Despite unprecedented action from political leaders, and a blizzard of bilateral co-operation treaties entered into by offshore centres, deposit data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows bank accounts in tax havens still held \$2.7tn (£1.7tn) last year – about the same amount as in 2007.

Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman, academics who were granted access to a rarely seen breakdown of BIS data, concluded: "So far, the G20 tax haven crackdown has … largely failed … Treaties have led to a modest relocation of bank deposits between tax havens but have not triggered significant flows of funds out of tax havens."

Their findings are in sharp contrast to the official verdict on the G20 initiative in London in 2009. Last November Angel Gurria, general-secretary of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the body whose job is to oversee the crackdown, told the G20 in Cannes: "The era of bank secrecy is over." Acknowledging work remained to be done in some areas, he nevertheless insisted: "It is now no longer possible to hide assets or income without risking detection."

Presented with Johannesen and Zucman's findings last week, Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD's head of tax, said: "It's an interesting survey, but perhaps it is published a bit early. Let's see what the impact is in a couple of years."

However, tax campaigners claim the latest study shows getting offshore centres to sign bilateral co-operation treaties is an ineffective means of tackling the problem. Weakly worded treaties, they argue, allow signatories to request financial details only where they can already demonstrate suspect evasion activity. Reformers have called for more robust transparency treaties to weed out tax evaders.

Adding to the challenge facing tax authorities is the widespread use of corporate structures spanning multiple havens. Johannesen and Zucman's study found that some \$550bn – about a quarter of all deposits in tax havens – was owned by individuals or companies in other havens. The British Virgin Islands and Panama are popular jurisdictions for such holding companies.

Money flowing to opaque offshore financial centres has in recent years been the subject of intense political scrutiny as many of the world's largest economies – not least the US and Britain – have been straining to raise sufficient taxes to pay for public services and to service rising debts without choking off economic growth.

The G20 crackdown has pressured many offshore financial centres to sign co-operation treaties. Jersey and Guernsey have signed 18 and 19 such treaties respectively. According to Johannesen and Zucman, BIS data suggests that these bilateral treaties typically lead to a 3.8% fall in the deposits held on behalf of individuals or companies from the treaty partner.

Bank deposits in Jersey have dropped by more than a half, a fall of \$110bn over four years; deposits in Guernsey have declined by 15%. By contrast, Johannesen and Zucman said, Cyprus has signed only two co-operation treaties meeting OECD criteria and saw deposit levels rise by 60%.

"The deposit gains and losses correlate strongly with the number of treaties signed by each haven," the academics found. "The least compliant havens have attracted new clients, while the most compliant have lost some, leaving roughly unchanged the total amount of wealth managed in tax havens."

However, they also noted that those withdrawing deposits around the time of co-operation treaties – possible tax evaders – were frequently shifting their wealth to other, similarly secretive, offshore centres where no such equivalent treaty existed.

When you picture the effects of climate change, does a dying ocean come to mind?

Alongside the better-known terrestrial impacts of global warming, there are immense – and costly – damages that will occur beneath the waves. If we continue on our present course of unchecked carbon emissions, the losses due to climate change in five key ocean services could reach $2 trillion annually by the end of this century. Two-thirds of those losses could be avoided, effectively saving almost $1.4 trillion a year by 2100, if we embark on a rapid reduction in emissions to stabilize and protect the earth’s climate.

I developed these estimates as part of an international research project on the multiple threats to the oceans. The study, now available in summary form, was presented at the recent Planet under Pressure conference in London, and will be published as a book later this year. Research by my colleagues in this study describes numerous sources of harm to the oceans, stretching far beyond the few categories for which I was able to estimate monetary values.

The $2 trillion estimate includes five types of damages to the oceans and the services they provide to humanity.

- Commercial fishing will suffer major losses, as temperature changes drive many species toward the poles, and deeper beneath the surface. Gains in Arctic and Antarctic fishing will be outweighed by much greater losses elsewhere.

- Ocean-based tourism will become less attractive, as coral reefs bleach and die, formerly ideal beach locations become unpleasantly hot, and shorelines are eroded by sea-level rise. Tourists can easily go elsewhere; the communities that currently serve them will be left behind.

- Hurricanes may or may not become more frequent – debate continues on this point – but there is general agreement that they will become more intense, causing escalating losses. At the same time, growing numbers of people and amounts of property are located in hurricane-prone areas.

- Sea-level rise is driven both by runoff from melting ice sheets and glaciers, and by the gradual expansion of ocean water as it warms. High-value locations such as major cities can be protected from moderate sea-level rise – but it would be hopelessly expensive to protect all coastlines, or to build seawalls ever higher as the oceans continue to rise.

- The subtlest effect is the decline in the role of the oceans as a “sink” that absorbs carbon dioxide. A significant fraction of each year’s carbon emissions are currently absorbed by the oceans. Yet as emissions continue to rise, the oceans will absorb a shrinking fraction of future emissions, leaving more in the atmosphere and accelerating global warming.

The $2 trillion estimate has drawn widespread attention, especially in Europe where it was released. Despite its seeming immensity, it could be viewed as a relatively small number – since world GDP is estimated to be more than $500 trillion at the time, a $2 trillion loss is just 0.4% of global income. It is, however, a very partial, lower bound, not a comprehensive estimate of all climate impacts. The five types of harms that I evaluated are far from a complete picture of the damages to the oceans from climate change. Two crucial categories are necessarily omitted, because there is no meaningful way to assign prices to them.

First, some of the most profound values at risk in the oceans simply defy monetary valuation. What is it worth to preserve the existence of whales, or other endangered species? What is the value of wild nature, of unique and irreplaceable habitats? Our most important values cannot always be priced.

Second, the $2 trillion estimate is based on the most likely effects of climate change. However, climate change may also lead to tipping points, triggering abrupt, catastrophic damages. These events could dwarf the most likely outcomes. For example, there is a (surprisingly low) temperature threshold beyond which coral reefs will not survive. And at some point, rising temperatures may cause the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, causing it to melt and slide into the ocean – ultimately resulting in a disastrous 7 meters (23 feet) of sea-level rise.

Ocean-based costs should not be viewed in isolation from other climate impacts. The same process of unchecked global warming that would cause multi-trillion-dollar ocean damages, along with other, priceless impacts, and growing risks of catastrophe, would also cause similar losses in agriculture, human health, and many other areas. The costs of taking action to reduce emissions are dwarfed by the environmental and economic costs of inaction.

And the benefits of taking action to stabilize the climate include protection of the living ocean and the numerous vital services it provides.

About a thousand people, most of them on behalf of civil society organizations from all over the world, have signed so far a petition to warn the United Nations and its member states about the possibility that the outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio2012), to be held in June, “severely threatens the rights of all people”.

“We are witnessing an attempt by certain countries to weaken, or ‘bracket’ or outright eliminate nearly all references to human rights obligations and equity principles in the text ‘The Future We Want’” to be approved at Rio2012, remarks the letter addressed to the Secretary General of the Conference, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, and the governments.

The petition, titled “Rights at Risk at the United Nations”, was propelled from a meeting co-organized by Social Watch and the UN-Non Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) at the UN headquarters in New York as a side event of the negotiations held last month in preparation for Rio2012. The negotiations will officially resume next week, on 23 April.

According to the letter signed by non governmental organizations, social movements, trade unions, universities and other civil society institutions from all over the world, some governments attempt to undermine or remove from the declaration to be approved by the Conference the “references to the right to food and proper nutrition, the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, the right to development and others.”

“The right to a clean and healthy environment, which is essential to the realization of fundamental human rights, remains weak in the text. Even principles previously agreed upon in Rio in 1992 [at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development] are being bracketed – the Polluter Pays Principle, Precautionary Principle, Common But Differentiated Responsibility,” adds the petition.

“We […] feel that is our duty to call the attention of relevant authorities and citizens of the world to a situation that severely threatens the rights of all people and undermines the relevance of the United Nations,” warns the letter.

“Many member states are opposing prescriptive language that commits governments to actually do what they claim to support in principle and […] there is a strong push for private sector investments and initiatives to fill in the gap left by the public sector. This risks privatizing and commoditizing common goods – such as water – which in turn endangers access and affordability, which are fundamental to such rights,” adds the petition.

The signatories urge the official authorities to bring the negotiations “back on track to deliver the people’s legitimate agenda and the realization of rights, democracy and sustainability, as well as respect for transparency, accountability and non-regression on progress made.”

Five relevant civil society organizations (Eurostep, the Arab NGO Network for
Development, Social Watch, the Third World Network and ALOP) supported the petition in an open letter addressed to the 27 European Union environment ministers and urged them “to listen to these pleas”. The text remarks that human rights “are fundamental requirements for a sustainable world,” and appeals to the “EU’s laudable engagement on human rights, to improve democracy, inclusiveness and participatory approaches and increase the role of civil society organizations in decision making processes.”

“At the moment civil society organizations and other actors are anxious when considering the potential outcome of Rio2012. The EU’s position has contributed to these sentiments. Another outcome is possible - the EU should gear its actions towards an ambitious and fair outcome to the summit that is necessary to secure a better future for all,” urges the letter.

Informal dialogue

In the “informal dialogue” held last month in New York between the “major groups” that represent non governmental sectors of the society, Nicole Bidegain, from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) said, on behalf of the Women’s Major Group, that the draft of “the Rio2012 text is imbalanced across the three pillars of sustainable development.”

