These immediate causes are the results of an unsustainable global economic system built on unequal access to and control over the planet’s limited resources and the benefits that accrue from their use. This system is premised on the appropriation of local, national, and planetary commons by local and global elites. What has been praised as great strides in technology, production, and human progress has in fact precipitated global ecological and development disasters. Still, a privileged global elite engages in reckless profit-driven production and grossly excessive consumption while a very large proportion of humanity is mired in poverty with mere survival-and-subsistence consumption, or even less. This is the situation not only in countries of the South but also in the North. The world’s largest transnational corporations (TNCs), based mainly in the northern countries and tax-havens, but with expanding operations, have long been at the forefront of these excesses.

The competition among global corporations and rich nations for resources and greater market shares, as well as trade agreements and treaties, have led to a neo-colonial suppression of southern peoples, denying them rightful ownership and control of their resources. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and international financial institutions, as well as the European Union (EU) and United States (US), using bilateral trade agreements, are increasing the privatization and commoditization of public resources, intensifying the plunder of natural resources of underdeveloped countries, and imposing conditions that increase their dependence.