Divert. Transform. Sustain  ~ the 5% formula winners

The 5% formula savings of $700bn over 10 years could deliver the following outcomes:

$350BN DIVERTED OVER 10 YEARS AND ALLOCATED TO GLOBAL PRIORITIES

  • Immediate and essential development needs
  • Sustainable Development – reflecting Climate & Economic Justice
  • Peace/ Conflict Prevention & Human Rights

$350BN DIVERTED OVER 10 YEARS AND ALLOCATED TO DOMESTIC PRIORITIES

  • The Global Green Economy

Extreme Poverty

It is estimated that it would cost $66 billion annually to get everyone on the planet out of extreme poverty – 4% of annual global military spending. (Poverty to Power, Duncan Green)

Around 15 million people die every year largely due to a lack of access to nutritious food, basic healthcare services, or clean water for drinking and sanitation – equivalent to more than 40,000 preventable deaths every single day.

Sustainable Development

Fund Civil Society and the Economic and Climate Justice Agendas

  • Funding the strengthening of global civil society capacity is critical to ‘development’  so that it can hold ‘power’ to account, be that its own leaders, multinational corporations, or international institutions such as the World Bank or IMF.
  • Particular focus on structural issues such as food sovereignty, land issues and trade; tax-related campaigning; environment and climate change related rights. This is a truly effective way to ensure ‘transparency’ and ‘good governance’ and at the same time, recognises the inter-connectedness of how issues such as the global trade system negatively impacts on communities via trade and/or environmental damage.
  • This diverted funding could also be partially allocated to help deliver more debt cancellation.

Climate Emergency

Funding to address the environmental and human climate emergency.

We are in a climate emergency.  And it should not be forgotten that wars, conflicts and militaries are a major driver of climate change, in addition to the damage done to people and planet alike as a result of war.

  • 300 million people are currently affected by global warming
  • 300,000 people lose their lives every year as a result of climate change.

Military spending cuts should be put into the climate funding mix so that a significant ‘new’ revenue source can be factored into calculations concerning mitigation, adaptation, transfer of new technologies and investment in the global green economy.

The fossil fuel global economy is not just a driver for climate change – it is a driver for instability and therefore increased military spending. So reducing spend on military and increasing spend on climate financing as well as the green economy is a win-win all round.

Developing countries have been experiencing the impact of climate change for many years and now, the increasing number of ‘weather events’ in the developed world, is bringing home this reality to the hitherto relatively disengaged publics of the rich nations – also the main culprits of climate change. Polar melting, soil erosion, deforestation, ocean pollution – the list is endless; the impact on human society catastrophic. Yet the response by governments and business has been to fail miserably at turning events around – whether setting and meeting targets or providing finance –or indeed, investing in the green economy at home or abroad.

Peacekeeping; Early Warning & Conflict Prevention; Post-conflict Reconstruction

Funding for the peace movement; those working on disarmament agendas or conflict prevention, conflict resolution; or peacekeeping – all this work combined, constitutes a hugely diverse and global community. It embraces grassroots activism such as was mobilised by the anti-war movement of 2003 (15-30m million marched on a single day, Feb 15th) or the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s that is once again in the public eye through the Global Zero initiative.  It campaigns on a diverse range of issues and has a proud – and often effective – tradition of non-violent resistance.

It has academic centres of excellence, think tanks and policy groups working across a whole variety of subjects which intersect with (under)development, human rights and environmental concerns.  This is a grossly underfunded sector, which should benefit from funds reallocated from war to peace.

Meanwhile, the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations is profoundly underfunded; conflict prevention and conflict resolution poor relatives to the business of war-making;  funding demobilisation of combatants equally under-resourced yet essential to post conflict resolution; and the remains of conflict last way beyond the end of conflict – landmines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium.  Equally vital is the disarmament work to reduce nuclear stockpiles, while the search for missing nuclear materials post the break-up of the Soviet Union continues.

All these areas of work need much more funding and need to be taken far more seriously by politicians and public alike.