“The social pillar seems to be only about poverty eradication and does not pay attention to gender and other inequalities. The economic pillar does not address the systemic issues such as the reform and coherence of international monetary, financial and trading systems. Without this the environmental pillar is weak and fails to tackle patterns of over-consumption and production,” Bidegain explained.

At the side event organized by the UN-NGLS and Social Watch, Iara Pietricovsky de Oliveira, of the Brazilian Institute for Socioeconomic Studies (INESC), said that the document reflects governments’ lack of commitment in this time of global crisis, and expressed concern regarding what will be agreed upon in the context of green economy and the proposed sustainable development goals (SDGs). She also cautioned against the dilution of the human rights framework during the negotiations on the zero draft of the outcome document.

On behalf of Social Watch, Barbara Adams raised concerns about the proposed plans for the SDGs. Though these goals may attract support as a concrete, time-bound, results-focused structure, they run the risk, as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before them, of narrowing the development agenda and defining a wide range of issues simply in terms of lack of funds.

Additionally, the SDGs could pose actual harm by promoting the financialization of water, etc, rather than protecting rights in the context of planetary/ecological limits. Adams framed the SDGs as placing the political burden of adjustment to climate change on the most vulnerable populations by emphasizing resilience, rather than redressing those issues through a rights-based approach. She raised the proposal for alternative, consumption-driven goals, to combat overconsumption and mal-production, and concluded by focusing on the human rights agenda and the potential dangers posed to it by the Zero Draft and Rio2012.

Another member of the Brazilian Civil Society Facilitating Committee for Rio2012, Andre Abreu, cautioned that the debate surrounding green economy should be transparent and ensure accountability. He also urged that the views of small-scale farmers, peasants and others be involved in the process.

Caterina Silveira, representing the Brazilian trade unions, underscored the necessity of social protection in the context of the environment, saying that the outcomes they wish to see at the Conference include guaranteeing basic rights to water, food and housing.

Dena Hoff, of La Via Campesina, remarked that the document does not distinguish between different agricultural systems and stated that “peasant farming” has always been a part of a green economy.

Paul Quintos, of IBON International, warned that the principles agreed at the Earth Summit held in 1992, also in Rio de Janeiro, are being lost during the negotiations. He said there is a need for strong integration of the three pillars of sustainable development, as well as less prescriptive language for civil society.

In another side event during the negotiations in New York to debate the question of Equity and Sustainability, Anabella Rosemberg, representing the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), supported a social protection floor as a first step for building intragenerational equity, particularly within countries.

Meena Raman, of the Third World Network, presented the example of the climate change regime currently under negotiation to depict how inequity is being threatened, as the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities” and “historical responsibility” are being wiped out from the new regime.

Sources
Petition “Rights at Risk at the United Nations”: http://bit.ly/GOIYxv
UN-Non Governmental Liaison Service: http://bit.ly/J3WRJK
Civil society press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York: http://bit.ly/HadZgb
The Future We Want (Zero draft of the outcome document): http://bit.ly/yayYju

Watch the video here.

Also in PDF

Making Sense of Participatory Democracy in the Lula Era*

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Einar Braathen, Ana Claudia Teixeira[1]

[A] Introduction

Brazil’s recent social changes have been dramatic. Apart from the impressive reduction in poverty and seemingly inexhaustible economic growth of recent years, the country’s politics seem like a testament to the possibilities of social-movement driven change. With the end of the military dictatorship (1964-85), social movements of all sorts emerged as protagonists of a new kind of politics. They were radical, yet democratic; they challenged the system, but were oriented towards a sense of the public good; militant, but also civic. The ‘new trade union unionism’, the urban movement, the health movement, the feminist movement, the black and student movements were some of the expressions of what Evelina Dagnino (2004) described as the ‘new citizenship’ of the time. In addition to imagining new democratic practices and institutions to challenge Brazil’s deeply rooted social authoritarianism, these movements would largely find expression in the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), or the Workers Party. The election in 2002 of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a former metal worker and strike leader with little in the way of formal education, was the end of a ‘long march through institutions’ for the party, after two decades of failed national campaigns but often successful local administrations run on the principles of participatory democracy.

When Lula ended his term in office in 2010, 87 per cent of the people approved his performance as president, the highest approval rating in Brazilian history. In the public discourse, ‘the Lula Era’ and a phenomenon, Lulismo, have been named after him (Singer 2009). Scholars generally agree that this is due to a distinctively successful combination of economic development and social policies and of growth with redistribution (Sader 2010; Anderson 2011). The latter has been characterized by the millions of people who have ascended to Brazil’s lower middle class, the implementation of the Bolsa Família (the conditional cash transfer programme that has reached 40 million Brazilians), the real increase in the minimum wage (53 per cent during his presidency), and pension increases. It has also been an intensely participatory administration, with literally millions of individual Brazilians participating in one of the many conferences, councils and programmes created to foster dialogue and gather citizen input. Unions and social movements have been, for the first time in Brazilian history, systematically recognized as legitimate interlocutors in the national dialogue, having been invited to the table along with other stakeholders to debate with the federal government and its policies.

On the surface, it appears that in recent years, Brazil has succeeded in confirming the most hopeful expectations of the ‘Transformative Politics’ framework outlined in the introduction of this volume. That is, it appears to be, in the terminology of Stokke and Törnquist, a case where the existence of ‘political agendas, strategies and alliances to introduce effective democratic institutions’ conspire to ‘promote substantive political equality and popular capacity to use democratic institutions to pursue their interests and aspirations’. One way perhaps to understand the story is as the gradual cumulative victories of movements over three decades in alliance with actors within political parties, together creating new democratic institutions at increasingly higher levels of government. Each step, in principle, helping to make the next step possible, right up to national level, which in partnership with civil society actors, aims at reforms such as the universal provision of a welfare state while deepening democracy.

In this essay we propose a different interpretation. We focus on the first dimension of Transformative Politics, namely ‘the primacy of politics via popular organization and public institutions’ and retell the story of the rise of the Workers Party from the point of view of the evolution of participatory institutions over the last three decades. Our argument is that attentiveness to the instruments of political participation, the quality of participation within them, and their relationship to organized movements of civil society show that there was a pronounced shift between an earlier stage and the later years. During the earlier years, social movements and unions found expression within the party and party agendas were often translations of social movement agendas; participatory democratic institutions organized around the principles of ‘sharing power’ were crucial elements in rendering this alliance viable. In recent years, however, as the party rose to national power, social movements and unions have come to occupy a subordinate role. They provide political support to the national administration’s mandates. Participatory institutions are today organized around ‘listening and dialogue’ and play perhaps an important legitimating role. But many issues of crucial importance to social movements, such as the direction of the country’s economic development and national budgeting priorities, are today outside of their purview.

Our point of departure is that the participatory politics of the Lula administrations have accommodated contradictory logics and forces. We suggest that they can only be understood by applying a historical-dynamic approach. The key analytical issues are how the expectations for radical transformation are embedded in specific institutionalized experiences as well as in the social movements, and how these expectations clash with the logics of (state) power which seeks to bureaucratize, dilute and/or instrumentalize participation. After discussing the historical conditions that gave birth to the Workers Party, social movements and unions as particularly democratizing forces, we discuss local power experiments (in particular Porto Alegre in the 1990s) that were institutionalized and rolled out across the country. This sets the stage for the expectations of a Lula victory in 2002. We then turn out attention to participatory spaces and the relationship between the national administration and organized movements. Our argument is that very many participatory spaces were indeed created under the Lula administration, organized as logical extensions of previous local experiments, but with a different logic. Instead of ‘sharing power’ and ‘empowerment’, the emphasis since 2003 has been on ‘listening’ and ‘dialogue’. Governance, which had earlier been accomplished through participation, was now based on compromises within the National Congress. We suggest, by way of conclusion, that the framework of Transformative Politics needs to address three particular dimensions in order to fully describe the Brazilian case: first, the issue of institutions and their impact; second, the issue of active v. passive conceptions of democracy; and third, the issue of scale and scalability of politics.

[A] The participatory legacy

If what drew attention to the PT in the 1980s was its novelty as an internally democratic leftist party that did not seek to dominate social movements (Meneguello 1989), what caught attention in the 1990s was its model of local governance (Keck 1992). By the late 1990s, the PT had governed over two hundred municipalities of all sizes. Often, these were successful attempts at governing with the real input of civil society, transforming the creativity of popular voices into a real, legitimate mandate. While among the cases documented by scholars there are failures, in many cases there is a transformation of local politics with the inclusion of many previously excluded voices in running the government. In addition to participatory budgets, PT administrations gained extensive experience working with councils on a diversity of public policies including those relating to women, Afro-Brazilians, youth and many others. By the end of the 1990s, the phrase ‘the PT way of governing’ (o modo petista de governar) became a trademark. It was synonymous with participation, transparency and good governance.

Since its founding in 1980 by union leaders, the PT’s ideology has embraced sometimes contradictory elements such as workerism and class-consciousness, a participatory democratic ethos, a commitment to social movement autonomy and a desire to govern by these principles. Indeed the PT has been referred to as a social movement party. Since its inception, it has had a close relationship with popular movements, unions, human rights groups, the progressive church and others.

