December 5, 2003	Friday	Shawwal 10, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 4: The process of globalization should value environmental and social contributions of communities and peoples’ right to their resources and labour.

Speaking on the second day of the seminar on “Emerging trends in geo-economic world order”, organized by FRIENDS and the Hanns Seidel Foundation, here on Wednesday, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, an environmental lawyer from Bangladesh, said nearly 80 per cent of the world’s natural resources were being consumed by 20 per cent people in the rich countries. She urged governments in the South to gain meaningful bargaining power.

“If pollution and waste migrate to the South under free trade and knowledge while biological diversity and wealth created from it travel to the North through intellectual property rights protection, the inevitable outcome would be environmental injustice,” Ms Hasan maintained.

In all, nine papers were presented on the concluding day, majority of which spotlighted the issues pertaining to the ravages of globalization in its role as the instrument of transnational corporations and the developed world.

Aziz Alkazaz from the Network of European Institutes of Economics and President of Iraqi Community in Germany, reviewed the state of economy in various countries of the Middle East and Pakistan.