UEsi SUA vor crea alinate cu India si China pentru
asigura Securitatea Terrei- in fata amenintarilor
schimbarilor climatice
Inca nu s-a ajuns la concluzia ca trebuie creat un
sistem de global governance si creata o noua structura
care sa gestioneze dezvoltarea durabila. Aceasta
discutie a fost temporizata.
European Union a potential model of global humane
governance for humane security and sustainable
development
By Salomeea Romanescu
1. Introduction
This essay would like to link concepts like: humane
security and sustainable development within the humane
governance concept and also look at these common
values of Europe from a feminine perspective.
Why? As any discussion about the common denominators
within a humane security European Order has to start
with the opportunity of a new system of col¬lective
security in Europe - as they have been expressed
through the decisions taken in Maastricht, Amsterdam,
Berlin, Madrid and Saint. Malo - and also should take
account of the constituent elements of change that
produced thenew order .
The elements of Change usually create conflicting
relationships; the wisdom and challenge will be to
deal creatively with them, transforming these
challenges in opportunities for new policy and
strategies in an aggregated effort of all European
actors involved in building a new Humane Security
Order, based on common denominators.
This can be an opportunity for the regime-building
process, which should draw from states their common
interests in redefining the terms of an interstate
security com¬munity in Europe, recognising non-state
actors as critical supporters for this process, in a
feminist theoretical perspective of cooperation.
The condition for successful security regime building,
as an opportunity is the identification and definition
of the threat. NATO experience in Kosovo has shown
that there is a linear relationship between the
internal cohesion of an alliance and the way in which
members perceive external threats and challenges. The
nature of interstate relations in post-Cold War Europe
has changed to such an extent that the definition of a
specific threat is very difficult by replacing the
Soviet threat with a complex of secondary threats or
collective risks.
The failure of EU states to define the nature and
character of post-Cold War threats could not only
undermine the attempts to transform the CFSP into
defense policy, but could endanger the integration
process in other fields. By linking threats to
internal security of the EU to the enlargement project
by some politicians, the public opinion would be
against enlargement project.
The challenge is to explain to the public opinion the
real threat for individual security, on one side and
to find the principal common denominators of the
actors involved on the European affairs, on the other
side.
The common denominator of all this powers is the
struggle for survival and we assume that in a long
term only humanistic values like humane security and
humane governance for sustainable development can
assure the survival for all. The question is could be
this struggle transformed in cooperation for survival
of the human being and preservation of the Earth?
My essay will only present general ideas because the
discussion needs more space. We give more space to the
prospect for humane security, which eventually will be
part of the new security identity of Europe, civilian
approach.
2. New humane security paradigm as a common
denominator of all European actors against common
challenges
This chapter deals with the concept of humane security
and his potential positive impact on the quality of
life.
After the Cold War the militarised conception of
security was challenged by multifaceted and holistic
conceptions like humane security, concept which lacks
a clear definition. The replacement of the major
military threats from the East by the multilevel and
multidimensional threats has lent great instability to
the European Security System, which was not prepared
to deal with it, in term of competences, policies and
institutions.
The definition of security issues, the way in which
they were analyzed and the policies that resulted were
the fruits of the dominant geopolitical and
ideological atmosphere during the Cold War period.
Security concept has a strong political base and it
changes according to it.
Security continues to be calculated by the degree of
destructive capacity possessed in relation to an
expected enemy. The achievement of security in a
global setting is largely reduced to the management of
boundaries of the territorial state- the degree of
capacity to keep unwanted persons, ideas, things out,
and to keep what is wanted within.
To extent that security is globalised, it is
associated with establishing the conditions that best
enable the expansion of gross planetary product and
stimulate the growth of world trade within a framework
stabilized by policies that produce the triple
indictment
What is remarkable about this geopolitical image of
security is its durability, one that traverses the
distinction drawn earlier between modern,
state-centric geopolitics and post-modern
market-geared geopolitics. The absence of critical
self-reflection is terrible. What needs to be
acknowledged here, among other challenging
perspectives, is the relevance of feminist voices from
around the world in fashioning other possible
responses to the actual. The revision of security is
crucial to the all enterprises of global civil society
and the shaping of the global polity in accordance
with the criteria of humane governance.
Subrahmanyam clearly identifies this element of
necessity in the following passage:
Either humanity unites to survive, or it is bound to
face a bleak future. The strategy of a non-violent and
nuclear free world has no alternative, if future
generations are to survive in condition of sustainable
development. We of this generation have to stark
choice before us. Either we become saviours of our
posterity or its executioners. Either we opt for life
or shatter the future of mankind.