When in power, the main problem that the PT faced was negotiating the political demands of the party’s base in a way that did not jeopardize the party’s ability to govern. One of the recurring problems of many PT administrations, particularly where local movements and public sector unions comprising the PT’s base were strong, centred around the inability of administrations to distance themselves from demands that could not possibly be met given current finances. Early attempts at governing municipalities in the 1980s and in the early 1990s thus often ended in a knot of endemic problems: splits between party factions; conflicts with organized bases of support such as municipal workers; the inability to govern with a minority in the local legislative; and the distrust of segments of the population who only experienced the resulting failures of governance such as week-long bus strikes. Some administrators, such as in the city of Santos or in Porto Alegre, nevertheless successfully implemented participatory programmes as a strategy for the negotiation of demands and the legitimation of platforms with the population at large in ways that helped avert some of the conflicts. In best case scenarios, participation provided solutions to some of these dilemmas of ‘radicals in power’ (Baiocchi 2003).

Successful programmes such as the Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre drew broad sectors beyond organized social movements as empowered decision-makers into matters of governance, in this case deciding specifically on new forms of local investment. While the decentralization of government has not done much to improve overall regional inequalities, it has nonetheless created institutional spaces for local actors to carry out innovative reforms in governance. It created settings where claimants themselves could be part of the negotiation of demands; in terms of governance, this generated legitimacy for strategies of governance, if not improving governance directly (Baiocchi 2005). The quality of this form of radical democracy, which turns both social movement participants as well as unorganized citizens into discussants, is dependent on the autonomy of these participatory spaces from party control. The degree of autonomy is evident in Participatory Budget meetings where PT members do not participate as ‘party members’ but rather as independent citizens or as members of civil society organizations with rules strictly prohibiting the meetings from being turned into partisan spaces (Baiocchi 2004: 211). By resolving conflict in participatory settings, administrators have found ways to generate consensus around redistributive platforms, and have helped prevent conflict with the administration. In time, Participatory Budgeting became a signature of the ‘PT way’.

Although the PT was the first political party in Brazil to implement participatory policies in a systematic way (and to embody participatory principles in its programme), it is important to mention that this participatory legacy in Brazil has always been broader than the party. Since the 1980s, urban social movements actively participating in the pro-democracy movement made demands for more accountable forms of city governance, calling for decentralization and citizen participation in the running of city affairs as a basic right of citizenship (Moura 1989). Activists linked to liberation theology, popular education groups inspired by the theory of critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire (1970) and NGOs of various stripes all advocated participation. These were sometimes inspired by and sometimes reinforced the experiences of left parties, particularly the PT. These spaces of overlap between parties and meetings produced a fertile breeding ground for ideas that served to spread participatory democracy. For example, the participatory paradigm was already present in the constitutional process, in caravans and popular initiatives, laws, and also embodied in the democratic 1988 Constitution itself.

This participatory spirit marked social policies that followed, and legitimized old struggles such as the health movement. One of the first major policy reforms after the founding of the constitution was the creation of the Unified Health System (SUS) in 1990. It established municipal health councils that were in principle supposed to exert social control over the budget and define public policies. It was documented at the time that the supporters of this idea identified themselves as members of the ‘the party of SUS’ (Escorel 1998). Many public policies followed that were also similarly decentralized and had a strong participatory mandate. In the early 1990s for example, the Child and Adolescent Services adopted a council structure, as did the National System of Social Assistance. For many observers and activists from abroad, Brazil became a privileged locus of studies on innovation in and inspiration for democratic politics and citizen participation in public policy (Fung and Wright 2003; Dagnino 2004; Dagnino et al. 2006).

[A] The 2002 prospects

It is not surprising, then, that the PT’s first national victory in October 2002 raised expectations about popular participation in government. The idea of participatory governance was enshrined at the 1999 party congress in the ‘Program for a Democratic Revolution’ (PT 1999). This programme lays out the foundations for an eventual PT national administration. The Democratic Revolution under a PT presidency would mark the beginning of a long transformation of deepening economic and social democracy, extending human rights and citizenship to the country’s majority, reforming institutions of representation and increasing democratic and direct control over the state. While the party did not want to exist as a perpetual party in opposition, it understood that ‘it is not enough to arrive at the government to change the society. It is necessary also to change the society to arrive at the government’. The Democratic Revolution is viewed as a long process, but not one that is inevitable. It involves the reorganization of society, politics and the economy with a new hierarchy of values based on equality, freedom and solidarity. Education, health, literacy, welfare and economic well-being are all central to the democratic thesis.

The programme reiterated the PT’s unique strategy of not only participating in municipal and state governments and the parliament, but of combining this with different social struggles using strategies as broad as land occupation, strikes, and other mass mobilizations. It also stressed the necessity of extending party affiliations in order to make the integration of new activists into the party easier, as well as continuing dialogue with academics, artists, intellectuals, professionals and social movements. A centrepiece of the programme was extending the experience of local level administrations to national government.

And while there were serious calls and discussions around a Federal Participatory Budget in the months leading to Lula’s election, by August 2002 the authors of the government plan announced that the PT would be unable to implement this initiative, citing practical difficulties. The principle of Participatory Budgeting would be translated, according to finance-minister-in-waiting, Antonio Palocci, at the federal level as ‘forums for debate’ (Folha de São Paulo 2002). Nevertheless, Federal Participatory Budgeting remained part of the 90-page government plan issued by the PT, even though it was limited to one sentence recommending its adoption.

[A] Participatory institutions in the Lula administration (2003-2010)

According to the slogan, Brazil under Lula was supposed to be ‘a country for all’ and as such, the administration created a large number of participatory spaces. It created or revived national councils on a variety of issues and instituted ‘national conferences’ in the form of thematic meetings throughout the country, with local delegates attending national meetings. There are three noteworthy aspects of this national participatory policy. First, the uncoordinated nature of these participatory spaces with their constitution and composition often linked to particular ministries and related movements (the ministries themselves having been doled out to particular factions and political parties as part of the PT’s political pact with the governing coalition). Second, disappointment on the part of civil society and progressive sectors of unions and political parties with these spaces over the lack of effective decision-making power over important policies; and third, the organizing logic of ‘dialogue and listening’ characterizes these spaces much more than the previous logic of empowerment and power-sharing.

[B] Broad-based participation

Perhaps the most striking feature of participatory policies under Lula is their scope. At national level, the emblematic and most developed example is the health sector, where the participatory spaces are federally organized. There is one national council, 27 state councils and more than 5000 municipal councils in the health sector, and every four years there are ‘health conferences’ held throughout the country leading to a national meeting. By 2010, one could identify 68 institutions that might be considered national councils, more than a third of which were created under President Lula. The only other time in Brazilian history that so many councils were created was in the period immediately after the ratification of the 1988 Constitution.

One telling example from the Lula is that of the Ministry of Cities, headed in its first two years by Olívio Dutra, the PT’s first mayor in Porto Alegre (1989-92) and then its first governor in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (1999-2003). The ministry implemented the City Statute having been adopted by Congress in 2001 as a result of the civil society movement for urban reform. This new policy ‘sector’ is actually composed of multiple sectors with a mandate to carry out transformative reforms connected with social housing (habitação popular), urban dwellers’ land rights, installation of adequate sanitation infrastructure (water, sewage and drainage) and urban collective transport systems. In addition to social movements, participants in these sectors include business associations, scholars, NGOs, and municipal governments. More importantly, the sector has adopted a governance system that is participatory and multi-layered at the same time. Every two or three years, deliberative ‘city conferences’ are held that are open to all civil society associations active in the city. These elect delegates to a state conference of the cities, which in turn sets up a permanent state council of the cities and appoints delegates to the federal conference of the cities and members of the federal council of the cities. As part of the administration’s policy of broad congressional coalitions, however, the Ministry of Cities, came to be run by the conservative ‘Progressive Party’ (PP) in 2005 as part of a political compromise, a move that was seen by many observers as a step backwards.

Data on national conferences are even more surprising. Seventy-two such national conferences were held during Lula’s two terms in office in comparison to the 22 held under President Cardoso’s administration from 1995 to 2002 (SGP 2011). The conferences held under Lula’s administration dealt with 40 different themes, 28 of which were discussed for the first time. According to the available data, the conferences have mobilized 5.6 million participants (2.2 million of which attended conferences specifically dealing with children and youth issues), passing some 14,000 resolutions. That said, the number of people involved in each conference has varied as has the degree of society’s involvement in defining the resulting policies. For example, the First National Conference on Sports in 2006 did not reflect high levels of collective action. It involved 42,000 people in 180 municipal, 140 regional and 26 state conferences. In contrast, the First Conference on Racial Equality mobilized existing social movements and organizations and counted twice as many individual participants. It may be that the discussion of guidelines and national action takes place at the stage of local-regional preparations, as was the case of the National Environment Policy. Or it may be at the conference itself that such space is provided. The National Plan for Culture, for example, was debated in the first conference in 2005, and led to the creation and maintenance of so-called Pontos de Cultura, a network of public spaces for production, diffusion and capacity 650 of which active by 2009.

Looking at the composition of these conferences and who they mobilize, the picture is revealing. Based on the official data of the General Secretariat for Participation (SGP 2010), approximately 70 per cent of participants came from civil society and 30 per cent were members of government (national, state and municipal). But once we disaggregate ‘civil society’, we see that only 34 per cent of representatives are from social movements, 21 per cent represent business interests, and 15 per cent come from the unions. The high number of business interests is telling, as part of the argument for the creation of these spaces is that they provide opportunities for those who are under-represented politically. Also represented, although to a lesser extent, are religious organizations, academia, professional associations, representatives of state and municipal councils.

