global citizenship and human security

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a week into the new year, i take time to reflect on the lessons learned and the eye-opening experiences over the holidays... i finally got a chance to pick up and read through (most of) Lloyd Axworthy's Navigating a New World which i had purchased several months ago... at the same time, i got a chance to visit Grassy Narrows, a First Nations reserve in Northern Ontario and where waawaate is from... in addition, i had spent a week in Southern California with extended family, about whom i discovered that they were die-hard supporters of the Bush administration and the Republican Party... there were some interesting dinner conversations to say the least... in any event, this combination of events and experiences really led me to reflect (as usual) on the state of the world and the big-picture issues and problems we're dealing with as a human community...

"[D]efining the issue[s] in terms of impact upon people is crucial. Concerns about globalization aare as much about culture as they are about economics. Once the connection is made between the rash of natural disasters, extremes in climate, shortage of resources, poisonous air and the dangers to health and livelihoods of people in all regions; once the the interdependence between economic inequality and environmental destruction is recognized . . . then there might just be a springboard for action."

[...]

"The difficulty is in translating such a sense of responsibility into political will. It is such a contrast to see the billions of dollars being funnelled into military and border-security expenditures as part of the anti-terrorist campaign while paltry sums are allocated for prevention and peace-building investments where human security is at risk. What if even half that sum had been allocated to deal with immediate problems of poverty, refugees, water shortages, and settling disputes?"

[...]

"[W]e can begin a new course by changing the nature of the debate from one based primarily on sustainable development to one based on economic and environmental security. The concept of sustainable development came about as a way of marrying competing claims between economic development and environmental protection. [But] whenever there is a conflict . . . powerful economic interests usually win. Risks faced by people are not addressed directly by the sustainable development model; it doesn't provide the necessary imperative for protection. By looking at the landscape with people in it, there is a better chance of creating wider political support."

to paraphrase Tip O'Neill, whether the issue is about the war in the Middle East or the plight of First Nations in Canada, all of it is local... the thrust of Axworthy's book and the lesson i came away with from this holiday break is that there is a shared moral impetus to deal with problems of "human security" — his is a philosophy of global responsbility to the interests of individuals rather than to the interests of the nation state or multi-national corporations... the issues we collectively face — global terrorism, civil unrest and ethnic conflict, cyclical poverty, disease and strife, environmental degredation and natural disaster, political disenfranchisement — must be rethought from the perspective of people... our shared humanity ought to create a closer and thicker bond than blood or national ties and thus move us to act more expediently and thoughtfully to protect our security, our needs, our promise, and our dreams...

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