Alternative Globalization Addressing Peoples and Earth

of being blessed with freedom, they once more struggle for existence in
their own homelands. As the Indian government has pursued liberalization
and the World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes’ privatization
agenda, and WTO obligations, it has devised new policies and laws that
remove protective legislation and forcibly take land, forests and water away
from the poor, indigenous and marginalized communities to benefit the
corporations. The resulting attempts to exploit Orissa’s resources threaten
people with displacement, loss of livelihood, loss of customary rights over
land, water and forests, the decay of culture and social relations, and
destruction of the natural environment. In other words, there is a systematic
demolition of real, living alternatives where people live as one with God
and nature.
The widespread emergence of people’s movements indicates the rising
consciousness of people at the grassroots. But these movements, and their
legitimate struggles against injustice are viewed as threats to national
security and economic growth. Police and military, authorized by new laws,
are unleashed in a reign of terror to suppress genuine aspirations and
legitimate dissent. The links between neo-liberal economic globalization
and militarization are laid bare for all to see.
The struggles of the people to ensure their rights over resources are
suppressed as anti-development and anti-government. Formal democracy
is inadequate to protect people’s interest in the era of globalization. People’s
direct decision-making in matters that affect their lives needs to be renewed.
Churches need to be outspoken in recognizing that the rich in the South
as well as in the North are responsible for the systemic nature of these
abuses, and hold them to account. Indigenous Peoples in Aotearoa,
Australia, Canada or the US share similar stories of systematic destruction
and of movements of resistance.
There are places where communities still adhere to their traditional and
customary ways of life, and defend their own spirituality and customs. The
churches in the Pacific, for example, have presented an encouraging model
of how people in their region might resist the project of neoliberal
globalization by building on their traditional ways of life. They called their
detailed proposal “The Island of Hope”.
An agrochemical enterprise in São Paulo, Brazil, went beyond the rhetoric
of corporate social responsibility and began promoting the concept of
economic justice. At a very awkward moment of high indebtedness, it
started investing funds and time in its own cadre of employees. For some
members of the board, the decision sounded mad, irrational. Innovations
included improvements in remuneration, the creation of indirect forms of
remuneration, time for study during the working year, encouragement to
cooperate rather than compete in the work environment. In a few years,
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