When globalization fails, the regions!
Carles Llorens
Secretary General of ORU Fogar
The Azores archipelago will always be remembered for that meeting that Manuel Durao Barroso facilitated to reach an agreement between Bush-Blair-Aznar regarding the Iraq War. There, also facilitated by the commissioner of the European Union, however a key meeting for global regionalism also took place. The United Regions Organization ORU Fogar was born in March 2007 in Marseille. However, it was conceived in Ponta Delgada, the capital of the archipelago, in June 2006 during the celebration of the seminar “Regions and globalization.”
If I remember that event today it is precisely because of the topic addressed. Barroso, the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Michel Barnier, the UNDP representative, Christophe Nuttal and a lot of relevant regional presidents met concerned about the consequences of globalization. Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, sent a message expressing the same concern.
For several years now, the anti-globalization movement had been pointing out the perverse effects of the process: precariousness of work, destruction of the weakest economies due to the emergence of large companies, effects on the environment, threat to the ability of states to act, etc. ...The movement was so politically connoted that it became, but a relative case. Time, however, has proven the anti-system right on this issue.
Barroso's illustrious guests, in any case, emphasized -above all- that globalization meant the standardization of the world and the uniformization of products, customs and lifestyles. They showed their rejection of decisions that affected daily life and the future of the territories being made increasingly far from the people. And they pointed out that globalization would be inequitable, because there would be many regions that would be left out. Faced with this process, they affirmed that regions should be areas in which identity, difference, specificity and -they said- "in a broad sense, biodiversity" were preserved. That meeting marked the path of regionalism.
If there was concern about the consequences of globalization, it would be, in any case, because, in 2006, globalization was advancing unabated. With the Fall of the Berlin Wall, markets opened, international trade flowed, companies expanded everywhere, raw materials, goods and capital circulated. Globalization, in many ways, was very positive.
This flow was transferred to everyday life. We could order anything for dinner and have it in half an hour. With one click, Amazon served us any product within a few hours. Products began to be bought, used and launched to like never before in history. But an unsustainable logic, but very powerful. Today we can continue clicking, but we are very far from that moment.
The economic crisis of 2008 was the first warning that things were not as easy as many said. However, many more warnings would come, the most important: the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, globalization presented its most perverse face. Although in 2020 BREXIT occurred. In March 2021, as a metaphor for the collapse of globalization, the Panamanian-flagged container ship Ever Gobierno became stuck in the Suez Canal, completely paralyzing global trade. Then came the Ukrainian War, which showed us ships loaded with grain blocked in Sevastopol and the Gaza War, which populated the Red Sea with pirates willing to prevent container ships from reaching Suez. And, throughout this process, we have seen how many industries were lacking chips and supplies to many industries and we have also seen how all these problems made products and, above all, food more expensive.
Globalization required stability. For a few years, like a mirage, it was there. Now, although we know that stability is not guaranteed. Global trade has two major routes: China's in the United States and China's in Europe. The first, along the Pacific, is 11,000 kilometers. The second, depending on where it passes, can have 14,500 or 22,500. These are basically maritime routes with many possibilities of having suffered interruptions. The United States has sufficient military power to guarantee its route to Asia. However, neither Europe nor China can guarantee theirs. The United Kingdom could have done it. However, its interests are no longer with Europe. And, thus, relying on such long supply chains poses a huge risk.
It is not that the “Four Cheese” pizza no longer arrives. Knowing what we know about geopolitics, climate change or terrorism, we have no guarantees that water, gas or electricity will reach our homes in the medium term. If you continue to rely on supplies of these routes, our industries may collapse and our supermarkets may be deprived. We also do not know exactly how we will guarantee mobility. If we want to stop the catastrophic consequences of Climate Change, we cannot burn more oil. For now, though, we need it like water and if a supply is subject to the most fickle geography it is, but this one! That the Gaza War, to begin with, has derivatives in this sense is within the possible, and even probable. Meanwhile, the electric car is not advancing. Hydrogen is a utopia. And at a nutritional level? The unknowns are very large... I don't know what we will eat, but it is clear that speculation with cereals can put the fattening of our livestock in serious difficulties.
At this point we must go back to the beginning. Perhaps a new meeting in the Azores would be necessary. There, we would confirm that we are already in post-globalization, in a fractured world in which global economies of scale are going to disappear, because much shorter and guaranteed supply chains are needed. If for a few decades cost had prevailed above all, now, the most important thing is security of supply. The production site will move closer to the consumption site. There will, therefore, be a local industry that produces the essentials.
In this scenario, the regions are not only also a space of identity that resists uniformization. The regions are much more. They are the scale on which the solution to many of our problems must be considered. The region must be an economic space, an ecosystem with powerful synergies and with a high degree of autonomy from the outside. We will have to work with neighbors, overcoming -if necessary- old reluctance, more than with distant destinations. The regions will also have to provide their own energy. The energy transition is not an option. It is an imperative.
In the food field, a real revolution is necessary. Our globalized food system is, objectively, a threat for the coming years. According to the 2023 FAO Report, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of people in the world who suffer from hunger by 119 million. The Ukrainian War in 23 million. Some studies suggest that in this decade there are 1 billion people who may die of hunger. In an unstable world, food security cannot depend on products arriving from thousands of kilometers away. We must talk about food sovereignty and guarantee a minimum of local production.
We are not the only ones who are clear that the solution lies in the regions. The prestigious Japanese political analyst Keniche Ohmae has been arguing for many years that nation-states are no longer the framework for economic activity and that well-planned regions with a good strategy (industrial commitment, investment and well-trained individuals) are the key of success in the global world.
In his latest book, “The Age of Resilience”, published in November 2022, Jeremy Rifkin also supports governance based on bioregions. The well-known author of "The End of Work" affirms that this must be the bet "if we aspire to the survival and prosperity of our species”. The author considers the bioregion in social, psychological and biological terms: a “place to live” in which the population establishes a balance with other living beings and in harmony with the processes of the planet (seasons, meteorology, water cycles...).
Even more recently, geopolitical expert Peter Zeihan in "The End of the World is Only the Beginning" makes the same bet in favor of the regions if "humanity does not want to collapse."
