Go to TOES '97 Home Page
Many thanks to Peter Mann for making a valiant effort to keep track of TOES '90 press coverage. This is a long list, but it is not an exhaustive list. In addition to international reporting, there was considerable coverage by C-Span, Pacifica Radio, and National Public Radio (NPR). NPR continued to rebroadcast interviews from TOES '90 - Houston for at least a year.
Looking through these articles, it seems obvious that what got the media's attention was Jesse Jackson. They came to see him, and even though he didn't show, they were charmed by "Lula" and Cardenas. They also realized that there was a lot else going on that was newsworthy, and kept coming back. - Susan Hunt
Houston Chronicle, February 24, 1990, sec. A, p. 27, col. 2.
by Bob Tutt
Abstract: Every year since 1984 a diverse group of academics and activists has staged its own economic summit, paralleling the one held by the world's chief industrial powers. They will do that again when the 1990 international economic summit convenes in Houston July 9-11. They call theirs "The Other Economic Summit," or TOES for short. About 2,500 participants attended their alternative summit in Paris in 1989, held at the same time President François Mitterand was hosting the annual summit of world leaders and commemorating the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
Houston Chronicle, March 10, 1990
by Bob Tutt
Exxon USA President Bill Stevens Friday presented a $250,000 check to the Houston host committee for the 1990 international economic summit scheduled here.
The Exxon contribution will help finance the committee's preparations for the July 9-11 conference which will draw the leaders of the world's seven top industrial powers and the European Community, plus thousands of news media representatives.
The host committee, headed by Kenneth Lay and George Strake, is planning a series of events for these visitors and a public relations campaign to promote Houston. …
Stevens said he expects many of Exxon's 14,000 employees in this area will be volunteering to work with the host committee and other organizations related to the summit.
In a statement issued by the committee, Lay said, "More money will have to be raised for the summit, and pace-setting contributions like Exxon's are enormously helpful in encouraging others to give generously."
Committee communications director Peter Roussel said a dollar figure has not been calculated for the committee's preparations.
"It's going to be whatever it will take to do the job right," Roussel said.
Meanwhile, planners for an alternative economic summit conference that annually precedes the official international summit prepared to meet with the public and the press from 1-3 p.m. today at First Unitarian Church, 5210 Fannin.
This conference, known as "The Other Economic Summit," or TOES, will be held here July 6-8, bringing together scholars and activists from around the world.
They will explore such topics as "building an economy that doesn't require endangering the environment," converting "from a war to a peace economy," as the Cold War fades; and ways to "alleviate the injustice of poverty and Third World debt."
The Houston Post, March 11, 1990, sec. A, p. 29
by Mike Dorning
Abstract: The same July week that leaders of the seven most powerful democracies come to Houston for the 1990 Economic Summit, the city also will host representatives of the world's seven poorest peoples. It's called "The Other Economic Summit." The alternative summit, an annual event since 1984, also will include a three-day conference of activists and academics on economic issues. "There should be other voices represented in deciding the economic fate of the world, rather than just the leaders of the seven richest nations," Houstonian Prentiss Riddle, one of the meeting's organizers, said Saturday.
La Otra Bolsa de Valores (Mexico), Boletín No. 4, Abril de 1990.
TOES es un movimiento internacional por una economía alternativa desde las bases sociales. Nació en Inglaterra con una primera conferencia en 1984, para promover una nueva economía basada en desarrollo personal y justicia social, satisfacción autosostenida de la compleja variedad de necesidades humanas, uso considerado de los recursos y conservación del medio ambiente. Durante cuatro años consecutivos, Londres fue el lugar donde se organizaron conferencias alternativas a "las reuniones cumbre" (en Bonn, Venecia, etc.) de los dirigentes de los siete países más industrializados del mundo (Estados Unidos, Japón, Inglaterra, Alemania, Francia, Canadá, Italia) procurándose hacer llegar un mensaje cuestionador a dichas reuniones.
Autosuficiencia, medio ambiente, micro-economía, agricultura, trabajo, salud, alternativas innovadoras, etc., han sido los temas principales de estudio, habiéndose ya producido el libro The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making con material de las primeras conferencias. Johan Galtung, Manfred Max-Neef, Susan George, Samir Amin, Paul Ekins, Diana Schumacher, Hisashi Nakamura, etc., han sido pensadores que han aportado luces guía en estas conferencias.
Posteriormente se creó un "TOES North America", con participantes de Canadá y Estados Unidos, organizándose la subsiguiente Conferencia en Toronto, 1988 - a la par con la reunión cumbre de los estados más ricos del mundo - con el apoyo de una amplia coalición de personalidades y movimientos alternativos (J. K. Galbraith, Susan George, Frances Moore Lappé, Andre Joyal, Ward Morehouse, Barbara Brandt, TRANET, Friends of the Earth, Bank for Social Responsibility, L'Entreprise de Demain, The Learning Alliance, Center for Human Economy, e incluso el Movimiento Seikatsu de Japón, etc. etc.). TOES-NA cuenta hoy con un boletín noticioso y cientos de adherentes.
La siguiente conferencia TOES fue organizada en París, 1989, "L'Autre Sommet," por un comité francés de participación muy amplia - ALDEA, Tribunal Permanent des Peuples, CEDETIM, Agir Ici, CIMADE, Terre des Hommes, Justice et Paix, etc. - con respaldo de personalidades como René Dumont, Jean Ziegler, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Ignacy Sachs, Jean Goss, Abbé Pierre, entre muchos otros. Junto con numerosos eventos se dio la reunión de "los siete pueblos más pobres del mundo" y una gran variedad de talleres y manifestaciones - en alternacia con los festejos del bicentenario de la Revolución Francesa y la reunión cumbre anual de los dirigentes económicos del mundo - con la participación de más de 3,000 representantes del hacer y pensar alternativo de los diversos continentes. Luis Lopezllera de Promoción del Desarrollo Popular, A.C., México, fue invitado a participar, quien expuso sobre experiencias en "economía y desarrollo local."
Un "Observatorio" de la democracia internacional fue creado para contar "con un ámbito de vigilancia del quehacer de los poderosos (Fondo Monetario Internacional, Banco Mundial, etc.) y para promover intercambios y elaboración de propuestas entre las sociedades civiles del Norte y del Sur."
La próxima reunión TOES será en Houston, Texas, los días 6 al 8 de Julio - como Foro paralelo a la Cumbre en esos días - con la intención de hacer participar a representantes de esfuerzos alternativos no sólo de Estados Unidos y Canadá sino principales en tres jornadas serán: 1) Un mundo Perspectivas en Ecología y Economía: Escuchando para el Cambio; 2) Nuevas Paerspectivas en Ecología y Economía: Atendiendo a la Tierra; 3) Democratizando la Economía: la Dimensión de la Autogestión y la Justicia Social . Se espera que asistirán más de mil representantes del hacer y pensar alternativo, no sólo de Estados Unidos y Canadá sino de Latinoamérica, Europa y Asia.
No cabe duda que en la medida en que las grandes fuerzas económicas se coordinan entre sí para definir la marcha del mundo, se necesitan foros como el TOES, en los cuales el ciudadano, el aldeano, junto con intelectuales defensores de la autonomía de los pueblos, pueden y deben hacer llegar su vos a través de sus organizaciones alternativas a la vez que van tejiendo redes mundiales de solidaridad y creatividad desde las bases mismas de las sociedades, poniendo el acento en la formulación de nuevos paradigmas de una economía realmente humana, "como si la gente importara!" * En inglés: estar en sus "puntas de los pies" (toes) quiere decir "alerta", "listo para actuar".
Daily Cougar, June 6, 1990
by Frank San Miguel
Abstract: UH officials rejected a bid Monday by organizers of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) to hold its three-day conference on campus. "The Other Economic Summit: The Voice of the People for a Change," scheduled July 6-8, will bring in leaders of various colleges, social movements and organizations to discuss Third World debt, ecology, environment, social justice, democratizing economics and other issues. Previous TOES conferences were held in France and Canada.