[B] Lack of decision-making power

One of the common refrains widely reported in the literature, is that social movement activists have complained of a lack of effective decision-making power in participatory spaces. That is, time and again, conference resolutions that go directly against government policy or powerful economic interests do not get adopted as policy. Moreover, pillars of the administration such as the Bolsa Família (the income transfer programme), and PAC (the anti-crisis economic measures of 2008) did not go through participatory spaces and ignored more progressive alternatives. In fact, (as has been argued by a former head of the Ministry of Cities), the participatory spaces in Brazil do not discuss structural issues (such as transfers of funds to the financial sphere through the payment of interest on public debt, or decrease in social policy) by design (Maricato 2011).

The participatory processes on economic issues are telling. Some well publicized efforts, including in the establishment of the Council of Economic and Social Development (CDES) and a consultative process on the national multiyear plan (PPA), drew on veteran local PT administrators with participatory experience in prominent positions. These and other efforts, however, have been marred by administrative inconsistency, lack of clarity regarding the role of popular input, and the relegation of the final decision-making to the administration itself.

The CDES was set up to create a state-civil society dialogue aimed at fostering a ‘new social contract’ (Genro 2004). Roughly modelled on similar national councils in social-democratic countries, [2] the CDES includes representatives from government, business, trade unions and civil society in addition to the presence of twelve ministers. Headed in its first year by Participatory Budget architect from Porto Alegre, Tarso Genro, the CDES was heralded as an ‘important instrument’ for making debate surrounding policy questions more democratic. Unlike instruments such as the Participatory Budget, however, the CDES is not vested with decision-making powers and participation in it is limited to a few civil society representatives. It has also been criticized for allowing little room for participant-initiated agenda items (Genro 2004). In addition to allowing the administration to articulate a coalition to support its structural reforms, the CDES has accomplished little. For example, after a series of meetings in 2003 on macro-economic policy, the council proposed reducing interest rates and increasing public investment.

Similarly, the PPA held for some the prospect of creating a participatory process on national investment priorities. A process of consultation with civil society took place in all 27 states, and culminated with a proposed PPA in August of 2003. The PPA was extensively modified by both the executive and by Congress, and resulted in a final document that ultimately privileged certain exporting industries such as mining and agro-industry, and included dam construction projects that were heavily criticized by civil society observers.

Indeed in 2006, the executive branch submitted a budget to Congress that was unrelated even to the modified PPA. Like the CDES, the PPA process invoked the language of participation, but had an unclear mandate as far as linking that participation to decision-making. And also like the CDES, it became a process that included consultation but mystified ‘technical decisions’ such as interest rates or budgetary priorities as the exclusive realm of government technocrats.

[B] Listening and buffering conflict

If earlier experiments expounded ‘power sharing’, ‘co-management’ and ‘people power’, the new predominant terms became ‘dialogue’ and ‘listening’. This semantic change is significant.

One important factor that made the Lula administration different from anything else in the Brazilian past was the recruitment of militant social movement activists into government. New departments and ministries were created (including for women, human rights, racial equality, agrarian development, solidarity economy and cities). This meant that people from social movements (or very close to them ideologically) stepped into administrative positions within in the federal government. In a sample survey on the profile of politically appointed employees at the federal level under Lula, 45 per cent were unionized and 46 per cent participated in social movements, figures well above the national average of associational patterns (Araújo 2007: 44).

The government has also redefined the role of the Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, vesting in it the lead role of ‘articulator of participatory politics’. As Costa Sobrinho (2010) has pointed out, however, rather than focus on implementing this role, the Secretariat has prioritized buffering conflicts. Moreover, the group within the secretariat responsible for participatory politics did not see their role prioritized in terms of resources, people or strategies. In examining the overall functioning of the Secretariat, Costa Sobrinho also points out that more energy was spent on talking to those strategic actors who were resisting government proposals as there was an assumption within the Secretariat that all conflicts are negotiable, and that a win-win solution is always attainable.

The number of public hearings held during the period is also noteworthy. From 2003 to 2010, 515 hearings with civil society were organized by the General Secretariat of the President. Of these, 326 were with business and employers. In other words, listening to social movements was not a priority, either because they were in direct dialogue with other ministries, because they were considered less strategic or because they were exerting less pressure on the government.

We conclude this section by noting that in the Brazilian literature, although impressive in their numbers, these participatory spaces are not considered sufficient to meet the challenges of popular participation (Dagnino 2004; Tatagiba 2004; Cortes and Gugliano 2010). Recent studies analyse them, on the one hand, in terms of the redistribution of political power, and on the other, as existing forms of collective action and modes of interaction between civil society and state. The dominance of health workers to the detriment of users in the National Health Council is one of the findings of the current research (Cortes et al. 2009). There is a feeling of general disappointment on the part of organized civil society, which points to the lack of effective decision-making power linked to these spaces.

[A] Relationships with social movements

Since its inception, the PT has had close relationships with a wide range of social movements, having been described as ‘a political expression of popular and grassroots objectives without attempting to control or co-opt its own basis of support’ (Guidry 2003: 103). Brazil’s largest social movement, the MST (Movimento Sem Terra, or Landless Movement) and the main labour federation, the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores), have traditionally been closely linked with the party, even if formally autonomous. There has usually been a considerable overlap in membership between them, particularly the CUT, and the PT. Notable activists associated with these movements have risen to political prominence within the party, sometimes winning seats in state or federal legislative bodies. And perhaps most importantly of all, the party has until recent years always defended the claims of these movements in institutional settings. Throughout the 1990s, the PT was the party in Congress associated with land reform proposals or the fight for a higher minimum wage.

The Lula administration’s relationship with social movements in general, and with the MST and labour unions in particular, displays specific characteristics. For the CUT, one of the first issues they faced was the controversial pension reforms proposed by the Lula administration. As a way of reducing social spending, the administration reduced the pensions of several categories of civil servants, which occasioned large protests in Brasilia mid-2003. Subsequently, conflicts in Congress over the readjustment of the minimum wage led to the curious situation in which the PT government defended a lower readjustment than right-wing parties wanted. Early on, movements were disappointed but hopeful that mobilization would yield positive responses from the government. João Machado, a member of the leftist tendency within the PT called Democracia Socialista, commented that by the end of the first year, the Lula administration had forced social movements to change practices, step-up opposition, actively ‘pressuring the government and opposing its choices’ (Machado 2005). The formation of the Coordination of Social Movements (CMS) by the MST, CUT and other groups was, according to Machado, a response to this new challenge and the belief that ‘a broad and unified popular mobilization alone can guarantee the conquests of the toiling classes’. Lula’s second and third years in office saw an increase in confrontation, which included strikes and marches in Brasilia, but without the CUT or the MST breaking ties with the PT (Machado 2005). Even on the MST’s biggest ever march, organized to push for agrarian reform in 2005, MST leader João Pedro Stédile made it clear that ‘[w]e know that in order to achieve agrarian reform, it is not a question of political will or the personal commitment of the president’. ‘[T]he march is not against the Brazilian government, but for agrarian reform and a change in economic policy’ (cited in Fuentes 2005). Dissension within the PT also grew, leading to a few expulsions and the departure of several prominent petistas, who went on to form a breakaway party, the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL, Partido Socialismo e Liberdade).

The CUT supported Lula’s re-election campaign in 1986, though not without internal conflict. Frei Betto, a prominent liberation theologian, called on the support of progressive Christians in terms that seemed to capture the mood of activists in Brazil at the time when, speaking about Lula, he argued that ‘he still owes us a lot’, but ‘[we] are better with him than without him’. The MST, however, did not endorse Lula until the second round (Marques and Nakatani 2007). The MST’s change in attitude towards the PT is evident in its statement on PT’s performance:

Our analysis of the Lula government’s policies shows that Lula favored the agribusiness sector much more than family-owned agriculture. The general guidelines of his economic and agricultural policy have always given priority to the export-oriented agribusiness. And agrarian reform, the most important measure to alter the status quo, is in fact paralyzed or restricted to a few cases of token social compensation.’

(Stédile 2007)

For many previously ardent PT supporters this was a vote ‘for maintaining living conditions, not for Lula’s political project’, (post-election CMS statement as cited in Wainwright, 2007). While disappointed with the progress of agrarian reform, Stédile claims that, ‘[o]nly the strength of millions of mobilized, politically aware Brazilians will help the government to face those [powerful] interests and change the current economic model. We are hopeful.’ (Stédile 2007).

The Council on Land Reform was established under Lula, and there has been significant participation. However, because the ministry in charge of land reform is itself underfunded and thus unable to carry out its own policy directives, participatory democracy in this context has been ‘by default’ rather than by design, in the words of Wolford (2010). The MST participates in the forums by regularly transgressing its boundaries as a way to make claims beyond what facilitators can provide. The Council on Land Reform serves the MST as long as it can disrupt it and make specific gains, but the analysis is that it has done very little to actually advance land reform (Stédile 2007; Wolford 2010).

The National Labor Forum, established by the government in 2004 was imagined as a site to:

[…] bring together workers, owners, and the government itself to create a consensus around [...] democratization of labor relations by adopting a labor relations model based on liberty and autonomy; update labor legislation and make it more compatible with the new exigencies of national development [...] to modernize the institutions of labor regulation.’

