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From Melbourne to Prague: the Struggle for a Deglobalized World

*

(Talk delivered at a series of engagements on the occasion of demonstrations against the

World Economic Forum (Davos) in Melbourne, Australia, 6-10 September 2000.)

We are, here in Melbourne in the next few days and in Prague in two weeks' time,

participating in an historic enterprise: that of creating a critical mass to turn the tide against

corporate-driven globalization.

For years, we were told that globalization was benign, that it was a process that brought

about the greatest good for the greatest number, that good citizenship lay in accepting the

impersonal rule of the market and good governance meant governments getting out of the

way of market forces and letting the most effective incarnation of market freedom, the

transnational corporation, go about its task of bringing about the most efficient mix of capital,

land, technology and labor.

The unrestricted flow of goods and capital in a world without borders was said to be the best

of all possible worlds, though when some observers pointed out that to be consistent with the

precepts of their 18th century prophet, Adam Smith, proponents of the neoliberal doctrine

would also have to allow the unrestricted flow of labor to create this best of all possible

worlds, they were, quite simply, ignored.

Such inconsistencies could be overlooked since for over two decades, neoliberalism or, as it

was grandiosely styled, the "Washington Consensus" had carried all before it. As one of its

key partisans has nostalgically remarked recently, "the Washington Consensus seemed to

gain near-universal approval and provided a guiding ideology and underlying intellectual

consensus for the world economy, which was quite new in modern history." (1)

Globalization Unravels I: The Asian Financial Collapse The unrestricted flow of speculative

capital in accordance with Washington Consensus doctrine was what our governments in

East Asia institutionalized in the early 1990's, under the strong urging of the International

Monetary Fund and the US Treasury Department. The result: the $100 billion that flowed in

between 1993 and 1997 flowed out in the bat of an eyelash during the Great Panic of the

summer of 1997, bringing about the collapse of our economies and spinning them into a mire

of recession and massive unemployment from which most still have to recover. Since 1997,

financial instability or the constant erosion of our currencies has become a way of life under

IMF- imposed monetary regimes that leave the value of our money to be determined day-to-

day by the changing whims, moods, and preferences of foreign investors and currency

speculators.

Globalization Unravels II: The Failure of Structural Adjustment The Asian financial crisis put

the International Monetary Fund on the hotseat, leading to a widespread popular reappraisal

of its role in the Third World in the 1980s and early 1990's, when structural adjustment

programs were imposed on over 70 developing countries. After over 15 years, there were

hardly any cases of successful adjustment programs. What structural adjustment had done,

instead, was to institutionalize stagnation in Africa and Latin America, alongside rises in the

levels of absolute poverty and income inequality.

Structural adjustment and related free-market policies that were imposed beginning in the

early 1980's were the central factor that triggered a sharp rise in inequality globally, with one

authoritative UNCTAD study covering 124 countries showing that the income share of the

richest 20 per cent of the world's population rose from 69 to 83 per cent between 1965 and

1990. (2) Adjustment policies were a central factor behind the rapid concentration of global

income in recent years - a process which, in 1998, saw Bill Gates, with a net worth of $90

billion, Warren Buffet, with $36 billion, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, with $30 billion,

achieve a combined income that was greater than the total combined income of the 600

million that live in the world's 48 least developed countries, a great number of which had been

subjected to adjustment programs.

Structural adjustment has also been a central cause of the lack of any progress in the

campaign against poverty. The number of people globally living in poverty - that is, on less

than a dollar a day - increased from 1.1 billion in 1985 to 1.2 billion in 1998, and is expected

to reach 1.3 billion this year. (3) According to a recent World Bank study, the absolute number

of people living in poverty rose in the 1990's in Eastern Europe, South Asia, Latin America

and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa - all areas that came under the sway of

adjustment programs. (4)

Confronted with this dismal record, James Wolfensohn of the World Bank had the sense to

move the institution away from its identification with structural adjustment with public relations

initiatives like the SAPRI, or the Structural Adjustment Program Review Initiative, that it said

would be jointly conducted with NGOs. But the IMF under the doctrinaire Michel Camdessus

refused to see the handwriting on the wall; it sought, instead, to embed adjustment policies

permanently in the economic structure through the establishment of the Extended Structural

Adjustment Facility (ESAF).

Yet as a consequence of greater public scrutiny following its disastrous policies in East Asia,

the Fund could no longer pretend that adjustment had not been a massive failure in Africa,

Latin America and South Asia. During the World Bank-IMF meetings in September 1999, the

Fund conceded failure by renaming the ESAF the "Poverty Reduction and Growth" Facility.

There was no way, however, that the Fund could successfully whitewash the results of its

policies. When the G-7 proposed to make IMF certification a condition for eligibility in the now

defunct HIPC Initiative, Rep. Maxine Walters of the US House of Representatives spoke for

many liberal American lawmakers when she commented, "Do we have to involve the IMF at

all? Because, as we have painfully discovered, the way the IMF works causes children to

starve." (5)

So starved of legitimacy was the Fund that US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who in an

earlier incarnation as chief economist of the World Bank was one of the chief backers of

structural adjustment, told the US Congress that the "IMF-centered process" of

macroeconomic policymaking would be replaced by "a new, more open and inclusive process

that would involve multiple international organizations and give national policymakers and civil

society groups a more central role." (6)

Globalization Unravels III: The Debacle in Seattle Freedom, said Hegel, is the recognition of

necessity. Freedom, the proponents of neoliberalism like Hegel's disciple, Francis Fukuyama,

tell us, lies in the recognition of the inexorable irreversibility of free- market globalization.

Thank god, the 50,000 people who descended on Seattle in late November 1999 did not buy

this Hegelian- Fukuyaman notion of freedom as submission and surrender to what seemed to

be the ineluctable necessity of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In the mid-nineties, the WTO had been sold to the global public as the lynchpin of a

multilateral system of economic governance that would provide the necessary rules to

facilitate the growth of global trade and the spread of its beneficial effects. Nearly five years

later, the implications and consequences of the founding of the WTO had become as clear to

large numbers of people as a robbery carried out in broad daylight. What were some of these

realizations?

- By signing on to the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs),

developing countries discovered that they had signed away their right to use trade policy as a

means of industrialization.

- By signing on to the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs),

countries realized that they had given high tech transnationals like Microsoft and Intel the right

to monopolize innovation in the knowledge-intensive industries and provided biotechnology

firms like Novartis and Monsanto the go-signal to privatize the fruits of aeons of creative

interaction between human communities and nature such as seeds, plants, and animal life.

- By signing on to the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), developing countries discovered that

they had agreed to open up their markets while allowing the big agricultural superpowers to

consolidate their system of subsidized agricultural production that was leading to the massive

dumping of surpluses on those very markets, a process that was, in turn, destroying

smallholder-based agriculture.

- By setting up the WTO, countries and governments discovered that they had set up a legal

system that enshrined the priority of free trade above every other good - above the

environment, justice, equity, and community. They finally got the significance of consumer

advocate Ralph Nader's warning a few years earlier that the WTO, was a system of "trade

uber alles."

- In joining the WTO, developing countries realized that they were not, in fact, joining a

democratic organization but one where decisions were made, not in formal plenaries but in

non-transparent backroom sessions, and where majority voting was dispensed with in favor of

a process called "consensus" - which was really a process in which a few big trading powers

imposed their consensus on the majority of the member countries.

The Seattle Ministerial brought together a wide variety of protesters from all over the world

focusing on a wide variety of issues. Some of their stands on key issues, such as the

incorporation of labor standards into the WTO, were sometimes contradictory, it is true. But

most of them, whether they were in the streets or they were in meeting halls, were united by

one thing: their opposition to the expansion of a system that promoted corporate-led

globalization at the expense of justice, community, national sovereignty, cultural diversity, and

ecological sustainablity.

Seattle was a debacle created by corporate overreach, which is quite similar to Paul

Kennedy's concept of "imperial overstretch" that is said to be the central factor in the

unraveling of empires. (7) The Ministerial's collapse from pressure from these multiple

sources of opposition underlined the truth in Ralph Nader's prescient remark, made four years

earlier, that the creation of global trade pacts like the WTO was likely to be "the greatest

blunder in the history of the modern global corporation." Whereas previously, the

corporation's operating within a more or less "private penumbra" made it difficult to effectively

crystallize opposition, he argued that "now that the global corporate strategic plan is out in

print...gives us an opportunity." (8)

Truth is eternal, but it only makes a difference in human lives when it becomes power. In

Seattle, truth was joined to the power of the people and became fact. Suddenly, facts that had

previously been ignored or belittled were acknowledged even by the powers-that-be whose

brazen confidence had been shaken. For instance, that the supreme institution of

globalization was, in fact, fundamentally undemocratic was recognized even by

representatives of its stoutest defenders: the United States and the United Kingdom.

