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 December 2011 |
Here is the latest information from the Forum for a new World Governance
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Front Page
Preparing Rio+20 at the Thematic Social Forum: A Historical Opportunity
 Every year since January 2001, and every other year after 2005, the different actors of global civil society have assembled for mutual reinforcement and cross-fertilization at a World Social Forum (WSF), as well as at increasingly numerous and diverse Regional and Thematic Social Forums. Eleven years after the first WSF, the January 2012 Thematic Social Forum at Porto Alegre in preparation for the Rio+20 Peoples Summit in June, arises as a historical opportunity. Our FnWG teams are working actively with many allies to make of the Porto Alegre Forum and the Rio+20 Peoples Summit significant stages that will remain in the memories of the new citizenships of the early twenty-first century. |
Hello!
2012, which has certainly sparked many an imagination and been the subject of many a prediction, is now knocking at the door! Beyond speculations on the Mayan calendar, it is indeed a year of numerous political transitions: major elections are set to take place in no less than 17 countries on every continent, including Oceania, and even at the UN, which is to renew the Security Council! As for the FnWG team, it is focusing its efforts on the Peoples Summit at Rio+20, which will convene in June. The spotlight here is on the results of a long participatory process ending in the formulation of three Proposal Papers that will be debated in Porto Alegre in January and presented in Rio in June (see story on the left). We are submitting them not only for your reading pleasure and interest, but for you to send us your contributions to enhance them. We are also offering the indignados and the 99% movements proposals for regulating transnational companies, the critical responsibility of which in the current global crises can no longer be contested. Our end-of-year gift to you is the World Governance Index (WGI) 2011, which follows up on the WGI 2008 and has since been fine tuned. And our deeply felt New Year’s wishes to you in the words of Confucius. May 2012 be a moment of collective forces joining for the future of life on the planet! FnWG Team  
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The Future of the Commons
Twenty-one thinkers and activists from around the world gathered to discuss their shared interest in the commons as a new paradigm of politics, economics, and culture. The meeting yielded extraordinarily rich results: a clearer sense of how a new discourse of the commons might be developed; how it could be used to confront the savage pathologies of neoliberalism; and how it could serve as a proto-political philosophy for building more eco-friendly, humanistic forms of self-governance. |
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The Great Together
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC) is one of the great sources of inspiration for rethinking world governance: “I can do nothing for those who raise no questions Questions, anyone? |
 Photo: Alain Bublex (Courtesy Galerie GP & N Vallois, Paris) |
Regulating the Public and the Private Economy
The crisis in the financial system that has hit economies worldwide has demonstrated beyond any doubt the importance of regulating for-profit private and public transnational actors. This Proposal Paper analyzes the obstacles and provides viable proposals. |
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Charters for the United Nations Conference and the Peoples Summit
The heads of state who will meet at the UN Conference in Rio from June 20 to 24, 2012 will have the historic opportunity of agreeing on a Charter of Universal Responsibilities. On the issue of regulating climate change and of every individual and every state’s place facing the current challenges, the principle of responsibility has become the fundamental pillar that can help build the global community on new ethical and political foundations. The text of the Charter of Universal Responsibilities could be submitted to the chiefs of governments who will be meeting at Rio+20. In parallel to this Charter, the Peoples Summit at Rio+20 deserves a Charter as well, in order to leave the stamp of a written “footprint” of the historical demands of those who will participate on site and from afar in this event. At every moment of history that has marked a big change, peoples have sought to express their visions of the future in a Carta Magna, Declarations, and/or Manifestos. The Charter of the Peoples of the Earth is inspired from the historical South African Freedom Charter, which was the banner of the anti-Apartheid movement and was adopted in 1955 by the Congress of the People. This first version of the Charter of the Peoples was drafted by the coordination team of the Forum for a new World Governance and regional Citizens Assemblies in solidarity and committed with grassroots movements active in different continents. The text of the Charter of the Peoples is a first initiative and an invitation to talk. It is already being enhanced, modified, and reformulated through dialogs organized in preparation for the Rio+20 Peoples Summit and beyond. |
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People’s voices on Rio+20
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