In a presentation given at the School of Economic Science’s annual colloquium, STWR outlined why the principle of sharing – as practiced in families and communities since the dawn of civilisation – should be placed at the forefront of policymaking in order to address the social, environmental and security crises that humanity now faces. Read the full transcript at: http://www.stwr.org/economic-sharing-alternatives/one-world-one-wealth.html

1. Is Sharing a Solution?
School of Economic Science colloquium
“One World, One Wealth”
Rajesh Makwana and Adam Parsons
23rd June 2013

2. What is economic sharing?

3. Sharing in nature
• Planet Earth as a self-regulating system
• Natural cycles and elements within the biosphere
• The cells of all living organisms share available nutrients
• Plants and flowers freely share their pollen and seeds
• Evidence of sharing in groups of highly social animals

4. Homo economicus
Policymaking is:
• based on assumption that human beings are selfish, competitive, acquisitive and
individualistic
• driven by the endless pursuit of growth, profit and wealth accumulation
Creating a world in which:
• market forces rather than human need dictates the distribution of resources,
goods and services
• commercialisation has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, encouraging highly
individualistic and unsustainable consumerist lifestyles
• natural resources are usurped at far greater rates than they can be replenished

5. Economic sharing
Economic sharing is about creating environmentally sustainable systems that
deliver social and economic justice. It relates closely to the concepts of:
• Justice
• Equality
• Human rights
• Universalism
• Trusteeship
• Common ownership
• Stewardship

6. Sharing locally
• Agricultural land traditionally shared/managed cooperatively as a
‘commons’
• Saving and sharing seed has played an integral role in farming
• Transition towns, cooperatives, conservation projects, alternative
currencies, and ‘trusts’ that manage land and other common-pool
resources
• The sharing economy: collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer
technology, open source software development, gift economies, time
banking etc.

7. Sharing nationally
• Participative democracy seeks to share political power more equitably
with citizens
• Progressive taxation and public spending is a complex form of economic
sharing, whereby a nation redistributes a portion of its financial resources
(personal income and assets, as well as company profits) for the benefit of
society as a whole.

8. Global economic sharing
• Extending the concepts of justice, socio-economic rights and
environmental sustainability to include the entire community of nations
and the planet as a whole.
• Ensuring that people in all countries, including future generations, can
access what they need to survive and prosper without devastating the
planet in the process.
• Recognising that all people are part of an extended human family with the
same basic needs and rights, and establishing policies and institutions at
the global level that embody this understanding.

9. Global sharing still in its infancy…
Sharing is still not sufficiently expressed in the governance systems and
economic structures that underpin the global economy.
Historic examples include:
• The United Nations – promoting better living standards, peace and human
rights for all since 1945.
• The Marshall Plan – a massive transfer of financial resources from the US
to European countries devastated by the Second World War.
• International Aid (ODA) – provided by rich countries to facilitate economic
growth in developing countries since 1960s.

10. Sharing as a solution
to global crises

11. Poverty among the ‘richest’ countries
• Almost 1 in 4 children in the United States grows up in a poor household;
and around 50 million people are now going hungry across the country.
• In the EU, over 115 million people – 23% of the entire EU population –
officially live below the poverty line.
• In the UK – the fifth richest country in the world – one in five people are
living in poverty.
• Food banks now a lifeline for half a million people in Britain.

12. Poverty in the Global South
• 95% of people who live in developing countries survive on the equivalent
of less than $10 a day (comparable to what $10 would buy in the US)
• The majority of the developing world population still lives on less than
$2.50 a day
• On a worldwide basis, 50% of children are living below the $2-a-day
international poverty line
• Malnutrition is the underlying cause of death for at least 3.1 million
children - 600,000 more child deaths each year than was previously
realised
• 15 million people die every year as a consequence of extreme poverty and
inadequate welfare provision

13. The inadequacy of development targets
• Although reports suggest that the Millennium Development Goal on
halving poverty has been met ahead of schedule, the actual number of
people living in extreme poverty in 2015 will remain unacceptably high at
around a billion.
• At the current rate of poverty reduction we may never succeed in
consigning poverty to the annals of history, even 65 years since the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first established.
• The post-2015 development goal: can we really say that we’ve made
poverty history if millions of people still live on less than $2.50 a day in
2030?