Houston Chronicle, June 14, 1990, sec. A, p. 25.
by Julie Mason
Abstract: Citing an overcrowded agenda, the University of Houston has dropped plans to host The Other Economic Summit - or TOES - during the July meeting here of world economic powers. TOES, a diverse group of academics and activists, had planned to conduct an environmental and economic alternative summit on the university campus.
The Houston Post, June 16, 1990, sec. A, p. 26, col. 2
by Mike Dorning
Abstract: Organizers of an alternative economic summit have overcome a crisis that probably isn't even in the contingency plans for the official summit President Bush is hosting. Their accommodations - at the University of Houston - were canceled. Organizers of The Other Economic Summit, a conference for academics and activists, found out last week the university had backed out of a commitment to give them 150 rooms for their meeting, scheduled for the weekend before the July 9-11 meeting of world leaders. UH spokesmen said their activities for the official summit - housing military police - will leave no room for the alternative summit. The rooms were released to the activists through an administrative error, they said. Prentiss Riddle, a local organizer for the alternative summit, is skeptical of the explanation.
Public News: Houston's Alternative News Weekly, June 20, 1990.
by Mel Sharkson
How about the University of Houston's cheating The Other Economic Summit? It's hard to believe a large, efficient public institution makes a clerical error involving 150 rooms. If you didn't hear, TOES, which had planned to use UH as the site of its alternative summit just before the big boys meet in July, was kicked out of UH so the U.S. military could take the rooms for the big summit. UH President George Magner was quoted as saying the whole thing was simply a mistake. Given UH's shameful history of weaseling in to powerful government and corporate interests, we don't feel to squeamish about calling George a liar or, at the very least, a pretty lame specimen of an administrator.
You have to go back about 10 years for one of the university's most shameful examples of spineless corporate kowtowing. Then-UH Vice President Patrick Nicholson, very well known for his overweening arrogance, banned the showing of the docudrama Death of a Princess on KUHT because the university feared it would be offensive to Arab oil interests. Nicholson should have been fired for bringing pubic disgrace on the university. He wasn't.
We have to suspect that other arrangements could have been made for TOES had the administration wanted to do it. We also have to suspect that no such arrangement was made because UH depends directly and indirectly on corporate and federal dollars for research programs and such.
Magnar does not have the poor reputation Nicholson did. At least, not until now. Grow a spine, George.
Undaunted, though, TOES rolls on. Tonight, Wednesday, June 20, TOES will have another benefit, this time at the Axiom and featuring Earth Army, Ninth Day Underground, Tory Mercer and Cinco Dudes. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. Admission will be a $3 donation.
Next Wednesday, June 27, the TOES benefit will be at Downtown Grounds, 908 Wood, with performances by The Art Guise, Sons of Dada and The Reign. There will also be an exhibit put up by GVG Galleries, with assistance from Diverse Works and DT Grounds. The action starts at 7 p.m. A $5 donation will get you in. The Shark himself will be there to see who doesn't show up.
For info on TOES activities call …
Houston Chronicle, June 22, 1990
by Bob Tutt
Abstract: Former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson will come here July 6 to address what is being billed as the first "populist leaders' summit." This event will mark the opening of The Other Economic Summit, or TOES, "an international, non-governmental forum" held annually since 1984. It attempts to serve as an alternative to the official international economic summit.
The Houston Post, June 22, 1990.
by Jay Root
Abstract: Former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson will open an alternative summit to be held in Houston days before the leaders of the seven richest democracies gather in Houston for the 1990 Economic Summit. Jackson will be joined by two other former presidential candidates, Brazilian Luiz "Lula" Inacio da Silva, and Mexico's Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. Also on the roster is Adalberto Carvajal-Salcedo, of the Colombian Unida Party.
El Sol of Houston, 1990, sec. A, p. 1
El ex-candidato presidencial Jesse Jackson, abrirá una cumbre alternativa, unos días antes de que los líderes de las más ricas democracias se presenten en Houston para la Cumbre Económica de 1990.
Así se dió a conocer en días pasados, afirmando que Jesse Jackson estará presente en lo que formalmente es llamada "La Otra Cumbre Económica", representa la plataforma popoular que los organizadores desean para promover la reunión que tendrá efecto del 6 al 8 de Julio.
Jackson se presentará conjuntamente con otros ex-candidatos presidentiales, el Brasilero Luís "Lula" Ignacio da Silva y Cuauhtemoc Cárdenas de México. También se contará con la presencia de Adalberto Carvajal-Salcedo del Partido Colombia Unida.
Los cuatro hombres llevarán a cabo una "Cumbre de Líderes Populista" como parte de la cumbre alternativa. Esta es la primera vez que los cuatro se reunen en un mismo lugar.
"En el pasado, hemos tenido gente de todas las partes del mundo, pero nunca hemos contado con las presencia de personas que hayan sido candidatos a la presidencia en sus respectivos paises", dijo Alan Gussow, quien esta al frente de TOES para América del Norte.
TOES comenzó en 1984 como una alternativa para las reuniones anuales de cumbres económicas.
En adición a Jackson y a los otros líderes populistas, TOES tambien contará con representantes de los siete paises del mundo más pobres. Los tópicos incluíran el medio ambiental, la deuda del Tercer Mundo, SIDA, racismo y sexismo.
La reunión primeramente fue programada a efectuarse en la Universidad de Houston, pero esta fue transíerida al Hotel Astro Village, despues de que los oficiales de UH indicaron que las acomodaciones proporcionadas para la cumbre económica oficial, no dejaba espacio para la reunion alternativa.
Public News: Houston's Alternative News Weekly, June 27, 1990, cover story.
by Michael Smith
Abstract: TOES stands to be a broad-based, grassroots shindig of alternative ideas funded by individual donations. Prentiss Riddle learned the activist trade as chairman of the Galveston Sierra Club. Judy Pearson, a teacher, is a member of Houston Nonviolent Action/War Resisters League, which works to understand and find solutions to violence. Lucie Cashore, an economics student, is co-founder of the Houston anti-apartheid group City-A. According to pre-summit literature, talks and workshops will be presented by a range of people from semi-reformed old cow-hippies like Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, to the African National Congress' chief economist, Max Sisulu. There will be a summit of populist leaders including Mexico's Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, an EnviroSummit of the "Group of Ten" largest environmental organizations, and a peasant delegation from South and Central America - altogether, over 80 events and 200 speakers. TOES is produced exclusively by volunteers. Riddle said the TOES Houston mailing list contains about 450 names, and another 50 people have contributed significant time and effort to the event, excluding the people who have agreed to chair committees. According to Cashore, the volunteers are high school kids and people in their 60s, people of all colors and all income groups. "TOES cuts through all the barriers."
Houston Chronicle, June 29, 1990, sec. A, p. 25
City and state officials, members of the business community and civic leaders make up the host committee to welcome participants in The Other Economic Summit July 6-8. City Councilman Dale Gorczynski, attorney Frances T. "Sissy" Farenthold and oilman H. F. "Kep" Keplinger chair the committee. TOES is a non-governmental forum aimed at promoting discussion about environmental issues and economic development. Two July 7 events open to non-registered people are a 12:30 p.m. lunch at the AstroVillage Hotel and a 7:30 p.m. dinner at the Astrodome Marriott.
