Falling Walls: Can Civil Society rock global North-South divisions? What are its Resources, Agents and Limits?

Abstract

The world is at a turning point. The climate crisis, Covid-19, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are sounding the alarm. The governance of our global community is in need of new rules, models, and paradigms on a grand scale. This applies above all to the relations between the Global North and the Global South. Invisible walls, cemented by historic inequity, must fall. This working paper identifies push and pull factors. In the North, one of the key players is the Catholic Church’s reform wing; in the Americas, it is economists and ecologists embedded in indigenous traditions who question the status quo. The Buen Vivir (good life) philosophy of indigenous cultures which reunites man and nature and forms an essential part of the environmental movement in the North, could build a bridge between hemispheres. Anthropological research into pre-Columbian America provides new insights into a well-functioning indigenous civil society. These may be a valuable starting point for a new culture of dialogue and the foundation of a newly balanced world order with shifted normative standards, which is expected to be on the agenda at the 12th World Conference of Science Journalists in Medellín, Colombia in 2023.