The international debate and the alter-globalist movement's approach

The Green New-Deal appears as one of the proposal discussed in the debate on the strategic issues of the crises. We will not enter into the discussion on the nature of the crisis and the importance of ecology as a new paradigm. We will consider that the G20 proposals are not, for the moment, are not really concerned with a green new deal and are more related with some green painting and slight corrections of the neoliberal policies. Green New-Deal is present in three main axis of strategic issues.

The first axis focuses on the most open bodies of the United Nations represented by the recommendations of the Stiglitz Commission, backed up by the ILO report, and that of UNCTAD. This approach, often considered as the "Green New Deal", advocates public regulation and that takes up some of the Keynesian paradigms adapted to an open economy rather than to national regulation and to the realisation that there are ecological limits.

The second axis is that of the international trade-union movement and the peasant movement. The trade-union movement includes its short and medium-term demands within a perspective of sustainable development, to which it pays great care.

The third axis of the international debate is taken up by social and citizen movements, associations, trade unions and networks. They remain non-committal on the forms of citizen and civil involvement in the regulation and on the radical implications of taking into account ecological constraints. They continue in the current discussions that explore a radically alternative approach, that of "prosperity without growth".

In the short term, intervention in the international debate should give priority to the United Nations system with regards to proposals for public regulation of the global economy. In the short and medium-term, support for and discussion of the recommendations of the international trade-union movement would make it possible to influence the proposals of the reformer axis in order to anticipate the offensives of the still active and often dominant neo-liberal and neo-conservative forces. Promoting the building of alternatives to the current system starting now would prepare the longer term, based on the social practices of innovation and resistance as well as the popularisation of the proposals highlighted by the World Social Forum.

Gustave Massiah

Novembre 2009

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