GLOBAL ETHICS FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM:
a series of interviews with outstanding personalities
 
Interviews by Patricia Morales
Globus Institute, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
 
Sir Shridath Ramphal: Our Country, the Planet

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Q.        You are the only person to have served on all independent international commissions on global issues. Could you explain the relationship of these issues, in particular, development, environment, and governance?
 
A.        I was certainly privileged to serve on most of the international commissions that addressed global issues: the Brandt Commission on International Development Issues; the Palme Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues; the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development; the Commission on Humanitarian Issues; the South Commission; the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict; and the Commission on Global Governance. The Brandt Commission looked at development in the context of relations between rich and poor countries, and sought to draw attention to the increased interdependence of the two. It pointed out that in addition to the ethical claims of the struggle against poverty, rich and poor had a mutual interest in the progress of the Third World. Support for development in the Third World was in the long-term self-interest of the developed countries themselves.
 
The Brundtland Commission came in the wake of increasing evidence that economic growth had adversely affected the environment in various ways. Its key message was that environment and development were linked and that development would be placed at risk by economic growth that paid no heed to its impact on the environment. Its call for sustainable development was addressed to all countries, developed as well as developing. It underlined the need for all countries to follow policies that do not destroy or reduce the world's ecological capital, so as to ensure that the prospects for future generations are not undermined.
 
Security also had a bearing on development. While peace is undeniably desirable as an end in itself, it is only in conditions of peace and security that people and countries can effectively pursue development. The Palme Commission was concerned with the colossal waste of the arms race, and with the diversion to arms of funds that could be deployed to achieve development and increase human well-being. Violent conflicts, whether between nations or within nations, are an enemy of development; in so many parts of the world, people's progress has been held up, if not put back, by deadly conflicts.
 
Governance is relevant to all these issues, as governance relates to the way we handle them, how effectively we manage global issues, whether they are issues of security, or conflict prevention, or environment, or development. It relates to how the world community is organized to manage these problems; what partnerships, what arrangements, and what institutions it has set up for the purpose; the distribution of power and responsibility in these institutions; and the coordination and cooperation between these institutions as well as between nations within them.
 
Q.        You have played a key role internationally by increasing the awareness of the need for an ethic of survival. Could you explain the relationship between this ethic of caring and global interdependence?
 
A.        The issue of survival has arisen because there is a danger to the sustenance of human life on the planet, because the pattern of human actions, if continued without change on a "business as usual" basis could endanger the environmental support base that is vital for human life. Faced with this danger, we are all vulnerable the whole world is vulnerable. There are no safe sanctuaries for rich or poor. This is one important aspect of global interdependence. The Brandt Commission drew attention to our economic interdependence when it called its report North South: A Program for Survival. The Brundtland Commission issued its message of environmental interdependence, naming its report Our Common Future. The Commission on Global Governance underlined the imperatives of interdependence and of a global ethic to guide our actions by speaking of Our Global Neighborhood.
 
Q.        The title of your significant book Our Country, The Planet states that we need to see the planet as our country as the first step to survival. Global problems require global solutions. What consequences does this have for politics and ethics?
 
A.        Let me take the matter of ethics first. To see the planet as our country, to see ourselves as planetary citizens, has immediate implications for our ethical mindset. Our concern, our compassion, our fellow-feeling must encompass people the world over. We must be concerned with environmental deterioration and damage everywhere, not just in our own backyards, recognizing that further pressure on the global environment threatens all our futures. As for politics, it is through governments and politicians that decisions must be made, nationally and globally, so that we can respond practically to the concept of our country being the planet. It is finally through politics and political decisions that we can save the planet and ourselves. And the more that people are converted to a planetary consciousness, to a planetary ethics, the more likely it is that they will make politicians and governments take those crucial, survival decisions.
 
Q.        You said: "Our global society must become less feudal. It must reform its trading arrangements and economic relationships so that developing countries can make faster progress. The rich for their part must be less aggressive towards the planet, or it will strike back with vengeance." (Our Country, The Planet, p. 192.) What do you think about the need for empowerment of people?
 
