Welcome to the first Global South Encounters Webinar 2023: Land Ownership, Resource Wars, and Peace- The Philippines with Charles Avila, chaired by Franklin Obeng-OdoomPeace
The Universe Story is one thing – now that scientists quite unanimously tell us how the Big Bang started it all some 13.8 billion years ago. The story of Earth, however, is another matter: a 4.5-billion-year-old planet that developed life in its own good time also evolved, very late in the day, a certain group of Earthlings – the human species – a group that has become powerful and insane enough to be in sufficiently powerful position to destroy the very planet of its origins. The human story, then, is quite important to grasp in its essence and trajectory. Charles Avila has written lots about how the welfare of human be-ing (being) depends completely on the notion of have-ing (having) that it entertains.
In this Webinar he discusses what this now means in today’s circumstances of North-South contradictions, of imperialism taking on new names and covers, but at bottom still wrestling with what is just and smart regarding the ownership of property, particularly land and all natural elements and how in a particular quite instructive case like the Philippines both old colonialism and neo-colonialism allow the age-old insanity of absolutist and exclusivist ownership to reign – at the cost of unending wars and planetary suicide. At the same time, however, Avila maintains that there is hope for the human species and Earth if enough numbers of that species wage a cultural revolution on the unjust conception of ownership in favor of trust and stewardship and organize critical numbers to enable peoples everywhere to recover the commons.
Our presenter, Charlie Avila (CHARLES R. AVILA), Director for Social Justice of the Lay Society of St. Arnold Janssen (LSSAJ), is also the National Chairman of the Philippine Association of Small Coconut Farmers’ Organizations (PASCFO) and Executive Director of the Confederation of National Coconut Farmers’ Organizations of the Philippines. At one time an elected Mayor of the town of his birth (Tanauan Leyte), he was at various other times a Consultant of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization based in Rome Italy and Bangkok Thailand, a Secretary-General of the Asian Cultural Forum on Development that served as a development coalition of people’s organizations from 18 countries of Asia and the Pacific, a Research Fellow at the Centro Intercultural de Documentacion in Cuernavaca Mexico, and at the Institute for Food and Development Policy in San Francisco California, a Staff Writer of South magazine in London UK. He studied Theology and got his Masteral degree in Philosophy from the Divine Word Seminary, Quezon City and Tagaytay City. He is author of several books on various topics, including OWNERSHIP: EARLY CHRISTIAN TEACHING. Now based in Manila, Avila is active with the International Union for Land Value Taxation of which he is one of the Representatives to the United Nations. His latest book is entitled "The Untold Magellan Story” (available at Barnes&Noble).