14. “There is an absurdity to the idea of raising the average income of more than
7 billion people to more than $100,000 a year merely to ensure that everyone
has an income of at least $465. But in the present context of global carbon
constraints, it goes far beyond the absurd. It is both dangerous and
counterproductive.”
- David Woodward (British economist)

15. “In this century, the central challenges of sustainable development are: on
the one hand, to overcome poverty and the tremendous inequalities that
exist and, on the other hand, re-establish the equilibrium of the Earth system.
Both objectives are intrinsically linked and one cannot be reached
independently of the other.
The main challenge for the eradication of poverty is not to grow forever, but
to achieve an equitable distribution of the wealth that is possible under the
limits of the Earth system. In a world in which 1% of the population controls
50% of the wealth of the planet, it will not be possible to eradicate poverty or
restore harmony with nature.”
- Opening paragraphs of the proposal submitted by the Plurinational State of
Bolivia for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012

16. Sharing the planet’s finite resources
equitably and sustainably?
• Currently the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of global
resources, and are therefore responsible for the vast majority of global warming
and environmental destruction.
• The poorest 20% of the population lack sufficient access to essentials such as food,
clean water and energy, and account for just 1.3% of global resource consumption.
• The carbon emissions of just 11% of the global population generate around 50% of
global carbon emissions, while 50% of people create only 11%.
• At present, the ecological footprint of high-income countries is three times that of
middle income countries, and five times that of low-income countries.

17. The need for equity, fairness and sharing
as a solution to the environmental crisis
• ‘The Doughnut’ adds the concept of social boundaries to that of planetary
boundaries, and argues that traditional growth policies have largely failed to
ensure a safe or just world (Oxfam)
• Living Planet Reports demonstrate how our demands on the planet exceed its
capacity to sustain us (WWF)
• Ecological Debt Day is the calendar date each year in which the total resources
consumed by humanity will exceed the capacity for the Earth to generate those
resources that year (New Economics Foundation)
• ‘The Equitable Sharing of Atmospheric and Development Space’ is a framework
based on the principle that a global deal on climate change must put fairness and
equity at the centre of its design (South Centre)

18. Interstate conflict:
the consequence of humanity’s
failure to share natural resources
• Between 1965 and 1990, 73 civil wars over resources occurred in which more
than a thousand people a year died.
• At least 18 international conflicts have been triggered by competition for
resources since then, including the invasion of Iraq since 2003.
• The possibility of future conflict grows as nations race to control oil and gas
reserves in the Arctic, in the East and South China Seas, around the Falkland
Islands and elsewhere.

19. Sharing vs competing for global resources
Unless nations find ways of sharing rather than competing over scarce
resources, a number of factors all but guarantee a further escalation of
resource wars in the near future;
• a rising world population
• soaring global consumption rates
• rapidly disappearing energy supplies
• climate change

20. “It seems reasonable to ask whether a resource-acquisition strategy based on
global cooperation rather than recurring conflict might not prove more
effective in guaranteeing access to critical supplies over the long run. Such a
strategy would call for the equitable distribution of the world’s existing
resource stockpiles in times of acute scarcity, as well as an accelerated, global
program of research on alternative energy sources and industrial processes.
Coordinated international efforts would be inaugurated to conserve scarce
commodities and employ material-saving technologies…”
- Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, p. 223.

21. Sharing to mitigate global crises
• Share financial resources --> eliminate poverty and inequality
• Share natural resources --> equalise consumption patterns,
reduce CO2 emissions
• Share the world’s resources --> de-escalate conflict and
facilitate peace and security

22. Re-ordering global priorities

23. A global emergency
• Rapidly rising poverty, food insecurity and social exclusion in OECD
countries
• Extreme poverty and life-threatening deprivation in the poorest countries:
– 40,000 poverty-related deaths each day
– 1 in 7 people go hungry
– A third of all child deaths occur due to under-nutrition
– Around 400,000 people die as a result of climate change each year
Should this be our no. 1 priority?