The Houston Post, June 29, 1990, sec. A, p. 23.
by Steve Friedman
Abstract: Three city officials, a former gubernatorial candidate and an oilman are among the list of local luminaries announced Thursday who will make up the host committee for "The Other Economic Summit." That summit brings together activists and economic issues and is the alternative to the 1990 Economic Summit which brings together the leaders of the seven most powerful democracies. Former gubernatorial candidate Frances T. "Sissy" Farenthold will co-chair the host committee for the alternative summit along with Houston City Councilman Dale Gorczynski, and local oilman H. F. "Kep" Keplinger. City Controller George Greanias, Councilwoman Sheila Jackson Lee and State Rep. Debra Danburg are also on the host committee. "The Other Economic Summit offers a wonderful opportunity for grass-roots people throughout the world to address the critical economic, environmental and social issues," Gorczynski said in a prepared statement. "The world's experience with democracy proves that people at the grass-roots level understand their problems and the solutions to these problems better than elected leaders often do."
The Texas Observer, 1990, p. 11
by Igor Alexander
Abstract: For all those who drive around with "Think Globally, Act Locally" bumper stickers, the place to be from July 6-8 is Houston. For three days prior to the G-7 Economic Summit meeting of representatives from the world's seven wealthiest industrial nations, Houston will be the site of The Other Economic Summit, or TOES. The Other Economic Summit will bring economists, political activists, environmentalists, and religious leaders to the city.
The Houston Post, June 30, 1990, sec. A, p. 35.
by Robert C. Newberry
Although the Economic Summit of seven world leaders will be playing big-time in Houston July 9-11, local organizations will have already gotten things rolling with some worthwhile programs and events of their own.
July 7 will be the biggest of big days before the real summit begins. All of Houston appears to be doing something.
Among the events are The Human Summit, the Urban Economic Summit, and The Other Economic Summit. The Human Summit is a one-day event from 1 to 5 p.m. on the steps of City Hall. The Urban Economic Summit is a two-day event beginning Friday, July 6 at Texas Southern University; and The Other Economic Summit will be a three-day event starting Friday, at Astro Village Hotel.
The Human Summit will bring together an impressive list of people to speak a few minutes about what local problems mean to them; how they work to promote racial acceptance and equality of opportunity; how racism growth and how to combat it; and how all people can work to bring unity to the human race.
That list includes Houston City Council members Jim Greenwood, Sheila Jackson Lee and Beverly Clark; Houston Independent School District board members Kathy Mincberg and Don McAdams; Harris Country Judge Hannah Chow; Harris County Constable Victor Trevino; former Mayor Fred Hofheinz, EEOC Regional Director Harriet Ehrlich; Harris County Treasurer Nikki Van Hightower; state Sen. Rodney Ellis and state Reps. Larry Evans, Debra Danburg and Roman Martinez.
And probably most important of all, four young people will discuss how high-school and middle-school students view today's problem of racism and racial intolerance. Those students, Shoma Haque, Curtis Newberry, Leana Ahmed and Kenneth Smith, know first-hand what racial tensions are present on today's school campuses. They were organized by Texas Southern University Professor Selina Ahmed and psychologist Beverly Crane.
It should be quite interesting to hear what all of these people are doing to combat racism in their daily lives.
In addition to the speakers, entertainment will be provided by the musical group Love All People, featuring Ralphena Anderson; the Caribbean Steeltones; the Anjali Center for the Indian Performing Arts; and St. Joseph's Catholic Church's MECA (Multi-Ethnic Cultural Association).
The Urban Economic Summit, organized by The Association of Minority Women Entrepreneurs, hopes to "provide a solution-oriented program for economic development in the urban sectors of the city." Gwenevere Daye, president of the women's association, said the Urban Summit "is designed specifically to develop young entrepreneurs for the future in these enclaves (urban areas). She added that it is in "stark contrast" to the "protest" movements being held that are making demands, but providing no solutions for the economic development of poor people or poor urban areas.
Heaven knows we need self-help solutions - and not more rhetoric pointing out the problems and asking other people to take care of them for us.
The Other Economic Summit, held since 1984 to draw attention to the seven poorest nations of the world, contrasts sharply with the prestige and drama of the meeting of seven of the most advantaged economic powers of the world.
Popularly called TOES, the gathering this year will feature former presidential candidates from the United States (Jesse Jackson), Brazil (Luiz "Lula" Inacio da Silva) and Mexico (Cuauhtemoc Cardenas).
Jackson will open the alternative summit, which will include discussion about the environment, Third World debt, AIDS, racism and sexism.
The workshop topics include Economic Empowerment of Women; Ecofeminism; Feminist Economics; Racism and Economics; Prospects for Latino Immigrants in the U.S.; Hispanic Perspective on Economics; Capitalism and the African-American Community; Social Investing and Recycling; Environmentally Responsible Business; Ecology and Economy; and Beyond Earth Day to Every Day.
City Council member Sheila Jackson Lee will chair the overall program, Feminist Perspectives on Economics, and the Ecofeminism panel will include several women of Native American ancestry.
These three events deserve some attention from the public, and of course, they all will be over when the real Economic Summit hits town.
Houston Press, July 5, 1990, pp. 6-8.
by Alan M. Field
Abstract: There will be another series of meetings in Houston just prior to the G-7 Summit. The meetings, mostly of academics, politicians and activists, are called The Other Economic Summit, or simply TOES. While the G-7 summit addresses problems from the perspective of the industrialized 15 percent of the world's population, TOES tries to represent the other 85 percent.
The Dallas Morning News, July 5, 1990, sec. A, p. 1, col. 1.
by Kevin B. Blackistone
Abstract: The seven nations meeting a next week's Houston summit control more than two-thirds of the world's economy but compose less than one-fifth of its population. Some observers have argued that it is undemocratic for so few to determine so much for so many. As a result, a handful of international economists organized an alternative gathering called The Other Economic Summit - affectionately known as TOES - to discuss issues not likely to be priorities for the Group of Seven.
Houston Chronicle, July 6, 1990, sec. B, p. 11, col. 3.
by Steven Fenberg
Abstract: Something bigger and more important than the Economic Summit is about to happen in Houston and almost nobody seems to know or care. This event represents more people and places than the Economic Summit; it invites all, excludes none; and it is bigger - not in attendance but in importance - because it offers and promotes fresh solutions, ideas and approaches to our common global problem - survival. It's called The Other Economic Summit (TOES) and it's happening today through Sunday. It's bigger and more important than the Economic Summit because it offers hope instead of hype.
The Dallas Morning News, July 7, 1990, sec. A, p. 28, col. 1.
by Kevin B. Blackistone
Abstract: Representatives of the world's poorest counties said Friday that they are locked inextricably in poverty because of trade policies that the world's richest countries are living off of. The poorest pleaded with the richest to implement what they called more equitable terms. "Those of us attending this popular meeting can legitimately claim that we represent the hopes of people that … cannot reach the levels of welfare and the opportunities of sustained progress that have been achieved by the advanced countries," said Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the loser in last year's Mexican presidential race. "The leaders of the economic powers that … are redistributing among themselves the world's territories are assigning to countries such as ours a subordinate role with no hope for the present or the future." Mr. Cardenas criticized current international trade negotiations and agreements as being unproductive for developing countries. Trade policies of the wealthiest countries have raised those nation's standards of living but done just the opposite in impoverished homelands such as his.
The Houston Post, July 7, 1990, sec. A, p 21.
by Jane Grandolfo and Jay Root
Abstract: The Other Economy Summit got off to a rocky start Friday when Jesse Jackson - arguably the biggest name at the event - canceled his morning appearance. The sudden no-show left planners without their featured speaker at a populist leaders panel but with a promise from Jackson that he would join them later for a phone discussion. In his 10 p.m. call, Jackson told the TOES participants they had the power to help transform the world if they used their sense of purpose and commitment to make things happen for a better world. "I stand with you to keep hope alive," he said. Houston City Councilwoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a member of the TOES Host Committee and a scheduled speaker for Sunday, said she was disappointed but not discouraged by Jackson's cancellation. "He's a dynamic speaker but as far as I'm concerned it's still a success," Lee said. "I am amazed at the international flavor of the conference. There are people from all walks of life. I think TOES is on point."