Listen to US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky after the revolt of the representatives

of developing countries that helped bring down the Ministerial: "The process...was a rather

exclusionary one," she admitted. "All meetings were held between 20 and 30 key

countries...And that meant 100 countries, 100, were never in the room...[T]his led to an

extraordinarily bad feeling that they were left out of the process and that the results...had

been dictated to them by the 25 or 30 privileged countries who were in the room." (9)

Listen to Stephen Byers, the UK Secretary for Trade and Industry, after the Seattle shock:

"WTO will not be able to continue in its present form. There has to be fundamental and radical

change in order for it to meet the needs and aspirations of all 134 of its members." (10)

Globalization Unravels IV: Meltzer Torpedoes the Bank The Asian financial crisis triggered the

IMF's crisis of legitimacy. The Seattle Ministerial collapse brought the WTO to a standstill.

However, under Australian-turned-American Jim Wolfensohn's command, the World Bank

seemed likely to escape the massive damage sustained by its sister institutions. But the

torpedo in the form of the famous Meltzer Commission found its mark in February of this year.

Formed as one of the conditions for the US Congress' voting for an increase of its quota in

the IMF in 1998, the Commission was a bipartisan body that was tasked to probe the record

of the Bank and Fund with the end in view of coming up with recommendations for the reform

of the two institutions. Exhaustively examining documents and interviewing all kinds of

experts, the Commission came up with the devastating conclusion that with most of its

resources going to the better off countries of the developing world and with the astounding

65-70 per cent failure rate of its projects in the poorest countries, the World Bank was

irrelevant to the achievement of its avowed mission of global poverty alleviation. And what to

do with the Bank? The Commission urged that most of the Bank's lending activities be

devolved to the regional developing banks. It does not take much, however, for readers of the

report to realize that, as one of the Commission's members revealed, it "essentially wants to

abolish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank," a goal that had "significant

pockets of support... in our Congress." (12)

Much to the chagrin of Wolfensohn, few people came to the defense of the Bank, and it was

in a state of shock that the agency held its joint spring meeting with the IMF in a Washington,

DC, that was shut down by some 40,000 protestors. The spirit of demoralization that gripped

the Bank was conveyed in Wolfensohn's missive to Bank staffers before the meeting that "the

next week will be a trying time for most of us." (13) That the April 2000 meeting of the Bretton

Woods twins could take place only under heavy police protection, with the use of a system of

decoys to breach protesters' lines in order to bring apprehensive delegates to the fortified

bunkers at Pennsylvania and 19th NW in central DC spoke volumes about the tattered

legitimacy of the two institutions.

The Davos Process I: Relegitimizing Globalization Why do I keep coming back to the question

of legitimacy? Because, as the great Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci pointed out, when

legitimacy has vanished and is not regained, it is only a matter of time before the structure

collapses, no matter how seemingly solid it is. Many of the key advocates of globalization

realized this in the wake of the joint crisis of the WTO and the Bretton Woods twins. They

knew that the strategy of denial that these three institutions deployed in the past would no

longer work and that the aggressive approach of pro- globalization firebrands like Martin Wolf

of the Financial Times, who accused NGOs of ignorance and of being an "uncivil society,"

was likely to be counterproductive.

To the more soberminded among the pro-globalization forces, the first thing to do was to

recognize the facts. Fact No. 1, according to the influential free trader C. Fred Bergsten, head

of Washington's Institute of International Economics, was that "the anti-globalization forces

are now in the ascendancy." (14) And Fact No. 2 was that central to the response to these

forces "has to be an honest recognition and admission that there are costs and losers," that

"globalization does increase income and social disparities within countries" and "does leave

some countries and some groups behind." (15)

Here is where the Davos process - of which the current exercise of the World Economic

Forum (WEF) is a part - has proven to be central to the project of relegitimizing globalization.

Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps, is not the center of a global capitalist conspiracy to divide

up the world. Davos is where the global elite meets under the umbrella of the WEF to iron out

a rough consensus on how to ideologically confront and defuse the challenges to the system.

Meeting shortly after what many regarded as the cataclysm in Seattle, the Davos crew in late

January composed the politically correct line. Repeated like a mantra by personalities like Bill

Clinton, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Nike CEO Phil Knight, and WEF guru Klaus Schwab, the

chorus went this way: "Globalization is the wave of the future. But globalization is leaving the

majority behind. Those voices spoke out in Seattle. It's time to bring the fruits of globalization

and free trade to the many."

It was British Prime Minister Tony Blair who best articulated the vision and rhetoric of

"compassionate globalization." Blair said: "Alongside the advance of global markets and

technologies, we are seeing a new search for community, locally, nationally, and globally that

is a response to change and insecurity, but also reflects the best of our nature and enduring

values. With it is coming a new political agenda - one that is founded on mutual responsibility

- both within nations and across the world." (16)

He continued: "We have the chance in this century to achieve an open world, an open

economy, and an open economy with unprecedented opportunities for people and business.

But we will succeed only if that open society and economy is underpinned by a strong ethos

of mutual responsibility - by social inclusion within nations, and by a common commitment

internationally to help those affected by genocide, debt, and environment." (17)

"I call it a Third Way," Blair declared with passion. "It provides a new alternative in politics - on

the centre and centre-left, but on new terms. Supporting wealth creation. Tackling vested

interests. Using market mechanisms. But always staying true to clear values - social justice,

democracy, cooperation.... From Europe to North America, Brazil to New Zealand, two great

strands of progressive thought are coming together. The liberal commitment to individual free

in the market economy, and the social democratic commitment to social justice through the

action of government, are being combined." (18)

Now, one thing that the British public has finally realized about Mr. Blair is that with him, there

is a huge gap between rhetoric and substance. What actually does "globalization with a

conscience" or the "Third Way" or "globalization with compassion" have to offer? To find out,

one must turn from Blair to Bergsten, who, to his credit, dispenses with the soaring rhetoric

and admits that the program is actually a system of "transitional safety nets...to help the

adjustment to dislocation" and "enable people to take advantage of the phenomenon [of

globalization] and roll with it rather than oppose it." (19) In short, instead of being run over by

the globalization express, people will be asked to quietly and peacefully roll over and adjust to

the constant and unpredictable change wrought by the TNCs search for profitability.

The Davos Process II: Coopting the United Nations As important as the rhetoric in the Davos

response is the process of bringing people onto the bandwagon. This would be achieved

through dialogue, consultation, and the formation of "partnerships" between TNCs,

governments, the United Nations, and civil society organizations.

The UN was a piece of cake. Discussions with Secretary General Kofi Annan produced the

"Global Compact" that has become the centerpiece of the United Nations' Millennial

Celebrations. Signed by 44 TNCs, the Compact has been promoted by Annan as a major

step forward for it supposedly commits its signatories to respect human, labor, and

environmental rights and provide positive examples of such behavior. To many NGOs, on the

other hand, the Global Compact is turning out to be one of the UN's biggest blunders for the

following reasons:

- Despite a Compact provision that membership in the Compact will not be given to business

entities complicit in human rights violations, the founding membership includes the worst

corporate transgressors of human rights, environmental rights, and labor rights: Nike, Rio

Tinto, Shell, Novartis, and BP Amoco.

- The Compact will provide a great public relations venue for these corporations to promote a

clean image very different from the reality since compliance with the Compact will be self-

monitored and no sanctions exist for violating the Compact's principles.

- The Corporations will be able to use the UN logo as a seal of corporate responsibility, thus

appropriating the UN's image of international civil service "not only for short-term profit but

also for the long-term business goal of positive brand image." (20)

The Davos Process III: Managing Civil Society

As for civil society organizations, they were not as naive as Annan and the UN and thus

neutralizing them demanded more sophisticated measures. As a first step, one had to divide

their ranks by publicly defining some as "reasonable NGOs" that were interested in a "serious

debate" about the problems of globalization and others as "unreasonable NGOs" whose

agenda was to "close down discussion." (21) Then towards those identified as "reasonable,"

one put into motion what one might call a strategy of "disarmament by dialogue" designed to

integrate them into a "working partnership" for reform.

Here the model was the "NGO Committee on the World Bank" and other joint World Bank-

NGO bodies set up by Wolfensohn and his lieutenants in the mid-nineties. While the NGOs

that joined these bodies may have done so with the best of intentions, Wolfensohn knew that

their membership in itself already helped to legitimize the Bank and that over time these

NGOs would develop a stake in maintaining the formal relationship with the Bank. Not only

was Wolfensohn able to split the Washington, DC, NGO community, but he was able to

harness the energies of a number of NGOs - many of them unwittingly - to project the image

of a Bank that was serious about reforming itself and reorienting its approach to eliminating

poverty before Meltzer Commission was able to expose the hollowness of the Bank's claims.

Wolfensohn 's neutralization of a significant section of the Washington, DC, NGO community

in the mid-1990s should serve as a warning to civil society of the mettle of the forces it is up

against. The stakes are great, and how civil society responds at this historical moment to the

aggressive courtship being mounted for its hand will make the difference in the future of the

globalization project. Developments are so fluid in the correlation of forces in the struggle

between the pro- globalization and anti-globalization camps that strategies that might have

been realistic and appropriate pre-Seattle, when the multilateral institutions had more solidity

and legitimacy, may be timid and inappropriate, if not counterproductive, now that the

multilateral agencies are in a profound crisis of legitimacy.