24. The small cost of saving lives
• Lifting 1.4bn people above the $1.25 a day extreme poverty line: $173bn
per year
• Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) shortfall for 2011: $45m
• Financing the Global Climate Fund: $100bn per year
• World Food Program shortfall for 2011: $141m
• Providing vaccines for all infants in poor countries: $3bn
• The total cost of meeting the MDG financing gap for every low-income
country: $143bn in 2010

25. Mobilising $2.8tn
• Tax financial speculation: $650bn
• End fossil fuel and biofuel subsidies: $531bn
• Divert military spending: $434.5bn
• Stop tax avoidance: $349bn
• Increase international aid: $297.5bn
• End support for agribusiness: $187bn
• Redistribute IMF resources: $115.5bn
• Tax carbon emissions: $108bn
• Cancel unjust debt: $81bn
• Protect import tariffs: $63.4bn

26. Common heritage of humankind
• 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the
Event of Armed Conflict
• 1961 Antarctic treaty system (indirectly)
• 1967 Outer Space Treaty
• 1970 The Declaration of Principles Governing the Seabed and Ocean Floor
• 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention
• 1982 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
• 1984 Moon Treaty

27. A global commons trust
• The trust would set a cap on a particular resource to ensure it is used
sustainably and protected for future generations
• Businesses could rent a proportion of the resource from the trust, rather
than own it
• The rent paid for the resource could be used to fund social or
environmental needs

28. Curbing consumption
• Placing resource management at the forefront of policymaking
• Moving beyond economic growth and GDP as objectives of economic
policy
• Internalising external costs of economic activities
• Dismantling the culture of consumerism: restricting advertising,
implementing better trading standards, ending planned obsolescence
• Investment in low carbon infrastructure and energy/resource efficiency
measures

29. The global call for sharing

30. Overcoming the barriers to progress
• Current world direction => centralisation of state/market power.
• The impasse => the world economy is structurally dependent upon
unsustainable levels of production and consumption for its continued
success.
• The result => international negotiations fail, year on year; viable solutions
for the world’s multiple crises are blocked.
Overcoming the vested interests that block progress on restructuring the
world economy is the most significant challenge of the 21st century

31. The potential power
of a united people’s voice

32. “Perhaps this is a reaction born in part in America's irresponsible
inaction on climate change, but I have come to the view that what's
needed now is a massive, in-the-streets citizens protest – a global
Tahrir Square. I fear that governments will procrastinate unless
unprecedented numbers of people across the world continue to put it
all on the line with non-violent demonstrations, marches, and protests
and move with determination from protest to movement to power
before it is too late. In the realms of science and policy, we have
known enough for decades, but normal NGO advocacy has been
incapable of forcing political systems, especially in the United States,
to act on what we know.”
- James Gustave Speth

33. Worldwide demonstrations are all calling
for economic sharing
• Arab Spring: reacting to enormous socio-economic divisions
• Occupy and Indignados: mobilising against inequality, the ‘1%’
• Anti-austerity protests: for a fairer sharing of public revenue / for
corporations to pay their ‘fair share’
• Idle No More: a call to share Canada’s national resources
• Taksim protests in Turkey: in support of shared public spaces, as
symbolised by Gezi Park
• 2013 protests in Brazil: for a fairer sharing of public revenue / free public
transportation

34. The big question: can people power recognise
the need for sharing on a global level?
99% vs 1%:
How about on global levels?
Am I part of the elite 1%?

35. The implications…
only a collective demand
for a fairer sharing of
the world's wealth,
power and resources is
likely to unify citizens of
the richest and poorest
nations on a common
platform

36. The call for sharing as a practical tool for
influencing political and economic reform
• A human perspective
• Moving beyond ‘isms’
• A united approach
• A positive proposal
• A guide for policy