
Today, most of the nation states (including Russia) do not protect themselves against the entry and influence of multinational companies. On the contrary, they often lure them into a region and provide them with a tax holiday and other advantages. Why could there not be similar activity at the level of global control, through a Marshall Plan, if the projects are important for the whole planet?
The collapse of communism has caused the collapse of the bipolar world: communism - the enemy of the West - has disappeared. The release of resources (not only military ones) could create the preconditions for the new ambitious aims of the co-operation of people and nations on the threshold of the 21st century - a global Marshall Plan, global governance and sustainable development.
One of the great difficulties of a global Marshall Plan is that it will require a fundamental transformation, not only from developing, but also from developed economies. If the developed countries are not going to set an example, the developing world will not be willing to accept and introduce the necessary changes.
Europe today is again behind in its economic growth because of social gains which are inconceivable e.g. in Southeast Asia, and in addition a substantial part of its energy may be absorbed for a long time by the process of the unification and expansion of the European Union. It could, therefore, be more sensitive to the challenge for sustainable development and global governance. Otherwise there is the threat that Europe, or the whole developed world, will economically "dissolve" under the pressure of competition - cheap labour working in inhuman conditions in the developing or just industrialising (Southeast Asian) countries. Another alternative would be the closing-off of the markets and borders, but this is not good and, above all, impossible to implement. Therefore, the only solution will, most probably, be global governance and the new global Marshall Plan. This is reality both for developing and developed countries, this is reality also for former communist states, which created the so-called "second world" until recently.
Barney, G., O., Blewett, J., Barney, K., R. (1993): Global 2000 Revisited. Millennium Institute, Arlington.
Brown, L. et al. (1996): State of the World. W. W. Norton and Company. New York.
Daly, H., E., Cobb, B., J. (1989): For the Common Good. Beacon Press, Boston.
Garrett, M.,J., Barney, G.,O. (1988): Handbook for 21st Century Studies. Volume 1: Team Building and Related Activities. Institute for 21st Century Studies, Arlington.
Gore, A. (1992): Earth in Balance. Ecology and the Human Spirit. Houghton Mifflin and Co. Inc., Boston.
Laszlo, E., Biermann, J. (1977): Goals for Mankind: A Report to the Club of Rome on the New Horizons of a Global Community. Dutton, New York.
Mayo, E., MacGillivray (1994): Growing Pains? The New Economics Foundation, London.
Meadows, D., H., Meadows, D., L., Randers, J. (1992): Beyond the Limits. McClelland and Stewart Inc., Toronto.
Moldan, B., edit. (1993): Konference OSN o životním prostředí a rozvoji - Dokumenty a komentáře. Management Press, Praha (in Czech).
Nováček, P., Huba, M. (1995, 1996): Šok z prosperity - Čítanka z globální problematiky. I., II. a III. díl. Vydavatelství Univerzity Palackého, Společnost pro trvale udržitelný život. Olomouc, Bratislava (in Czech and Slovak).
Nováček, P., Mederly, P. a kol. (1996): Strategie udržitelného rozvoje. Vydavatelství G plus G. Praha (In Czech).
Nováček, P., Huba, M., Mederly P. (1998): Ohrožená planeta na prahu 21. století. Vydavatelství Univerzity Palackého. Olomouc (in Czech).
Prins G., editor (1993): Threats without enemies. The Global Security Programme. Earthscan. London.
Svoboda, J. (1987): Reality and Meaning of Homosphere. Fourth Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Human Ideas on Ultimate Reality and Meaning. Toronto
Svoboda, J. (1997): Na prahu třetí transgrese. (Úvaha o směru a smyslu evoluce). 3. výroční přednáška k poctě J. L. Fischera. Vydavatelství Univerzity Palackého. Olomouc (In Czech)
The Commission of Global Governance (1995): Our Global Neighbourhood. Oxford University Press. New York.
The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987): Our Common Future. Oxford University Press. New York.
Toffler, A., Toffler, H. (1980): The Third Wave. Bantam Books, New York.
Toffler, A., Toffler, H. (1995): Creating a New Civilisation: The Politics of the Third Wave. Turner Publishing, Inc, Atlanta.
Topercer, J. (1994): Trvalo udržateľný rozvoj: náčrt teoretického rámca. Mscr., 18 p. (in Slovak)
Toynbee, A., J. (1957): A Study of History. Oxford University Press. New York.
United Nations Handbook (1995): Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Wellington.
Vavroušek, J. (1992): Návrh na změnu uspořádání Organizace spojených národů. In: Světová konference o životním prostředí a rozvoji v Rio de Janeiro (UNCED), STUŽ, Čs. společnost pro životní prostředí, Praha (in Czech)
Vavroušek, J. (1993): Perspektivy lidských hodnot slučitelných s trvale udržitelným způsobem života. In: Nováček, P., Vavroušek, J. (eds.). Lidské hodnoty a trvale udržitelný způsob života. STUŽ a Přírodovědecká fakulta Univerzity Palackého, Olomouc, p. 91-100 (in Czech)