Let me be specific:

- Will NGOs breathe life into a WTO process that is at standstill by pushing for the

incorporation of labor and environmental clauses into the WTO agreements instead of

reducing the power and authority of this instrument of corporate rule by doing all in their

power, for instance, to prevent another trade round from ever taking place?

- Will they throw a life saver to the Bretton Woods institutions by participating in the civil

society-World Bank-IMF consultations that are to be the central element of the

"Comprehensive Development Framework" that Wolfensohn and the IMF leadership sees as

the key to the relegitimization of the Bretton Woods twins?

- Will they allow themselves to be sucked into the Davos process of "reasonable dialogue"

and "frank consultation" when the other side sees dialogue and consultation mainly as the

first step to the disarmament of the other side?

Reform or Disempowerment?

Our tactics will depend not only on the balance of forces but will turn even more

fundamentally on our answer to the question: Should we seek to transform or to disable the

main institutions of corporate-led globalization?

Institutions should be saved and reformed if they're functioning, while defective, nevertheless

can be reoriented to promote the interests of society and the environment. They should be

abolished if they have become fundamentally dysfunctional. Can we really say that the IMF

can be reformed to bring about global financial stability, the World Bank to reduce poverty,

and the WTO to bring about fair trade? Are they not, in fact, imprisoned within paradigms and

structures that create outcomes that contradict these objectives? Can we truly say that these

institutions can be reengineered to handle the multiple problems that have been thrown up by

the process of corporate-led globalization?

Perhaps we can best appreciate the current situation by borrowing from Thomas Kuhn's

classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (21) Scientific paradigms, says Kuhn, enter into

crisis when they can no longer explain or handle dissonant data after dissonant data thrown

up by observation. At this point, the community of science diverges in its responses. Some try

to salvage the dominant paradigm with endless minute adjustments that merely prolong its

inevitable demise. A brave few try to cut cleanly from it in favor of a simpler, more elegant,

and more useful paradigm - in a manner similar to the way the founders of early modern

science simply junked the old, hopelessly complex Ptolemaic paradigm for explaining the

cosmos (the sun and other celestial bodies moving around the earth) in favor of the simpler

Copernican paradigm (the earth moving around the sun).

Like scientific paradigms in crisis, the dominant institutions of globalization can no longer

handle the multiple problems thrown up by the process of corporate-led globalization. Instead

of trying to reform the multilateral institutions, would it in fact be more realistic and "cost-

effective," to use a horrid neo-liberal term, to move to disempower, if not abolish them, and

create totally new institutions that do not have the baggage of illegitimacy, institutional failure,

and Jurassic mindsets that attach to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO?

Disabling the Corporation

Indeed, I would contend that the focus of our efforts these days is not to try to reform the

multilateral agencies but to deepen the crisis of legitimacy of the whole system. Gramsci

once described the bureaucracy as but an "outer trench behind which lay a powerful system

of fortresses and earthworks." We must no longer think simply in terms of neutralizing the

multilateral agencies that form the outer trenches of the system but of disabling the

transnational corporations that are fortresses and the earthworks that constitute the core of

the global economic system. I am talking about disabling not just the WTO, the IMF, and the

World Bank but the transnational corporation itself. And I am not talking about a process of

"reregulating" the TNCs but of eventually disabling or dismantling them as fundamental

hazards to people, society, the environment, to everything we hold dear.

Is this off the wall? Only if we think that the shocking irresponsibility and secrecy with which

the Monsantos and Novartises have foisted biotechnology on us is a departure from the

corporate norm. Only if we also see as deviations from the normal Shell's systematic

devastation of Ogoniland in Nigeria, the Seven Sisters' conspiracy to prevent the

development of renewable energy sources in order to keep us slaves to a petroleum

civilization, Rio Tinto and the mining giants' practice of poisoning rivers and communities, and

Mitsubishi's recently exposed 20-year-cover up of a myriad of product-safety violations to

prevent a recall that would cut into profitability. Only if we think that it is acceptable business

practice and ethics to pull up stakes, lay off people, and destroy long-established

communities in order to pursue ever-cheaper labor around the globe - a process that most

TNCs now engage in.

No, these are not departures from normal corporate behavior. They are normal corporate

behavior. And corporate crime against people and the environment has, like the Mafia,

become a way of life because, as the British philosopher John Gray tells us, "Global market

competition and technological innovation have interacted to give us an anarchic world

economy." To such a world of anarchy, scarcity, and conflict created by global laissez-faire,

Gray continues, "Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Malthus are better guides than Adam Smith or

Friedrich von Hayek, with their Utopian vision of a humanity united by "the benevolent

harmonies of competition." (22) Smith's world of peacefully competing enterprises has, in the

age of the TNC, degenerated into Hobbes' "war of all against all."

Gray goes on to say that "as it is presently organized, global capitalism is supremely ill-suited

to cope with the risks of geo-political conflict that are endemic in a world of worsening

scarcities. Yet a regulatory framework for coexistence and cooperation among the world's

diverse economies figures on no historical or political agenda." (23) Recent events underline

his point. When the ice cap on the North Pole is melting at an unprecedented rate and the

ozone layer above the South Pole has declined by 30 per cent, owing precisely to the

dynamics of this corporate civilization's insatiable desire for growth and profits, the need for

cooperation among peoples and societies is more stark than ever. We must do better than

entrust production and exchange to entities that systematically and fundamentally work to

erode solidarity, discourage cooperation, oppose regulation except profit-enhancing and

monopoly-creating regulation, all in the name of the Market and Efficiency.

It is said that in the age of globalization, nation-states have become obsolete forms of social

organization. I disagree. It is the corporation that has become obsolete. It is the corporation

that serves as a fetter to humanity's movement to new and necessary social arrangements to

achieve the most quintessentially human values of justice, equity, democracy, and to achieve

a new equilibrium between our species and the rest of the planet. Disabling, disempowering,

or dismantling the transnational corporation should be high on our agenda as a strategic end.

And when we say this, we do not equate the TNC with private enterprise, for there are

benevolent and malevolent expressions of private enterprise. We must seek to disable or

eliminate the malevolent ones, like the Mafia and the TNC. (24)

The Struggle for the Future I: Deglobalization It is often said that we must not only know what

we are against but what we are for. I agree - though it is very important to know very clearly

what we want to terminate so that we do not end up unwittingly fortifying it so that, like a WTO

fortified with social and environmental clauses, it is given a new leash on life.

Let me end, therefore, by giving you my idea of an alternative. It is, however, one that has

been formulated for a Third World, and specifically Southeast Asian, context. Let me call this

alternative route to the future "deglobalization."

What is deglobalization?

I am not talking about withdrawing from the international economy. I am speaking about

reorienting our economies from production for export to production for the local market;

about drawing most of our financial resources for development from within rather than

becoming dependent on foreign investment and foreign financial markets;

about carrying out the long-postponed measures of income redistribution and land

redistribution to create a vibrant internal market that would be the anchor of the economy;

about deemphasizing growth and maximizing equity in order to radically reduce

environmental disequilibrium;

about not leaving strategic economic decisions to the market but making them subject to

democratic choice;

about subjecting the private sector and the state to constant monitoring by civil society;

about creating a new production and exchange complex that includes community

cooperatives, private enterprises, and state enterprises, and excludes TNCs;

about enshrining the principle of subsidiarity in economic life by encouraging production of

goods to take place at the community and national level if it can be done so at reasonable

cost in order to preserve community.

We are talking, moreover, about a strategy that consciously subordinates the logic of the

market, the pursuit of cost efficiency to the values of security, equity, and social solidarity. We

are speaking, in short, about reembedding the economy in society, rather than having society

driven by the economy.

The Struggle for the Future II: A Plural World

Deglobalization or the reempowerment of the local and national, however, can only succeed if

it takes place within an alternative system of global economic governance. What are the

contours of such a world economic order? The answer to this is contained in our critique of

the Bretton Woods cum WTO system as a monolithic system of universal rules imposed by

highly centralized institutions to further the interests of corporations - and, in particular, US

corporations. To try to supplant this with another centralized global system of rules and

institutions, though these may be premised on different principles, is likely to reproduce the

same Jurassic trap that ensnared organizations as different as IBM, the IMF, and the Soviet

state, and this is the inability to tolerate and profit from diversity.

Today's need is not another centralized global institution but the deconcentration and

decentralization of institutional power and the creation of a pluralistic system of institutions

and organizations interacting with one another, guided by broad and flexible agreements and

understandings.