Houston Chronicle, July 8, 1990.
by Bill Dawson
Abstract: The Bush administration came under sharp criticism at a counter-summit Saturday for its increasingly isolated position on the pollution-linked phenomenon of global warming. Christopher Flavin, vice president of the Worldwatch Institute, charged at The Other Economic Summit, or TOES, that President Bush has gone from "posing" as a leader on global warming to a position of "dragging down" an international process working toward agreements to limit climate change. Flavin told a TOES panel that the United States has used "underhanded techniques" to slow the progress of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a project sponsored by the United Nations that the U.S. helped to launch in drought-stricken 1988.
The Washington Post, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 4, col. 1.
by David Maraniss
A report card of the world's seven leading industrialized nations released here today gave the United States a "poor" grade of 41.5 percent in meeting the environmental objectives those nations set at last year's Economic Summit in Paris.
On the eve of this year's summit, the seven countries were graded by a consortium of 150 environmental groups on six key issues ranging from global warming to environmental aid for Eastern Europe. West Germany, which has announced plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent, ranked at the top of the class, with a "good" rating of 65 percent, and Italy was "poorest" with 39 percent. Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada were also rated "poor," while France received a grade of "fair."
But overall, said Jay Hair, president of the National Wildlife Federation, the group of seven nations "failed" to protect the environment. Their actions over the past year, he said, have not lived up to their rhetoric. "If the G-7 were a soccer teams and I a sportscaster, I would say the team had a bad season overall," Hair said on the same day that West Germany won soccer's World Cup. "The game plan looked good but the players showed minimal defense and almost no offense."
Each country, in addition to an overall grade, was ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 on the six major issues.
The highest score for the United States was a 6 on the issue of protection of biodiversity. Included in that category were efforts to stop the destruction of the world's rain forests, which are disappearing at the rate of 27 million acres a year, and to diminish the effects of acid rain. The United States has taken a vocal role at the World Bank and elsewhere in discouraging rain forest destruction.
But on the other issues, said James Tripp of the Environmental Defense Fund, the U.S. response over the past year has been weaker. On the concern that Tripp and the consortium considered most pressing, global warming, the United States was given a failing grade of 3.
While other countries, especially West Germany, were moving to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years, the Bush administration, Tripp said, "was not a leader but a hinderer" in that effort.
The scorecard gave the United States its lowest grade, a 2, on population, which has not been discussed at the Economic Summit since the strongly antiabortion Reagan administration took the issue off the agenda in the early 1980s.
On the issues of environmental aid to Eastern Europe and control of ocean pollution, the United States was given scores of 5, while it received a 4 for a category that was called the global environmental bargain, which included actions to ease debts in Third World countries to allow them to improve long-term management of their natural resources. It was in that category that Italy received the lowest score of any country in any category, a 1.
The environmental report cards were among myriad reports, meetings and symbolic actions in Houston this weekend as hundreds of environmentalists and social activists arrived to stage events in the shadows of the Economic Summit.
There are two key counter-conventions. The first-ever Envirosummit met to monitor the environmental actions or inactions of the seven industrial leaders.
A session known as The Other Economic Summit (TOES) has been convening in summit host cities since 1984 to present Third World and other alternatives to the actions of the industrialized nations.
The TOES conference, held in a hotel near the Astrodome after the University of Houston declined at the last minute to serve as host, featured a gathering of representatives from seven developing countries, including Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, leader of Mexico's Democratic Revolutionary Party, who nearly won the Mexican presidency in 1988. Cardenas said that the new trade alliances being formed among the industrialized nations will only lead to more exploitation of Third World countries.
His view was shared by Martin Khor Kok Peng of Malaysia, coordinator of the World Rain Forest Movement. The Malaysian said underdeveloped countries would have their sovereignty to set environmental and health standards preempted by provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) being discussed this year. Where in previous generations Third World countries were colonized through the use of force, he said, they are now being colonized through the use of trade agreements. "Trade is the main weapon today - more than weapons," he said.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, a keynote speaker at the TOES conference, said the latest GATT proposals setting up international trade rules on agriculture would prove devastating for American farmers. The GATT agreement could cut wheat prices by 44 percent and rice prices by 59 percent, he said.
Hightower said farmers "don't know what GATT means, but they're going to figure out it means 'Gotcha Again!'"
The Washington Post, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 18, col. 1.
by David Maraniss
Abstract: "Yet just as there are two summits in Houston this week - the formal one for the industrialized nations, and an informal one, known as The Other Economic Summit (TOES), for various social, economic and environmental activists around the world - there are two Houstons. And one is not so hot." On Sunday, journalists are invited to tour the Houston Ship Channel "as part of a toxics and pollution tour organized by TOES environmentalists, who call the channel 'George Bush's Boston Harbor,' a reference to Bush's election-year attack on the environmental record of his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis."
The Guardian, July 9, 1990.
by Larry Elliott
Abstract: While the World Economic Summit kicked off last night with a traditional Texan barbecue and rodeo, delegates to The Other Economic Summit held a silent protest outside, holding empty begging bowls. "We want the Western nations to take a look at themselves and ask where they are going and what economic growth actually means," said Romesh Diwan, a summit organizer.
Houston Chronicle, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 15, col. 1.
Latin American populist leaders at a countersummit Sunday called for a global economic order that does not make the Third World servant to major industrial nations.
"We're trying - even if we're not in the government - to change the international order economically and politically. We want to be treated as equals among the nations," said Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, leader of Mexico's opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party.
Speakers at The Other Economic Summit, an alternative to the economic summit of seven industrial nations, reiterated that the United States should cancel debts owed by poor nations such as Mexico and Brazil.
Latin American delegates to the alternative summit only briefly discussed drug problems in their countries in the proceedings at the Astro Village Hotel. They denounced, however, direct U.S. military intervention such as the December invasion of Panama to arrest Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who is accused of drug trafficking.
The Houston Post, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 12, col. 1.
by Leslie Loddeke
Broiling in 95-degree temperatures Sunday, Seven of the World's Poorest Peoples summit delegates toured Allen Parkway Village and concluded they shared many of the same problems as the beleaguered project's residents.
"Development is always done at the expense of the poor," said Filipino human rights activist Enrique de la Cruz. "That is what we saw here today and that is what is happening in all our countries."
The delegate to the Poorest Peoples Summit - part of The Other Economic Summit - was alluding to plans to redevelop the public housing project, which has been a political football for years.
On prime property in the Philippines as well as in Houston, said de la Cruz, "poor people are being pushed out to make room for the developers and big business. That speaks of the degree of moral bankruptcy of a government that does not take care of its people."
De la Cruz; Francisco Torres of Puerto Rico; Pedro Galindo of Columbia; and APV Residents Association president Lenwood Johnson said the 1990 Economic Summit participants demonstrated their disregard for the world's poorest people by not inviting their representatives.
We encourage our brothers to continue their struggle and resist attempts to displace them," said psychologist and author Torres, speaking of the 50 remaining families' opposition to relocation.
After touring the mostly boarded-up, 1,000-unit complex, Galindo called it "criminal" to see uninhabited housing when so many poor people have no homes.
Johnson accused the postwar U.S. government of establishing a "police force for corporate America" in the poorest nations in terms of protecting U.S. investments and intervention potential, rather than supporting a true democracy.
"America, wake up; world start scrutinizing America," said Johnson. "It's not all peaches and cream."
The Houston Post, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 12, col. 1.
by Harold Scarlett
Abstract: The leader of the nation's largest environmental group charged Sunday that President George Bush's "balancing" of economic and environmental issues is a policy that is "killing our world." Jay D. Hair, president of the 5.8-million-member National Wildlife Federation, offered this grim assessment at a news conference staged by an international alliance of 150 conservation groups on the eve of the 1990 Economic Summit. The Envirosummit 1990 group issued an environmental report card on the seven summit nations that rated West Germany as the best environmental performer and the United States a poor fifth.
