Global Governance: New Players, New Rules - Assignment Example

? GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Type of the Paper December 25, 2970 words of the school Introduction Nations across the globe have a role to maintain law and order among their citizens. For a long time, delegates from different nations have been meeting collectively in forums to discuss issues and provide the resolution, which give directives to nations on how to handle global problems. Certain factors occurring in several or individual nations could adversely affect other nations on a wide scope, if not controlled. Global governance mechanisms involve cooperative leadership by bringing together different stakeholders from national governments, civil societies and multilateral public agencies to accomplish commonly accepted objectives.1Therefore, governments, UN, WHO, UNEP, UNSC, World Bank, and WTOs are among the main participants in such forums. Every nation has its own laws, but due to the existing shared resources such as the oceans, the atmosphere, and climate among others, the necessity of global governance on such environmental issues has to be in place, to protect the environment and the biodiversity. There are series of environmental challenges which span several nations, regions, and eventually the entire globe causing serious harm. Some of the main global governance issues relating to the environment include health, energy, hazardous chemicals, green house gas emissions, invasive species and polluted water, and depleting resources. Truly, it is each nation’s and its societies’ responsibility to safeguard the environment, but their efforts are too small to handle the increasing issues; hence international cooperation has to take responsibility, by enforcing policies to guide and discipline nations. Health Issues The increasing health problems are matters of global concern, especially now when the transmission of diseases, either sexually, contact or airborne is on the rise. New diseases are emerging, all threatening the lives of the global population, who have unrestricted movements across different boundaries. Health problems are wide, but the growth of global health partnerships is helping to address majority of them. ‘Health threats such as HIV/AIDS, influenza, SARS, or avian flu threaten every country and the global community as a whole, due to the rapid spread based on global travel and mobility; their impact is frequently very serious in economic terms.’2 Some of the diseases are arising or spreading due to human, economic, and social actions, which could be regulated easily to counter the diseases. Nations are spending huge amounts of money that could be drained in other sectors, to assist the citizens to meet the costs of treatment of these diseases. Food processing, alcohol, and tobacco companies have been accused of being channels that steer certain diseases like Diabetes and cancers within the societies. As financing healthcare continues to be a political issue, inequalities in accessing health care still persist with nations like the United States spending $7285, while developing nations such as Eritrea and Myanmar may have to spend less than $10 per individual annually.3 Often, human health has a relation with the health of the ecosystem; hence environmental degradation does not affect terrestrial organisms only, but generally lead to diseases that are severe to human health than infectious diseases. Malaria is partly attributed to environmental changes arising from human activities for economic gain. Parts of the Amazons, Peru, and Bangladesh demonstrate increasing malaria cases, as the clearing of the forests left pools of water bodies, creating ideal sites for mosquitoes to breed; these human caused changes encourage mosquitoes movement into areas populated by humans as their habitats are destroyed.4 This problem is also a health problem in Africa, since the tropics are much warmer due to deforestation activities, influencing organisms’ evolution (insects tend to live longer and breed faster than before) and as they migrate to other newer environments, tuberculosis, HINI, SARS, and Schistosomiasis caused by snails become prevalent. In relation to consuming wild animals, ‘Ebola outbreaks and Simian foamy virus traced from blood or body fluids of non human primates’5 has claimed the lives of many, especially in central Africa. According to WHO, ‘24% of global diseases are caused by environmental exposures that can be averted.’6 Other environmental issues addressed are water and sanitation, whose effects result to Cholera and Diarrhoea. Addressing Health Issues Through global health governance, specific international health problems are being handled. Organisations are participating in financing global health activities, especially for people in marginalised areas, to access medication and health care. Combating most of the above diseases has been part of the global millennium goals, with huge resources, awareness, and commitment involved from international to national level. Aids, TB, and Malaria have been given priority. GAVI distributes resources to reinforce immunization infrastructure, such as cold chains and training health officers on effective delivery of vaccinations, while Global Fund provides financial support to similar health workers, to deliver and monitor compliance of antiretroviral treatments among patients.7 Both low and middle income countries far as from Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia, Latin America, and Middle East, who have been faced by such problems have benefited from developmental assistance on this health issues. Although all these efforts have not eradicated the health issues, they have reduced the impacts caused among nations, and touched on key weaknesses in the global health system. However, the global governance and international health organisations efforts depend on countries’ structured policies, for the aid and assistance to work effectively. Initially, the use of pesticide DDT was common to eliminate mosquitoes, even though it had side effects of being carcinogenic in