We are not talking about something completely new. For it was under such a more pluralistic

system of global economic governance, where hegemonic power was still far from

institutionalized in a set of all-encompassing and powerful multilateral organizations and

institutions that a number of Latin American and Asian countries were able to achieve a

modicum of industrial development in the period from 1950 to 1970. It was under such a

pluralistic system, under a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that was limited

in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic to the special status of developing countries, that

the East and Southeast Asian countries were able to become newly industrializing countries

through activist state trade and industrial policies that departed significantly from the free-

market biases enshrined in the WTO.

Of course, economic relations among countries prior to the attempt to institutionalize one

global free market system beginning in the early 1980's were not ideal, nor were the Third

World economies that resulted ideal. But these conditions and structures underline the fact

that the alternative to an economic Pax Romana built around the World Bank-IMF-WTO

system is not a Hobbesian state of nature. The reality of international relations in a world

marked by a multiplicity of international and regional institutions that check one another is a

far cry from the propaganda image of a "nasty" and "brutish" world. Of course, the threat of

unilateral action by the powerful is ever present in such a system, but it is one that even the

most powerful hesitate to take for fear of its consequences on their legitimacy as well as the

reaction it would provoke in the form of opposing coalitions.

In other words, what developing countries and international civil society should aim at is not to

reform the TNC-driven WTO and BrettonWoods institutions, but, through a combination of

passive and active measures, to radically reduce their powers and to turn them into just

another set of actors coexisting with and being checked by other international organizations,

agreements, and regional groupings. These would include such diverse actors and institutions

as UNCTAD, multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor Organization, the

European Union, and evolving trade blocs such as Mercosur in Latin America, SAARC in

South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and a revitalized ASEAN in Southeast Asia.

More space, more flexibility, more compromise - these should be the goals of the Southern

agenda and the civil society effort to build a new system of global economic governance. It is

in such a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic world, with multiple checks and

balances, that the nations and communities of the South - and the North - will be able to carve

out the space to develop based on their values, their rhythms, and the strategies of their

choice.

Let me quote John Gray one last time. "It is legitimate and indeed imperative," he says, "that

we seek a form of rootedness which is sheltered from overthrow by technologies and market

processes which in achieving a global reach that is disembedded from any community or

culture, cannot avoid desolating the earth's human settlements and its non-human

environments." The role of international arrangements in a world where toleration of diversity

is a central principle of economic organization would be "to express and protect local and

national cultures by embodying and sheltering their distinctive practices." (25)

Let us put an end to this arrogant globalist project of making the world a synthetic unity of

individual atoms shorn of culture and community. Let us herald, instead, an internationalism

that is built on, tolerates, respects, and enhances the diversity of human communities and the

diversity of life.

Walden Bellow - Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, a program of research,

analysis, and advocacy of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute (CUSRI) in

Bangkok, Thailand; and Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of

the Philippines. Author or co-author of 11 books on Asian economic and political issues,

including A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand (London:

Zed Press, 1998) and Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis (London:

Penguin, 1992)

Notes 1. C. Fred Bergsten, "The Backlash against Globalization," Speech delivered at the

2000 Meeting of the Trilateral Commission, Tokyo, April 2000. Downloaded from Internet. 2.

Cited in Giovanni Andrea Cornia, "Inequality and Poverty Trends in the Era of Liberalization

and Globalization," Paper delivered at the "United Nations Millenium Conference," Tokyo,

January 19-20, 2000. 3. Ibid.; see also, "Number of World's Poor Unchanged in the 1990's,"

Reuters, August 3, 2000. 4. Cornia. 5. Quoted in Associated Press, reproduced in Business

World, Nov. 15, 1999. 6. Op-ed column, Washington Post, reproduced in Today (Manila),

Nov. 15, 1999. 7. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage

Books, 1989). 8. Ralph Nader, speech at International Forum on Globalization Teach-in on

"The Social, Ecological, Cultural, and Political Costs of Economic Globalization," Riverside

Church, New York, Nov. 10, 1995; quoted in Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet (San

Francisco: Sierra Club, 1997), p. 207. 9. Press briefing, Seattle, Washington, Dec. 2, 1999.

10. Quoted in "Deadline Set for WTO Reforms," Guardian News Service, Jan. 10, 2000. 11.

Bergsten. 12. James Wolfensohn, Memo on "Disruptions at Spring Meetings," World Bank,

Washington, DC, April 13, 2000. 13. Bergsten. 14. Ibid. 15. Prime Minister Anthony Blair,

Speech at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 28, 2000. 16. Ibid. 17.

Ibid. 18. Bergsten. 19. Letter of International Coalition against Global Compact, July 26, 2000.

20. The Wolfensohn memo, above, is an interesting exercise in this branding or

categorization of NGOs. 21. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1971). 22. John Gray, False Dawn (New York: New Press,

1998), p. 207. 23. Ibid. 24. For excellent recent critiques of the corporation, see David Korten,

When Corporations Rule the World (San Francisco: Kumarian Press/Beret-Koehler, 1995),

Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997), and

Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New

World Order (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994). 25. John Gray, Enlightenment's Wake

(London: Routledge, 1995), p. 181.

* Walden Bellow - mini bio: Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, a program of

research, analysis, and advocacy of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute

(CUSRI) in Bangkok, Thailand; and Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the

University of the Philippines. Author or co-author of 11 books on Asian economic and political

issues, including A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand

(London: Zed Press, 1998) and Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis

(London: Penguin, 1992)

individual as a result of creating this transgenic organism is smaller than one in a

billion" must be regarded as meaningless for practical purposes and should certainly

not be used as the basis for judging the wisdom of taking the risk, especially if it

entails the potential creation of a novel pathogen.

2.4.2 Interdependence of risk factors

103 Another source of difficulty with risk analysis is that probabilities can be assigned only

to events described in purely mechanical terms. The multiplication of the probabilities

is then valid only if the different failure modes are truly independent.

104 However, engineering catastrophes tend to occur when human actions put the

system under consideration into a mode such that the probabilities of different failures

are drastically altered and the prior analysis no longer gives any worthwhile indication

of the real risks associated with various hazards. Factors which are considered to be

independent from an engineering point of view turn out to have unforeseen

dependencies imposed by human actions.

105 In biology the problem is much worse because human intervention is not necessary

to produce "quirkish" interdependence between particular members of different

classes of events. New phenomena can appear that are so novel that their character

cannot even be guessed at in advance.

2.4.3 Risks peculiar to biological systems

106 No matter how we classify biological events and entities, we will have no guarantee

that rare members of apparently independent categories will in fact interact to

produce a new self-sustaining phenomenon. Prions are entities that defy normal

categorization, but they have caused a catastrophe on British farms and BSE has

now been transmitted to humans. This could probably have been avoided if more

stringent measures were imposed in about 1990.

107 The risks associated with the creation of novel biological situations cannot be

measured. The integrity of the defined categories of events and entities which

underpin risk analysis cannot be guaranteed to the same extent in biology as in

physical and chemical engineering. To make matters worse, many biological events

are threshold-regulated. No risk analysis could have assigned a probability to the

possibility of the BSE epidemic prior to its occurrence

108 We should regard the conspiracy of events to produce unusual and unpredictable

outcomes as a characteristic of biological systems and be extremely wary of analyses

based on the sort of reasonable common sense with which committees and

Commissions function, especially when dealing with the novel creations of genetic

engineering.

2.5 Concerning ANZFA

109 There is no mechanism within the whole process of ANZFA's function that allows any

consideration to be given to what might be called the "intangible" aspects of matters

within its field of jurisdiction. The principle on which it judges food comprised of,

containing or derived from genetically engineered organisms is that of substantial

equivalence. The matters of substance in terms of which equivalence between GE

food and traditional food is judged all fall into areas that are framed by scientific,

technical enquiry.

2.5.1 Substantial equivalence

110 Three dictionary definitions of "substantial" are of relevance:

(i) "having substance, actually existing, not illusory",

(ii) "of real importance or value", and

(iii) "deserving the name in essentials, virtual, practical".

111 The first meaning is not what is intended. ANZFA has declared foods with different

chemical compositions to be substantially equivalent. Monsanto's genetically

engineered Round-up Ready Soy (RRS) has been found to be substantially

equivalent to their parental lines even though RRS contain a protein ingredient

novel to soy, the enzyme EPSPS.

112 Neither is the second meaning what is intended. For reasons of real importance and

value to a very large number of people, RRS is not equivalent to ordinary soy. This

perceived non-equivalence of genetically engineered food to ordinary food has

nothing to do with scientific analysis directly. It is a matter of personal, perhaps

ethical, choice. If ANZFA were to take this definition of "substantial" then they would

simply be dictating that people cannot expect to exercise personal or ethical choices

in respect of the food they eat unless the choice is provided by the Authority. In effect

that is the attitude ANZFA has taken.

113 It is the third definition on which ANZFA actually relies and the Authority has taken

control of what deserves to be called "essential", or what is "practical" in terms of

differences between foods. The only questions of considered relevant by ANZFA are

those of safety (including allergenicity), nutritional quality (wholesomeness),

composition, and end use.