A.        It is enormously important. The growing empowerment of people and their increasing use of their power for progressive, collective ends has been a remarkable and remarkably heartening development of recent times. But the process has far to go. In many parts of the world, people are held back, if not downright oppressed. There is too much illiteracy, too few opportunities for education. And women suffer disproportionately almost everywhere. But even where the basic conditions for people's empowerment are in place, empowerment may not in fact materialize or do so only weakly. Empowerment is, in the final analysis, not a gift from above but something people themselves must value and want to acquire. Some are held back by inertia, by custom and tradition. Some fall victim to the blandishments of materialism. Some become too quickly cynical about the ways of politics, failing to recognize that it is in their collective power to change those ways. I hope that the new century brings about improvement in the conditions for empowerment literacy, education, democratic rights and that people will also have the wish to empower themselves and will use their power to make the planet a safer and more equitable global society.
 
Q.        Do you consider that the global community will accomplish social and economic justice in this century, as proposed by the Earth Charter?
 
A.        The term "accomplish" carries a connotation of completeness, and I would be wary of suggesting that the quest for social and economic justice in the world will be completed within a finite period, even a century from now. We can certainly expect to see progress, I hope substantial progress, towards that goal, and we must strive for that. But if we consider the pace of progress in, say, the second half of the twentieth century, I don't know if we can we be confident that the goal will be fully achieved. Take poverty, which is central to the question of social and economic justice. Despite all the rhetoric about basic needs and poverty alleviation, and despite several decades officially dedicated to development, the number of people in extreme or absolute poverty continues to increase. According to the World Bank's World Development Report for 2000, the number of people living on the equivalent of US$ 1 a day or less had risen from 1.2 billion in 1987 to 1.5 billion, and the report warned that if recent trends persisted the number would reach 1.9 billion by 2015. The year 2015 is the year for which the world community has set a target of reducing extreme poverty by a half. If the world does meet that target by 2015, then one would be justified in feeling more confident, indeed optimistic, about what the world will achieve by the end of the century.
 
Q.        Can you imagine a global society with a common constitution?
 
A.        As a lifelong internationalist, I have been working throughout for increased global cooperation and improved global governance. While I have envisaged stronger global institutions and new global institutions as a means of achieving greater cooperation, I have not envisaged a common constitution for global society. A global constitution suggests a form of global government. We certainly need better global governance but a global government, a single, monolithic world power, would, I fear, pose dangers that far outweigh any benefits.
 
Q.        What do you think about international democracy and global sovereignty?
 
A.        I think very highly of international democracy and only wish there was more of it. The recent campaign to promote democracy worldwide, to give ordinary citizens a voice in how their countries are governed, has been a remarkable phenomenon. It has significantly enlarged the democratic domain. What is disappointing is that this fervour for establishing and strengthening democracy within nations has not been accompanied by even a low-key effort to enhance international democracy. There is hardly a murmur of concern on the part of key champions of democracy about the need for extending democracy on the global stage, in international institutions. There, democracy continues to be denied by the rich and powerful who seem determined to cling to their privileges, the special status they acquired for themselves when these institutions were established.
 
Our experience with the efforts of the last decade to secure a reform of the United Nations Security Council to make it more representative, i.e. more democratic, is proof of this. Proposals for reforming the Security Council have been discussed at the United Nations year after year, but the resistance of powerful nations prevents any movement towards a Council that is more representative of the UN's present membership than of its composition when the UN was formed over 50 years ago. Of the five Permanent Members of the Council, three are European countries. There is no Latin American country, no African country. The continuation of this inequitable situation is an affront to international democracy.
 