humans. It was a way of solving one problem, while inducing another one into the population. On the contrary, UNEP, WHO, and GEF opposed the use of DDT to be replaced by other alternatives such as preventative medications, bed nets, and decreasing the mosquitos’ breeding grounds.8 The involvement of global organisations in health issues have encouraged countries to take measures on environmental degradation, educated their citizens on environmental concerns to promote health, as the governments formulate strategic policies to lead internal organisations on how to administer, use, and take responsibilities once funds, vaccines, and other medications are facilitated. Polluted Water and Depletion of Resources Increase in water bodies’ pollution affects all dependent activities internationally. Since the water bodies drain into other sources, pollution caused in a water source within a boundary merges with large water bodies, some of which could be fresh and safe water for human consumption. In the modern world, accessing clean water for consumption is no longer easy, not only in developing nations, but also in the rich nations. Accessibility of fresh water sources is increasingly becoming limited due to pollution, shortage, and population growth, which lead to inequalities among the rich and the poor. According to the Watson, ‘Water shortages and water pollution cause wide spread public health problems, limit economic and agricultural development, and harm a wide range of ecosystems.’9 The numbers of diseases arising from water related problems seem to affect the population, especially the children who die from cholera and diarrhoea frequently. The major causes come from industries and human activities that end up releasing unwanted materials, with knowledge or through carelessness into water bodies. As industrialisation increases, the disposal of untreated industrial effluents, which are released without regulations increase the chemical levels in water bodies. Often, depending on the industries, the waste which finds itself could be toxic pollutants (e.g organic chemical and heavy metals), mildly radioactive waste water, sediments and acid drainage, and oxygen depleting organisms.10 Beyond that, agricultural activities contribute to the heavy deposition of sediments, farm chemicals via livestock waste, and crop dressing chemicals once washed down the water bodies, besides the sewage leakages, and domestic waste coming into contact with fresh water sources. Among the many recognized countries associated with water bodies’ pollution, Indian industries (pulp, sugar, textile and paper) are major contributors of aquatic life destruction, while risking the lives of people to a variety of health hazards.11 The humans’ aggressive nature of fishing activities has also led to overfishing, resulting to collapse of fisheries. Though water and sanitation policies may be effective at the national level, lack of international cooperation towards the governance of these issues could lead to threats on marine and costal ecosystems. Addressing Water Issues Global water governance has not been easy, especially with multiple decisions from forums conducted by different global organisations. However, through the UNDP’s Water and Ocean governance programs, integrated ecosystem based approaches are undertaken from national, regional, and global levels.12 Instead of remaining silent due to lack of permanent solutions, the UN opted for cost effective intermediate actions, such as chlorinated water, Sodis: Solar water disinfection, changing behaviour for health reasons, and integrated effort of government policies to support local plans. Of course before providing safe water, the hygiene and sanitation should be achieved. At least their actions have been quite an effort in improving health, after global education and awareness for proper sanitation and cleaning hands, reducing the diseases infections, especially in Africa and Asia.13 This change of behaviour is improving children’s and global health in general. Chlorinated and solar water disinfection improves water safety for consumption, while safeguarding the health of the population. Water treatment has been made affordable for application in any local and national level. Due to water shortage, the allocation of this resource requires wisdom; the IWRM introduces new approaches such as charging tariff for water acquisition in the competing consuming sectors, while sustaining widespread availability of the limited resource among the population.14 The impact of water pollution is felt globally; hence both poor and rich nations have to collaborate to eliminate the threat. UNIDO has put efforts to reverse environmental degradation arising from industrial activities, by using preventive approach through clean technologies.15 These clean technologies would enforce treatment of industrial effluents, with support from national policies and governing structures. Failure to which, industries would be penalized for being pollutants. The countries would control fishing activities at the local and national level, as the aquatic life is safeguarded. Climate Change Together with o zone depletion, the issue has been a key area of global governance interest. Besides the natural causes of climate change, human related activities have intensified the change, tampering with global temperatures, and the atmosphere. The anthropogenic forces lead to increase of green house gases, atmospheric black carbon, and changes in land utilization.16 Human efforts in deforestation have slowly resulted to desertification, land degradation, and increasing strength of winds, which cause harm as wind storms. The lands top fertile cover ends up being swept down into the neighbouring surface water bodies, which are already suffering from intense evaporation and pollution. As the forest plantations are destroyed, the quantity of CO2 gas increases in the atmosphere. According to Dessler and Parson, majority of humans rely on burning fossil fuels as the source of energy, hence emissions of CO2 combine with H2O, CH4, N2O, and halocarbons from agricultural