(Molin 2011: 194).

First there were state-level conferences where union reform was debated, which attracted a total of 10,000 participants. In addition, conferences, meetings, workshops, and preparatory debates brought together another 20,000 participants. By 2004, representatives of the three main labour federations were present at the national-level forum, but despite efforts at consensus-building, the administration’s proposals were seen as too pro-market by some.

Divisions over whether to support the administration or break with it were largely behind schisms that led to the formation of four new national labour federations that split from the old ones. Nevertheless, a constitutional amendment (PEC 369/05) was sent to Congress with a ‘weak consensus’ and largely with the government’s wording and it was through CUT’s influence that the constitutional amendment was passed. CUT in particular, which had long defended the freedom to organize and pluralism in labour relations (in line with the ILO’s position), backed the government’s proposal. Other critiques by progressives within the labour movement were that the constitutional amendment contained ‘liberal and pro-business bias’ in its emphasis on private arbitration and labour flexibilization.

CUT’s leadership justified their position as a defence of ‘possible labour reform’ (Druck 2006). Even sympathetic observers noted that, ‘[t]he unions filled an important position in providing the administration with political support, although their role in the exercise of power was a subordinate one’ (Boito and Marcelino 2011). This led to new cycles of strikes. Between 2004 and 2009 there was an average of 360 strikes a year involving 1.5 million strikers (Boito and Marcelino 2011). Baltar et al. point to ‘the minimum wage revaluation policy, social security, income transfers and improved wage bargaining’, as well as to ‘increase in protected work, mainly on open-ended contracts, the raising of the minimum wage, the recovery of the average wage, a drop in open unemployment and curbs on unprotected subcontracting’ (2010: 34). As political scientist Wendy Hunter noted recently, radical factions have found it difficult to mobilize critical opposition against a president who ‘presided over a set of policies that yielded growth, kept inflation at bay, diminished poverty and appeared to make some inroads into Brazil’s long-standing socio-economic inequality.’ (Hunter 2010: 176).

[A] From Petismo to Lulismo

Two types of transformative politics have evolved around the PT in two different periods, each with distinct political agendas, overall strategies and alliances. The terms

Petismo and Lulismo are used in the Brazilian debate on the PT’s development (Singer 2009; Rennó and Cabello 2010; Ricci 2010). We are also of the opinion that these concepts describe the two types of politics well.

Petismo refers to the ‘PT way of governing’ (o modo petista de governar) as it was perceived by the public in the 1990s: direct democracy and ample popular participation; crusade-like campaigns against corruption, patrimonialism and clientelism in the municipal and state institutions; and socio-economic redistribution through improved public infrastructure and services benefitting the subaltern classes, in contrast to the privatization and austerity policies offered by the neoliberal right-wing. The PT’s overall strategy was to transform Brazil to a socialist country by democratic means. The alliances promoted were with other left-oriented parties and groups, the trade union movement and the new social movements connected to a wide range of struggles concerned with issues such as decent housing, land, environment, Afro-Brazilian culture and minority rights (including LGBT and indigenous peoples). While the petista way of governing managed to bring some unity and coherence to the diversity of agendas and interests — and in many states and regions it managed to become an ideologically hegemonic block — it never managed to attract a stable majority among the electorate, not even in strongholds such as the state of Rio Grande do Sul and the city of Porto Alegre. At national level, Lula suffered repeated defeats in the presidential elections, and the PT was isolated in the National Congress as well as in the assemblies of almost all the federated states. Local radical experiments in municipalities frequently experienced discontinuation because they lacked financial and technical support from state and federal authorities. The participatory and local way of transforming Brazil was simply not able to sustain itself.

In a gradual learning or ‘revisionist’ process that began in the mid-1990s, and which culminated just before the second round of the presidential elections in 2002 with its ‘Letter to the Brazilian People’, the party leadership initiated a profound change in the PT’s agenda, strategy and alliance building. The overall aim was to win the presidential elections. The broadest possible centre-left electoral alliance was pursued. It was more important to expose the charismatic personality of the candidate, Lula, than to educate the electorate about its political programme. More and more power was concentrated in the hands of the party leadership, dominated by Lula’s increasingly pragmatic trade union friends. The leadership listened more to its carefully composed advisory teams of economists and marketing experts than to its own rank and file. The political programme was de-radicalized. Conservative or even neoliberal macro-economic policies were combined with certain social and redistributive measures. Due to its pragmatic concern for maintaining allies on the centre-right and, increasingly, in order to do well in the next elections, the party become more tolerant of corruption. It was even caught committing the biggest public-contract-for-money-to-the-election-fund crime in Brazil’s political history, the so-called mensalão (‘big monthly payment’), in 2005. Obviously, a new type of politics had emerged that clearly overshadowed the old Petismo.

[B] Achievements and limits of Lulismo

Lulismo refers to the post-2002 politics centred on President Lula. To what extent has Lulismo enhanced transformative politics? The main difference between Lulismo and Petismo is that Lulismo has replaced local participatory political institutions with a number of nationwide economic institutions, namely federal financial transfers, the household and the market place as the main arenas for change. Three sets of policies have spurred these changes. First, the government has skilfully managed stable growth in the national economy and in private sector employment combined with firmer interventions in the labour market, including a sharp increase in the minimum wage. Typically, when the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, the Lula administration took bold anti-recession measures through a federal ‘programme for accelerated growth’ (PAC). Second, it has designed programmes for conditional cash transfers such as the Bolsa Família programme, targeting the poorest families of the country. Third, its financial austerity policy leading to huge primary superávit (surplus) on the federal budget has served to service debts to foreign and domestic financial institutions. Consequently, Brazilian banks have had the capacity to make generous consumer credit provisions. Even the poorest sections of society have had access to credit cards and other banking services.

These policies have yielded important socio-economic results. In 2011, unemployment reached a historical low of six per cent. The number of workers with a signed work contract, and thus able to enjoy the rights and benefits of formal employment, has increased from 54.8 per cent in 2000 to 65.2 per cent in 2010. Furthermore, the number of families living in extreme poverty has been halved and 28 million people were been pulled out of poverty from 2003-10. Income inequality has been reduced. The 2010 national census shows that from 2000, the poorest 50 per cent of people in Brazil increased their income by 68 per cent, while the richest ten per cent only increased theirs by ten per cent (Carta Capital 2012a). This has enhanced massive upward social mobility. Thirty-eight million people have moved into income category C (‘lower middle class’) of the national statistics, and approximately half of the population belongs to this category. Social strata that have historically been excluded from the mass consumption society of modern capitalism have become economically ‘empowered’. It is this ‘new middle class’ that forms the main social base of Lulismo (Ricci 2010). However, Lulismo’s electorate is marked by a pragmatism quite similar to that of the Lulista state managers. Electoral support for Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff is neither based on strong political or ideological preferences, nor on strong identification with the personality of Lula. Instead, retrospective evaluation of the government’s performance seems to determine the vote (Rennó and Cabello 2010).

It is therefore not certain that Lulismo is capable of building a social-ideological basis for an enduring political project, for a ‘Brazilian social democracy’ for example. Although classical social democracy can be characterized by pragmatism and multi-class support, some core elements of stable working class support and left-oriented ideology have also been prerequisites. Technocratic excellence in state and public policy management is not sufficient. Missing from Lula’s administration has been a more central role for movements and unions through which to define the political character of the regime in an active way.

Additionally, it is evident that there is a continuation in state policy from Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002) to Lula and Dilma. If using the typology developed by Gøsta Esping-Anderson (1990), one can identify a pattern that leads Brazil towards a welfare capitalist society closer to the South European or Christian Democratic version (which since 2008 has been in deep crisis) rather than the Scandinavian or Social Democratic type.

First, the Brazilian welfare system is based on conditional cash transfers while the social democratic model prioritizes the expansion of public service provision in order to ensure universal and equal access to education and health. In Brazil, federal public spending was 18.9 percent of the GDP in 2001. This increased to 21.6 per cent in 2010. Seventy per cent of this increase was spent on cash transfers to families, which rose to 10.53 per cent of the GDP in 2010, up from 8.64 per cent in 2001. However, federal investment in infrastructure only increased from 0.43 per cent to 0.77 per cent (IPEA 2011). In 2009, total public investment by the three spheres of government (federal, state and municipal), was only 2.9 per cent of the GNP. This is extremely low in an international-comparative perspective. The level of public investment in Brazil from 2000-10 was only one third of the average spending of 25 middle income countries with a GDP per capita similar to Brazil (Afonso 2011). But even more important, federal government consumption in terms of salaries and purchases fell from 4.33 to 3.99 per cent of the GDP (IPEA 2011). This contributes to a very low share of the labour force working in the public sector, only 8.4 per cent, with a severe impact on the labour intensive service sectors such as health and education. While a large majority of the population depends entirely on the government for the provision of education and health services, the corresponding public sectors are underfunded and of questionable quality. The private market for health services has a larger share of the GDP than the public sector, and the private sector has increased to the detriment of the public institutions in the education sector too (Carta Capital 2012b).

Secondly, the Brazilian cash transfer system is highly conditional and ‘targets’ the poorest types of households/families based on the paternalistic will of the rulers, while a social democracy tends to emphasize unconditional support to the individual rather than the family, based on universal citizen rights or rights acquired from (universal) participation in the labour market.

