ALTERNATE G8 BIRMINGHAM DECLARATION The G8 and G20 have provided poor governance over a prolonged period and should dissolve their duties with immediate effect. The IMF and WTO should also be disbanded in a short, agreeable time scale. There is a need for governments to transform their democratic process accordingly, ensuring that any future consensus agreed at an inter-governmental level, reflects the needs of the earth and the security and rights of people around the world. Governments that are actively transforming their governance to enable a new settlement to be enacted in civil society would then be fit to form any replacement bodies International governance has a special responsibility to recognise that co-operative and social enterprise have a vital role in providing sustainable growth, ensuring democratic governance and mitigating against the adverse effects of transnational corporate enterprise. Transparency, with open data on country by country reporting, is vital before proper rules on tax jurisdiction can be apportioned and economic justice adequately addressed. The G8 governments could make a real difference by enacting the following prior to any discussions on a replacement body: 1.Give the earth legal rights through negotiation across civil society. This is an essential step to build a sustainable, democratic future, for all, to enable governments across the world to frame economic policies that prioritise common benefits. 2.Countries should adopt rules that enable transnational corporations to be held to account, on tax, on earth rights, and societal impact in a transparent manner, governments should sufficiently recognise the essential role of civil society in monitoring and reporting such issues. 3.Countries should adopt stringent conditions on transparency of corporate ownership and the ability to meet accountability conditions prior to granting trading rights. 4.All countries should seek to liberate human potential by supporting practical democratic practice, extending governance through co-operative agency to strengthen society, assisting in containing the pressure of liberalised markets, if governments fail to act, then civil society should lead. 5.Countries should urgently seek to enable a debt jubilee prior to engaging in further substantive attempts at inter-governmental economic governance. 6.Countries should seek to regulate commodity food trading at the earliest opportunity, and further enable food security through common land rights. 7.Current intellectual property right regulation is stifling growth and innovation, countries should re-evaluate legislation to liberate the potential of collaborative enterprise and commons practice. 8.Governments should roll back the wasteful security state practices that enables oppressive anti-democratic governance at the expense of civil society and seek to urgently direct efforts to redress the democratic deficit at the heart of the UN Security Council. 9.Governments should seek to overhaul land rights in a democratic manner with civil society, to rebalance taxes with land valuation, to enable transparency of land rights, and support common rights. 10.Governments, financial institutions and transnational corporations should publish data transparently and expediently with information in accord with civil society requirements if they are to be effectively held democratically accountable.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 18:54:19 +0000
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