Call for new world order

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 17

Call for new world order

(By

LEONARD SILK,

of the "Neto York Times")

PHILADELPHIA, April 19. The Club of /Rome, which aroused intense controversy three years ago by the report it commissioned on “The Limits to Growth,” now recognises that further global growth is essential if the problems of world poverty and threats to world peace are to be solved. At an Internationa! conference of scholars arid businessmen at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome and former manag-ing-director of Olivetti, stated that the Limits to Growth Report, which sold more than 2 million copies world wide, had served its purpose of focusing world attention on the ecological dangers of unplanned and uncontrolled population and industrial expansion. Disaster The original study, based on a computerised model developed at the Massachusetts Institute otf Technology, gave a warning of a disaster to mankind vrithin a century if present growth trends continued. The American Vice-Presi-dent (Mr Rockefeller}!, in a speech to a meeting of the club, attacked “no-growth” economic and social philosophy, saying: “It has always retarded some of the traditional dynamic thrust of the nation.” Mr Peccei said in an interview that the M.I.T- group had “punctured the ‘.myth of exponential growth,” but that it was now essential to find solutions to the problems about which their report had warned the world. "Any effort to do so,” he said, “would requirie puncturing a second myth — that of national ” competence." New &tudbj' This meeting in Philadelphia, in honour of the American bicentenal y, was used by the Club of Rome to draw the veil parti y back from a new study it has commissioned the Nobel

Laureate, Professor Jan Tinbergen, of the Netherlands, to do on the creation of “a new international order.” Professor Tinbergen is working with 20 other experts from developing and developed countries. Their study, called by the acronym Rio (“Reviewing the International Order”) will be released in October. The call for a new international economic order was made at the sixth and seventh special sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. Although the meaning of the term is vague, it has generally been taken to signify a world order that would better serve the interests of developing countries, and, in particular, their poor masses. Proposals The Tinbergen Report will set forth concrete proposals for achieving ends in 10 major areas:— The international monetary system: The report is expected to call for additional creation of monetary reserves for the purpose of financing more rapid development of the Third World. Income redistribution and the financing of development: The report will probably call for substantial increases in transfer payments to Third World countries, especially the poorest, ■vith particular attention on the use of these resources for directly addressing the poverty problem. The Tinbergen Report will openly endorse the principle of greater equity for the poor nations, which it regards as an essential principle for the achievement of world peace. Industrialisation, trade and international division of labour: The report is expected to call for closer collaboration among regional blocs and for more “multilaterality” rather than bilateral relations in trade. It will also call for reduction of import impediments to industrial products from the Third World. Food production and distribution: The report

favours implementation of decisions, to be furthered by the pressure of agricultural organisations on the governments of industralised countries. Energy, ores and minerals: The report favours extra efforts for research on fusion, nuclear, solar, and geothermal energy, possibly to be co-ordinated by a world energy research authority. Environmental programmes and ocean management: The report favours preparation of a 1977 conference on the Law of the Sea by a group of experts, with concentration on building a federation of international organisations.

Transnational enterprises: Mr Peccei favours the internalisation of multinational corporations. He recognises that this may be difficult to do in the short run, but he feels that it is urgent to separate multinational corporations from the national governments of their own countries. Scientific research and technology: The report favours a system of subsidising the prices at which technological expertise is made available to Third World countries. Arms reduction: The Tinbergen study will call for reinforcement of the United Nations Peace Force and the exertion of pressures on the superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) to redirect military expenditures towards development, since “underdevelopment” constitutes a more serious threat to world peace than the other superpowers. A general category that includes increasing the efficiency of the United Nations. The thrust of the Tinbergen Report will be to substitute international economic planning for the uncontrolled play of market forces. Mr Peccei indicated that this would doubtless mean building the new order on regional and industrial groups

— including not only the European Common Market or the Andean Pact, but even the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. “We have got drunk on cheap oil in the industrialised world,’’ he said. Mr John Bunting, an unorthodox Philadelphia banker who is chairman of the First Pennsylvania Corporation and who served as host of the Club of Rome conference in Philadelphia, agreed with Mr Peccei on the necessity of long-range planning — for the United States as well as for the world economy. “The market, essential as it is,” Mr Bunting said, “is myopic: It is good for dealing with problems that lie only five or seven or possibly 10 years ahead, but our most serious problems are longrange problems.”