David Korten - The Great Turning : From Empire to Earth Community

http://www.davidkorten.org/great-turning-book

David Korten’s classic bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, was one of the first books to articulate the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy. Now, ten years later, Korten shows that the problem runs deeper than corporate domination—with far greater consequences.

In The Great Turning, Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely a contemporary manifestation of what he calls “Empire”: the organization of society by hierarchies of domination grounded in violent chauvinisms of race, gender, religion, nationality, language, and class. The result has been the same for 5,000 years, fortune for the few and misery for the many. Increasingly destructive of children, family, community, and nature, the way of Empire is leading to environmental and social collapse.

The Great Turning makes the case that we humans are a choice making species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to choose our future as a conscious collective act. We can no longer deny the need nor delay our response. A mounting perfect economic storm is fast approaching. A convergence of climate change, peak oil, and the financial instability inherent in an unbalanced global trading system will bring an unraveling of the corporate-led global economy and a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.

We cannot avoid the unraveling. We can, however, turn a potentially terminal crisis into an epic opportunity to bring forth a new era of Earth Community grounded in the life-affirming cultural values shared by most all the world’s people and eloquently articulated in the Earth Charter.

The Great Turning is an essential resource for those who understand this need and are prepared to engage what Thomas Berry calls the Great Work. It cuts through the complexity of our time to illuminate a simple, but elegant truth. We humans live by stories. We are held captive to the ways of Empire by a cultural trance of our own creation maintained by stories that deny the higher possibilities of our human nature—including our capacities for compassion, cooperation, responsible self-direction, and self-organizing partnership.

Changing our future begins with changing our stories. A work already underway, it ultimately calls out for the participation of every person on the planet. The Great Turning points the way to the inspiring outcome within our reach.

Table of Contents

Chapter Summaries

Prologue: In Search of the Possible

Part I: Choosing Our Future
1. The Choice
2. The Possibility
3. The Imperative
4. The Opportunity

Part II: Sorrows of Empire
5. When God Was a Woman
6. Ancient Empire
7. Modern Empire
8. Athenian Experiment

Part III: America, The Unfinished Project
9. Inauspicious Beginning
10. People Power Rebellion
11. Empire’s Victory
12. Struggle for Justice
13. Wake Up Call
14. Prisons of the Mind

Part IV: The Great Turning
15. Beyond Strict Father Vs Aging Clock
16. Creation’s Epic Journey
17. Joys of Earth Community
18. Stories for a New Era

Part V: Birthing Earth Community
19. Leading from Below (excerpt)
20. Building A Political Majority (excerpt)
21. Liberating Creative Potential
22. Change the Story, Change the Future

The Rights of Nature : The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth

http://www.canadians.org/rightsofnature/

In April 2010, Bolivia hosted a gathering for civil society in the wake of the failed December 2009 United Nations Copenhagen climate summit (COP 15). It was clear to millions of climate activists, scientists and environmentalists around the world that the UN process had been sidelined by a deal, the Copenhagen Accord, which represented a major step backward in the search by the UN for a binding, comprehensive agreement that would protect humanity and the Earth from the ravages of climate chaos. When more than 32,000 participants from around the world gathered for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, it was evident that a counter message had to be sent to the UN and the world that a far stronger commitment was needed if humanity is to successfully move to a safe and sustainable future.

Out of this World People’s Conference came a call to protect nature differently by recognizing the Rights of Nature, or as expressed by others, the Rights of Mother Earth. The UN General Assembly proclaimed April 22, 2010, Mother Earth Day, and the Declaration was introduced to the G-77 countries and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon several weeks later. It is the intention and hope of the drafters and supporters that this groundbreaking Declaration will take its place alongside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a guide for the future of humanity.

This book brings together the voices of acclaimed authors, progressive thinkers, political leaders and environmental and community activists from around the world who share their passion and insights about the Declaration, the Rights of Nature and the urgent need to recognize the unbreakable link between respecting ourselves and respecting the planet – Mother Earth – on which we all live and depend. The authors all reflect on the important question: What would our world look like if nature had rights?

With distinguished contributors such as Maude Barlow, David Suzuki, Margaret Atwood, Eduardo Galeano, Nnimmo Bassey, Pat Mooney, Shekhar Kapur, Susan George, Dr. Vandana Shiva and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and more, The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth in meant to inform and inspire others about the need to create and ratify a binding instrument to protect the rights of the Earth and all living things upon it.

This new way forward would inspire a new model of governance that places the Rights of Nature – the Rights of Mother Earth – at the heart of existence, recognizing that there is no such thing as a human right unless the natural world is protected now, and for all time.

The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is published jointly by The Council of Canadians, Fundación Pachamama and Global Exchange (2011).

Imposed Austerity vs Chosen Simplicity: Who Will Pay For Which Adjustments?

http://www.vandanashiva.org/

Vandana Shiva's ZSpace Page

The world is in ecological and economic meltdown. Ecological limits and limits set by human dignity and human equality are being ruthlessly violated. Adjustment is an imperative. However, there are vital ways that differentiate the adjustment by the rich and powerful and the processes of adjustment demanded by the popular will of people everywhere. The rich would like to make the poor and working people pay for adjustment. People want the rich to pay through higher taxes, including the Tobin Tax on financial transactions, and through regulation for stopping the robbery of natural resources and public goods.