Houston Chronicle, July 9, 1990, sec. A, p. 15, col. 1.
by Bill Dawson
The economic summit nations received generally poor grades on an environmental score card issued Sunday by a global coalition of more than 150 organizations.
Almost across the board, the score card tells a tale of the general apathy with which the world's wealthiest industrial nations approach the critical environmental issues of the planet," said Jay Hair, president of the National Wildlife Federation.
Only West Germany got a "good" grade, and only France received a "fair" mark in the evaluation of how the seven countries lived up to environmental promises of last year's Paris summit. The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Italy received "poor" grades.
The ratings on issues such as global warming, tropical forests and ocean pollution reveal a gap between the "rhetoric" of the Paris communiqué and the "reality" of subsequent inaction, said George Frampton, president of the Wilderness Society.
The United States was particularly faulted for President Bush's refusal to endorse targeted deadlines for reducing carbon dioxide pollution from the burning of fossil fuels to limit global warming.
James Tripp, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, said it was ironic that the summit is in Houston, because the city's links with "heat, oil and relentless, unforgiving traffic" make it "a microcosm of U.S. energy addiction."
Tripp charged that the United States is blocking progress in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations to forge an agreement on limiting global warming.
But Robert E. Grady, associate director of the While House budget office, said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle that the U.N. panel has agreed to move forward toward a framework convention on climate change. Grady added that he expects an agreement to fashion such an accord by 1992 to be revealed in the summit communiqué this week.
A U.N. conference is scheduled that year in Brazil on environment and development, and hope has been voiced by some that a global warming treaty could be signed then.
A key disagreement between the United States and European nations involves commitments for pollution reduction - or at least stabilization - to limit warming. Bush has said that more study is needed.
British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd was asked Sunday on ABC television if Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher hopes to persuade Bush to change his mind on the issue.
"Well, who can tell?" Hurd said. He noted that Thatcher believes "there is a threat to which we need to react, but realistically."
Among summit nations, West Germany has gone the furthest by committing to a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide by 2005. That position on global warming figured in West Germany's high ranking on the coalition's score card, but Konrad Von Moltke, a German representative of the World Wildlife Fund, said all the national ratings "were given in a spirit of charity."
Wall Street Journal, July 10, 1990, sec. B, p. 2, col. 5
by Dianna Solis
Academics and activists again set out to present the perspective of impoverished nations as a backdrop to the annual proceedings of the economic summit of industrialized nations.
The Other Economic Summit, a loose coalition of environmentalists, Third World feminists, labor and political leaders and citizens groups, convenes just prior to the economic summit of the world's wealthiest nations. TOES, as the group is known, strives to be the conscience of that summit.
This year, here, populist leaders from the world's poorer regions called for a cancellation of all foreign debt owed by the Third World, charging debt service has made them "new colonial tributaries." Summiteers at the alternative meeting also called for broader environmental initiatives on toxic waste, other pollution and the global-warming phenomenon.
Organizers say they will deliver their communiqués to the United Nations and are attempting to submit it to the U.S. delegation gathered in Houston for the summit of industrialized nations, which are the so-called Group of Seven: the U.S., Japan, West Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.
The counter-summit was a low-budget contrast to the main one. Nearly 1,000 participated in the conclave across from Houston's Astrodome, where President Bush entertained his wealthy guests Sunday with a welcoming rodeo and comedian Minnie Pearl. TOES summiteers were entertained by Himalayan bell music and a political satirist. A "stress release for world peace" booth offered up massages to many takers.
While the world's press here for the G-7 summit were feted and fed at four of Houston's museums this past weekend, the counter-summit took a handful of reporters to tour shoddy housing conditions in the city's Fourth Ward, whose clapboard shanties jar into a nearby horizon of gleaming skyscrapers.
A Paris coordinator for last year's TOES summit in France, a socialist democracy, lamented the shrunken participation at this year's event and the shrunken publicity. "At the end of the [Paris] summit … because of the press coverage, they [the industrialized nations] had to meet us," said Anne Sophie Boisgallais of Paris.
TOES bills itself as an alternative summit of "seven of the world's poorest people," though eight groups were highlighted. This year's representatives came from Bangladesh, Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Nigeria. The eighth group, Native Americans, were "observers" to the alternative summit, as representatives of the European Community are observers at the G-7 summit, an organizer said.
Many conferees came across the border to Texas from neighboring Mexico. Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, a 1988 presidential candidate in Mexico and the son of a former president, won a standing ovation when he told the crowd that Third World nations "don't agree to be treated as merchandise … as a territory to be distributed among industrialized countries."
Joined in a communiqué by former presidential candidates from Brazil and Colombia, Mr. Cardenas also said that drug trafficking is a "transnational business based in the U.S." and that it can't be used as "an excuse for U.S. military and political intervention in Latin American countries, as recently happened in Panama."
The Dallas Morning News, July 10, 1990, sec. G, p. 3
by Kevin B. Blackistone
Abstract: Martin Khor Kok Peng points to his homeland of Malaysia as an example of how industrialized nations maintain a double standard in policing pollution problems. It was in Malaysia, he said, that a Japanese electronics firm recently disposed of radioactive waste by selling it as fertilizer to farmers. The company would be prosecuted for doing the same thing in Japan. "It should be the moral responsibility of the United States and the industrialized nations to apply the same laws to their companies when they go abroad," Mr. Khor said Saturday at the Other Economic Summit in Houston.
The Dallas Morning News, July 10, 1990, sec. G, p. 3.
by Kevin B. Blackistone
Abstract: Organizers of The Other Economic Summit on Monday delivered a final communiqué to the industrialized nations' summit that criticized the rich and powerful for ignoring their negative impact on the Third World. The Other Economic Summit, called TOES, on Sunday had concluded three days of meetings focused on concerns of the undeveloped countries, global pollution, resource depletion and trade between the richest and poorest nations. "The kind of economic expansion that occurred in the 1980s in the industrialized countries … has led to a lost decade for millions of people not only in the Third World but in the G-7 counties as well," the TOES communiqué said.
The Plain Dealer, July 10, 1990.
Standing apart from its summit partners, the Bush administration yesterday reviewed its opposition to any concrete guide for reducing pollutants blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere.
Shortly before the seven-nation summit formally opened, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu reiterated U.S. worries that efforts to sharply curtail polluting emissions would hamper economic growth.
The administration is concerned that it is being asked for "in essence a perpetual stabilization" in energy use, Sununu said at a news conference.
"Continued economic growth … requires that you continue to use energy, and that any growth at all then would not be permitted," he said.
A discussion of environmental issues was on the agenda for the summit meeting of President Bush and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan.
At the end of their talks tomorrow, the leaders will release a final statement expected to include endorsement of a 93-nation accord that in turn calls for getting rid of chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete the earth's protective ozone layer, by the end of the decade.
The United States, though, has been isolated from its European allies in a go-slow policy on curbing carbon dioxide and other pollutants blamed for warming the global environment.
Several European countries intend to reduce or stabilize carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000 or 2005. But Bush argues more research needs to be carried out before such dramatic measures are adopted.
In advance of the summit, officials said the Europeans appeared willing to ease their previous insistence that specific reduction goals be set at the summit. Led by Germany, some had wanted agreement to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions or reduce them by up to 25% by the end of the decade.
Sununu, in an interview on ABC, took a swipe at the United States' critics on the other side of the Atlantic.
"I think West Germany got a lot of good grades for rhetoric," he said.
"If you take a good look at what the United States has actually done in terms of cleaning up our environment … I don't think the United States has to take a back seat to anyone," he said.
But the Wilderness Society, a private U.S. environmental group, shot back: "The U.S. gets a failing grade, not matter how … Sununu tries to rejigger the numbers."