Q.        Could you explain why we need global governance to achieve justice, peace, and security?
 
A.        There is clearly a role for national action to achieve justice, peace, and security. But, equally, in the contemporary world these issues cannot be contained strictly within national borders; they have international implications and therefore call for global action to complement national efforts. If we look at the questions of economic and social justice, our efforts to achieve them must begin at home, within every society. But to varying degrees these national efforts need to be supported and encouraged by global efforts, as the international economic system has been skewed against developing countries. In the matter of gender equality, the place of women in society, obviously each society has to take the action necessary to remove discrimination and promote equality. But I am sure that even the progress achieved so far would not have been possible without a global climate that encouraged and summoned national efforts. The role of global action is more obvious in matters of peace and security
 
Q.        What are the major achievements of Our Global Neighborhood and what suggestions do you have for its realization in this century?
 
A.        I think the principal achievement of the report of the Commission on Global Governance has been in placing the subject of global governance, and governance in general, firmly on the political and intellectual agenda of our time. These terms have become part of the political vocabulary, and also part of the curriculum in educational institutions where the younger generation learn about politics, government, international relations, and international institutions. An American observer who made a study of a dozen reports, including Our Global Neighborhood, that addressed issues of international reform about the same time, had this to say:
 
 Our Global Neighborhood had a powerful message one that still animates much of the internationalist literature. It did an unusually effective job of conceptualizing the practice and challenges of global governance.
 
Another important contribution made by the report was in recognizing and underlining the enlarging role of civil society, and its potential for improving the quality of global governance. Remember that the report was issued five years ago, and remember too that most of the members of the Commission came from a public service or governmental background. For that time and against that background, the position that we took on civil society was, I think, very forward-looking and enlightened. We would naturally have been happier if more of our specific goals for institutional reform had been achieved, if, for instance, governments had agreed to reform the Security Council, but the search for better global governance is a continuing effort, a process to which, I believe, we have made a not insignificant contribution. I firmly believe that our report has helped to create a wider community committed to improving global governance and a better foundation for future efforts. It will help those who take up the challenge in the future to achieve more in the new century.
 
Q.        How do you connect the global neighborhood with sustainable development and environmental protection?
 
A.        The term "global neighborhood" is a metaphor for a world in which distance has been bridged, interdependence has increased, and we have all become neighbors of one another wherever we may live. Such a world requires all of us, as neighbors, to be aware of the need for development, to be equitable so that all neighbors benefit, rather than have some neighbors prospering and other neighbors languishing in poverty or misery; the latter situation would be a denial of the ethics of the neighborhood which calls for neighborly conduct. It also requires us to recognize the need for development to be sustainable, so that it is not achieved at the expense of our children's generation  or our neighbors' children's generation. And if we are to ensure that the neighborhood that our children will inherit is at least as hospitable as it has been to us, we can only do so by protecting the environment. So the global neighborhood, sustainable development, and the protection of the environment are inextricably linked.
 
Q.        What role do you expect the United Nations to play in the Third Millennium, in particular for realizing an "agenda of survival" as you mentioned in your book Our Country, The Planet?
 
A.        The United Nations is the principal organization we have for addressing global issues, raising global awareness, setting goals and targets, and mobilizing our collective energies in pursuit of those goals. The United Nations is, of course, the sum of its parts, a body representing all the nations of the world, and it is therefore as forward-looking, as progressive and as effective an organization as its members want it to be. I certainly hope that in the new century the nations of the world will make greater use of the United Nations their United Nations make fuller use of its immense potential for advancing action on survival issues. The weakness of the United Nations as an organization arises mainly from the fact that, despite its name, the nations that are its members do not always act in a united way, but pull in different directions. I draw hope from two developments. There is ever-increasing evidence of our interdependence, of nations' impact on other nations, and of nations' dependence on other nations. I believe that this must encourage greater cooperation rather than pulling apart. I also take heart from the growing power of people, of civil society, to move governments. They have already demonstrated, on such important issues as landmines and the International Criminal Court, that they have the capacity to catalyze governmental action. I am sure this power will grow, and that people will be a more forceful unifying factor, and that this will be reflected in the way governments make use of the United Nations in the new century.