[A] Concluding remarks

In Brazil, the 1988 Constitution and local PT administrations have secured the prevalence of participatory spaces in the governance system. What was added by Lula’s ‘pink’ government in 2003 was an emphasis on sector policy making on a federal scale. Deliberative processes around local, regional and national conferences with ample social participation flourished. These conferences were accompanied by the establishment of councils with civil society representation to oversee the implementation of the formulated policies. While there was considerable civil society influence on policy formulation within the sectoral ministries, there were a number of setbacks when sectoral ministries needed to bargain with other ministries and the national assembly on issues regarding legislation and resource allocation. Civil society organizations have been proactive and influential in the deliberative processes, but in some policy areas influence has been obtained at the expense of autonomy and militancy.

At national level, the PT-led government has adopted participatory practices, but these were much less radical than those experienced at the local level. The paradox is that many of the policies considered successful by the Lula government have not even been discussed in the national participatory spaces. The Lula government did not have a clear strategy for participatory democracy, and perhaps more important, it has not enhanced any discussion of passive v. active conceptions of society participation in government. Pragmatic Lulismo, oriented towards piecemeal social and economic changes, has replaced the PT’s previous emphasis on empowered participation and Democratic Revolution. This is even more clearly demonstrated by the administration of Lula’s successor, Dilma Roussef. The new middle class that has resulted from Lulismo is linked to improved access to private goods supplied by the market, not to the expansion of universal and high quality services provided by the public sector. Private consumption rather than public participation underpins the logic of the new social forces that could push the PT and Brazilian politics into a more liberal-conservative direction. The former ‘social movement party’ (PT) has become a government and election machine, seeking votes from social strata that are increasingly associated more with evangelical churches than with trade union militancy and radical social movements.

Tentatively, how can this transformation of the Workers Party and its ideology, government strategy and main policies be explained? On a final note, we would like to present some hypotheses that in combination may solve the puzzle of transformative politics in Brazil.

First, there have been important internal changes in the PT itself (Amaral 2010). With Lula’s presidential victory, membership of the PT increased from 400,000 to 800,000, many from the new middle class. Ideologically, the party moved further to the right, some of the more radical members were expelled, while others left the party in protest at the unfolding scandals and founded the Party for Socialism and Liberty (PSOL). Another important change was the introduction of the PED, direct elections for the presidency of the party, which caused internal alliances to form. This new form of internal democracy resulted in the local party faithful (the nuclei) — which were already weakened as a collective form of internal organization within the party — losing power to internal disputes and negotiation between different tendencies controlled by a handful leaders.

Second, the demands of the civil society movements have been partially satisfied. Lula’s government was much more open to social movements than previous governments. Although few concrete policies were introduced, the ‘ritual’ of going to Brasilia to attend meetings, councils and conferences has had a positive effect in comparison with the various forms of disqualification, if not repression, that they were subject to under previous presidents. There are new public themes and new government agendas that engage civil society organizations in a meaningful way. Although many of the militants are critical of much of what the government does, they stick with the PT and defend the government’s record in comparison with previous administrations. In addition, a large number of the otherwise critical civil society leaders have been recruited into the offices of the government.

Third, the power structures surrounding federal Lulismo are different from those feeding the PT’s participatory governance at the local level. It is a fact that ‘coalition presidentialism’, as identified out by Abranches (1988), remains strong at the federal level. Lula had no majority in the National Congress; his party won only 17 per cent of the deputies in Congress and the National Congress is not a City Council. The Congress has powers to render federal government unviable. Thus, instead of opting for participatory solutions to the problems and dilemmas of government, the administration combined horse trading and compromises in National Congress with diluted conceptions of participation. Furthermore, while progressive social movements have considerable influence in urban settings, they have much less power at national level, where politicians funded by agribusiness with rural and clientelist constituencies tend to be over-represented. This reminds us that the scaling up of participatory democracy is, as suggested by Leonardo Avritzer (2009), a true challenge.

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Wainwright, H. (2006) ‘The Brazil they want’ in The Guardian Unlimited (27 November 2006).

Wolford, W. (2010) ‘Participatory democracy by default: land reform, social movements and the

state in Brazil’ in Journal of Peasant Studies 37(1): 91-109.

Notes

* Please cite this paper as: Baiocchi, G., E. Braathen, and A. C. Teixeira. (2012) “Transformation Institutionalized? Making Sense of Participatory Democracy in the Lula Era.” In Stokke C. and O. Thornquist (eds), Democratization in the Global South: The Importance of Transformative Politics. London, UK: Palgrave McMillan.

[1] The authors acknowledge Monica Dowbor (CEBRAP, São Paulo), Felix Sanchez (PUC, São Paulo) and Sveinung Legard (AFI, Oslo) and their contributions to a project proposal on the Pink Tide and participatory spaces in Brazil, which has inspired parts of this essay.

[2] The minister for social and economic development, Tarso Genro, met the Norwegian minister for international development, Erik Solheim, in Brasilia in 2003 and initiated a bilateral programme to exchange experiences of ‘tri-partite cooperation’ between employers, trade unions and government.

Delegates from 53 countries will come together in Brasilia for the 2012 annual meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This will establish OGP as a 21 century international movement that uses the latest tools and technologies to help governments solve age-old problems and deliver tangible results for citizens.

Attending countries will announce their action plans to achieve greater openness in order to bring governments and citizens closer together, cultivate shared understanding and help solve practical problems. Over 400 delegates – including representatives from civil society organisations, businesses and governments – will gather for two days of inspiring discussion on the latest reforms, tools and innovations in the open government field. They will share experiences from their respective countries, providing real examples of how openness can save lives, drive economic growth and reduce widespread corruption around the world.

Confirmed high-level attendees for the event include Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UK Cabinet Minister Francis Maude and dozens of senior government ministers from around the world. Amongst a range of speakers are Ushahidi co-founder Juliana Rotich, Yemini anti-censorship activist Walid al-Saqaf and Indian education activist and TED-Fellow Gautam John.

Journalists wishing to cover the event should register for the meeting by completing the online registration form no later than Wednesday 11 April. Registration is free, although you will need to apply for a visa, which takes around a week to arrive. Brazilian regulations mean it is not possible to secure a visa upon arrival.

Media facilities, including a press centre and a press briefing room, will be available at the Ulysses Guimarães Convention Center. A communications team will also be on the ground to assist journalists and facilitate interviews.

Participants are responsible for making their own travel and hotel arrangements. Recommended hotels in Brasilia for attendees can be viewed here. A free shuttle bus service between the officially recommended hotels and the meeting venue will be available to participants. Transportation to and from Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek International Airport will not be provided, but taxicabs and rental cars are available at the airport.

For more information please call hanover Communications on 0044 207 400 4480, email ogp@hanovercomms.com or visit www.opengovpartnership.org.

Agenda

Registration

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Alessandra Cardoso

Alexandre Ciconello

Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC)

In recent years Brazil has established and expanded a development model in which income and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of political and economic elites with links to big agro-industrial and financial capital. One of the main foundations of this model is agrarian exploitation, especially the mono-cultivation of crops like soybean and sugar cane (for producing sugar and ethanol), which use genetically modified seeds and agro-toxic products purchased from transnational enterprises. The country is also implementing big infrastructure, energy and mining projects in the Amazon region. Another aspect of this macroeconomic model is high interest rates, and this is a problem for the Government because in the 2000 to 2007 period, for example, amortization and interest payments on the public debt came to around 430,000 million dollars, which was an average of 30% of the State budget per year.

This development model is predatory and unsustainable. Brazil is on the point of making big changes to its environmental protection legislation and it has already relaxed some regulations in the Forest Code.[1] These amendments are geared to protecting the private interests of rural landowners and the big estates, groups that are over-represented in Parliament because the political system is weighted in their favour.

The cornerstone of the Government’s current development policy, which is exactly in line with the strategies of transnational enterprises, is to exploit the Amazon basin and accumulate capital by implementing energy, mining and agro-industrial projects and paying for environmental services. In the period 2000 to 2010, exports from the states that make up Legal Amazonia[2] increased by 518% (from USD 5,000 million to 26,000 million),[3] which is a much higher growth rate than the 366% of the country’s exports as a whole.

In 2010 the state of Pará alone was responsible for 48% (USD 12,8 billion) of the value of exports from this region. In the export pattern, mineral products are by far the biggest item on the list followed by agricultural produce, particularly meat. In the case of Pará, exports by just three enterprises, Vale, Alunorte and Albrás (iron and aluminium) accounted for 78% of the total value sold abroad (USD 10 billion).

The apparent wealth now flowing from the Amazon area is going straight into the pockets of the transnational enterprises’ shareholders, and what is left behind is a legacy of inequality and unsustainability. The production of aluminium alone consumes nearly 6% of the electrical power generated in the whole country. According to the specialist Celio Bermann, “Aluminium is selling at a low price on the international market and it generates few jobs. Seventy times fewer workers are needed for this product than in the food and drink industry, for example, and forty times fewer than in the textile industry.”