2.5.2 Problems of "substantial equivalence"

114 People who wish to have nothing to do with food derived from genetically engineered

organisms are not opposed to the ANZFA's regulation of these important factors, but

they can rightly complain that ANZFA is telling them what to think and denying them

the opportunity to exercise freedom of expression when they are told that two foods

are "substantially equivalent" when one is genetically modified and the other is not.

115 The 1989 poisoning of hundreds of people with Showa Denko's preparation of

tryptophan from genetically engineered microbes is an illustration of how the principle

of "substantial equivalence", even in ANZFA's interpretation, can fail.

2.5.3 ANZFA bias

116 ANZFA has shown open bias in favour of industry interests. This bias is

demonstrated, by way of example, in its Assessment of the use of RRS in food.

117 The Assessment contains two tables. One shows absolutely no benefit, to

government, industry or consumers, but potentially high costs to all, associated with

the option of banning the sale of RRS food. The other shows universal benefit and

tolerable costs associated with the option of permitting the sale.

118 However, the categories of costs and benefits used to compare the two options are

not at all equivalent. For example, the benefit to consumers from permitting sale of

RRS food is said to be that they "can be assured that [RRS] have been through a

premarket assessment and found to be as safe for human consumption as

conventional soybeans", but there is no corresponding assurance (that ANZFA has

protected the consumer) registered as a benefit against the option of not permitting

sale of RRS food. With this rather blatant stacking of the evidence, ANZFA's

approval of RRS was a foregone conclusion.

2.5.4 Inadequacies of industry testing

119 Of equal significance is the manner in which ANZFA bases its assessments of food

safety on studies that come from almost exclusively from the applicant seeking

approval for the sale of a novel food. In relation to the assessment of RRS, ANZFA

reports :

"A full data package for [RRS] was submitted by the applicant for

assessment. Quality Assurance certification was provided that the

studies were done in accordance with Good Laboratory Practice

and that the information presented in the application accurately

reflects the raw data generated during the studies."

120 I do not believe that any serious scientist would give very much weight to data which

was presented in such a manner. In the case of testing for drugs there are three

phases of carefully designed clinical trials that involve the (often blind) judgments of

independent physicians. Even so, there is often residual suspicion that large

pharmaceutical corporations are able to wield undue influence at various stages of

the regulatory process.

121 In the case of ANZFA's assessments, safety considerations are finally weighed

against financial concerns "Good Laboratory Practice" allows researchers

enormous leeway in determining what experimental results are accepted as raw data.

122 Inconvenient results are routinely cast aside when investigation detects some

irregularity in experimental protocol. Convenient results do not demand the same

investigation. Really "clean" results, that would be obtained exactly if the experiment

were carefully repeated by independent researchers, cannot usually be obtained in

studies looking for marginal biological effects without the honing of experimental

conditions over a considerable period of time and many repetitions of the same

protocol.

3. Issues of scientific and Maori epistemology

3.1 Disparity of worldviews

123 The regulation and control of genetic engineering's role in our national life has been

dominated by technical, scientific considerations. However most of the public

discussion has relied on a context in which political, ethical or cultural values are of

greatest importance. This has been particularly so in relation to the contribution that

has come specifically from Maori.

124 New Zealand society faces the unresolved generic problem of deciding how fairly to

give the proper weight in decision-making to the cultural perspective of the Crown's

treaty partner - Maori. In the case of genetic engineering the problem is exacerbated

because the terms used in the discussion are defined from a perspective that is

foreign to Maori. This disparity of perspective, coupled with the claim of science to

deal in universal truths, has marginalised the contribution of Maori. Maori are seen

as expressing concern for what is in the realm of the "intangible".

125 Non-Maori with non-scientific reservations about genetic engineering have

experienced similar treatment of their concerns. However, some success has been

achieved by Maori through effective political action, but it has been impossible to

draw official discourse and decision-making into the context of what might be called a

"Maori worldview" or "Maori epistemology".

126 The discussion of genetic engineering from Maori perspectives can do much to

illuminate hidden assumptions, especially in analyses that seem purely scientific and

technical.

3.2 The universal versus the particular

127 Science seeks to explain phenomena in terms of order and structure that is

permanent and fixed, not contingent on anything local or historical. Traditional Maori

express a sense of order and structure that is intrinsically local and historical,

contingent on events and relationships established by precedent, not given

unalterably.

128 Scientific analysis relies on the prior establishment of universally applicable

categories that can be used to describe things and events. These categories may

specify things like "electron" or "gene" or events like "chemical reaction" or

"translation of genetic information".

129 Scientific categories are abstract constructs that have been built up and refined

through a process of observation and experimentation. The definition of the

categories and their relationships is always, at least formally, open to question.

However, in their day to day work scientists treat basic categories of description as if

they gave a true representation the one and only physical reality. That reality is taken

ultimately to be "given" by unalterable laws of Nature and to have universal

properties.

130 In Maori tradition knowledge of something is concerned with achieving a proper

perception of its location in time and space. Knowledge of things and events is

concerned with the particularities of whakapapa - layers of genealogy and lines of

descent, their patterns and linkages.

131 For Maori, everything is ultimately related to everything else, but the true character of

something belongs to the particular thing itself and its historical origin. The character

of things is not described as a set of properties derived from an abstract world

beyond what is here and now.

132 For Maori, everything is rooted, not only to its origin in time, but also to its origin in

space - the place and tradition of the tangata whenua to which it belongs. This

relationship with the earth and its local geography, something amounting to an

umbilical connection , is of particular poignancy in the contrast between scientific

and Maori explanations of the causes of things.

3.3 Mechanism versus agency

133 The most fundamental character of reality in Maori cosmogony entails a conception of

agency within Nature that has been systematically exorcised from intellectual

discourse within the Western scientific tradition.

134 In science, the final explanation of things, events and possibilities is expressed in

terms of what "happens" and its mechanism. Everything we observe derives from the

properties of a single, unchanging material substance (which physicists, since

Einstein, have identified as energy rather than atomic matter).

135 In the original conception of the Ancient Greeks, this material Nature, physis, was not

distinguished from the divine power that was thought to pervade it. Later Aristotle

expressed the idea that everything in Nature had an internal goal-directed drive,

telos, to find its rightful place.

136 Only in the seventeenth century did Galileo and Newton come up with a purely

formal, mechanistic description of motion. There was then no need to think of Nature

as being alive with any of the attributes we now associate with subjectivity or

conscious intent.

137 Darwin dealt the final blow to any scientific idea of élan vital by describing the entire

history of life in terms of the mechanistic principle of natural selection.

138 In Maori tradition, things, events and possibilities cannot be reduced to the properties

of a material substance and mechanistic laws. Marsden and Henare identify Tua

Uri as a representation of the 'fabric of the universe' in which whakapapa begins

with mauri, divine power or agency.

139 Mauri precedes hihiri, pure energy, in the cosmological genealogy and hihiri is refined

to give rise to Mauri-ora, the life principle, and thence Hau-ora, the spiritual breath of

animate life. These precede shape, form, space and time.

3.4 The secular versus the sacred

140 The defining political event marking the advent of modern science was the trial of

Galileo (now the subject of a New Zealand opera of bicultural origins ). Through his

refusal, on the basis of scientific judgment, to capitulate to ecclesiastical power

Galileo emancipated 'natural philosophy' from arbitrary strictures imposed by parties

for whom the truth was predetermined. Science then established for itself an

intellectual authority that transcended the foundation on which the Church had relied.

141 Theology itself eventually underwent a revolution of 'secularization' in which

Christian belief was fully accommodated to scientific methodology. Although

scientific findings are regarded as being independent of cultural or ideological bias,

scientific research is still subject to general ethical and regulatory controls.

142 There is nothing internal to science that associates a value, according to any scale

whatsoever, with any thing, event or possibility.

143 Everything in the Maori world is imbued with a natural sanctity or tapu. The tapu

ascribed to things is derived from divine association and establishes a prima facie

untouchability that humans are bound ritualistically to propitiate in all of their actions.

There is no exemption within the sphere of Maori influence.

144 The contrast with the perspective of science could not be starker.

For Maori: everything is in some sense intrinsically sacred and a demand for

respect arises from the very nature of things.

For science: nothing at all is sacred; no attribute could be more foreign to physical

reality.

3.5 Politics of rapprochement

145 The crux of the problem in relation to genetic engineering and Maori is to find a way

of giving force to considerations of whakapapa, mauri, tapu and other precepts of

tradition without their remaining a sideline to the recognised discussion based on

scientific principles and analysis. What is done in New Zealand to solve this problem

will have implications far beyond our shores.

146 It is not just a matter of whether Maori are given some measure of political power in

decision-making. Much more is at stake in what humans decide to do with genetic

engineering and we should act according to the best principles that we can conceive

from our uniquely bicultural constitution.

147 Up until now contributions to debate about genetic engineering from alternative

scientific and Maori perspectives have amounted to competition for control over

domains of culture and Nature.

