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Artists donated songs to support Save the Childrens Fund
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Artists donate songs to support Solar Electric Light Fund
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| Beats4Change encourage cultural
activities to raise awareness and funding for sustainable development
of caring communities Cultural and economical activities, based on principles of mutual aid,which lead to: - a world economy with ecological and social responsibility - a free and manifold world culture - the creation of a common future, based on work, knowledge and love |
| RENEWABLE ENERGY | SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT | CARING COMMUNITY | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| DOWNLOAD FULL TABLE (in Excel Format) | The global distribution of wealth is more
unequal
than ever | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In
fact if we go back to about 1400 ad., we can say
that the level of material development was quite equal between the
continents (of course some nations were wealthier than others and there
was unequal distribution within the different nations) As the era of colonialism started, the unequal balance emerged and continued to grow. Now with political independence in the former colonies, we see that this unequal development gets worse than ever. specially during the 1980'ies. What happened ?? Well 2 events are closely connected in this process: First the US government forced the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to accept, that the dollar became independent of a gold reserve. The US Government did this because they had problems financing the Vietnam War. If IMF had not accepted this, the world economy would have collapsed, as the dollar is used for payment in international economy. Then in the early seventies there was too much dollars in the international monetary system, which in fact made the so-called oil crisis, (when the Oil Producers and Exporting Countries (OPEC) cooperated to take control over the prize and production of oil) into a save for the capitalist economy in the industrialized countries. The overflow of dollars was used to pay the increase in oil prizes in 1974. For the countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America this was however catastrophic. The prizes on products they exported wasn't increasing, while prizes on oil and secondly on industrial products increased dramatically. Secondly the dollars flowing into OPEC was reinvested in western banks (and are now called "petrodollars") again there was an overflow of dollars, which this time was lend out to the countries suffering from problems with their trade balance. This set of the debt crisis in Africa, Asia and Latin America In the 80'ies many of these loans was taken over by the World Bank System, followed by Structural Adjustment Programs, which aims to promote free market economy. In practice this forces the countries to cut down public expenditure on social welfare, health and education. In some countries the loans were taken by authoritarian regimes, but even though there's been democratization, the people still have to pay the prize for western banks happily financing the previous dictatorships luxury consumption and military adventures. Economically the countries are forced into export oriented economic activities, rather than increasing production benefiting the population. Well as we see the connection between energy policy and the current economic situation, it is strange that most development neglect the great potential in small-scale renewable energy development. Such a development would make the communities more independent and self-reliant, it will probably be the paved road to breaking the neo-colonialist dominance imposed on Africa, Asia and Latin America by transnational companies and international financial investors. This fact also open possibilities for us, the people of the world to do something about the situation. Most renewable energy sources work very well in small-scale plants, which means that it is no big deal to start developing, even without access to big economical resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||