On Sunday, environmentalists denounced what they said was the failure of the summit nations to meet the aims of last year's Paris summit, during which they promised to protect the world's environment.
Sununu told reporters the United States wanted "a commitment … that would allow both the industrialized countries and the developing countries to address the broad issue of greenhouse gases without picking them one by one and setting caps on them individually."
What we have proposed constantly is to address them in the broad context and let each country take into account its own particular structure," he said.
In addition to global warming, summit participants are expected to discuss ways to curtail the destruction of tropical forests and whether to create an international "green fund" to help developing countries protect their environments.
Washington Post, July 18, 1990, sec. A, p. 4, col. 1
by Dan Balz
Abstract: President Bush, frustrated by persistent criticism from environmentalists, criticized them in return at the recent Houston economic summit.
USA Today, July 10, 1990.
by Richard Benedetto
Environmental groups, seeing their issues on the economic summit's back burner, are lobbying heavily to keep them from being pushed off the stove.
A draft of the U.S. environmental position demonstrates the cautious approach favored by the Bush administration.
"There seems to be some propensity to deal with the issue without putting all the data on the table," said White House chief of staff John Sununu, top architect of the go-slow policy.
Environmentalists - holding an "Envirosummit" here - renewed a battle with Sununu over the causes and severity of global warming.
They charged the United States is out of step on its approach to environmental protection, and "isolating itself further" in the eyes of the world.
Last year's summit put the environment up front, producing an agreement calling for "decisive action" to protect the Earth. This year, aid to the Soviet Union, trade agreements and ending farm subsidies are getting the attention.
Sununu raised the hackles of his environmental critics when he said at a press briefing that natural sources generate 96 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and only 4 percent come from man-made sources.
He noted that President Bush's initiative to plant one billion trees a year was an "efficient" example of combating natural carbon dioxide.
Dan Becker of the Sierra Club called the Sununu statement a "gross misrepresentation" of scientific facts.
Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists called it "a retread of President Reagan's infamous comment about killer trees" - the 1980 remark trees caused air pollution by emitting dioxides.
Summit leaders take up the environment today. Sununu said the United States will press the view that any action must "balance" the need to protect the environment with maintaining economic vitality.
Newsweek, July 16, 1990, p. 42
by Nonny de la Peña
Abstract: When most people think of Houston, they're likely to conjure up all-day barbecues, not economic-summit meetings. Yet that image will change this week - as Houston hosts not one summit, but two. There's the grand one for the great powers, the one for which Houston has spent nearly $10 million and planted thousands of begonias. Then there's another gathering, made up largely of leftist academics and activists, that has taken on the pun-prone acronym TOES: The Other Economic Summit. This second get-together - a three-day affair kicked off on Friday - includes a range of seminars on such subjects as environmental decay and economic self-reliance for Third World nations. The object: to serve as a counterpoint to concerns of the industrialized nations. Says participant Max Sisulu, son of African National Congress leader Walter Sisulu and a recent returnee to South Africa after 27 years in exile, "It is a summit for the ordinary people who want to have a say in the running of their lives."
Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1990, sec. M, p. 3
Martin Khor
:
Fighting to Save the Rain Forests and the World Environment
by Jane Ayers
Abstract: Martin Khor's unpretentious and calm demeanor belie his fearful message: "The Earth is in great danger" because of deforestation, global warming and government inaction in the face of such threats. He urges the industrialized nations to change the production and consumption habits that endanger the global environment, and presents a Third World perspective on trade, development and South-North relations. "Third World peoples need to be represented because the decisions of the richer nations affect them tremendously."
(Note that Martin Khor's name in the title above is a link to the entire article, which is superlative.)
Guardian, August, 1990.
by Greg LeRoy
HOUSTON - Twin annual economic summits were held here last month, centering, respectively, on the Big Seven and the Rest of the World.
For many weeks before President George Bush arrived here to host the July 9-11 Economic Summit of the Group of Seven, Texas business and governmental agencies worked together to present the city as a microcosm of the United States - all set for economic resurgence.
They did this by raising over $10 million, organizing "SWAT teams" to clean up garbage-strewn city lots and paint derelict buildings. They did it by ousting vagrants from their "homes" under freeways and rounding up prostitutes. They even rigged up a "Houston's Hot" publicity campaign to divert attention from the weather. "We don't want dignitaries thinking about the heat when they visit," Mayor Kathy Whitmire said. "We want them to know that Houston's hot for business."
To make sure everyone got the right picture of the country's fourth largest city, the U.S. Information Agency ran a press center out of a large downtown convention complex. With a restaurant, two nightclubs, computer set-ups and a post office, the center was completely self-contained. Reporters had no need to leave the complex, and if they did want to get out on their own, there was no need to worry. "We're all primed," said the agency's Gary Franklin, "to point them in the right direction."
The right direction was toward Rice University, which bumped its students off campus and sealed off the entire school. Rice also spent an undisclosed amount on improvements, including the installation of seven tons of air-conditioning equipment to cool down the platform in the outside quadrangle to keep Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Helmut Kohl and the rest of the G-7 leaders from finding out just how truly hot it was.
The wrong direction was a few miles up the road toward the site of The Other Economic Summit. There, across from the Astrodome, over 200 academics, populist leaders, environmentalists, authors and activists had met only a few days earlier in an alternative summit. Like the other alternative summits held each year since 1984 in the same city as the G-7 conference, this one focused on the needs of the great majority of the world's people.
"While the G-7 summit addresses problems from the perspective of the industrialized 15 percent of the world's population," explained Larry Martin, coordinator and sole paid employee of the alternative, "we try to represent the other 85 percent."
The other 85 percent this year included representatives from some of the world's poorest nations - Haiti, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines - and Native Americans. to help spotlight their concerns, several of the most respected political leaders in the Americas spoke at plenaries and participated in workshop discussions. They included Jesse Jackson, Mexico's Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Brazil's Inacio "Lula" da Silva. Much of the work of the conference concerned new perspectives on ecology and democratization of economies.
One of the main issues at the alternative conference, as well as at the G-7 meeting, was international trade and, more specifically, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. This multi-nation treaty tilts sharply toward the major Western powers and Japan. President Bush is hammering hard to get the GATT nations to eliminate subsidies to farmers and make other revisions in the agreement which threaten further hardship for the Third World.
At The Other conference, David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance explained how the removal of trade subsidies would allow multinational corporations to plunder poorer countries' resources and pollute their environments. Allowing such changes in the general trade agreement, Friends of the Earth Vice President Martin Khor Kok Peng said, "is like Carl Lewis running a 100-meter race against a 3-year-old baby from Africa."
In remarks that drew special attention from the conferees, Howard Odum of the University of Florida spoke about the need for a new way of calculating market value. He advocated that "the full energy value of a resource" - such as the number of years it takes for a tree to grow, and the oxygen-processing value of a rain forest - be used in determining the commercial value of, say, Brazilian hardwoods.
The final communiqué from the poor nations called for cancellation of foreign debt, the creation of an international reparations fund, elimination of foreign military aid and respect for the rights of indigenous peoples.
Bush never acknowledged receipt of any of the alternative meeting's communiqués, although last year at the Paris G-7 summit President François Mitterand had incorporated the alternative's agenda in the G-7 documents.
As for the press, it for the most part ignored both the other summit and the 2,000 people demonstrating to demand, "cure AIDS now" in front of City Hall, the Women Against Violence Everywhere and the Poor People's March at Rice, the farmers' tractorcade and the pro-choice supporters marching everywhere. As a foreign journalist observed at the downtown press center, "We're just so isolated here. We just don't know what's going on."