The logic of regional integration

Another aspect of this extraction-for-export model is that the Government is allowing Brazilian and international companies to expand their operations in the Amazon basin. This is bringing about accelerating changes in the environment there and in how people live not just in the Brazilian part but in the pan-American Amazon as well. In a series of steps, the Federal Government has increased investment in logistics infrastructure including ports and land and waterborne transport systems. Most of these funds have gone to pay for big construction projects like the huge hydroelectric dams at Jirau, Santo Antônio and Belo Monte (in Brazil) and Inambari, Sumabeni, Paquitzapango and Urubamba (in Peru), and highways like the controversial Villa Tunari-San Ignacio de Moxos in Bolivia, which cuts right through indigenous peoples’ lands in the Isiboro Sécure National Park. These large scale works were carried out by Brazilian firms and financed with public money from the country’s National Economic and Social Development Bank.

The Government is also providing more tax and credit incentives to attract the private sector to the region, in particular with projects to generate and distribute electrical energy. This has opened up the Brazilian Amazon even more to public and private enterprise involving international as well as domestic firms, which is making this predatory model of natural resource exploitation even stronger.

Climate change and agriculture

Deforestation in the Amazon and the rearing of livestock are the two main causes of CO2 and CH4 gas emissions in Brazil (67% and 70% of total emissions, respectively).[4] There is a strong connection between logging (and burning off vegetation) and the fact that land in the area is concentrated in very few hands, and this is clearly connected to the dynamics of the expansion of agricultural land. This concentration of land ownership increases the risk that the country’s climate change policies will mainly benefit the big landowners because it is they that will receive the various kinds of subsidies, and rural communities and the indigenous population will find themselves more excluded than ever.

However, the Government has not taken any effective action that goes to the heart of the problem. What is needed is agrarian reform whereby a new model for the use of land and its resources can be implanted in the Amazon, based on the sustainable use of natural resources and respect for the traditional communities’ and indigenous people’s different ways of life. Bear in mind that these people have been living in harmony with their jungle environment for many centuries.

In a recent Social Watch study[5] a Basic Capabilities Index rating was calculated for the various states and municipalities in the Amazon taken separately, like the analysis for the country as a whole. This report confirmed that there is a vast gulf between the prosperous regions of Brazil and the poor ones, and the poorest of all are in the north of the country. At the bottom of the list for satisfying the population’s basic necessities we find the states of Pará, Acre and Amazonas. When we consider each indicator in isolation it emerges that inequality between the different regions is even worse in the sphere of education and Pará is in the worst situation of all.

Changes in the legal framework

There have been many attempts to make the prevailing legislation about the environment more flexible. The outstanding example of this campaign to relax environmental controls was when the Forest Code was weakened as a result of pressure from powerful interest groups representing the agriculture sector, whose overall strategy is to expand the agricultural frontier further and further into the Amazon. Rural landowners are pressing for a range of measures and one of these, which is contained in a bill currently before the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house in Parliament) is to reduce from 80% to 50% the proportion of land that all rural holdings in the Amazon must maintain as native forest.

The Government regards the Rio Madeira hydroelectric complex as a crucial component in its plans to meet the country’s energy needs as of 2010 - 2012, and it considers the generation and transmission of electric power as the cutting edge of the “advance of the electric frontier”. But in fact the increase of 6,600 MW of installed power (3,150 MW in Santo Antônio and 3,450 MW in Jirau) will be used to satisfy a demand the Government and the electric energy sector have themselves created artificially. The power generated at the Madeira complex will be supplied to the economic centre of the country, which is the south west, and a lot of investment will be required to build the 2,375 km of power lines and stations needed.

It has been estimated that USD 21 billion[6] will have to be invested in the group of projects connected to the Madeira complex, but up to now only USD 9,3 billion[7] has been approved. Of this total some 8,6 billion is from the BNDES, including direct and indirect operations, and another 700 million is from the Amazon Bank (BASA) using public finance from the Constitutional Fund of the North and the Amazon Development Fund.

Data from investment reports on the Amazon show that, because of the risks involved in the project, the construction work and the process of obtaining environmental authorisation, there is strong pressure from the public as well as the private sector (which includes banks, public bodies, companies, lobbyists, managers and agents) that nothing should be allowed to interfere with the timetable of the projected works, and nothing should delay the start. It is being argued that the economic feasibility of the Madeira complex depends on the hydroelectric system going into operation as soon as possible, and therefore the process to obtain authorisation is being rushed through without due consideration of the social and environmental impacts the mega-project will have in the area.

Workers on these projects are being exploited (the Ministry of Labour has detected more than 2,000 infractions), the murder rate in the area has gone up by 44%, the sexual exploitation of childs and adolescents increased 18% in the period 2008 to 2010, and the number of rapes went up by 208% in 2007 to 2010. These are the effects of the development model financed by public funds, and Brazil is exporting this same model to other South American countries and to African nations like Angola and Mozambique. It is a model that serves the elite but destroys the environment and violates human rights on a large scale.

[1] See: <www2.camara.gov.br/agencia/noticias/MEIO-AMBIENTE/197556-INFOGRAFICO:-VEJA-AS-MUDANCAS-NO-CODIGO-FLORESTAL-APROVADAS-NA-CAMARA.html>.

[2] The administrative area in Brazil made up of nine states in the Amazon basin.

[3] Source: Ministry of Industry and Trade. Nominal values, in dollars.

[4] Ecoportal.net. “Cultivando el desastre. Agricultura, ganadería intensiva y cambio climático”. <www.ecoportal.net/Temas_Especiales/Cambio_Climatico/Cultivando_el_desastre._Agricultura_ganaderia_intensiva_y_cambio_climatico>.

[5] Social Watch, “Basic Capabilities Index – BCI Brazil”. 2009.

[6] Bank Information Center “The Madeira River Hydroelectric Complex” <www.bicusa.org/es/Project.Financing.10138.aspx>.

[7] See: <wnotes.furnas.com.br/Administracao/fonline_Internet2.nsf/viewTodosDestaques/BC1A3E8903174A58832573AD003673C7?OpenDocument>.

To be sure, it’s a difficult period for imposing new environmental taxes, given ongoing financial sector power over public policy. With the entry of European Union airlines into the region’s fast-collapsing Emissions Trading Scheme, a group of non-European countries led by the Chinese is revolting against paying higher air fares to and from Europe.

There are bad and good arguments about carbon taxation here. According to a China Daily report, “Europe’s compulsory charges are set to have great impact on China’s aviation industry, and more profound influences may be found in the export sector. China therefore strongly opposes the EU’s unilateral action, viewing the EU’s move as violating the United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention and related regulations of the International Air Transport Association.”

The North’s opportunities for creeping carbon taxes will rise or fall in this battle, since finding agreement on the UN’s ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ (a good argument against imposing the tax on poorer countries) will be near impossible.

Would a carbon tax help slow climate change? It depends on how high it must be in order to generate conservation incentives. As HSBC bank economists argued in a report released on March 8, the recent Brent crude oil price rise to 96 euros/barrel had the equivalent disincentive to emit CO2 as would a carbon price of 153 euros/tonne (ten times higher than most current proposals). The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme now sells carbon at just 8 euros/tonne. As HSBC put it, “Even pricing carbon at its total estimated damage costs of 64 euros/tonne has equivalent economic impacts to an oil price rise of only $24/bbl.”

South Africa, an in-between country that hosted the UN’s climate summit (COP17) last December, should reasonably be expected to also hold a rigorous, far-ranging debate on transitioning to a low-carbon economy through strategic state investments and by imposing taxes on egregious polluters. East of Johannesburg, for instance, Sasol’s coal/gas-to-liquid petroleum refinery at Secunda is still the world’s worst CO2 emissions site, while the Eskom parastatal electricity supplier is building the world’s third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants at Medupi and Kusile, north and west of Joburg, also despoiling the region’s fragile water supplies.

Sadly though, we have not raised climate consciousness to the point that even a rudimentary conversation has begun on either command-and-control regulatory reductions or neoliberal ‘get the prices right’ strategies to internalize pollution externalities. We still have no clue as to how quickly carbon taxes would be passed to consumers, and whether price elasticities generate genuine behavioural change – or simply more class apartheid.

Worst of all, the state regulatory option appears off the table. Last month, President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s Budget Speech set the tone for renewed pro-corporate, high-carbon underdevelopment, announcing more than $100 billion worth of new infrastructure for minerals export, smelting and port expansion. Fracking shale-gas extraction also appears imminent, with Shell proposing to drill SA’s most water-sensitive area, the Karoo.

Evidently, SA civil society’s watchdogging of the triple-crisis nexus of finance, development and environment is not working. Moreover, last week, Parliament gave constituents a lesson on how not to discuss low-carbon development. Environment Committee chairperson Johnny de Lange is best known for two interventions in parliament, namely physically fighting an opposition party member and then admitting his ministry was losing SA’s infamous fight against crime. He proved unresilient when facing up to the world’s greatest challenge, throwing another blind punch at the environment and, according to Parliamentary Monitoring Group minutes, ignoring carbon taxation entirely: “De Lange commented that a large part of the population were poor and struggled to survive every day, and the last thing they would want to think about would be the future.”

In reality, grassroots movements – such as the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (disclosure: I’m a member) – make regular appeals to bring down Eskom’s extreme electricity prices as an urgent matter of daily life, for they have soared 150 percent since 2008 to pay for Medupi and Kusile (not to mention another $45 billion we expect to be billed for nuclear power plant construction in the coming 15 years). The way to do so is to halt new coal-fired powerplant construction and simultaneously, so as to avoid demand pressure, cut off the supply of the world’s cheapest electricity to BHP Billiton and Anglo American Corporation. The former guzzles more than 10 percent of SA electricity, providing just 1500 jobs in its main aluminum smelters.

