Founder and Chairman of INSEAD business school of management, France, in his keynote speech to the conference, “Globalization: Embracing Opportunity, Creating Synergy”, Asia Plateau, Panchgani, India.

Olivier Giscard d'Estaing is the founder and Chairman of INSEAD business school of management, France. The following are extracts of his keynote speech to the conference, “Globalization: Embracing Opportunity, Creating Synergy”, Asia Plateau, Panchgani, India, 9 January 2003:

Four fears, four opportunities of globalization
“globalization is a transition from international to an inter-continental dependency”

Globalization is the most important factor that affects this starting century. We watch miseries, inequalities, migrations, moral crisis, religious conflicts, violence, and lack of clear objectives. However, do not underestimate the achievements of the past century that have taught us good lessons and have already transformed our planet.

A new world is born mostly due to the accumulation of technological innovations and the process of globalization of their applications.

There has been a slow evolution toward globalization throughout the history of civilizations—

Chinese, Egyptian, Greco-Latin—but they were mostly regional, the history of trade such as the Silk Road, of religious influences, of colonization. Today globalization means something new. It is a transition from international to inter-continental dependency. Now the world depends on business conditions in the United States and Asia, on conflict in the Middle East, on the growing power of China and India. These have a direct impact on our standard of living and on psychological reactions, affecting goals in investment and consumption and resulting in migrations.

What is new? It is that we perceive, through the world’s media, TV and Internet, the same events at the same time, like the attack of 11th September, other terrorist attacks, local fighting, tornadoes, floods, volcano eruptions, but also football competitions, Olympic Games, movies or concerts. These create a New World culture, adding to our traditional and precious cultures as well as a new feeling of world solidarity. What is also new is that we have reached levels of movements of goods, money, and people, not approached before.

I see, as a consequence, four main fears:

One: fears of insecurity, physical—because of international or local conflicts and terrorism—and insecurity of employment due to international competition.

Two: fears of US domination or excessive power of multinational corporations. This may lead to political confrontation as happened in Porto Allegre, accusing the advantages that those corporations gained from globalization but without offering other substitutions except returning to state economy and protectionism which have had disastrous effects, socially and economically.

Three: fears of uniformization of culture. This was said of ‘united Europe’ but after 50 years we have, fortunately, the same differences and the survival of our entire local traditions and particularisms. This will continue to be the case and we can be sure that each continent will remain different from the others.

Four: fears of increased poverty and polluted environment. Here, demography has a detriment impact. The fact that the world’s population has doubled in 50 years from 3 billions to 6 billions affects standards of living. For instance, a low-increasing population at the rate of 1.3 per cent increases GNP per inhabitant at the level of 2 per cent but when the rate of growth of population reaches 3.4 per cent the GNP per inhabitant decreases by 1.2 per cent. It is being said that, since 1995, there are 100 millions more people in a state of poverty, but at the same time the world’s population has increased by 700 millions, which shows that 600 millions more people were taken above the level of poverty.

My answer covers four proposals:

One: To attack poverty all over the world at local, national, regional, continental, and global levels and to assure those four pillars of human dignity: proper nutrition, housing, health, and education.

Two: Massive action on education and professional training with an emphasis on moral behavior and individual responsibility.

Three: Contribution to the evolution of mentalities to help everyone to address these new conditions, leading to the concept of world citizenship.

Four: Creating new democratic structures to deal with global problems. This could be inspired by the development of multinational and regional models. It should include the creation of a world parliament, the transformation of the ECOSOC of the United Nations to be representative of civil society, and the creation of world taxes.

In conclusion, if we look back at the past 50 years and measure the changes that have occurred, it is clear that nothing is impossible and we have to meet this chance of the world’s challenge.

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