Globalization comes at a cost

Bishop Fred Henry documents the plus and minus aspects of our growing universal community

By BILL GLEN
WCR Staff Writer
Edmonton

The poor are tired of listening to the rhetoric from the rich that freer and fairer trade is the answer to all their economic woes, says Bishop Fred Henry.

And while some progress has been made to help the impoverished through a more just global market, most gains have come at a tremendous cost, said the Calgary bishop.

As guest speaker during the fourth annual Vital Grandin lecture series on economic justice and globalization at Newman Theological College Nov. 4-5, Henry told the audience who filled the chapel that while globalization offers great opportunities, it also contains perilous risks.

Definite risks

"There are weapons of mass destruction, the potential of genetically modified crops and terrorism. We have global crime syndicates, climate changes and new diseases such as SARS and the avian flu," he said.

"But at the same time we have a new vision of global commonness - a common and shared sense of what it is to be humane," as he identified the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in South Asia as the world's coming together for a common good.

"There is promise of economic and health betterment around the world that we had never dreamt of previously. Never in my life have I seen such a generous expression of solidarity and outpouring of support."

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a nationwide appeal early in January 2005 to help victims of the disaster that claimed some 275,000 lives.

Largely because of that appeal, Development and Peace raised $20.7 million in direct contributions. It is also eligible for matching Canadian government funds of $11.7 million, bringing the total tsunami reconstruction budget to $32.4 million.

"We have seen something similar with Hurricane Katrina and most recently with the earthquake in Pakistan and mudslides in Central America."

Global monitors

Henry said "international actors" such as Doctors Without Borders and Greenpeace have changed the way the world does business by addressing unjust political, economic, social and medical conditions, as well as the earth's ecology.

"A global economy is a subset of ecology. You can't have a healthy economy without a healthy ecology," he said.

Globalization, as a human activity and product, is both graced and sinful in the personal choices and activities that take place within its scope and in the structures and institutions that incarnate and sustain it.

"From a Christian, biblical and social tradition, we know that economic justice requires that each person should have adequate resources insofar as they can survive, develop, thrive and be able to give something back to the community. There is a substantive component that looks for fairness and adequacy in the outcomes of economic activity as well as in the competitive process."

Henry mentioned the growing availability of investing in a largely untapped Chinese market where the potential to make a lot of money is tremendous - so long as an investor is able to ignore the communist govern-ment's record of human rights abuses.

As more operations become mechanized, human labour becomes the variable cost. Machines are replacing workers while global communication is almost instantaneous. Technology has revolutionized our lives.

"If I send an email to Rome, I can get an answer in five minutes," Henry said.

God teaches us a universal common good that the resources of creation were given to the human community as a whole to meet the needs of all people.

Henry called the privatization of water in Africa "insidious."

While he spoke Nov. 5, the Summit of the Americas was taking place in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Prime Minister Paul Martin was quoted as saying fairer and freer trade will take care of poverty better than all relief programs combined; that free trade was not a haven for capitalists. The prime minister was responding to allegations by Venezuelan President Hugo Ch vez that free trade pads the bank accounts of the rich off the backs of the working poor.

In an interview, Henry said: "It would be important for Canada as a G8 member, to slow down a little bit to do more listening instead of simply looking at what we think is best.

"Maybe we can form a partnership and say, 'Tell us your needs and let's help you out because we're doing fine. How can we help you achieve some sense of solidarity and justice in the marketplace with respect to your own particular country?'"

Corporate tactics

Many transnational companies seek countries where taxes and wages are low to maximize profits. If a company can set up a business in Sri Lanka and make a baseball cap for $1 that they can sell in North America for more than $30, other large companies will follow suit.

Companies learn to take advantage of their mobility by threatening to relocate if a government begins to impose controls.

This competitiveness, Henry warns, is prone to bribes and corruption when fail-safe regulatory frameworks are loosely worded or ignored altogether by the companies.

Henry concluded by quoting Princeton political scientist Richard Falk who contends that the "prevailing bankruptcy of the regnant global schemes cries out for a religious voice.

"The best of secular thinking falls short of providing either a plausible path to travel in pursuit of human global governance or a significant inspiring vision of its elements to mobilize a popular grassroots involvement for drastic global reform."

He mentioned a publication by Kairos that deals with development and peace and global economic justice. Visit www.kairoscanada.org to read more.

"There is something there to help humanize globalization," Henry said.

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