Firstly, the MDG’s are not ambitious. The first objective is to halve extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015. Extreme poverty, according to Jeffrey Sachs in his report to the United Nations, is poverty that kills. Extremely poor people are said to live with less than 1 $ a day. They die of hunger or of diseases that can easily be cured. The World Bank estimates that there are more than one billion extremely poor people in today’s developing countries. These numbers are not really accurate, but they show the magnitude of the problem. To halve extreme poverty means that 500 million people can slowly die. This is pure arithmetic thinking, but unfortunately, it is correct.

The MDG’s will not be met. The World Bank confirmed it from 2001 onwards. In China and India poverty is falling back, but it stagnates in Latin America and continues to rise in Africa. According to Jeffrey Sachs’ report, 135 billion $ is needed in 2006, and 195 billion $ in 2015 in order to put the right policies into place and to meet the MDG’s. This means 0,44 and 0,54 % respectively of the GNP of rich countries. Thirty-five years ago, these countries promised to pay 0,7 % of GNP for development aid. The repeated their promise in 2002, at the UN Conference in Monterrey. But the money is still lacking. Yearly, defense budgets absorb 900 billion $. "If we spent 900 billion $ on development, we probably wouldn’t need to spend more than 50 billion $ on defence", according to the president of the World Bank.

The MDG’s cannot be met. The poverty reduction strategies of the international organisations are exclusively aimed at growth. But according to the UNDP, Africa will have to wait until 2147 before it can halve its extreme poverty with today’s growth. Today, 54 countries are poorer than they already were in 1990. It is not ‘globalisation’, but privatisations, free movement of capital and free trade that is causing more poverty that it solves. The ‘free market’ for textiles that was put into place on the 1 of January of 2005, is making hundreds of thousands of people jobless. It destroys the social policies that some countries are trying to introduce.

Of course the MDG’s are a worthy cause. But they are far from sufficient and poverty reduction is not development. The MDG’s can be financed within the framework of the promised 0,7 % for development aid. There is no reason to look for other ways of financing. And there is no reason to forget social and economic development and rights in order to lift people from poverty.

Secondly, the enormous growth of financial markets is probably the most important feature of globalisation. The daily turnover on the exchange markets is almost three thousand billion $. Speculators can easily distort national economies of poor countries and provoke losses that make the whole population suffer. The elites of poor countries have more money on bank accounts in northern countries than the total external debt of their countries. 40 % of African wealth has been “exported” to rich countries or to tax havens. So, there are good reasons to try and limit the power of financial markets.

Today, there are several proposals to introduce global taxes. A tax on arms sales for instance. Truly cynical, since it would help to sell lots of weapons with which people can be killed in order to help poor people. Or taxes on CO2 emissions. Or a tax on the fuel of airplanes. Or just taxing the GNP of rich countries. Imagine that all those proposals were linked to the MDG’s, how should we defend the CTT as soon as the world’s leaders decide to tax, say, CO2 emissions? What arguments will we have to use in order to promote a Tobin tax?

Tony Blair proposes an International Finance Facility, loans in order to finance development aid. The collateral would be the promise of rich countries to pay more in the future. But what if this promise, once again, is not kept? Would it not strongly diminish the development budgets?

This brings me to two conclusions. First, the CTT has to keep its specific purpose and must be considered as just one element in a broad global tax system that one day will be put into place. Controlling financial markets is a crucial element of every effort to create another world. The CTT is a priority, since it is a structural measure that has been studied more and better than any other tax proposals. But it is not a good idea to use it for financing the MDG’s, since that could mean that countries only introduce a first, low rate, enough to create money, but insufficient to hinder financial speculation.

Second, we need to reflect more on global taxes as an instrument for a global redistribution of incomes. Poverty reduction is not enough. We also have to fight inequality and poor countries also need social and economic development. It is particularly painful to have a focus on the millennium goals, exactly ten years after the first UN social summit in Copenhagen. This summit seems to have been forgotten, although the action programme talked of poverty, full employment and social integration.

We certainly need an open, democratic and global debate on how to use the result of global taxes, preferably in the UN. One could think of a global social and economic rehabilitation program in order to compensate for the damages incurred by the Washington consensus. Another possibility is the production of global public goods, such as peace and security, protection of the environment, health, social justice, equality between men and women, etc. One can also think of a programme for decent work and respect of all internationally accepted human rights, including social and economic rights. This is what the World Commission on the social dimensions of globalisation has asked.

The MDG’s are nothing more than a blind. They are presented as being an ambitious development programme, which they are not. We have to reject the CTT being used in order to try to meet the MDG’s. Moreover, there is a risk that they lead to nothing more than a slender form of charity, allowing Bono, Bill Gates and Sharon Stone to buy themselves a good conscience. Finally, poverty reduction policies are being used in order to impose neoliberal reforms on poor countries. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the fathers of structural adjustment policies, is now in favour of public investments in education and health and of a leading role for the UN. But there is nothing that makes us think that the World Bank and the IMF are willing to give up their urge to privatise. NGO’s and social movements cannot blindly accept this strategy. They are the ones that should pinpoint all the shortcomings of these policies, the growing inequalities, the lack of any form of social and economic development. The third world movement was created in order to contribute to fill the gap between rich and poor countries. Today, it seems to forget that gap. Just like it seems to forget the necessary income redistribution and the social and economic rights that should be central in each discourse on development and poverty.

Francine Mestrum Attac Vlaanderen