> Our problem arises from the fact that, being a diverse
> movement, we have hesitated to describe precisely
> what we want. We have called for fair trade, but have
> failed, as a body, to specify how free that trade should
> be, and how it should be regulated. As a result, in the
> rich world at least, we have permitted the few who do
> possess a clearly formulated policy to speak on our
> behalf. Those people are the adherents of a doctrine
> called "localisation". I once supported it myself. I now
> accept that I was wrong.
>
> Localisation insists that everything which can be
> produced locally should be produced locally. All
> nations should protect their economies by means
> of trade taxes and legal barriers. The purpose of the
> policy is to grant nations both economic and
> political autonomy, to protect cultural
> distinctiveness and to prevent the damage done to
> the environment by long-distance transport. Yet,
> when you examine the implications, you soon
> discover that it is as coercive, destructive and
> unjust as any of the schemes George Bush is
> cooking up.
>
> My conversion came on the day I heard a speaker
> demand a cessation of most forms of international
> trade and then, in answering a question from the
> audience, condemn the economic sanctions on Iraq.
> If we can accept that preventing trade with Iraq or,
> for that matter, imposing a trade embargo on Cuba,
> impoverishes and in many cases threatens the
> lives of the people of those nations, we must also
> accept that a global cessation of most kinds of trade
> would have the same effect, but on a greater scale.
> The localisers don't rule out all international
> transactions. As Colin Hines, who wrote their
> manifesto and helped to draft the Green party's
> policy, accepts, "Some long-distance trade will
> still occur for those sectors providing goods and
> services to other regions of the world that can't
> provide such items from within their own borders,
> eg certain minerals or cash crops". To earn foreign
> exchange from the rich world, in other words, the
> poor world must export raw materials. This, of
> course, is precisely the position from which the
> poor nations are seeking to escape.
It's not a sign of being out of touch with the global justice movement to read the above statements from Monbiot as a Big Deal, is it?
-- Shane
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