This sense of urgency is here affirmed. Also to be
underscored in the idea that continued democratisation
depends on the establishment of a security, which
radically breaks with perceptions and practices that
have given substance to geopolitics throughout modern
history.
It is obvious that to initiate a discussion of
security on this radical note is to highlight the
distance separating such a position from the
mainstream thought in the North and from the outlook
of most governing elites in the South. And it is
equally predictable that it will be dismissed thereby
as utopian. To respond helpfully to the challenge
ahead it is necessary to summon the intellectual and
political courage to face the depth and extent of the
problem that faces humanity.
What, exactly, is meant by the term humane security
and why humane security is so important in a optimist
scenarious of Integration. What is humane security?
«There are two basic aspects to humane security -
freedom from fear and freedom from want. Freedom from
want is no less important than freedom from fear
because his objectives are to ensure the survival and
dignity of individuals as human beings. The
epoch-making 1994 UNDP Development Report discussed
the concept of human security in depth, and identified
seven main categories of human security economic
security (or freedom from poverty); food security
(freedom from hunger), health security (freedom from
disease), environmental security (the availability of
clean water and air, for example), personal security
(freedom from fear of violence, crimes, drugs),
community security (freedom to participate in family
life and one's ethnic group), and political security
(freedom to exercise one's basic human rights)».
World politics should not be viewed as a historically
frozen process of power-hungry states, but rather as a
dynamic process of interaction among individuals,
groups, states and international institutions, all of
which are capable of adapting their sense of
self-interest.
As Europeans face so many security challenges and
promising opportunities, all of which compete for
higher attention and resources, it will be difficult
to deal with non-traditional threats. However, some of
them will not be ignored for long time. Individual
security can no longer be satisfied only through
military measures; it needs multidimensional
understanding.
Humane security is difficult to be achieved in actual
existing international system mainly dominated by
sovereign states. In our logic of humane security
nation states have to reorder priorities, problem is
what criteria? These could be:
The dignity of the human being,
Participation in decision- making and
Response to unmet human needs.
The following issues needs the priority of governments
and international organisations: hunger, housing,
health care, education, employment, environment, war
prevention, crime prevention, care of the aged, racial
justice, womens rights, religious freedom, penal
reform, urban planning, ageing of population,
democratic participation, prevention of alienation and
addiction.
Most of the leaders would insist that they personally
embrace the above agenda. Pragmatically, however,
these issues are subordinated to national security
priorities.
The lights of humane development will remain out for a
majority of humankind until the emergence of a
world-order system. It is important to emphasize that
we are not advocating constant mobilization for
national security. It is rather a question of
recognizing the reality that present corporate
priorities and elite rule are not primarily due to
ideological or personal demons. The world does not
need more demonology. What is needed is objectivity -
not the rationalize fatalistic acceptance of the
status quo, but to identify the all sources of
powerlessness: of leaders as well as of citizens. The
surest way to entrench the status quo is to focus too
exclusively on the powerlessness of the people and to
rely on demonology at the cost of a more holistic
analysis.
3. Sustainable development as a common denominator for
all European Actors and new opportunity
First section of this chapter will make an anthology
of the actual trends of defining sustainable
development in contrast with development concept used
in standard economic theory, actual position of EU
concerning sustainable development and the
implications of it for the employment in Europe and
finally participation as an important aspect of
sustainable development. We have chosen to do it by
using Internet resources and relevant literature. We
will try to make a synthesis of all of them for
economic reasons.
In standard economic theory, Development implies both
quantitative change (growth in Gross Domestic Product)
and qualitative change (transformation from a
pre-capitalist economy based on agriculture to a
capitalist industrial economy) etc. Theory of
sustainable development involves both a critic of
quantitative GDP measure and a different view of
qualitative transformation. The goals of sustainable
development include a harmonization of economic,
social and environmental goals:
Economic - an economically sustainable system must be
able to produce goods and services on a continuing
basis, to maintain manageable levels of government and
external debt, and avoid extreme sector imbalances
that damage agriculture or industrial production.
Environmental - an environmentally sustainable system
must maintain a stable resource base, avoiding
overexploitation of renewable resources systems or
environmental sink functions and depleting non
renewable resources only to the extent that investment
is made in adequate substitutes: this include
maintenance of biodiversity, atmospheric stability,
and other ecosystem functions not ordinarily classed
as economic resources.
Social - a socially sustainable system must achieve
fairness in distribution and opportunity, adequate
provision of social services, including health,
including health and education, gender equality, and
political accountability and participation. These
three elements of sustainability introduce many
potential complications to the original, simple
definition of economic development.