Any such attack on these mega-corporations requires much more social and labour pressure, as well as a Just Transition alternative such as that recently developed by the ‘Million Climate Jobs’ campaign. It’s still very early in the process, and we can expect interminable delays from a Treasury reluctant to harm mining houses which are already lobbying vigorously against a tax.

In its most detailed document, Pretoria’s neoliberal Treasury officials claim, “a tax of $10/t CO2e, increasing to around $25/t CO2e would be both feasible and appropriate to achieve the desired behaviourial changes and emissions reduction targets.” Those emissions-cut ambitions (34 percent by 2020 from a very high 2009 ‘Growth Without Constraints’ scenario) are rather low, given our vast historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions: third highest per capita rate amongst the 20 major emitters.

If we want a genuine transformation of coal-addicted SA capitalism and for Climate Justice to prevail, it looks like we should put much more pressure on the state to rethink its absurd investment plans, to cut power to smelters while ensuring metal workers have jobs in renewables, and to roll out more Free Basic Electricity (beyond current token supplies of 50 kWh/household/month to ‘indigent’ families).

The only good news from South Africa is that with the world’s carbon markets in crisis, virtually no one is talking about emissions trading, unlike misguided politicians and policy wonks in Sacramento and Beijing.

In a paper published in World Economics in November 2010, “Green Stimulus, Green Recovery and Global Imbalances”, I argued that a global green recovery strategy of reducing carbon dependency and improving energy security may therefore help to control both the large current account deficits incurred by major oil-importing economies, such as the United States, and to reduce the trade surpluses of fossil fuel exporting economies. To the extent that global green recovery can help to reduce both the volume of fossil fuel imports into deficit economies such as the United States, and help stem the rise in world prices, then it may help alleviate global imbalances by curbing current account deficits and surpluses in oil exporting economies.

Although reducing the chronic trade surpluses in Asian and other emerging market economies is more complex, a necessary step will be to rebalance the pattern of economic growth in these economies to absorb more of their savings domestically. Expanding clean energy investments and adopting low carbon technologies could be key to this strategy. Policies to target and develop clean energy, sustainable transport and other green sectors as new growth poles in emerging market and developing economies should foster production of modern tradable goods and services to meet expanding domestic demand. Increased spending on safety net programs, education, sanitization and improved water supplies, health care and other government insurance mechanisms could help reduce the precautionary motives for saving by households in developing countries. The result would be a multiplier effect through lowering economy-wide excess saving while promoting higher household consumption.

It is important to get up to speed on how we got into the current economic crisis, but it is also essential that we do not rush into “business as usual” solutions that will fail to prevent future crises from occurring.

Various inter-governmental institutions responded with alacrity to the food price alarms. But the most powerful governments remain resistant to reform. In the final two months of last year alone, the G20, the WTO, and the Durban Climate Summit all turned big opportunities for action into small communiqués of little import.

In our new report, “Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007,” we find that the recent crisis has been a catalyst for important policy reforms, but governments have yet to address its underlying causes. By avoiding deeper structural reforms, the countries that dominate international agricultural markets leave the world at risk of another devastating food crisis.

The report, released by Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, is based on a comprehensive assessment of the policies and actions taken since 2007 by four international groups of actors: the UN, the G20, the World Bank and international donors.

There is a lot to applaud. The price crisis helped reverse a long-running decline in donor support for developing country agriculture. Much of the renewed support acknowledges the important role governments play in redressing the market failures that plague agriculture. Many developing country governments began to rethink the prevailing orthodoxy that they could import rather than invest in growing their own food. Many now emphasize domestic food production and the central role of small-scale farmers and women. We also saw encouraging attention to environmental issues, including climate change, in local and national plans.

But these reforms fall well short of what is needed to meet the world’s current and future food needs in a sustainable way. New international funding is welcome, but only $6.1 billion of the G8’s pledged $22 billion over three years represents new funding. Those pledges may not materialize and are anyway well short of what is needed. They also focus too narrowly on increasing production. This just encourages an expansion in industrial agriculture based on external inputs and ever-more expensive oil.

As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said when accepting his second 3-year mandate in 2011, “Too much attention has been paid to addressing the mismatch between supply and demand on the international markets – as if global hunger were the result of physical scarcity at the aggregate level – while comparatively too little attention has been paid both to the imbalances of power in the food systems and to the failure to support the ability of small- scale farmers to feed themselves, their families, and their communities.”

A structural shift in global markets is underway, caused by the deepening integration of agricultural, energy, and financial markets in a resource-constrained world made more vulnerable by climate change. Powerful multinational firms dominate these markets, and they slow, divert, or halt needed policy changes. This leaves international institutions promoting market-friendly reforms but resistant to imposing the regulations required to ensure well-functioning food and agricultural markets.

A paradigm shift in policies is needed as well. Governments need to discourage industrial bio-fuels expansion, regulate financial speculation, limit irresponsible land investments, encourage the use of buffer stocks to moderate price swings, reduce fossil fuel dependence, promote agro-ecological practices, and reform global trade rules.

Unfortunately, the institutions reviewed have shown little appetite for decisive action. The world’s most economically powerful nations asserted leadership on food security at the G20 then backed away from reform. This has had a chilling effect on reform efforts elsewhere in the international system, most notably at the UN.

Three areas in particular demand decisive action. First, biofuels expansion must be slowed. It is widely recognized as one of the key factors behind rising agricultural commodity prices, driven by government incentives in rich countries. Second, the high levels of price volatility must be addressed. Financial regulations must limit speculation, well beyond the weak measures already enacted. Firewalls need to be put back in place between traders’ risk hedging activities and speculative investment. Food reserves are also needed to cushion price swings. Third, land grabs by resource-constrained nations and speculative investors must be stopped. Such investments compromise the long-term food-producing potential of developing countries and violate the rights of those now on the land.

Fortunately, many developing countries are making changes. New agricultural development programs in Africa focus on small-scale farmers and women using low-input techniques and local resources while building climate adaptation. Bangladesh and other countries used food reserves to reduce the impact of the food price spikes, and food reserves are again on the agenda. As the African Union said in its rebuke to the G20’s June Agricultural Action Plan, “we must rely on our own production to meet our food needs. In fact, importation is not Africa’s goal.”

For a while, in the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of late 2008, the G20 came into its own. This group of (self-styled) leaders of the global economy, representing governments in nations contributing more than half of global GDP, came together in April 2009 to pledge a co-ordinated response to unprecedented global economic threats. This not only had a role in staving off immediate disaster through the implementation of broadly Keynesian responses, but also promise more for the future. This was not just vainglorious self-importance on the part of these governments. There was a genuine absence of global institutions that were sufficiently small as to be coherent (something that was not as possible in the United Nations, given its size and structure) or even seen as generally reliable, flexible and aware (given how the IMF has discredited itself by awarding good marks to so many economies just before they imploded financially).

But since then, the drama in the world economy could even have been Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, as Act 2 of the global financial crisis unfolds. In its subsequent meetings, the G20 has been much more about style than substance – and sometimes the style has also been lacking. At least, in its Seoul meeting in 2010, the G20 committed themselves to promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth. They argued that ‘for prosperity to be sustained it must be shared’ and also endorsed ‘green growth’, which promised to decouple economic expansion from environmental degradation.

But by late 2011, when it was already clear that the global economy was still in a major mess and needed co-ordinated strategies for recovery, the G20 already seemed to be very much a spent force, unable even to agree amongst themselves, much less provide any clear direction for the global economy. This is very worrying. It is not just that G20 currently displays a lack of cohesion and imagination. More startling is the extent to which it displays the paucity of the most basic economic sense among those who currently control the world’s destiny.

The extraordinary notion (currently of North European provenance) that fiscal austerity will help – and is even necessary for – economic recovery from the latest downswing seems to have been timidly accepted even by governments that really ought to know better. The even more wrongheaded idea that fiscal consolidation has to be achieved by cutting public spending and employment rather than raising tax revenues, also seems to have taken hold. One of the few good ideas to have been proposed by Sarkozy – the Financial Transactions Tax – found relatively few takers.

It seems bizarre that global leaders have to be reminded that all countries cannot use net export growth as the route to expansion. But clearly this message has still not yet struck home. How else can one explain the almost complete absence of any meaningful measures to enable sustained expansion of demand from low income countries, which is really the only sustainable and equitable way out of this global dilemma?

Perhaps that is not really so surprising, however, since most G20 countries do not seem to have gotten the message that recovery will require progressive changes in asset and income distribution, even in their own countries. A new report from Oxfam finds that only four G20 countries (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and South Korea) have managed to reduce income inequalities within their countries since 1990. The very ability of these exceptions to improve distribution suggests that it can be done with sufficient political will, which is obviously therefore lacking in the other G20 countries.

The same report also finds that the current trajectory of natural resource use is deeply disturbing. Some middle income countries have managed to reduce the resource intensity of growth at the margin, but thus far no G20 country (or even non G20 country) has yet demonstrated that it is possible to combine high average incomes with sustainable natural resource use, and the high income countries among the G20 have performed worse in this regard, including in terms of reducing their carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, just when the world needs some kind of sane economic leadership the most, it is lacking, if not entirely absent. No real point, therefore, in looking towards G20 to be the next saviour of the global economy.