3.5.1 Dialogue between scientists and Maori

148 Maori have been consulted in various fora (like ERMA's Nga Kaihautu committee and

the Patenting of Life Forms Focus Group of the Ministry of Commerce) but there has

been little attempt to forge agreement, common understanding and joint action based

an appreciation of the real differences in worldview. This cannot be done quickly

simply to facilitate business interests, as has been attempted in processes of

"consultation" by parties applying to ERMA.

149 Ammunson and Cairns recommend bringing together for dialogue those separately

well-versed in biotechnology and tikanga. While such dialogue between scientific

experts and tohunga would be important, it would be limited in two very important

respects. First, it would not engender the kind of criticism that is needed to get to the

fundamental assumptions that separate the parties. Second, the approach is

gratuitously elitist and would exclude virtually all opponents of both Ammunson and

Cairns and their biotech-industry sponsors.

150 Opinion about genetic engineering is divided among Maori as well as among non-

Maori. True dialogue requires that the division of opinion among Maori inform

scientific understanding and that the division of opinion among non-Maori inform the

practice of tikanga.

3.5.2 Potential contribution of Maori thinking

151 Maori bring to the debate about genetic engineering a coherent and integrated

perspective in which the 'intangible' world of culture cannot be separated from the

description of the phenomenal world. This should challenge scientific analyses that

are limited to talk about pieces of DNA and the material consequences of transposing

them from one organism to another.

152 Scientists are very quick to dismiss or ignore any discussion based on premises that

are inconsistent with the accepted wisdom of their own disciplines. When they have

to take serious account of concerns for whakapapa, mauri and tapu, whether these

are expressed by proponents or opponents of genetic engineering, they may

appreciate some worth in what they have eliminated from their own descriptions of

the world.

153 There is good reason to believe that the facts of biology (and therefore the

consequences of genetic engineering) cannot be explained adequately, even from a

scientific point of view, without the development of concepts akin to whakapapa,

mauri and tapu.

3.5.3 Whakapapa, mauri and tapu in relation to biological systems

154 The structure of the biosphere, the ever-adapting species it contains in ever-changing

habitats, has been shaped by sequences of countless inter-related events (cf.

whakapapa). Orderly patterns of interaction and adaptation that have now emerged

derive from historical precedent, not permanently given laws of Nature governing the

molecular structure of DNA or any other material substance.

155 Whether we look at the level of a single cell, a whole organism, an ecological

community or the whole biosphere, we find that the functionalities of the various parts

are defined in terms of the integrity of the whole system. Functional interactions are

the practical determinants of events and the formation of new structures, conferring

on entities the capacity (cf. mauri) to act as agents of change in some characteristic

way.

156 The functional relationships between molecules in cells and species in ecosystems

are deeply entrenched and are maintained by natural restrictions and limitations (cf.

tapu). While it is true that we now have the means of setting some of those

restrictions aside through genetic engineering, we should not do so with impunity

because we will bear the consequences.

157 By insisting on the validity of the context they use to frame their thinking, Maori can

make a seminal contribution to the debate about genetic engineering, even when and

where considerations of a purely technical character have been given dominance.

For their part scientists need to undertake a critical analysis of their fundamental

philosophical assumptions and establish new ways of thinking about biological

phenomena, dropping insistence that their description of the facts is correct and

complete.

3.6 Stages of colonisation

158 The Treaty of Waitangi is taken by Maori and Pakeha alike as the founding document

of the nation of New Zealand. In recent times it has been construed as an obligation

of partnership between Maori and the Crown which, if honoured, serves as a basis for

just governance and power-sharing. The Treaty is often portrayed as a model of how

different peoples with different interests can live side by side.

3.6.1 Realities of colonisation

159 The reality of our nation's history is very different from what the Treaty would imply.

Maori and the land of Aotearoa, albeit to a lesser extent than some peoples and

lands, have suffered typical effects of colonisation by a western power. British

immigrants transposed their way of life as best they could to new surroundings and

went about commodifying everything available.

160 Ancient forests were felled for timber, as much as possible of the land was

domesticated and a system of administration based on western morés was instituted

and given the force of law. The immigrants felt no need to learn and act according to

the language, culture and customs of the prior occupants of the land. Their way of

life simply dominated.

3.6.2 Genetic engineering as colonisation of Nature

161 Genetic engineering can be understood as a process of colonisation. Territory that

has remained effectively undisturbed from the direct effects of intentional human

actions for approximately four billion years is now being manipulated to produce

desired outcomes. The territory in question is the genetic repository of the biosphere.

The manipulation involves insertions into and rearrangement of the contents of

Nature's genetic information bank and the extraction of advantage for minority

interests.

162 The character of the human interests for which genetic engineering is by and large

being performed reveal the activity as colonisation of Nature. Humans are not simply

using the fundamental processes of Nature as a resource. We are attempting to

transform them into artefacts

163 There is not much of the planet left finally to be dominated by commercial industry

and scientific technology. The global takeover has been careless of the rich

biological and cultural diversity that previous evolution had produced. Aotearoa and

Maori have suffered together.

164 Now that humans perceive the new natural territory of genetic information inside

organisms they should enter only with the utmost respect for what it may hold,

especially the established precedents of its own mode of organisation, function and

expression.

3.6.3 Dangers of further human colonisation

165 The failing of colonists is that they do not appreciate the true character of the territory

they have come to visit and they use what they find according to their own

inappropriate definitions and perceptions. The territory soon loses its previous

character and becomes a part of a much more narrowly conceived project of the

colonisers.

166 We are in danger of doing to Nature's genetic heritage what we have done to the face

of the planet.

3.7 Wai262 claim

167 Because of its importance in relation to genetic engineering and the Treaty of

Waitangi, I consider briefly some aspects of Claim Wai262 for ownership of the

indigenous flora and fauna of New Zealand. We need to take account of two aspects

of potential ownership

(i) possession, and

(ii) intellectual property rights.

These two aspects of ownership have become confounded lately because of the

recognition given under law to intellectual property rights over organisms. In New

Zealand it is possible to take out a patent over an organism

168 The Maori claim to sovereignty under the Treaty of Waitangi does not coincide with

legal concepts and precedents that had been previously established under British

law. Rangitiratanga must be interpreted in terms of Maori cultural practice which

would not appear to allow ownership, in the Pakeha sense, of a species of organisms

like rimu, tuatara or huia.

3.7.1 Character of the representation

169 When members of iwi appear before the Waitangi Tribunal they seem, according to

their traditions, to be representing the people now living, the ancestors who have

passed on, the flora and fauna, the land, the whole and every part of who they are as

iwi. Therefore, in asserting ownership of flora and fauna the Wai 262 claimants could

be said to be representing the flora and fauna themselves. In that case, the

claimants would be asserting ownership, not of the flora and fauna, but on behalf of

the flora and fauna.

170 The plants, birds and animals that are part of iwi cannot themselves appear before

the Tribunal to assert ownership of themselves. However, as tangata whenua iwi can

come to the Tribunal and, by exercise of their rangitiratanga, claim that ownership of

the flora and fauna, for the iwi, on behalf of the flora and fauna. New Zealand law will

ultimately accommodate Maori cultural practice in this respect or it will force Maori to

conform to western concepts of ownership.

3.7.2 Extent of the claim

171 The Crown could require that Wai262 claimants specify the extent of their claim in

terms of the genetic constitution of the organisms concerned, rather in the manner in

which ERMA now operates. In that case the claim is likely to be for ownership of all

indigenous species of plants, birds, animals, insects and other organisms.

172 However it would appear that the claims of iwi are actually specified in terms of

ownership of all flora and fauna which have ever flourished on land over which they

as tangata whenua exercise kaitiakitanga, and all the flora and fauna descended

therefrom.

173 The iwi claim ownership of their flora and fauna as kaitiaki. That those flora and

fauna may currently grow on land recognised under law as having private ownership,

and therefore belong to other legal persons, is irrelevant to the role of iwi as kaitiaki.

In that role, iwi have taken the responsibility, as well as the right, to control the

destiny of the flora and fauna within their domain of rangitiratanga from time

immemorial.

174 The role of tangata whenua as kaitiaki is under threat from the legal system which

allows ownership over genetic information for which some use is proposed. By taking

DNA from an organism and determining its sequence, any legal person (an individual,

a group, a corporation, a Crown Research Institute, etc.) can effectively take control

over a species and its destiny. This applies to the native flora and fauna of Aotearoa,

contrary to the guarantees of rangitiratanga afforded Maori under the Treaty of

Waitangi.

3.7.3 What is at stake in the Claim

175 Iwi have legitimate fears that the very constitution of their taonga is under threat from

the actions of biotechnologists who may see some advantage in creating genetic

modifications of them. New Zealand law allows organisms to be genetically modified

and then recognises those genetically modified organisms as inventions which are

the intellectual property of their creators.

176 My interpretation of Claim Wai262, which I support, is that it is an use of the legal

system by iwi to maintain their kaitiakitanga, mana and ora. Granting ownership by

outsiders of genetic information pertaining to the flora and fauna of iwi could be

interpreted as the final raupatu - the confiscation of whakapapa.