This new concerns for development will create new
opportunities for job creation in the area of Social
and Environment. It could be a good opportunity for
CEEC countries to get job in this new domains.
Together with sharing job opportunity and highest
wages strategy will contribute to bridging the gap
between Western and Eastern disparities, following the
logic of balance in a chines way.
EU has a strategy for sustainable development and what
is relevant for our essay is the fact that EU
recognizes the necessity to work together for
achieving this aim, on his declaration at the World
Summit for sustainable development from Johannesburg,
September 2002.
Economic growth along side environmental and social
concern: Sustainable development demands a fundamental
change in the way we live our lives. In a complete
break with the past this calls for a major
reorientation of public and private behavior and
thinking. The challenge is to bond economic growth
with social concerns and to decouple economic
development from environmental degradation. It calls
for creative, long-term policy making, efficient and
responsible use of resources, cost-effective
environmental policy and cleaner technology.
Governments, business, and citizens need to work
together to create the conditions in which sustainable
development can happen.
To bridge the gap between the popular agenda and
elitist agenda of Global governance we need to find
common values upon which a viable future can be built.
We start by considering five aspects of sustainable
development analized by UNDP: Empowerment,
Cooperation, Equity, Sustainability, and Security.
Related to these aspects are nine principles, which
could help political institutions to achieve
sustainable development, as suggested by UNDP:
Participation, Transparency, Responsivness, Consensus
orientation, Equity, Effectivness and Efficiency,
Accountability, Strategic vision.
I would prefer to choose to speak on Participation
forced by the economy of the essay. True democracy is
characterised by horizontal processes across a broad
spectrum of relationships, in contrast with
parliamentary democracies based on vertical
hierarchies.
The euphoria developed over events in Eastern Europe
after the fall of one party political system a decade
ago has masked the irreparable inadequacies in the new
capitalist democratic system. The fundamental
proposition of democracy needs to focus on an ongoing
process than the structure of representation.
Egalitarian interaction has to be a new democratic
principle in considering that development of Western
democratic systems in the 19th century coincided with
expansion of European Colonialism. Economic
decentralisation is a more appropriate form of
integrating nature and society. Sensitivity towards
the human subject in economic planning shall overcome
foundations laid down by modern economies. It would
reduce the widespread global structural violence
maintained by the political and economic elites of
dominant Western powers.
4. Conclusions
In conclusion disruptive forces will challenge the
meaning of security and the definition of threat. Our
hopes must continue to rest on the democratic energies
of the peoples of the world, acting in all their
diversity, yet conscious both of the threats that
confront them and of the historic necessity to adapt
the emergent geo-governance to the realization of
human rights, transforming it in humane governance for
human security and human sustainable development.
Europe could be a model of global humane governance
for humane security and sustainable development, and
the recent White paper on Governance and Strategy for
sustainable development shows clear signals of this
political will. Europe has humanistic values, material
capabilities and institutions to make a difference in
the World, as a feminine soft answer to the paradox of
Democracy (spreading democracy in very undemocratic
way) and Security dilemma. The question is how to make
all this actors work together taking into account
their divergent interest. The solution is to find the
values, which are commons for all actors, as
sustainable human development including humane markets
and humane security and cooperative behaviour and
culture. Our continent has tradition in Christian
message and this represents an important value, which
will transform integration into a real win - win
scenarios as peaceful conflict resolution soft model.
A shift from horizontal logic of Left and Right to a
vertical common logic of ecology, feminism and
sustainable, equitable and democratic development is
already in process at the theoretical discourse.
Development is not about helping a few people get rich
or creating a handful of pointless protected
industries that only benefit the countrys elite, for
the urban rich and leaving the rural poor in their
misery. Humane development is about transforming
societies, improving the lives of the poor, enabling
everyone to have a chance to success and access to
health care and education. This sort of development
wont happen if only a few people dictate the policies
a country must follow. Making sure that democratic
decisions are made means ensuring that a broad range
of economists, officials, and experts from CEEC are
actively involved in the debate in a new model of
global humane governance. It also means that there
must be broad participation that goes well beyond the
experts and politicians, so the democratization of the
actual geo-governance and ESC institutionalized such a
civil dialog and this represents a great opportunity.
If Globalisation brought negative aspects, the
positive aspect of Globalisation is that it has
brought an active civil society, fighting for more
democracy and greater social justice.
Asociatia/The Association"Proeducatia Rromilor Europeni in Contextul Integrarii
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