Pollution and environmental degradation know no international boundaries. That is now a cliché. The term 'Global Commons' highlights the status of the environment as a common heritage of all mankind, while recalling the historical fate of the English Commons. The health of the Global Commons is now threatened by a few wealthy nations and corporations.
The Global Commons Institute, an environmental research and campaigning group, was founded in 1991. Its main aim is to research into and publicise these threats, stressing the links between politics, economics and the science of global pollution. Our initial focus is on climate change, as that poses the most immediate problem, and indeed puts the very survival of human civilisation at risk.
We believe our distinctive contribution is to produce clear analyses, driving home the links between the lack of international equity and the prospects for human survival.
The environmental crisis is desperate. The many self-sustaining systems of the biosphere of planet earth are all nearing breakdown. But most of the effects are hidden from those of us who live a rich, sheltered existence in the North. We are able to 'externalise' the environmental costs of our unsustainable way of life. We force the poorer countries to carry these costs. We control the world's financial institutions so that the poorer 80% of nations pay an annual tribute of nearly $100 billion to the richer 20%, to us. We call it debt to pretend that this monstrous transfer of resources is moral and upright. The true debt is in the reverse direction, for the South's forests are mopping up a (small) part of our CO2 emissions.
But climate change affects the whole human species. It cannot be checked without broad international cooperation. If it is not, many millions if not billions of deaths are likely sometime in the 21st century. The requisite international cooperation cannot be reached until the North admits that it has caused and is causing the lion's share, perhaps 80%, of the problem; and gives a lead with positive actions.
Solving climate change will only be the start, moreover. Other problems, potentially just as bad, lie in wait. Ocean pollution, plutonium poisoning, ozone depletion and topsoil loss are just a few. Our 'civilisation' is much too anti-nature and fragile to survive for long in its present form. Major changes in Northern life-styles must come soon, and the rape of the South must stop.
For information about GCI's recent activities, see our web site at: http://www.gci.org.uk