Vol. 15 No. 1 (2016)

Development is the byword of “progress” in the world that has been swept over by starry claims of neo-liberal economics. In this issue we focus on the governments of Nicaragua and China pushing forward the development of a new canal across Central America cutting through the Miskitu and Rama territories in utter disregard of these nations’ consent. This “progressive change” comes more than twenty years after a ten years war against the Miskitu, Sumo and Rama peoples prompted by greed in Nicaragua’s capital Managua headed by Daniel Ortega. We see the influences of economic change in India on Fourth World peoples and the consequences of those changes on the millions of Fourth World peoples’ lives and property in reports appearing in Intercontinental Cry Magazine (https://intercontinentalcry.org/), The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/international), Aljazeera (http://www.aljazeera.com/topics/regions/us-canada.html) and The Ecologist (http://www.theecologist.org/). Rampant forest destruction by “logging” in the Brazilian jungles is not merely an environmental and climate disaster, but the essence of violence against Fourth World peoples who live in those jungles. States and corporations offer “development” with the help of the UN Development Program and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as if building highways, railroads, canals and cities in the midst of Fourth World territories is a positive good while the peoples and territories of Fourth World peoples are torn asunder. The PR Chinese government has begun plans to build a high-speed railway across Central Asia to Europe through hundreds of Fourth World Territories. The destruction to these peoples and their territories can only be measured by the levels of destruction suffered my many nations as a result of more than 70 years of “development”—expansion beyond the capacity of nature to renew. The life ways, philosophies, sciences and knowledge systems of Fourth World nations are under perpetual stress and violence from state and corporate development energized by neo-liberal economic concepts that are neither workable nor sustainable—for any of the world’s populations. Rolling back the unsustainable “development madness” of states and corporations seeking to expand their power and enrich the 1,810 billionaires (Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/) who have amassed $6.5 trillion from their development investments is a priority agenda item for Fourth World nations. Leadership among Fourth World nations in coalition has become essential to avoid the growing human catastrophe many nations face. In this Issue of the Fourth World Journal our authors offer some perspective as well as answers to the burning question: What can we do?