Globalization and Environment - Essay Example

Globalization is important as it has led to the development of the world economy among the participating countries. Globalization is mostly associated with trade. There are different activities of production that takes place in different countries. In some countries, there is a massive production of agricultural products while others experience a high production of minerals and industrial goods. Since different countries are endowed differently, they do come together and outline a trading strategy. The strategy involves solving the problem of massive production in one commodity and scarcity on the other. The treaty signed helps in offloading one commodity and acquired the other. There are different rewards and detriments that are coupled with globalization (studentresearch 1). The concern of this writing will be the outcome of globalization on the environment. Globalization is inescapable in many countries of the sphere. Every country requires offloading its excessive production in a market with the highest return. The country will also want to buy a commodity that is produced scarcely in the country. When buying, the country will choose from the available options and will go to the high quality and low-cost commodities. The final segment of this trade will ensure that the country makes profit. The profit made will be useful for investment, and the invested segment will lead to economic growth and prosperity. During the investment trend, countries have come to invest on what they can produce best. Producing the best commodities leads to specialization. In the course of economic growth and investment, there is a high trend of population growth. The populace growth can be as a result of numerous measures. Investors can immigrate into the country to look for an investment opportunity (Jorgenson and Givens 849). This measure is considered to have a small weight on the escalation of the population. Secondly, there is always a positive population growth in every country resulting from a high birth rate and low mortality rates. The final answer to the equation is always an increase in mortality rates. The growth of persons in the area has some consequence to the environment. An increase in population usually leads to increased pressure to the environmental resources. Reserves like land, water, and forestry are highly affected. The effect makes comes in when must settlement of the increased population. The population will opt to move to the unsettled area that mostly act as a source of the water reserves. When the water reserve is harmed, the surrounding will not be the same again (Himmelgreen, Cantor and Arias 81). The population sometimes suffers on water related diseases. Food production is also altered when some forms of environment such as forestry is affected. Many nations, especially the developing ones, usually rely on rainwater for crop production. When this rain falls, there is a massive outbreak of famine in the country affected. Agricultural activities manifested in the production of food also affect the environment. When a country specializes on agricultural products as part of its production for global trade, it will need to produce massively for a higher income. The massive production usually lead to the dependence of high tracks of land. When this land becomes smaller due to the increase of the growing population, environmental degradation is incurred as people move to the forested area for the growth of their produce. Continuous encroachment of the forested area leads to environmental degradation thus affecting people’s lives. Apart from environmental degradation due to the production of agricultural products, there is a degradation of the environment due to industrial activities in the course of globalization. Frequent globalization or international trading requires a high demand for various fields of industries, which will cause serious environment problem. Industrial activities such as processing of agricultural products is considered worth in terms of adding the quality of the products. Processing is important as it is considered to add both the value of the product as well as offer the local population a job that will raise their standards of living (Frankel 1). Manufacturing industries are also set up so that the country can sell finished products rather than the raw materials in the global market. Industrial activities portray various effects to the surrounding habitations. Since most of the industries, uses petroleum oil in production, they usually emit the harmful gas to the air. The industrial gasses such as carbon dioxide is not only harmful to the environment but also to human beings and animals living in the environment. Worldwide increase in temperatures is associated with the rise in gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is a big issue that is under discussion on various means on how it can be solved. Countries are not willing to minimize the production of the gas in the industries as an alternative energy has not been efficient for industrial use. Apart from global warming, people’s lives are being endangered by the gas. Taking in the harmful air is described as the beginning of various respiratory diseases. The problem is leading to many fatalities mostly in the developing world where industrial activities are becoming rampant. Industrial effluent are also being released to the environment through some channels that are poorly mishandled. Some of the channels over which the effluents are passed is the watercourse. Since the source of water is vital in the establishment of an industry, most of the firms usually settle on the water basins (Frank 417). They usually release their effluents to the aqua, thereby, contaminating the source. When this water is used by human beings and animals, they become affected in terms of health. Therefore, industries ignore the health importance of a person and animals for them to engage in the global trade. Globalization is, therefore, harmful to the population considering this event. Moreover, globalization is detrimental to the environment entails the trade of minerals. Minerals are important in the world development activity. Some reserves such as iron are important for industrialization and housing. Others like gold and diamond are worthy ornamentals. The mining process of the minerals is a harmful process as far as the environment is involved. Mining usually leads to land dereliction that makes it hard for settlement or other beneficial activities. Dereliction is a harmful environmental condition as it is costly to reverse the situation back after the mining process. Therefore, global trade that involve the exchange of minerals degrades the environment. Opposing views On the other hand, globalization has positively improved human life and standards. It has led to the provision of a collection of commodities attracting different consumers. Therefore, the nations need to live with globalization. If the need is vital for human development, there is a need to engage is a constructive business that will see to it that the environment is well catered. Indeed, the spherical players have come into the action of looking for the solutions. The actions are those that aim to change the environment in a positive way. Future actions to minimize the costs of globalization in environment area One of the strategy that the global players have outlined in the minimal standards of forestry in every country. The earth forestry cover is anticipated to fall short of 10%. Through the world environmental program, there is a strategy that has been set to raise this standard. Every country is supposed to achieve an 11% forest cover (Jorgenson and Givens 868). The achievement of this ratio will involve a serious measure of securing forest area in the country. When this ratio is achieved, the global climate will change. Trees are important in eliminating global warming that is perpetrated by the emission of the greenhouse gasses. Some of the gasses such as carbon dioxide are used up by trees and therefore their presence will help to balance the gas hence decrease the effect of global warming. The global players are also encouraging countries to invest on green energy. A green energy is an energy that do not emit harmful gasses as their by-products. Electric power is the highest utilized, and it is finding its way into the industry. The world environmental program is encouraging countries to develop and use other non-pollutant energy in place of the petroleum products. Many countries have heeded the call and deep research in these countries have led to the discovery of new sources of green energy. The safe energy is being generated into the industrial plants to enhance the elimination of chemical wastes. Alternative land use is also being encouraged on the derelict lands affected by mining. Even though settling in this area will be difficult, environmentalists are encouraging land reclamation that will transform the land to useable and beneficial land in the future (Webba, Cahan and Sun 237). When top soil and manure are applied in the area, the land can be transformed within a short time to useable land. Globalization is both beneficial and tragedy in the global arena. There is an undeniable fact that the environment crisis has been taken with the process of globalization. What people can do is to prevent this crisis from going worse. Positively, some organizations or events formed by international cooperation has planned to improve the ecological condition and has started to make an effort to accomplish this goal. This is the beneficial effect to the environment taken by globalization. Works Cited Frank, David John. "Science, Nature, and the Globalization of the Environment, 1870–1990." Oxford Journal of Social Forces (1997): 409-435. Frankel, Jeffrey A. "The National Bureau of Research and Statistics." 21 November 2003. The Environment and Globalization. . Himmelgreen, David A., et al. " Using a biocultural approach to examine migration/globalization, diet quality, and energy balance." Physiology & Behavior (2014): 76-85. Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Jennifer E. Givens. "Economic Globalization and Environmental Concern: A Multilevel Analysis of Individuals Within 37 Nations." Environment & Behavior (2014): 848-871. studentresearch. ecosystem. 01 may 2002. . Webba, Kimberley A., Steven F. Cahan and Jurry Sun. "The effect of globalization and legal environment on voluntary disclosure." The International Journal of Accounting (2008): 219-245. Read More