This review of the state of the global "alter-globalization" movement finds the movement divided over its political and organizational direction on the eve of the eighth World Social Forum (WSF) in Belém, Brazil (27 January - 1 February 2009). The WSF, which last met in Brazil in January 2005 in the city of Porto Alegre, remains the most successful forum in terms of the quality and openness of the discussions, and of the size of the event (200,000 people attended the opening demonstration, and 2,500 workshops were run by 5,700 civil-society organizations), according to the author, Geoffrey Pleyers, a researcher of the Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Louvain. In the wake of the present global financial crisis, the WSF suffers from "a failure of success" as evidenced by quarrels about the forums' objectives and the movement's political orientations. The review presents three approaches - local, advocacy and state - that may be complementary, rather than competing in their search for solutions to the problems of poverty, inequality, food insecurity and ecological crisis.
