Global Problems Require Global Solutions - Coursework Example

Global Problems Require Global Solutions Name Institution Course Date In the 20th century, world trade significantly improved and it promise to continue in the 21st century. Moreover, flow of goods and services has significantly increased in the last thirty years (World Bank, 2016). However, institutions that regulate the globalized and interdependent economies are still localized in national governments (Payne & Nassar, 2012). At the end, this imbalance played a part in the first global economic recession ever witnessed in history of the world. In fact, economic downturn experienced in United States in 1930s and in 2008 almost immediately became a global recession. This clearly shows that collective action is needed in terms of creating economic policies that cuts across all the nations if financial crisis that crippled world economies in 2008 is to be prevented from spreading across the globe. This essay agrees that global problems require global solutions. It argues that the world is more globalized and interdependent that it has ever been hence problems facing the world should be tackled collectively if they are to be effectively solved. Today, the world is more interdependent than it has ever been. Indeed, self-reliance has been replaced by specialization. Our current society resembles an assembly line where every individual carry out a specific task while majority of others provide for the remaining needs of that person. Nations, just like people are not anymore economically self-sufficient. They must all be involved in international trade that entails trading in various goods, services as well as financial resources. Every nation is interlinked with the rest of the world regardless of its economic prosperity or the economic system. At the centre of this global economic interdependence is United States (Payne & Nassar, 2012). Assets and shares worth billions of dollars are owned by United States citizens outside the country. In each day, currency exchanges valued at more than one trillion dollars takes place. In many ways, people’s lives have become so dependent on the global economic system. Over the last ten years, development cooperation in the world has significantly evolved to an extent that emphasis is on global public goods (Gavas, 2013). The essence of the global development challenges currently experienced is a clear indication that global problems need to be solved by developing global solutions. Additionally, development of fresh forms of international cooperation that involves emerging and developing nations is required to solve various problems that are similar all over the world. Countries needs to develop economic policies that adapt to the changing nature of world’s economic landscape and development approaches that follows the common narratives concerning the challenges that require solutions (Gavas, 2013). Indeed, focus should be on strategic partnerships and investment in building global alliances that serve to promote multilateral solutions. Global communities are increasingly becoming interdependent of each other. This is slowly changing the kind of relationships between countries and individuals. In simple terms, local concerns have turn out to be global in implication (Payne & Nassar, 2012). Today, problems facing a nation are currently global problems. Regardless of whether these problems are inflation, recession, monetary fluctuation or other kind of issues, national solutions cannot solve them. They are the type of problems that each nation across the world faces. They therefore require global solutions. In most cases, national solutions to the global problems are offered by our world of nation-states. Up to now, the nation-state system has not provided solutions to many of the modern global problems (Payne & Nassar, 2012). This is despite the fact that the world is so interwoven and the likelihood of one depends on the production of many others. For instance, visiting a mall is in effect entering a global marketplace as oppose to merely visiting a local shopping place. This is because one is likely to encounter merchandise made from different parts of the world. Globalization is currently the main theme characterizing all aspects of the economy. As a result, the role that business leadership plays in creation of better global governance in world trade cannot be overemphasized. In fact, improving and enhancing global governance in world trade is a common interest for both the advanced and underdeveloped nations (World Trade Organization, 2010). Inequity in world trade is a global issue that needs the attention of all countries in order to make the world equitable and profit both the developed and developing countries even if not equally. This can be achieved in three ways. First, investments in developing countries should be massively carried out. This will stimulate their economies and reduce the deficit of trade between them and the developed countries. Secondly, markets for trade in the developing countries should be opened up to achieve the same objective. Lastly, technology has been increasingly significant in economic development. There is a substantial difference regarding utilization and technological development between developed and developing countries. In order to bridge this difference and move towards achievement of equitable world trade, technological transfer is a crucial avenue. Globalization is a process that is still going on and has not reached its completion stage, so far (World Trade Organization, 2010). Trade constitutes both movement of goods and services and people. This is one of the key issues shaping the world economy since the start of the 21st century. Moreover, demographics has been a widely debated trend all over the world. Movement of people across the borders needs to be tacked immediately by instituting ‘global’ solutions because it is an issue that affects all the countries all over the world. Indeed, a significant demographic expansion will be facing the world in a short while (Batini, McKibbin, & Callen, 2006). Additionally, the young generation is currently facing high unemployment rate. In order to create an equitable, sustainable, robust and inclusive global society, there is need to achieve a freer movement of people across the borders. It is therefore essential for the business community to come together if a global market economy that is effective and efficient is to be achieved. At the beginning of the 21st century, globalization has already become a powerful phenomenon in business, government and even to academicians. Globalization was and continues to be considered by many governments as the reason for their failing economies. On the other hand, corporations downsize or reduce the number of their workers on account that they should be capable of competing in the new era of global market. It can be deduce that globalization has affected all aspects of economy. Globalization refers to process of integrating markets, environmental concerns, values and politics across national boundaries (Payne & Nassar, 2012). It is driven by the need to achieve higher profits and expectation of realizing greater global economic prosperity or a better future for all inhabitants of the world and the earth itself. The entire process of interdependence discussed earlier is the globalization process. There is nothing new about this concept (globalization) except its unchallenged spread in the last twenty years (Caprio, Claessens, & Schmukler, 2002). Those opposing globalization argues