Global Policy Forum

By Aaron G. Lehmer & James Phelan

The accelerating concentration of control over the world's resources poses a growing challenge to nations and communities working toward environmentally sustainable and socially just development.

Through their raw economic clout, transnational corporations (TNCs) are using government officials, public relations firms and the major media to insist that "free market" economics is good for us - even as they hoard taxpayer subsidies and merge into ever-larger businesses to weaken market competition.

Sadly, the policies promoted by TNCs are now seen as "natural," which often prevents us from recognizing them as political arrangements designed to meet narrow profit goals. For example, "free market" ideology claims that only money-based activities matter - not other aspects of community life like volunteerism, family and household care, affordable housing and health services, which often lie outside the cash economy. Corporate economics also ignores the planet's "natural sector" - the rivers, wetlands, soil, oceans and airways that provide vital purifying, stabilizing and regenerating services.

Although corporations were originally chartered to serve society, now their main purpose is to capture an ever-increasing flow of money for top managers and shareholders. In the view of economist David Korten, this behavior represents "serious violations of the principle of cooperative self-organization in the service of life." And with corporations comprising 52 of the world's 100 largest economies (according to the International Forum on Globalization), their undemocratic structure is cause for urgent global concern. Speaking at a comfortable distance from the clouds of tear gas that shrouded the recent G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, George W. Bush claimed that critics of TNCs are "hurting the poor" by making it more difficult for such companies to set up shop. This argument might make sense were it not for the millions of people around the globe who are taking back their communities from predatory corporations and unresponsive governments to chart their own destinies.

Whether in Bolivia (where citizens took to the streets to halt Bechtel Corporation's attempted takeover of their water services) or in Mexico (where the Zapatistas took up arms to protest the NAFTA "free-trade" pact), people are showing that they understand that the real goal of corporations and paid-off politicians is to extract community resources as cheaply as possible.

Toward Grassroots Globalization

Grassroots Globalization Network (GGN), a new project of Earth Island Institute, is dedicated to empowering people to create sustainable communities from the bottom up. GGN advances positive alternatives to corporate globalization by highlighting successful community projects and efforts, building ties between grassroots groups and citizens, and supporting socially and environmentally beneficial economic policies and arrangements.

So what institutions will provide sustainable livelihoods and economic security for people and their communities? And what policies can we develop to replace current neoliberal policies favoring the largest corporate conglomerates? Fortunately, there's no shortage of inspiring organizations and innovative practices to draw from: