PROBLEMS OF THE GLOBAL CRISES PREVENTION: NEW STRATEGY AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCING

Автор(ы): Доктор экономических наук, профессор Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета Маленков Ю.А.

Опубликовано: Euro-Mediterranean economics and finance review. Special Issue for IFC 6. Vol. 6, N°1, 2011 (pp.47- 74)
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Scientific researches with possible global catastrophic consequences

Scientific research is the main power of progress and brings great positive results, for example getting rid of illnesses, increasing comfort, prolonging lives.

Finance invested in research mostly pays back and often creates positive synergy effects. For example:"Money spent on research to develop new types of sensitive detectors and related monitors for biowarfare agents will almost certainly carry over to the public-health sector in the form of rapid, improved diagnostics for disease. Money spent on coordinating and developing emergency response teams at federal, state and local levels will also establish better mechanisms for dealing with natural outbreaks of emerging diseases. Money spent on innovative surveillance approaches for detecting biowarfare attacks should also improve medical epidemiology. Money spent on vaccine research and delivery may help to buttress our limited capacity to protect the civilian, as well as the military, population."

But there is another side of the process. Many of the ancient and modern research results serve for a mass destruction of population and remain as dangers for future development, for example, gunpowder, dynamite, machine guns, nuclear energy, et al.

It is necessary to distinguish between a research with a safe result and with a risky one. Research with dangerous unknown outcomes increase risks.

It is necessary to monitor and control researches with unknown dangerous outcomes. In the modern world too many researches are conducted without proper assessment of their system impact on the world community, ecology and environment. Many firms, small and big, have no restrictions at all, trying to be the first in the market. But history proves the danger of that approach. For example, one of the most devastating world pandemic in the 20th years of the last century, the Spanish Flu, is assumed to be the result of a misconduct of a bio experiment.

Today's nanotechnologies and bioengineering, especially those dealing with DNK experiments have more than enough risks, like Pandora's Box. World needs these technologies. But the haste to be the first in the market at any cost can lead to the series of global catastrophes.

Global ecological degradation due to high technogenic loading of the Earth results in fertility decrease of soils, deficiency of foodstuff and drinking water, degeneration and reduction of flora and fauna

It is one of the threats most persistently resisting to human progress. Destructions of many civilizations are on its account. One civilization cut down woods on slopes of the rivers, the other burnt out the fields, the third damaged environment with something else. The actions were different but the end was the same – full extinction.

About half a century ago scientists started talking about environmental problems at the top of their voices. In the papers of the so-called "Roman club" (self-organizing of various scientists) «The Limits of Growth» the environment catastrophe was predicted due to the exhaustion of resources, environmental pollution and impossible conditions of existence of people. Till now nobody has denied its basic conclusions. Futile hopes were staked on the World Ocean possibilities to provide food from seaweed and other bioresources, and the abundance of fish. But today we hear that world fish resources are being quickly exhausted. Any substitutes to foodstuff have not appeared. The situation worsens with every year.

After the first warnings half a century later to change the world environmental policy modern scientists again proclaim: "Ecological degradation is increasing in most countries".19 "If everyone consumed at the average level of high-income countries, the planet could sustainably support only 1.8 billion people, not today's population of 6.5 billion".

Table 1 Annual growth rates (%)

Crop	1970s	1980s	2000s
Wheat	2.1	2.8	0.4
Rice	1.5	2.4	1.5
Maize	3.2	0.6	1.8

The ecological degeneration is everywhere. Now it is global. In the reports from economically the most dynamic country in the world China is stated the bleak picture: "The ecology of 60 per cent of the country's territory is considered fragile... ecological quality of one-third of the country's territory as good and another third as bad. About 90 per cent of natural pasture land, which accounts for more than 40 per cent of the country's territory, is facing degradation and desertification to some extent. Desertified pastures have become the major source of sand and dust storms. About 40 per cent of the country's wetlands are under effective protection but vast areas of natural wetlands continue to wither or shrink due to farming and industrial activity". Combining these data with data of the Table 1 we may conclude that Ecological global ecological threat may very likely set the greatest hunger pandemic in the most dynamic country and put an end to the China economic wonder with falling down of all modern world financial and economical architecture.

In many countries ecology development can be pictured accordingly to the next typical example (Figure 2): "...more than 50% of this forest (pistachio nut) must have been lost in the past 22 years. This savanna forest, if not preserved, could be lost forever, with its hundreds of endemic animal and plant species on which the livelihood of thousands of families depends."

Figure 2 Decrease in the area of harvest and production of the wild pistachio in Afghanistan from 1976-1998

The Ecological global threat is distinctly growing every year around the planet. It strongly influences economy of the countries and it will be critical in the near future for the majority of the population of a planet. This threat causes the strongest negative synergy at interaction with social threat and may lead to collapses of the many countries that today are considered as developing and successful.

