The world’s poorer nations could disengage from globalisation and multilateral institutions if the current imperfect world order continues, South Africa’s Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Wednesday.
”If we cannot fix what is so obviously imperfect, then the losers from globalisation will either shout more loudly or they will disengage from the process,” he said in a prepared speech ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialised nations.
”And that is not an outcome from globalisation that most of us will be able to live with,” Manuel added.
The G8 meets in Germany from Thursday amid protests and disagreements within the group over climate change and United States and Russian squabbling over missiles.
Manuel said these issues had overshadowed key initiatives taken by the G8’s sitting chair, Germany, such as enlarging the discussions on key developments to include larger developing countries, and African development.
”Added together, these matters must raise fundamental questions about globalisation, present and future, and perhaps tangentially whether the G8 can claim to be the only voice on global economic developments at a time when the shifts of development and output change the global balance of power.”
Manuel said developing countries, including China and India, were becoming important players in the world economy but the United States and Europe still dominate institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
”As some of the world’s leaders gather in Heiligendamm to tackle issues ranging from global climate change to development in Africa, from world trade to security, we must constantly raise the voices of the people not there, not represented at that table,” Manuel said.
”The major problems of the world affect all its citizens and we can only begin to develop solutions to these problems when we change towards a more inclusive system of global governance.” — Reuters