4. Issues of science and ethics

4.1 Military influences

177 The most problematic ethical issue to face scientists in the twentieth century was the

relationship between their discoveries and the capacity of humans to effect gross

intentional destruction, on one another and collaterally on Nature. Thus, by the mid

1980s it had become the currency of public discussion that the survival of life on the

planet was under threat from arbitrary human decisions: nuclear war was capable not

only of destroying most of humanity but also of producing climatic change on a global

scale (the so-called "nuclear winter").

178 The building of nuclear arsenals comprising tens of thousands of weapons was not

accomplished as a way of meeting any simple military or political imperative. The

initial construction of nuclear weapons during WWII was the idea of scientists and

they solicited from the United States government the economic and other means

needed to achieve their goal.

4.1.1 Misdirection of scientific effort

179 In whatever way one views the ethics of that enterprise and the immediate use of the

weapons against an alternative enemy, the ever-increasing diversion of resources

into its continuation during the next forty years was an aberration of the initial intent of

Einstein and others who first proposed construction of an atomic bomb and it severely

distorted the character of science.

180 By the 1970s science funding was so completely dominated by the requirements of

the military-industrial complex that the career choice of anyone wishing to continue in

the physical sciences beyond the tertiary level of education was skewed toward

research that had military applications. The work of scientists had created a situation

in which they themselves were effectively deprived of authentic ethical choice and

they resigned themselves to political justifications for what they did: American

scientists built bombs to keep the Evil Empire at bay and Soviet scientists with the

same training build bombs for Patriotic Defence.

4.1.2 Effect on biological research

181 Those who wished to pursue the life sciences could take refuge in medical research,

but the military budgets of the superpowers were such that it was advantageous even

for biologists to participate in research that served national military goals. It was

within this context that genetic engineering was invented and the Biological Weapons

Convention (BWC) was signed in 1972. The BWC was ill-equipped to deal with

subsequent advances in biotechnology and its provisions for "defensive measures"

under the Kissinger interpretation allowed much research to go ahead unabated.

182 In 1988 I attended a conference at Fort Detrick, Maryland where I listened to US

Army researchers describe how they were using techniques of genetic engineering to

investigate the immunological properties of Hanta viruses and their mechanisms of

dispersal in aerosols.

4.1.3 NZ and military applications of GE

183 Briefing papers that I obtained from the Army under the US Freedom of Information

Act cited collaboration with New Zealand under the Technical Cooperation Program

(TTCP) as indicating that US biological warfare research had wide allied support.

184 As far as I know the New Zealand military conducts no research that involves the use

of genetic engineering, but I cannot exclude the possibility that individual medical

officers on military contracts use laboratory GE for work they do on behalf of the

armed forces. There are no military institutions who have "Interested Person" status

with the Commission.

4.1.4 Prohibition of military applications of GE

185 Consideration should be given, as a way of ensuring that genetic engineering is used

only to serve humanity as a whole and not the partisan goals of single nations or

blocs, to the possibility of amending the NZ Nuclear Free Zone, Arms Control and

Disarmament Act, beyond our obligations under the BWC, to exclude the use of GE

for military purposes within New Zealand and by persons under New Zealand's

jurisdiction.

186 It is worth considering what the effect of such an exclusion might be on goal as

worthy as the clearing of landmines. US military personnel have hatched a plan to

detect buried mines by using bacteria that have been genetically engineered to glow

in the dark when they metabolise TNT.

187 While I would oppose such a use of genetically engineered bacteria on general

ecological grounds, I could conceive of there being an international body which

deemed that the risks involved in the environmental release of the bacteria was

outweighed by the good which could be achieved by clearing the minefields. New

Zealand military personnel could then have a mandate from the United Nations to use

the genetically engineered bacteria.

188 Under those circumstances I believe that New Zealand personnel involved in the

work should be released from the special obligations to their employer (the New

Zealand government) arising from their military contracts. In other words we should

see to it that GE is never used by persons who are mandated, for the perceived

benefit of this country, to compromise the vital interests of members of other

countries.

189 We should move finally to make the ethical conduct of science and the use of its

inventions incompatible with all preparations for potential armed combat between

opposing military forces, even when such readiness appears to be only a matter of

form. Putting such restriction on scientific development would be a most salutary act

of internationalism.

4.2 Declining autonomy of scientific activity

190 Soon after the most basic techniques of genetic engineering were invented a group of

leading molecular biologists gathered at Asilomar, California and proposed a

voluntary moratorium on certain uses of the new technology. This act of self-

regulation has long been touted as a prime example of the sense of ethical

responsibility exercised by the scientific community and of the lack of need for tight

controls over scientific research.

191 When many of the same group of scientists reconvened at Asilomar in February of

this year they described a quite different picture of research within their field. It was

noted that "there a few pure academics left". Most senior researchers have ties to

biotechnology companies. The discussion was dominated by recognition of public

suspicion of many products of genetic engineering and the effect that commercial

pressures now exert on research.

4.2.1 Developments since the invention of GE

192 What has happened in the last quarter decade is described accurately by Dorothy

Nelkin:

"The social contract between science and the state that formed

after World War II included agreements about the terms of scientific

autonomy. The government would provide research support

unfettered by requirements for accountability if scientists would

work in the interests of progress and effectively regulate

themselves. The unusual degree of autonomy granted to science

reflected the public image of scientists as apolitical, unbiased, and

therefore reliable as sources of truth. It also reflected public trust in

the ability of the scientific community to control its internal affairs.

Under these conditions science flourished and scientists took

autonomy for granted as their due. In the 1990s, however, the

terms of contract appear increasingly obsolete, and the harmony

that had long marked the partnership between science and the

state has deteriorated. Both sides have failed to meet their side of

the bargain. Government is cutting back on funding and scientists,

often working in the interest of private profit, are facing the

problems of self-regulation.

193 "The strains on science funding are, in large part, a consequence of

world events--the end of the Cold War, the cutback in defense

related research, and the national deficit. But also, the extraordinary

optimism about the future of science that maintained the social

contract has dissipated, and scientists like other institutions and

most people these days must cope with fewer resources and

greater accountability.

194 "The scientists' side of the contract, their promise of self regulation,

has also deteriorated. It has become increasingly difficult to

maintain control over the large number of scientists working in

specialized fields in a climate of intense competition. The widely

reported incidents of fraud have become a major concern for journal

editors and scientific associations. Some scientists regard fraud as

an aberration: others as revealing basic structural flaws in the

organization of science. But fraud strikes at the moral roots of the

scientific enterprise, and presents a serious challenge to the ability

of the community to regulate itself.

195 "...changes in science also reflect growing corporate influence on

research. As economic competition overshadows military goals,

many scientists are shifting their priorities to commercially relevant

research devoted to the solution of short term problems.

Predictably, corporate sponsors demand research in the interest of

profit. Thus, the vision of science as driven by scientific curiosity

has been clouded leaving the impression that scientific information

is less a public resource--the basis after all of the original contract--

than a private commodity.

196 It is within such a context that questions of scientific ethics concerning genetic

engineering must be addressed. There has emerged a biotechnological

governmental-industrial-academic complex which aims to bring processes of genetic

change under control for global economic gain. Virtually all molecular biologists have

ties of some sort with parties whose interests are overtly commercial.

4.2.2 Scientists' conflicts of interest

197 Scientists cannot be trusted to speak as members of an egalitarian community of

scholars who work for the common good. Bodies such as the Royal Society and

IBAC seek to convey an impression that they act in such a manner, but it is a

misrepresentation. The information they convey to the public is tainted by a multitude

of undeclared interests. Beliefs and opinions, especially about the connection

between genetic engineering and economic growth, are presented as if they were

facts. Legitimate public concerns about aspects of these activities are portrayed as

being based on ignorance and scare-mongering.

198 The Royal Society's connections with the now-defunct Genepool is a clear illustration

of how what is supposed to be science degenerates into public relations in support of

commercial sponsors.

199 Professor Peter Gluckman resigned as Chair of the Independent Biotechnology

Advisory Committee (IBAC) in March of this year declaring that he wished to avoid a

conflict of interest, but it was not evident how his interests had been changed. He

had been a key figure in planning the formation of the University of Auckland's

biotech company Neuronz from the outset.

4.2.3 Official promotion of genetic engineering

200 Membership of the IBAC and much of the advice it has received has promoted the

views and interests of those involved in using genetic engineering at the expense of

those expressing a more critical point of view

201 Various other statutory bodies such as the Foundation for Research, Science and

Technology (FRST), as well as arms of government such as the Ministry of

Commerce , give overwhelming weight to the promotion of activities involving

genetic engineering. They are given a great deal of help from scientists who are take

the opportunity to raise the profile of their own research, thereby advancing their

careers.

