STWR - Share The World's Resources

The leaders of the G-20 Group of countries are like the blind men who failed to see the elephant - which in this case is the crisis-stricken international financial system. We have been too busy partying, and the hangover is too strong for us to see the silver lining, says Devinder Sharma.

The same disastrous policies responsible for the financial collapse in emerging markets are being forced by the IMF upon countries seeking liquidity, and efforts to strengthen the IMF will mean that conditions are likely to get much worse for the developing world, writes Jayati Ghosh.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy has called for trade liberalisation and finalisation of the Doha Round to alleviate the global financial crisis. Such a solution would only exacerbate the economic, social and environmental problems facing the world today, argues Myriam Vander Stichele.

Water is the dream capitalist product, with inbuilt scarcity and rarity, indispensibility to human life, and no possible substitutes. All the more reason that this universal good should be placed under democratic control and allocated fairly, says Susan George.

Past pledges of more aid and fairer trade to fight poverty have amounted to very little for the world's poor. More of the same medicine is not the solution - a global shift in priorities is needed to redistribute essential resources to immediately secure basic human needs, argues Davinder Kaur.

The financial crisis puts to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated - providing an ideal opportunity to replace the present system with a new economy dedicated to serving life, writes David Korten. 

The privatisation of the world's natural resources leaves us 'awash with capital but literally running out of nature'. Now, we need a counter narrative to legally protect our global commons, and share our most essential resources, argues a new report by Maude Barlow.

An eruption of war and displacement in east Africa is rooted in historical land tension, a dense ethnic mixture, and the Rwandan government's belief that the area remains a 'mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploited'. But are the DR Congo and Rwanda on the verge of civil war? By Gerard Prunier.