Bureaucracy, national and individual egoism, corruption, disintegration of positive social values

Theoretically all the global crises can and must be effectively coped with but for a number of barriers. The director of the Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre Bill McGuire made a key statement: "Global geophysical events, such as huge tidal waves or volcanic super-eruptions, could devastate the planet - so why doesn't anybody care?"

Let's analyze these barriers. The foremost include:

• Bureaucracy in almost all the spheres of human activity is now widespread all over the world, infecting official establishments, political parties, international organizations, and research institutes and universities. As we have seen for the moment not a single problem has even a slight perspective of being solved. Potential world financial resources, which are possible to be directed on prevention of crises, are huge. Buy they are ineffectively dissipated in the different countries, and are misappropriated by bureaucracy who "do not see" the necessity for the urgent actions and programs of global threat protection.
• National and individual egoism, the roots of which are back in a primitive-communal society. This socio - biological rudiment of the past has been accompanying all the history of human development, is one of the main reasons of a continuous chain of wars and conflicts, keeping a priority of national interests over world ones.

H. Fayol, one of the leading theoreticians of management, put forward as an immutable principles of management: "La subordination de l'interet individuelle a I'interet generale" (a priority of general interests over individual ones). He also stated that it was the most difficult problem of management, otherwise an organization stopped its activity. This principle should be considered as the obligatory principle for all the systems. If national interests are not subordinated to the interests of the world community in relation to the global threats, then prevention of the global crises and catastrophes is totally impossible and the world community cannot survive.

• Corruption is the third barrier, one of the main tools of the modern bureaucracy which uses it for grasping power and wealth in the individual interests. Corruption absorbs huge resources and always causes inefficient decisions of problems.

Today corruption is spread all over the countries and constantly grows. Corruption leads to chaos in the financial sphere, to the aggravation of social problems, sharply increases probability of different global catastrophes and crises (Figure 1).

Bureaucracy and corruption make absolutely impossible to choose a right way to solve the problems of the global threats protection because instead of competition among the ideas, competition among the corruptioners takes place. Overcoming of this barrier on the basis of the modern international organizations stricken with bureaucracy is impossible. Therefore a new way of global crises prevention and a new type of organization which will exclude bureaucracy and corruption are necessary.

• Sharp decrease in social responsibility, disintegration of positive social values. These destructive processes quickly expand worldwide. Last world financial and economic crisis was first of all caused by full loss of social responsibility, financial hoaxes and corruption in a bank sector, securities markets and in the governments control bodies. It is insufficiently realized today in the analysis of the reasons of the world crisis. The reasons for crisis are sought everywhere except this factor. But socially irresponsible heads and managers irrevocably lead to the world of financial chaos and social revolts. The history has many examples of it.

A clear example is given of the modern disintegration of positive social value: "The international press and media are full of reports that the rates of burglary, crime, murder, suicide and racially motivated violence are on the increase in this or that country… Extreme value is attached to the personal attainment of wealth and success at the expense of everything - friends, family and moral values. This leads to individuals' alienation from one another, and dehumanizing strategies are used by individuals and organizations for gain…. Now, in the face of the latest economic and social crises, we should all question ourselves about over-consumption, social disintegration and the social disorders of our affluent societies. Do we have more than we truly need? Food, clothing, home appliances, cars and excessive luxury in our houses vary in size, color, form and price. Is the life or society we live in ideal or is it plagued by social disorder? Is our affluent lifestyle really perfect for us and those around us? Social disintegration and the individual or social problems we go through arise from indulging in too much material accumulation, over-consumption and our detachment from traditional (moral) values. We talk about environmental degradation and pollution. What about moral pollution? Erosion of good old small-town values, for instance?... Without moral guidance, people in complex societies cease to exist as true human beings?"

In the last decades all attempts to prevent the global crises failed, except for the Third World War prevention, though several times humanity was on the brink of it and situation is still unstable. UNO (United Nations Organization) and many social organizations tried, but could not and still can not solve the problems of global crises prevention. Even for priority problems it is impossible to provide financing. The head of the Russia's Federal Space Agency lately said about the threat of collision with the space objects: "People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and design a system that would prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people." The finance needed is modest enough, but there is no progress in this respect also.

Full indifference to the problems of global crises became typical in many countries and international organizations. For example: "Land management and strategy for environmental protection. So far, no practical and systematic work has been done in Afghanistan to manage the land. In constructing hydroelectric and other industrial projects, no environmental assessment or other measure has ever been considered."

For a number of decades countries cannot agree on the problems of the international financing of the global threats protection, all sinks in bureaucracy, uncountable streams of papers, unfruitful meetings and conflicts of personal and national interests. "There is a great discrepancy between awareness and public discussions on environmental problems, on the one hand, and knowledge as to what to do and how to behave, on the other hand".

As a result the world community development is carried out today blindly, and it has entered a zone of quickly growing risks combination which inevitably leads to global catastrophes.

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