c. 2000 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ Globalization had an easier time of it during events tied to last week’s Millennium Summit at the United Nations. But even without the large-scale protests that surrounded recent international gatherings in Seattle and Washington, D.C., some of globalization’s contradictions were still apparent.

Many of those contradictions were on display at a huge “global town meeting” held to coincide with the Sept. 6-8 Millennium Summit of world leaders. At the heart of the Sept. 4-10 “State of the World Forum” was a dialogue on whether globalization _ the process of worldwide economic and cultural integration _ could be shaped with the common participation of governments; civil society, including religious and faith communities; and the private sector.

Answers remained somewhat elusive, as they almost always seem to be at such “mega events.”

Chaired by former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and featuring a staggering array of workshops, panels and plenary sessions with hundreds of representatives, the forum tried to find ways of “channeling” globalization to make it more humane.

Spirituality was not far from the debate. Jim Garrison, president of the forum, said a kind of global spirituality separate from formal religious ties was emerging, moving humanity to a more holistic understanding of its place on the planet.

Building a corporate culture that embodies values was one sign of such change, he said in what emerged as a principal theme of the conference.

“One of the conclusions we made was that markets are amoral and people tend to be moral,” said Mark Gerzon, “chief facilitator” for the forum.

In an interview, Gerzon said at the local level, governments, civil groups and businesses have long been able to find common ground when faced with the problems, challenges and benefits of the market’s “amorality.”

But such a goal has remained elusive at the global level with the rapid emergence of globalization. “The question for us now is what are the countervailing values to the global economy and how do you create them?” he said.

Organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were “being hit” in protests in Seattle and Washington, he said, because they are the only regulatory forces overseeing the global free market.

“They are symbols of the dilemma we face,” he said. “They are symbols of unanswered questions of how you start some kind of global governance.”

Ultimately, though, such questions have to be addressed locally, too.

A report issued for the Forum and the U.N. Millennium Summit concluded that in Latin America, for example, the gap between rich and poor remained the primary cause of that region’s social instability and “distribution of the means of production and land tenure must change.”

In an address at the forum, Colombia President Andres Pastrana, a champion of globalization and free markets, warned of the continued consequences of income inequity, saying “we cannot remain passive observers” to the problem.

In a telling detail, Pastrana spoke in English _ the dominant language of global information and business _ as did a panel of young Latin American leaders discussing the effects of globalization on the region.

Some, such as Susana de la Puente, a managing director of J.P. Morgan Investment Bank in Peru, spoke confidently of globalization’s benefits, saying Latin America was a better place than it was a decade ago due to improved communication and transportation, less government regulation and better education. “Globalization is here to stay,” she said, adding that the region’s leaders would either accept that “or miss the boat and remain in isolation.”

“Capital will go where it will go,” she added.

Others warned, though, that the region was under enormous pressure to develop too quickly, posing enormous threats, for example, to the region’s

biodiversity.

As the last continent to be colonized, Latin America “faces both the greatest threat and the greatest opportunity for the conservation of biodiversity,” said Brazilian conservationist Carlos Peres. But if conservation is not practiced, over-development, coupled with the effects of global warming, pose huge risks for the Amazon River Basin, he said. That, in turn, would have serious consequences for the long-term well-being of the entire continent.

The voices of protesters raising the same points were heard sporadically through the week, though without the organized strength demonstrated in the Seattle or Washington protests.

Perhaps the most declamatory warnings against globalization were issued by Cuban President Fidel Castro, who, speaking at New York City’s Riverside Church the evening of Sept. 8, delivered one of his trademark addresses that went well past midnight.

Castro, speaking to an enthusiastic and largely non-white audience, warned that despite the optimism of many, globalization was inflicting great pain on the developing world which, he said, was “undergoing a catastrophic situation.”

“Don’t believe the experts who feign optimism and ignore the cruel realities of the developing world,” Castro said.

Gerzon described Castro as the last symbol of the “communist empires” _ “a very old symbol of the old countervailing forces” whom history had largely passed by.

“There is a need for a new kind of `countervailing force’ in the next century,” Gerzon said.

DEA END HERLINGER