4.2.4 Exclusion of skeptics and critics

202 At no time, as far as I am aware, has any member of the scientific community who

has expressed views fundamentally skeptical or critical of genetic engineering been

appointed to any official body charged with evaluating or regulating aspects of genetic

engineering in New Zealand.

END File #8

A case in point: HIV cannot replicate without breaking the normal rules of protein synthesis

connecting genetic sequences to protein sequences.

A dramatic molecular biological example was provided by the discovery (in which I participated) of

an otherwise silent polymorphism in the human gene for PrP modulating the effect of a remote

mutation and differentiating fatal familial insomnia from an inherited form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob

disease. See Science 258, 806-808 (1992).

Many of the effects I mention have been given detailed and cogent consideration by Andreas

Wagner in a series of recent Working Papers of the Santa Fe Institute (Nos. 00-02-14, 00-02-15, 00-02-

16, 00-03-18).

By this it is meant that it cannot be summed up in any set of simple rules. To specify it one would

have to describe the relationship in full detail.

New Zealand molecular biologists were generally slow to take the idea of prions very seriously.

See, for example AR Bellamy & MC Croxson "Prions - Unconventional viruses?", Patient

Management, October 1987, pp169-176. My own analysis was published in a series of papers in

international journals, conference presentations and seminars

PR Wills, "Proposals for the BWC Review", Prepared for Public Advisory Committee on

Disarmament and Arms Control, July 1991; "Prions, Naturally-Occurring Genetic Material and the

Biological Weapons Convention", Prepared for Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control, July 1991

This question was resolved by an Order in Council after I raised it with ERMA when the Act first

came into effect.

I refer to the British BSE epidemic and the transmission of this disease to humans as nvCJD.

The results of this ongoing work, in collaboration with others, have been published in a series of

papers in international journals, conference presentations and seminars.

"Autocatalysis, information and coding", prepared for the Physics and Evolution of Symbols and

Codes issue of Biosystems (in press); "Evolution of the molecular biological interpreter", prepared for

the Complexity 2000 conference, Dunedin, 18-21 November 2000 (to be published online)

By way of contrast, senior molecular biologists claim that there is no such thing as theoretical

biology, implying a view that his subject is completely empirical and free of unproved concepts. I

would be more inclined to say that the majority of the discipline's practitioners studiously avoid

significant scientific ideas and resist any deep analysis of their art. In my teaching I continually

contrast the intellectual honesty of post-war theology with the deficit of self-critical thought found in

molecular biology.

RV Solé & M Newman (1999) "Patterns of extinction and biodiversity in the fossil record", Santa

Fe Institute Working Paper 99-12-079

See SA Kauffman (1993) Origins of Order (Oxford University Press) and P Bak (1996) How

Nature Works (Springer Verlag)

See, for example, W Fontana & P Schuster, Science 280, 1451-1455 (1998).

RV Solé & JM Montoya, "Complexity and Fragility in Ecological Networks" (submitted

manuscript)

5-enopyruvyl shikimate-3-phosphate synthase

This statement requires careful qualification. It is most likely that the points of incorporation are

biased in all sorts of ways by the technique of genetic transposition used; it is just that such biases have

not been investigated or characterised. Knowledge of such biases could be used potentially to devise

some degree of control over the point of insertion of a transgene.

Eduardo Kac claims to have produced, solely as a work of art, a transgenic rabbit that glows in the

dark. See <http://www.ekac.org/>;.

One need only consider how many different possible proteins of even moderate length there are (the

number of elementary particles in the known universe pales into total insignificance in comparison)

and how many proteins could ever conceivable have been encoded in genes.

ERMA member, Dr Oliver Sutherland, in an email message dated 2 October 2000, expressed the

view that the Authority could deal with the Maori dimension of many matters without input from

members of Nga Kaihautu.

E Chargaff (1976) "On the dangers of genetic meddling", Science 192, 938-940.

R Sinsheimer (1977) "An evolutionary perspective for genetic engineering", New Scientist, 20 Jan

1977, pp150-152.

ERMA's Summary Analysis of Submissions on Applications GMF99001/5 (21 September 2000)

states that of 735 submissions 96.5% opposed the applications.

See graph 9, p31 of the Summary Analysis of Submissions on Applications GMF99001/5.

ERMA Decision on GMF98009(MBP) (AgResearch Transgenic Sheep), 25 July 2000

ERMA Decision on GMF99004 (AgResearch Transgenic Sheep), 26 October 2000

Some of the potatoes are intended to contain a synthetic gene encoding for production of a toxin

from the African clawed toad.

Page 7 of the Decision.

Page 18 of the Decision; again on Page 20 of the Decision.

Letter to Rt. Hon. Helen Clark from Peter Wills, 28 March 2000, available at

<http://www.phy.auckland.ac.nz/staff/prw/Moratorium.html>;.

My submission to ERMA is at <http://www.phy.auckland.ac.nz/staff/prw/Sheep8Sept.html>;.

Page 18 of ERMA Decision on GMF99004.

In submissions I made to ERMA in respect of the PPL application to conduct field trials of h-AAT

sheep in the Waikato GMF98001, I considered the extraordinary possibility of the activity causing the

creation of a new prion-like disease. The Authority evaluated my hypothesis, but then gave it no

weight, concluding in its decision "Overall, the probability … is considered to be negligible".

See footnotes 3 and 4.

Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1964.

Full Assessment Report and Regulatory Impact Assessment, A338 - Food derived from glyphosate-

tolerant soybeans (undated, ~1999).

The toxin that caused the deaths and maimings due to eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome was

unknown, it was present only in miniscule quantities and there was no regulation requiring product

testing capable of detecting the hazard.

pp26-28 of the RRS Assessment.

p2 of the RRS Assessment.

As in the two tables comparing the costs and benefits of options in the RRS Assessment.

I refer to the dual meanings of whenua, either as the land or as placenta.

Maori Marsden & Te Aroha Henare (1992) Kaitiakitanga: A Definitive Introduction to the Holistic

World View of the Maori unpublished manuscript, Department of Maori Studies Library, University of

Auckland)

Marsden and Henare give the translation "beyond the world of darkness".

By composer John Rimmer and writer Witi Ihimaera.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer could be identified as having sparked a Protestant revolution that was led by

others who survived WWII, such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, et al..

The controversy surrounding the writings of John Robinson in Britain and Lloyd Geering in New

Zealand were local manifestations of the upheaval.

Paora Ammunson and Tamati Cairns (2000) Witness brief for the RCGM on behalf of the NZ Life

Sciences Network (Inc), paras. 55-63.

Especially the women Ammunson and Cairns critcise as simplistic and superficial: see para. 8 of

Section I and 4, 24, 56 of Section II of their brief.

The only grander scheme ever conceived by scientists is the idea of Copenhagen physicist Holger

Nielsen to construct a device that would begin the whole process of creation again, starting with a new

"Big Bang".

I distinguish between the land of Aotearoa and the country of New Zealand.

New Zealand was one of the first countries to grant Genpharm International a patent NZ Patent

236310, 27 September 1993) over Herman, the celebrated genetically modified bull that had been

created in the Netherlands.

There is every indication that such a process is on the Government's agenda. Two papers from the

Ministry of Commerce in 1999 ["Patenting of Biotechnological Inventions" & "Maori and the

Patenting of Life Form Inventions"] are based on the premise that western notions of property,

including intellectual property, will not be inconvenienced by anything of substance that may come

from the Waitangi Tribunal's recommendations in respect of Claim Wai262.

Hanta viruses cause fatal haemorrhagic fever, quite similar to Ebola.

Permission to conduct open field trials of such bacteria would probably be difficult to obtain within

the US, so it is proposed to conduct tests in Croatia where there have been more pressing concerns than

the establishment of regulations for the use of genetically engineered microbes. The plan does not

seem to have been changed since the discovery of naturally occurring bacteria with similar properties.

M Barinaga (2000) "Asilomar Revisited: Lessons for Today?", Science 287, 1584-1585.

Dorothy Nelkin , "The Science Wars: What is at Stake?", Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26,

1996. Available at <http://www.drizzle.com/~jwalsh/sokal/articles/dnelkin.html>;.

There are only minor differences between the scene in the US in 1996 and New Zealand in 2000.

The analysis of Dr Judy Motion (University of Auckland) should be studied carefully.

These problems are in no sense unique to New Zealand. The US National Academy of Sciences

panel on genetically engineered foods leans overwhelmingly toward a pro-biotech position and

includes members who are paid by the industry. Full details can be found at

<http://www.house.gov/kucinich/info/NASletter.htm>;.

My correspondence with the Minister Maurice Williamson on the setting up of IBAC can be found

at <http://www.phy.auckland.ac.nz/staff/prw/LetterWilliamson.html>; along with my criticism of the

University of Auckland's submission to IBAC at

<http://www.phy.auckland.ac.nz/staff/prw/IbacUni.html>;.

In May 1995 the Business Policy Division conducted an enquiry into the patenting of

biotechnological inventions, By February 1999 the Competition and Enterprise Branch had completed

consultation with Maori on the issue.

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