The world economic climate grows steadily more wintry: the increasing impoverishment of large parts of the Third World now finds a growing echo in those countries whose unqualified assumptions of unlimited growth and ever-increasing prosperity are foundering upon material shortages, the burden of defence expenditures, increased profitsharing in the world energy resources and the economic uncertainty generated by international monetary disorder. Yet the danger of collapse in the Western economies is doubly menacing to the world’s poorest countries, whose economic plight is already clear and whose trading position is equally vulnerable.
In this situation there is need for concerted action, in the framework of a re-evaluated United Nations system – and this is perhaps the dominant theme of this issue of Development Dialogue.