Multinational Monitor, July/August 1990, pp. 8-9.
by Robert Weissman
Abstract: The Leaders of the seven richest countries met at the Seven Industrial Countries (G-7) Economic Summit in Houston in early July to rejoice in the triumph of capitalism. With somewhat less publicity, representatives of the world's poorest peoples gathered a few days earlier to call attention to the majority of the world's population which has suffered at the hands of the system the G-7 celebrated. Over 600 activists concerned with development and environmental issues came to Houston from all over the world to attend "The Other Economic Summit," which featured the "Summit of Seven of the World's Poorest Peoples" and the "Populist Leaders' Summit," attended by Brazil's Luiz Ignacio "Lula" da Silva and Mexico's Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano.
The Third World representatives stressed that the disintegration of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes in the Eastern bloc does not prove the success of the Western economic model. Cardenas, to the contrary, equated fallen "authoritarian, dogmatic, centralized regimes in Eastern Europe" with the "neo-liberal, monetarist model" with which must of the Third World has been experimenting. "Both," he said, "are exported from abroad and alien to the people" who have suffered as a result of their policies.
Capitalism has failed to bring sustainable development to most of the world, argued the representatives from Bangladesh, Colombia, Guatemala, Native America, Haiti, the Philippines and Puerto Rico who attended the Summit of Seven of the World's Poorest Peoples. As a result, most of the world lives in dire poverty. "Today's issue is the issue of survival," said Salina Ahmed of Bangladesh.
In fact, social conditions deteriorated for much of the world in the 1980s. "For most of the Third World, the past decade has been a lost decade," stated the final communiqué of the populist leaders. In Mexico, Cardenas noted, the last decade witnessed a 56 percent decline in real wages, unemployment rates on the order of 30 percent and increased political violence, as the Mexican government struggled to maintain its hold over the populace.
The Third World representatives noted that people in many countries suffer from similar problems. When she heard a description of the plight of Filipino women, Ahmed said, she thought she was hearing a presentation on women in Bangladesh.
Live Oak Fund Newsletter, Summer, 1990, p. 2
Abstract: To give voice to some 4.6 billion people and 210 countries in the world not included in the Economic Summit of the top seven industrialized nations, The Other Economic Summit (TOES) held its own meeting in July. It was a clarion call for change with the message that economics as usual is destroying the planet and many of its peoples.
This article is mainly a report of the TOES panel "Funding for Change".
Maine Progressive, August 1990, p. 4.
by Karen Saum
"It must be recognized, and we affirm, that the capitalist model has totally failed to meet the basic needs of the majority of people on the planet. An explosive social and economic crisis grips much of the world today, which is immersed in social injustice and lack of true democracy."
- From Final Declaration of Representatives of Seven of the Poorest Nations in the World at Second Annual TOES Conference
The Other Economic Summit (TOES), which met in Houston early in July, was originally conceived as a response of poor nations to the annual economic summits of the Group of Seven, or G-7 (the United States, Canada, Italy, France, Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Kingdom). At last year's TOES in Paris, 2,400 people from around the world came together, and for the first time a summit was convened of seven nations identified as among the world's poorest: Bangladesh, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Native American nations. The 1990 conference, which coincided with the meeting of the G-7, was smaller (about 400 people). For political activists and analysts in the fields of ecology, economics, and development, and for leaders of national and international popular organizations, TOES provided an unprecedented three-day forum in which to exchange ideas about the problems facing the Third World.
Speakers at the conference included Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who won the last popular election in Mexico but was deprived of his victory by a combination of Mexican military force and U.S. money; Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, populist labor organizer of Brazil and runner-up in Brazil's last presidential election; Max Sisulu (the son of African National Congress leader Walter Sisulu); Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, former Texas gubernatorial candidate; and Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Three issues dominated the conference: GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) and its current, secret "Uruguay Round" of talks; Third World debt; and Development.
It was a gathering based on contradictions. At a meeting the first day titled "Summit at the Grass Roots," the organizer began by saying that "if it is a summit, it cannot be grass roots." Several workshops were devoted to the subject of "sustainable development," which others labeled an oxymoron. Speakers from the West spoke of people's "right to basic needs," which others, from Third World countries charged was only the ideology of imperialism because transnationals cynically use the concept to smuggle in their high technology. Responding to the technological fixes advocated by people like Amory Lovins, an advocate for soft energy paths, there were protests heard in the corridors that technology can't fix the problems technology created.
Uruguay Round Gives Free Rein to Transnational Corporations
There appeared to be consensus among participants on several issues - issues that distinguished TOES from the G-7 summit. TOES participants strongly criticized the current GATT talks, called the "Uruguay Round." Certain proposals made at the Uruguay Round "will give free rein to TNCs (transnational corporations) for their operations without a corresponding degree of obligation or accountability to the Third World countries," a TOES statement noted. A statement addressed by TOES participants to participants of the G-7 Economic Summit warned that the Uruguay Round, if adopted by the great powers, would take unprecedented steps toward liberalizing trade among nations to the detriment of the Third World. "The proposals of the industrial countries … would lead to the establishment of patent systems in the Third World that would protect the monopoly position of TNCs and significantly increase prices of key products such as pharmaceutical drugs. They would also severely hamper the Third World's domestic industrial development and concentrate the monopolization of technology … in the hands of industrial countries."
Advocates of a more equitable distribution of the world's resources generally agree that free trade inhibits the ability of an unindustrialized country to create a national industry. Indeed, this is conceded in present GATT treaties which make exceptions to general tariff agreements in the case of countries in the process of developing "infant industries." The Uruguay Round would eliminate these exceptions and extend GATT to include financial services of all kinds as well as copyrights. Third World governments would lose sovereign rights in these areas vis-a-vis TNCs. "Since the service sectors in Third World countries are not well developed, this proposal is likely to result in the foreign domination of the Third World's service sectors, e.g., banking, insurance, professional services, information and communications," the TOES communiqué noted.
Development Leads to Depletion of Natural Resources
There was general agreement that "development," in the lexicon of the West, means growth with the concomitant depletion of natural resources that poisons the land, air, and water. Its effects are felt first and most severely in Third World countries, but conference participants argued that the growing power of the TNCs will eventually deprive all nations of their national rights. There was a widely held sentiment that even the U.S. is in the process of losing its sovereignty to TNCs whose own financial requirements demand that they exploit the natural and human resources of individual nations. Participants maintained that "TNCs exist with utter disregard for the interests of the people in any nation."
Anyone who drives on the "Golden Road" of the paper companies in Piscataquis County can see these same effects in Maine: stripped trees and the consequent loss of topsoil; the silting of rivers as the topsoil runs into them; the resulting loss of oxygen in the rivers leading to a diminishing number of fish; herbicides used to kill the weeds after clearcutting flowing into the river and poisoning it. Beth Nagusky, staff attorney for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, notes that "all development causes depletion of land, air, water and wildlife resources."
In Bucksport, the proposed AES coal-fired plant is an example of the dilemma developing economies face repeatedly. Over the past generation, almost 90 percent of Hancock County has come to be owned by seven out-of-state paper companies. Families that once were independent farmers now depend on welfare or the few jobs offered by the mill and, seasonally, by tourists and blueberries. To boost its economy, Bucksport officials have shown a willingness to exchange some jobs during the three years of plant construction for the health of the Penobscot River, which is already one of the three most endangered rivers in the country. Environmentalists have projected thermal and chlorine pollution of the river along with the release of over 12 million tons of pollutants into the air annually as a consequence of the development of such a plant.
Debt Wreaks Havoc on Third World Economies
The conference also focused on the issue of international debt. Debt, and the financial structures and calculations that go along with it, was seen as the most effective tool by which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wreak their havoc on Third World Economies. To avoid default, countries allow the IMF to "restructure" their economies. This is done by devaluing currencies, eliminating subsidies for "infant industries," and causing untold misery for the poor.
Because Third World debtor nations have paid back their loans several times over through the interest payments they have made, they have become net exporters of capital to the rich industrialized nations. Thus, they don't have the capital resources necessary to start their own industrial production. The debt structure is the method by which capital is transferred from the world's poorest people to the world's richest people.
