A
major political challenge for the
next thirty years is guaranteeing the right to a human life for all.
The massive eruption of problems connected with climate change,
especially global warming, into the daily lives of the inhabitants of
the earth has refocused public opinion on issues of crucial importance
for the present and the future of humankind.
Accordingly, questions are again being raised about the future of
cities and especially the future of those who live in shanty towns,
banlieues, and poor suburbs.
The latest Human Development Report 2007-08 of the UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme) on climate change forecasts that in less than 20
years, 2.4 billion human beings will live in shanty towns and poor
suburbs places where affluent westerners would not even want
their
cats to live. Their lack of water and sanitation and the high rate of
infant mortality bring into sharp relief the dramatic challenge of
life/non-life facing billions of human beings.
Terrorism and poverty
It is estimated that the shanty towns of the main urban conglomerations
of Africa, Latin America, and Asia (which have 42 of the 61 largest
cities of the world, each with over five million inhabitants) now
contain over one billion human beings in conditions of long-term
poverty, collective physical, social, and moral violence and exclusion,
and negation of the minimum standards of existence worthy of being
called human. The city-dwellers of the countries of the North tend to
see these populations as incapable, born to destitution and
deprivation, and therefore easy prey for religious, ethical, and
political fanaticism a potential army for global terrorism.
In reality, poor suburbs and shanty towns reflect the dysfunctional
growth of cities and are the weak and most vulnerable elements of our
current urban civilisation. Looking back, there can be no doubt that
the ruling classes have no intention of taking the essential measures
needed to bring about the disappearance of poverty.
The inconclusive outcome of the last meeting, in April 2008, in Japan
of the Civil G8 (the international coordinators of NGOs working to
combat poverty and the sherpas of G8) provided yet another confirmation
that the world's ruling classes seem to prefer allowing the shanty
towns to become permanent ghettos while preventing their inhabitants
from emigrating to the countries of the North. The only immigrants from
the South welcomed in the North are those with university
qualifications, preferably a PhD.
The world's major political challenge for the next thirty years and
beyond is guaranteeing the right to a human life for all: in other
words, completely eradicating poverty from the world, and more
precisely, eliminating those approaches and processes which have led to
the mass pauperisation of the world's populations. It also means that
the solution involves a total and radical redefinition of the future of
cities in which cities have to be given back to the citizens.
How? Through a policy that shifts the investment and use of local and
global resources towards the generation of collective wealth in poor
suburbs, namely the production of communal goods: water, health,
education, housing, agriculture for local needs, renewable energies,
energy saving, etc. This will involve a battle for the global
restructuring of the current financial system, whose latest, umpteenth
crisis proves such change is absolutely necessary.
Multipronged strategy
We need a three-pronged global strategy focused on providing housing,
safe water, and adequate sanitation to small districts of cooperative
housing. Financing should come from new regional systems for income tax
collection, underpinned by a 10 per cent reduction in military spending
in the context of a policy of gradual disarmament an urgent
albeit
extremely challenging objective.
The ruling classes will try to implement moderate adjustments and
palliatives (like the green neocapitalism and the European Union's
proposals to combat global warming) or solutions that are worse than
the problems (like zero tolerance of illegal immigrants and fighting
the poor instead of poverty). But they will not succeed in thwarting
the fight for life.
http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Jun272008/editpage2008062675523.asp
