Above photo: Panel featuring Cassia Bechara (Brazil), Monica Bruckmann (Perú/Brazil), Alonso Herrera, (México) y Márcio Pochmann (Brazil). Priscila Ramos.
It Is Determined By Us, The Countries Of The Global South.
Economists and researchers from Brazil and Mexico discussed pathways towards ensuring the sovereignty of the Global South over its resources.
“Debating the resources of the Global South is becoming urgent, but it is even more urgent to discuss how it is that most of the resources for the production of technology and goods are from the Global South and yet it is the North that takes all the wealth,” Cassia Bechara began her presentation, adding: ”in 2024 the wealth of the world’s richest millionaires was the greatest in history.”
Although the speakers focused on the Global South in their presentations, they expressed different views on the same topic, as in the case of Márcio Pochmann, President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). He is an economist, researcher and voluntary collaborating professor at the Institute of Economics at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).
“We are in the midst of the greatest transformation since the 14th century: at that time, agriculture was centered in the East, the Turks had interrupted trade between Asia and Europe, and the question of the Mediterranean was being raised; the interruption of this trade opened the way for great technological advances through naval explorations. India and China were reached by sea, and this meant progress not only for those countries, but also for the West, especially for the Portuguese and Spanish,” Pochmann argued.
The President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) also stated that the European project of modernity was based on the power of arms, the exploitation of slave labor, and the use of war as a way of dominating territories and peoples. Without the power of weapons it would not have been possible to dominate in the way they did. “War has become a limit to the continuity of humanity; the main basis of this modernity, which is war, limits the project itself,” he said.
In all the presentations, the participants agreed that in order to generate a new project of modernity, it is necessary to ask what progress is and how to move forward, in addition to the proposals from the Global South where states are weaker and there is no control over large technology companies, for example.
In this sense, it is important to emphasize that war, the unlimited use of natural resources and the constant expansion of the population with the aim of increasing profits were foundational instruments of this project of Western modernity that is now collapsing due to its own contradictions. On this, Márcio Pochmann asked: “What is our response to the collapse of this project of modernity?”
The New Actors Entering The World Stage
Based on Pochmann’s approach, the person who tries to answer that question was Mónica Bruckmann, Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Coordinator of the Working Group on Geopolitics, Regional Integration, and the World System of the Latin American and Caribbean Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and Doctor in Political Science.
Bruckmann began by saying that since the advent of modernity, the capitalist production model has been marked by the politicization of nature. That talking about how strategic natural resources are depends on the time and the development of humanity, it is not the same to talk about what happened a century ago as about the needs of the present moment.
“Today the process is one of transition with advances and setbacks and in this process of dispute over strategic natural resources new actors are emerging,” said Bruckmann. In this sense, she highlighted the importance of China’s Silk Road (BRI) process, which it has been organizing as a project since 2013 and in Latin America and the Caribbean, 20 countries have signed memoranda of understanding with the BRI. “The Silk Road is reorganizing supply chains, with China and Southeast Asia playing an increasingly prominent role,” added Bruckmann.
Another aspect highlighted by the presentation was the importance of the BRICS+ economic bloc, which currently represents the vanguard of the world economy based on the Silk Road project (BRI), especially from a financial, political, economic, scientific and technological point of view.
Another of the elements presented by Mónica Bruckmann was that of the deceptive energy transition, explaining how the production of electric cars works and the amount of minerals that are used to make them. In this sense, she argues that it is extremely urgent to think about the sovereignty of the Global South, which are the countries that have the most of these products, and that just like electric cars, many other things can be sold with false expectations as “the future”.
The Important Thing Is Not To Import Energy Transition Models
Alonso Romero was the last speaker, an engineer in sustainable development from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and head of the commissioner’s office at the Energy Regulatory Commission; “there is a relationship between development and energy consumption, it is something to achieve an end, it should not be a goal in itself,” he explained.
Romero affirms that the basis for energy development must be abundant, reliable, cheap and clean. In addition to that, he added that Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the highest percentage of clean energy on the planet.
He also said that the energy transition is being led by big capital when the global north has the highest amount of carbon emissions and fossil fuel use.
In the same vein as Mónica Bruckmann, Romero focuses on the problem of mining as the savior model, when it comes to the exploitation of minerals by large capital and comments on the case of Congo with cobalt as an example.
The engineer in sustainable development from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education argues that the energy transition is being used as an excuse to return to the pure extractivist model. That is why the state’s long-term vision is necessary to curb extractivism.
“The state must intervene in the economy in essential sectors to curb rent-seeking. The energy transition is desirable and possible, but through a long-term and fair vision and regardless of other nations’ transition models,” he added.
In dialogue with this, Márcio Pochmann closed his speech: “The future can be better than the present, that is what brings us together here. We need this hope and to fight against this idea of canceling the future promoted by the Global North and added: “Our future is not determined by the US or Europe, it is determined by us.”