The dominant economic model based on limitless growth on a limited planet is leading to an overshoot of the human use of the earth’s resources. This is leading to an ecological catastrophe. It is also leading to intense and violent resource grab of the remaining resources of the earth by the rich from the poor. The resource grab is an adjustment by the rich and powerful to a shrinking resource base – land, biodiversity, water – without adjusting the old resource intensive, limitless growth paradigm to the new reality. Its only outcome can be ecological scarcity for the poor in the short term, with deepening poverty and deprivation. In the long run it means the extinction of our species, as climate catastrophe and extinction of other species makes the planet un-inhabitable for human societies. Failure to make an ecological adjustment to planetary limits and ecological justice is a threat to human survival. The Green Economy being pushed at Rio +20 could well become the biggest resource grabs in human history with corporations appropriating the planet’s green wealth, the biodiversity, to become the green oil to make bio-fuel, energy plastics, chemicals – everything that the petrochemical era based on fossil fuels gave us. Movements worldwide have started to say “No to the Green Economy of the 1%”.

But an ecological adjustment is possible, and is happening. This ecological adjustment involves seeing ourselves as a part of the fragile ecological web, not outside and above it, immune from the ecological consequences of our actions. Ecological adjustment also implies that we see ourselves as members of the earth community, sharing the earth’s resources equitably with all species and within the human community. Ecological adjustment requires an end to resource grab, and the privatization of our land, bio diversity and seeds, water and atmosphere. Ecological adjustment is based on the recovery of the commons and the creation of Earth Democracy.

The dominant economic model based on resource monopolies and the rule of an oligarchy is not just in conflict with ecological limits of the planet. It is in conflict with the principles of democracy, and governance by the people, of the people, for the people. The adjustment from the oligarchy is to further strangle democracy and crush civil liberties and people’s freedom. Bharti Mittal’s statement that politics should not interfere with the economy reflects the mindset of the oligarchy that democracy can be done away with. This anti-democratic adjustment includes laws like homeland security in U.S., and multiple security laws in India.

The calls for a democratic adjustment from below are witnessed worldwide in the rise of non-violent protests, from the Arab spring to the American autumn of “Occupy” and the Russian winter challenging the hijack of elections and electoral democracy.

And these movements for democratic adjustment are also rising everywhere in response to the “austerity” programmes imposed by IMF, World Bank and financial institutions which created the financial crisis. The Third World had its structural Adjustment and Forced Austerity, through the 1980s and 1990s, leading to IMF riots. India’s structural adjustment of 1991 has given us the agrarian crisis with quarter million farmer suicides and food crisis pushing every 4th Indian to hunger and every 2nd Indian child to severe malnutrition; people are paying with their very lives for adjustment imposed by the World Bank/IMF. The trade liberalization reforms dismantled our food security system, based on universal PDS. It opened up the seed sector to seed MNCs. And now an attempt is being made through the Food Security Act to make our public feeding programmes a market for food MNCs. The forced austerity continues through imposition of so called reforms, such as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail, which would rob 50 million of their livelihoods in retail and millions more by changing the production system. Europe started having its forced austerity in 2010. And everywhere there are anti-austerity protests from U.K., to Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Iceland, and Portugal. The banks which have created the crisis want society to adjust by destroying jobs and livelihoods, pensions and social security, public services and the commons. The people want financial systems to adjust to the limits set by nature, social justice and democracy. And the precariousness of the living conditions of the 99% has created a new class which Guy Standing calls the “Precariate”. If the Industrial Revolution gave us the industrial working class, the proletariat, globalization and the “free market” which is destroying the livelihoods of peasants in India and China through land grabs, or the chances of economic security for the young in what were the rich industrialized countries, has created a global class of the precarious. As Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich have written in “The making of the American 99%”, this new class of the dispossessed and excluded include “middle class professional, factory workers, truck drivers, and nurses as well as the much poorer people who clean the houses, manicure the fingernails, and maintain the lawn of the affluent”.

Forced austerity based on the old paradigm allows the 1% super rich, the oligarchs, to grab the planets resources while pushing out the 99% from access to resources, livelihoods, jobs and any form of freedom, democracy and economic security. It is often said that with increasing growth, India and China are replicating the resource intensive and wasteful lifestyles of the Western countries. The reality is that while a small 3 to 4% of India is joining the mad race for consuming the earth with more and more automobiles and air conditioners, the large majority of India is being pushed into “de-consumption” – losing their entitlements to basic needs of food and water because of resource and land grab, market grab, and destruction of livelihoods. The hunger and malnutrition crisis in India is an example of the “de-consumption” forced on the poor by the rich, through the imposed austerity built into the trade liberalization and “economic reform” policies.

There is another paradigm emerging which is shared by Gandhi and the new movements of the 99%, the paradigm of voluntary simplicity of reducing one ecological foot print while increasing human well being for all. Instead of forced austerity that helps the rich become super rich, the powerful become totalitarian, chosen simplicity enables us all to adjust ecologically, to reduce over consumption of the planets resources, it allows us to adjust socially to enhance democracy and it creates a path for economic adjustment based on justice and equity.

Forced austerity makes the poor and working families pay for the excesses of limitless greed and accumulation by the super rich. Chosen simplicity stops these excesses and allow us to flower into an Earth Democracy where the rights and freedoms of all species and all people are protected and respected.

Source: http://www.zcommunications.org/imposed-austerity-vs-chosen-simplicity-who-will-pay-for-which-adjustments-by-vandana-shiva

Earth Grab: Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes

http://fahamubooks.org/book/?GCOI=90638100969040

Authors: Diana Bronson, Hope Shand, Jim Thomas, Kathy Jo Wetter

This three-part book 'pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead.'
Vandana Shiva, Founder, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology

'Geopiracy' analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using growing concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering 'quick fixes'. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a 'greener' economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy.

'The New Biomassters' exposes how a biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

'Capturing Climate Genes' shows how the worlds largest agribusiness companies including Monsanto, BASF, Dupont and Syngenta are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be 'climate-ready crops'. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world – something peasant farmers already know how to manage – these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. These crops are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the gluttony of corporate shareholders for profits.