and industrial activities, increasing the greenhouse effect, and contributing to warming variably according to their persistence in the atmosphere.17 Sulphur dioxide is the major aerosol instigated through human burning of coals, which contain sulphur. The ozone depletion is still increasing as industries continue to manufacture the ozone depleting substances (CFCs, Methyl chloroform and HCFCs) and halons, which encourage the society to continue using them in their activities. As the ozone depleting substances are heated by the UV radiation, the degradation sets free the halogen atoms, which deplete the ozone layer. The excessive warming changes the rainfall pattern impacting on global climate, as well as risking human health in the exposure of UV-B ionizing radiation, which could lead to skin cancers. Truly, some of the contributing activities are within human control. Addressing Climate Change The global climate governance promoting change has broadly been handled by UNFCCC; other active organisations are EMG and CSD as the UN systems. The UNFCCC placed measures to stabilize GHG concentration in the atmosphere, at a level that would prevent hazardous human related interference with the climate. In addition to that, parties involved were supposed to take precautionary measures, to minimize the causes of climate change and mitigating its adverse effects, without postponing measures due to insufficient scientific certainty.18 So much has been focused in the rich nations, while the developing countries are exempted from mandatory cutback of green house gas, in the excuse that the measure would hamper their development.19 This means it would be an effort with partial regression, since the policy acts only to certain specific nations. Rather, the step can be criticized to encourage laxity among developing nations, as already industrialised nations perfect their economic and social life. The long term focus of UNFCCC is to stabilize GHG emissions, while the short term goal (based on Kyoto protocol) is similar, focusing on short term emissions. However, it would require an impetus to facilitate investments in long term infrastructure.20 Other recommended United Nations measures cooperate with nations’ policies and their environmental organisations, to encourage re-afforestation and control of harmful gas emissions. Destructive Energy Conflicting nations have erupted into war, threatening destruction of one another through reactive energies, and military engagements. Together with terrorist attacks, development of nuclear energies as a security measures, risks the lives of global populations. Security concerned and peaceful coexistence is what most nations desire to thrive in, but without it, threats against nations create tensions of insecurity. Energy purposes are intense from domestic consumption, industrial use, to weapons development using gaseous and chemical forms. The power to create these energies is often associated with powerful nations, nations with key resources, or conflicting with issues of one another. Such nations as China, Russia, India, conflicting nations like Iran and Syria, and some Middle East and North African countries could have civilian nuclear capacity, which pose future danger to global security.21 On the other hand, greater threats of increasing oil prices and scarcity have already been experienced, as the OPEC nations control production and to an extent, the price of these resources. Life has become expensive, with demand increasing than supply, causing nations to seek alternative means for development, such as Nuclear energy. Addressing Energy Issues Even as nuclear energy is being considered as a solution to the climate change, the power technology resulting from the nuclear sources could provide alternative low carbon electricity. Nuclear power is both of benefit, and challenging if mishandled. Before the globe embraces it, a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has to be strengthened to avoid more proliferation of weapons, and nuclear weapons technology, than what exists.22 The world energy council (WEC) has been working closely with private and public energy organisations, and involving youths as they seek sustainable petroleum to meet global demand. WEC calls upon all stakeholders, civil societies, governments, consumers, and producers to cooperate in investment, and development of innovative ways to acquire new oil, gas, and alternative resources, setting higher standards for efficient and clean energy use.23 In conjunction to this, use of non-hydro renewable energy technologies is encouraged. The multilateral (World Bank Group, Regional development banks and OPEC), and bilateral (OECD development assistance committee) development sources have been keen in funding on-grid, mini grid, and off grid electrification.24 Internationally, households are being encouraged to conserve energy in all their activities. Uses of LPG stoves, biogas systems, and advanced biomass cook stoves have been promoted across the globe, minimizing locally instigated pollution. List of Abbreviations UNFCCC - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change GHG - Green House Gas EMG - Environmental Management Group CSD - Centre for Sustainable Development CFC - Chlorofluorocarbons HCFC - Hydro chlorofluorocarbons UNIDO - United Nations Industrial Development Organisation UNDP - United Nations Development Programme IWRM - Integrated Water Resources Management UNEP - United Nations Environmental Programmes WHO - World Health Organisations DDT - Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane GEF - Global Environmental Facility GAVI - Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation UNSC - United Nations Security Council WTO - World Trade Organisations Bibliography Bradford, Jr, C. I., and Boughton, J. M., ‘Global Governance; New Players, New Rules.’, Finance and Development [online journal] Vol 44, No 4 (2004), http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2007/12/boughton.htm (accessed 24 December 2012). Dessler, A., and Parson, E. 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