that it will create greater economic disparities between the rich and the poor, further degradation to the environment and erosion of cultural distinctiveness. Multinational corporations consider it an avenue where new markets for their products and services are opened. Governments are supporting it because they see it as the only way of eliminating an unavoidable isolation and economic disaster in case they oppose it (Prasad et al., 2005). Furthermore, governments see globalization as a means of enhancing their economic situations. Investors are pro globalization because it offers them a way of growing their portfolios in stock markets and financial institutions. In sum, globalization has turn out to be a very contentious subject. Currently, globalization seems to be a process of unrestricted global economic growth that is guaranteed by neo-liberalism forces of markets and democracy. However, it is also a much more problematic phenomenon (Dirlik, 2007). Indeed, even the supporters of ‘globalism’ appear to agree that it is a new regulatory principle that needs to retain majority of the characteristics of earlier forms of regulation if it is to remain relevant and not slide into chaos. It has been suggested that it is a very powerful concept that threaten to plunge the world into fascism through global degeneration. On the other hand, it is thought as a solution to this kind of problems facing the world. Indeed, there are few people that would question that global problems require global solutions. However, it is necessary to point out that global solutions that are authoritarian in nature easily become new form of colonialism. Those who have been victims of colonialism, marginalization and economic development are more vulnerable in the era of global problems as compared to those who have benefit from it. Nevertheless, the problems do exist. The financial market meltdown witnessed in 2008 and the subsequent global and euro crises were not envisaged since the both the developed and developing nations have been having long periods of economic prosperity. The effects of these economic occurrences have not been fully eliminated as the global economy continues to be fragile (Bilal et al., 2014). Some policy reforms have been instituted in order to tackle the global economic imbalances and loopholes in regulation policies that brought this crisis. As this is happening, global economy has been recently transformed in the recent decades with integration of China into the world economy and the rise of Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa among other countries. Indeed, integration of these countries into the global system of trade has led to increase trade and capital flows as well as high standards of living in countries with the world’s poorest people. Furthermore, middle class citizens have emerged in the underdeveloped countries (Bilal et al., 2014). However, at the same time, inequality has increased, employment is much more precarious and the western countries have been witnessing increased socio-economic dislocation (Brown et al., 2014). In the meantime, the questionable sustainability of the present global economic activities and its contribution to widening disparities in the world has raised serious concerns. Amid these important global processes, citizens continue to feel that they have no power particularly as governments assert that they can do little as they remain fixated on developing short-term piecemeal solutions. The global crises that have been witnessed so far have had drastic effects throughout the world. The mortgage crisis that began in the United States negatively affected all the citizens in the entire world in comparison with the effects realized as a result of terrorists’ activities on the World Trade Center buildings or the fall of Berlin Wall. Moreover, the main cause of the Second World War was the global economic crisis of 1929 (Arguden, 2011). From these, one can appreciate that the crises currently facing the world deserves the attention of all stakeholders all over the world for reasons that are beyond their economic consequences. Indeed, all these crises have sharpened the awareness of capitalistic nations such as United States and many European countries to the limitations of unilateralism. At the same time, it has shown to the market-based economies such as Russia and other countries that the fragility of depending on the increasing commodities of oil and gas prices as a backbone of financing economic development. It has also demonstrated the dependence of the rising Chinese economy on profound integration of economies across the Atlantic (Arguiden,2011). All these events directly affect the global governance economic systems. As a result, solutions and attitudes towards problems affecting the world should have a global dimension and collective action as our environment and people’s daily lives are increasingly does so. It is difficult to organize key governance issues on a global scale since most of them are based on geographic and national boundaries. They include taxation and monetary policies. The world is increasingly becoming interdependent. There should be clear understanding that we live in a global society. As the world shrinks and become more interconnected, the solutions to the global problems should be jointly developed and implemented. Moreover, good governance principles need to be applied by individual governments and global institutions. Global institutions should be organized in such a way that rich countries contribute substantial amount of money towards their development in order to ensure that they have the means and mechanisms of dealing with problems of poor countries. Real legitimacy will be gained by global economic institutions if people are allowed to have an opinion regarding policies that shapes their own future. In other words, they significantly contribute to the process of developing global solutions to the global problems. A more sustainable and effective economies will therefore be achieved by including all interested stakeholders to the global decision making and solution to global problems. References Argüden, R. Y. (2011). Keys to governance: Strategic leadership for quality of life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Batini, N., McKibbin, W. J., & Callen, T. (2006). The global impact of demographic change. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, Research Dept. Bilal, S et al. (2014). Our Collective Interest Why Europe’s problems need global solutions and global problems need European action, Anna, B & Elize H (eds). European Think Tank Group: London. Caprio, G., Claessens, S., & Schmukler, S. L. (2012). The evidence and impact of financial globalization. London: Elsevier. Dirlik, A. (2007). Global modernity: Modernity in an age of global capitalism. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Gavas, M. (2013). The EU and global public goods: Challenges and opportunities (No. 2013: 05). DIIS Reports, Danish Institute for International Studies. Payne, R. J., & Nassar, J. R. (2012). Politics and culture in the developing world, 5th edn. Boston, Mass: Longman. Prasad, E., Rogoff, K., Wei, S. J., & Kose, M. A. (2005). Effects of financial globalization on developing countries: some empirical evidence (pp. 201-228). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. World Bank. (2016). World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications. World Trade Organization. (2010). GLOBAL PROBLEMS, GLOBAL SOLUTIONS: Towards Better Global Governance. Geneva: WTO Secretariat. Read More