North-South: A Program for Survival

The economic downturn, worldwide hunger, threat of terrorism and nature's sad state can all be solved by means that the Brandt Commission told to the world already 30 years ago in this superb book. By the initiative of the World Bank, West Germany's former Chancellor Willy Brandt brought together at the turn of the 1970's and '80's an extremely large and powerful group to invent global solutions to world wide problems. From that joining of forces of the extreme left and the extreme right became a commission, that brought together view points of how to solve the worlds social and economic problems. They analysed all global trends, population trends, trends of different commodities etc. From all these different points of views a true consensus was formed and it was published in this book: "North / South: A Program for Survival". It was the survival program for the human kind. The members of the commission came to the conclusion that there is only one possible way to approach the planetary problems: by sharing the resources of the world more equitably. The commission spoke of all possible ways to make that happen. According to the commission sharing would bring justice and justice would bring peace. It would be the only way to peace. The recommendation was extraordinary in its time and it was purely political and economical. And it represented a large number of decision makers since in the Brandt Commission were members such as former British PM Edward Heath and Swedish PM Olof Palme. On the basis of the North / South report the governments of eg. Norway, Denmark and Holland wanted to take measures, but in the Cancun (1981) meeting the recommendations met with relentless opposition by the USA and UK and other Western countries, even when the majority of the delegates present who also formed the majority of the Third World, all supported the recommendations. The politics of those days are still evident in our lives today, when the Brandt Commission recommendations have not been put into action. And yet it was the grass roots level ingenuity of the recommendations in this book that would be the solution to the same problems that the commission went out to solve and which even today pester the human kind. The Brand Commission demanded the removal of poverty and hunger, they demanded equal rights for women, education and health care and environmental protection as a solution to our problems. The commission reminded us though that in the work of progress not all can be on the receiving end, but some of us must be brave enough to give: the true motives must be "human solidarity and a commitment to international social justice".