Perhaps not so commonly understood is the role that debt has played recently in rapidly increasing the rate of environmental destruction. An example is the leveraged buy-out and the consequent debt of Pacific Lumber against whom the protest of Redwood Summer (the civil disobedience action in defense of the last stand of redwoods) is now being waged in northern California. In order to buy Pacific Lumber, Charles Hurwitz of the Maxxam Corporation sold junk bonds. To pay off the junk bonds he has doubled and tripled the cutting rate of the redwoods. Until the buy-out, Pacific Lumber was a conscientious harvester of wood, a role it has forfeited to maintain interest payments on his junk bonds.
Clearly, if the Uruguay Round of GATT talks succeeds, nations will not have the freedom to make decisions about their own economies. A point that was made repeatedly in regard to current GATT negotiations is that the primary U.S. negotiator is a former CEO of the Cargill corporation, a major TNC.
In a country like ours which promotes the interests of the TNCs over the interests of people, it is only a question of time before the social injustices we associate with Third World countries become commonplace here. It is arguable that with homelessness, and the devastation of our inner cities, those social injustices have already become part of our domestic landscape.
Karen Saum directs the Rural Education Program at H.O.M.E. (Homeworkers Organized for More Employment) in Orland, Maine.
This Time, Vol. XIV, No. 8 (Summer/Fall 1990).
by Karen Saum
Abstract: Although TOES offered a perspective on world trade, development and debt that was radically different from the G-7 summit, by and large the terms of the debate were no different from the ones Mr. Sununu, George Bush's Chief of Staff, would use. Only in the workshops on Gandhian economics and the one on World Religious Perspectives on Economics was a different vocabulary, a different morality, engaged.
Presented in a Gandhian economics workshop was a Third World perspective on "basic needs," which was characterized as an idea TNCs cynically use to smuggle their high technology into Third World economies. It isn't true, as those in the West believe, that the idea of basic needs is a universal concept. Buddhists believe that rather than the goal of one's life being to satisfy one's demands, the goal is to reform our consciousness. This leads to altruism and to harmony with God's creation.
"Pareto optimality" was questioned by a Muslim speaker, a Buddhist and a Gandhian, and an Episcopal priest from Houston. Pareto optimality, which is unquestioned in conventional economics, holds that any change that leaves someone better off without making someone else worse off is good. It doesn't question current economic practice and injustice, and if change results in the rich becoming richer without the poor becoming demonstrably poorer, then that is considered a change for the better.
The Gandhian held that the purpose of life is self-realization, and that in trade the partners must also consider the effect on the next generation. Price is a secondary consideration. Hindu precepts hold that you can have only what everyone else has, to have more is stealing.
According to the Muslim speaker, the dichotomies of the West are incorrect because in reality things can be true and not true at the same time. For instance, people want gratification but they also desire to be altruistic; they want power, but they want to renounce power. Religion introduces wisdom to impose restraint. Thus in Christianity love and compassion restrains the use of power. In religion people seek knowledge of the whole of creation as a way to guide their actions. Economics, on the other hand, teaches that all society needs to function are laws that define property rights. People can do anything they want, so long as they stay out of jail. In economics, "checks and balances" take the place of love.
The Texas Observer: A Journal of Free Voices, August 31, 1990, p 5.
by Ray Reece
Abstract: On July 6, while the corporate establishment in Houston was stashing the city's "For Sale" signs and otherwise spiffing up the place for the Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (G-7), delegates were arriving from around the world for The Other Economic Summit (TOES). They came from India and Puerto Rico, from Guatemala and the Philippines, from Poland, Haiti, Canada, Nigeria, Hungary, Malaysia, Italy, Pakistan, Colombia, France, Brazil, England, Japan, Bulgaria, Grenada, South Africa, Sweden, Costa Rica, Germany, Finland, Mexico and more - a total of 40 nations. The salvaging of the planet, with liberty, justice and a living wage for all, was the principal goal and unifying theme of the convention.
The Texas Observer: A Journal of Free Voices, August 31, 1990, p 6.
by Jo Clifton
Abstract: Destruction of the world's rainforests, the great increase in smoking among Asians, and the dumping of toxic wastes in the Third World, can all be linked directly to economics, according to Martin Khor Kok Peng, coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement. Khor warned those gathering in Houston for The Other Economic Summit that the current method of valuing resources, such as tropical hardwoods, could lead to the destruction of the world. Colonizing nations, Khor said, forced resource-rich Third World countries into the marketplace, where goods are valued only by the price the bring, not by the cost to the environment. Multinational corporations now bind those countries to a marketplace where they cannot fairly compete.
Those corporations exercise control over the rules of competition through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), also known as the Uruguay Round. (The leaders of the G-7 nations spent much of their time in Houston discussing fine points of the Uruguay Round.) "For instance, the market prices tropical hardwoods lower than softwood from the industrialized counties, even though it may take 200 years for a tree to grow in a tropical forest and only 20 years to grow softwood in a tree plantation in the United States," Khor said. As a result, the rain forests are being depleted "faster than you could imagine." But the rain forest countries are still poor, he said.
The Texas Observer: A Journal of Free Voices, August 31, 1990, p 7.
by Tom Schlesinger
Abstract: There is ferment in this country about the S&L bailout, there are tremendous organizing opportunities, and we're at a very interesting juncture. It's possible, because of this terrific S&L disaster, to get some real financial reform.
The Texas Observer: A Journal of Free Voices, August 31, 1990, p 7.
by Jo Clifton
Abstract: Six federal agencies are routinely ignoring environmental protection regulations while administering "the world's largest debt relief program," according to Rick Lowerre, a lawyer with the Texas Center for Policy Studies. That relief program, of course, is the savings and loan bailout, currently projected to cost taxpayers $500 billion dollars. The agencies are the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. (FLSIC) and its offspring the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the IRS, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Board.
The Texas Observer: A Journal of Free Voices, August 31, 1990, p 7.
Abstract: The greatest impending threat to humanity may no longer come from aggressive nation-states, such as Germany, the U.S.S.R., or Iraq. Instead, according to the speakers at TOES "Corporate Accountability" workshop, the new global villains are the almost-invisible multinational corporations who play the nations of the world against each other, and are willing to destroy environment and people, all to achieve a single goal: profits.
The Socialist, July-August 1990, pages 1, 12
by Earl Divoky
Development Forum, September-October, 1990, p. 20
Lone Star Socialist, Fall 1990, p. 1, col. 2.
by Earl Divoky
Abstract: Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the presidential candidate of Brazil's Workers Party, is speaking in Portuguese. Beside him at the Astro Village Hotel podium stands Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, presidential candidate of Mexico's Democratic Revolution Party, who translates his words into English. The audience is electrified as "Lula"/Cardenas says: "Nobody in the Third World is against development … development may mean a first pair of shoes, the first school, the first doctor, to be a real citizen … When we put these matters on the table for discussion we are called 'sectarians, leftists, cheaters' … We cannot continue as colonies." Behind him is a banner: "The Voice of the People for a Change - The Other Economic Summit."
Lone Star Socialist, Fall 1990, p. 9
by Earl Divoky
Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1991, sec. A, p. 6, col. 1
by Karen Tumulty and Joel Havemann
Abstract: The US appeared increasingly isolated from other members of the Group of Seven on how to confront global warming and save endangered Amazon rain forests.
New York Times, July 28, 1991, sec. 1, p. 6, col. 1
by Stephen Kinzer
Abstract: A Swiss artist and naturalist by inclination, Bruno Manser, chained himself to the top of a lamp post in front of Westminister Abbey during a recent economic summit conference to protest destruction of the world's rain forests. Manser came to fight for rain forests after spending many years in the Sarawak region of Borneo.
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