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SCI LIBRARY

Millennium Forum

Alanna Hartzok


[Reprinted from GroundSwell, 2000]


History was made at the first Millennium Forum with 1350 representatives of over 1,000 non-governmental and other civil society organizations from more than 100 countries gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 22-26 May 2000.

The Forum's Declaration and Agenda for Action built upon a common vision and the work begun at civil society conferences and the UN world conferences of the 1990's. The Declaration is intended to draw the attention of governments to the urgency of implementing the commitments they have made and as a framework for channeling our collective energies by reclaiming globalization for and by the people.

Two Georgists, Tatiana Roshkoshnaya, Director of the Land and Public Welfare Foundation, based in St. Petersburg, Russia and Alanna Hartzok, UN NGO Representative for the London-based International Union for Land Value Taxation, worked together during the Millennium Forum to inject resource rental language into the Forum Declaration. They also distributed the Green Tax Policy/People Planet Finance brochure to the other Forum participants and met with officials of the UN Center for Human Settlements (UNCHS or HABITAT) and the UN Development Program while they were in New York.

Statements from the Declaration and Agenda for Action relevant to earth rights and green taxation policy include:

Poverty eradication is not an automatic consequence of economic growth but requires purposeful action to redistribute wealth and land....

To give particular attention to eradication of unequal taxation, tax havens, and money-laundering operations and impose new forms of taxation, such as the Tobin tax, and to regional and national capital controls. To direct the international financial institutions to eliminate the negative conditionalities of structural adjustment programs (SAP's)....

Sustainable funds could be raised through a currency transfer tax, also helping to reduce currency speculation and TAX ON THE RENTAL VALUE OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES.

To promote the establishment of micro credit facilities, especially for farmers and women, to promote their access to forms of land tenure that facilitate access to and ownership of land.

Among other things, the Security Council must take more action to prevent conflict over raw materials and other basic resources.

The UN should set up expert groups and begin the necessary intergovernmental negotiations towards establishing alternative revenue sources, which could include fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees levied on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on carbon content of fuels.