Eurasia News

  F rom 22 August to 24 August 2023 South Africa hosted the 15th BRICS summit in an attempt to define the BRICS’s role in the global economic system. Namely, at the summit numerous documents were discussed in the presence of more than 40 heads of states and governments, in addition to the leaders of the BRICS countries, which include Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the minister of foreign affairs of Russia. As usual, this 15th summit in the history of the group also addressed the global management system and the necessity to reform the current (in the words of the participants) unjust and unequal system with a special emphasis on the need for major structural reforms of the global financial system, which has been dominated by the United State s since the  Bretton Woods Agreement [ 2 ] of July 1944 and the  Nixon shock [ 3 ], which has been present to date. The Johannesburg Summit was not ordinary by any means, as its agenda included many major issues in the light of global t

A s I was writing a section of a book on sustainable development, I was struck by two key thoughts. In the first place, I was reminded of the growth in population, which had taken place over the last 60 or so years, from 3 billion approximately to over 8 billion. However, had we continued the previous trajectory of growth the population today would be approximately 5 billion. There are good reasons for this increase in growth of population; improved health, medical research breakthroughs, people living longer, expansion of globalised shipments of increased output of bulk food from better agricultural practises, and comparative peace, i.e. limited scope wars but no major conflagrations. An example of allowing continued long-term peace to reign, after a fairly uncomfortable period of erratic governance, is that of Indonesia. In the thirty-year period from 1970, the population doubled from 100 million to 200 million, and the average longevity increased from 40 to 70 years. This was as a