CGS Minnesota Issues
GlobalSolutionsMN.org works with our national organization on a number of issue areas. Below, you can read about these issues and find links to more information.
GlobalSolutions.org is a nationwide organization that inspires America to engage the world. Our members recognize that in today’s interconnected world, our lives, our jobs and our families are increasingly affected by global problems. Challenges like terrorism, climate change, failed states and infectious diseases cannot be addressed by any one country alone, not even the United States.
Global Solutions believes that countries can best solve global problems by working together to find global solutions. We believe that achieving a secure, connected, just and livable world requires effective international law and institutions, as well as a U.S. foreign policy that makes us safer and stronger through cooperation.
Some of CGS National's issues are different from CGS Minnesota's. To see a list of CGS National's issues, click here.
Global Solutions envisions and advocates:
A Secure World in which we work together with our friends and allies to tackle global problems that no one nation can solve alone, like terrorism, genocide and failed states;
A Connected World in which Americans recognize the link between global issues and local concerns in communities at home;
A Just World in which terrorists, human rights abusers and war criminals are held responsible for their crimes and deterred from future attacks; and,
A Livable World in which global collaborative efforts effectively confront environmental and health threats.
Climate Security
Citizens for Global Solutions-Minnesotamembers recognize that in today’s interconnected world, our lives, our jobs and our families are increasingly affected by global problems.
Climate change and related environmental degradation are good examples of problems that can't be solved by one country and therefore will require enforceable International law.
Catastrophic climate change could decimate the global economy and lead to political instability, social strife and mass migration on a historic scale with unknown consequences forour global civilization. In this sense climate change is as pressing an issue as are nuclear issues.
Nuclear non-Proliferation
Unregulated nuclear weapons systems continue to pose a threat to our global civilization. Since our founding, CGS has sought to reduce nuclear weapons and promote binding international regulation of nuclear materials. Today's changing global security environment, hacking of national security systems, and rise in terrorism reinforce the need to abolish Cold War-era weapons that fail to provide genuine global security.
Trade Agreements
TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership,
s an example of what can go wrong when no attempt is made to democratize decision making in global governance. On-going rounds of trade negotiations are taking place under a self-imposed gag pact even though 600 corporate leaders (with the help of their lobbyists?) are involved. So it seems that citizens around the world have been locked out of affecting the "rules of the road" for the near future of globalization but only "corporate citizens" have an inside track.
he silver lining in this on-going controversy is that many people may come to realize that global governance continues to take shape (UN, WTO, IMF, TPP, etc.) but people will be poorly served unless they work for citizen representation in these institutions.
Un Parliamentary Assembly
The United Nations system is the core of a larger system of global governance that has evolved since the end of World War II. But neither system includes an agency that directly represents the people of the world. Rather, people are represented indirectly, if at all, through their country's UN delegations. This would be as if the House of Representatives did not exist in the United States, with the legislative branch consisting exclusively of the hundred-member Senate.
The Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly seeks to establish an advisory parliamentary body as a logical early step toward the long-term goal of creating a democratic and truly representative system of global governance.