24 GLOBAL ISSUES
Global Climate Change
A new report has just been published confirming global climate change. For the last twentytwo years temperatures have been above average and the temperature has risen steadily since
1910, owing to the increased burning of fossil fuels and emissions of carbon dioxide - the
famous “greenhouse effect”. The increase in the twentiesth century was only 0.6oC, but this
has actually meant mor changes in climate. North America has regularly had temperatures
3oC higher than usual and both the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are melting. The latest
computer forecast predicts that global warming could speed up and meteologists predict and
increase of 6oC in the twenty-first century. This will have unforseen consequences for the
future.
Endagered Species
Statistics have just been released showing the number of endagere species on the “red list”,
that is species on the brink of extinction. This list has grown dramatically in the last few years
Over a quarter of the world’s reptiles and a fifth of the world’s amphibians are all threatened
by the destruction of their habitats. Eleven species of mammals are in danger and these
include tigers, whose population i down to 5,000, and giant pandas, whose population is
around 1,000 owing to deforestation. However, there is some good news. The white rhino,
which in 1970 was on the verge of extinction with only 200 animals left, has now recovered
and there are now 11,000 white rhinos in the wild.
How can we protect our environment?
Sort out your rubbish. Organic matter e.g. potato peelings, left over food, tea leaves
etc. can be transferred straight to a compost heap in the garden and used as a good, natural
fertiliser for the plants. Aluminium cans, glass bottles and newspapers etc. can be taken to
bottle and can banks and wastepaper skips. Find out where they are by asking your local
council or library.
Use recycled paper to help save trees. Everyone in Britain uses about 6 trees worth of
paper every year.
Take your old clothes to charity shops. Some are sold, others are returned to textile
mills for recycling.
Try to avoid buying plastic. It's hard to recycle. One way to cut down on plastic is to
refuse to use carrier bags offered by supermarkets and use strong, long lasting shopping bags
instead, or re-use plastic bags over and over again, until they wear out.
Use less energy by switching off lights when rooms are not in use, not wasting hot
water, not overheating rooms and not boiling more water than necessary when making a cup
of tea!
Use a bicycle or walk instead of using a car for short trips.
If you use chlorine-based bleach or detergents containing phosphates you are
contributing to water pollution.
Try to buy 'environmentally-friendly' products.
Poverty
The number of poor people in the world is actually increasing. Poor people make up one-third
of the world’s population. And that’s despite a steady increase in global income since 1960.
Basically, the world has got richer, but the number of poor people is going up. And what’s
worrying, too, is that the gap between rich and poor is growing as never before.
So where do most of the world’s poor live? The answer’s quite easy - in developing countries,
often called “Third World”, especially in Asia and Africa. Some countries, like Rwanda and
Mozambique, are desperately poor. However, even the richest countries have their share of
poor people. For example, over thirty-five million people in the USA, the world’s richest
country, lived in poverty in the late 1990s - that’s a number greater than the whole population
of some countries.
Another important question is: who exactly are these poor people? Some social groups are
much more likely to be poor than others. If you are a woman, if you come from a group of the
original inhabitants of a country, like the Native Americans in America the Aborigines in
Australia, if you are old, or if you are a refugee, well, you are much more likely to be poor
than other people.
The big question we need to answer is: why does poverty exist? Why are some countries so
much poorer than others? There are many possible causes of poverty. A country can be poor
simply owing to its location. Areas with poor soil and bad climates are more likely to be poor
than others. Related to this is the environment. Poor countries are usually the ones that suffer
from natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods. There are also historical reasons for
poverty. Some countries, particularly in Europe and North America, experienced industrial
development in the past, and industrial growth made them richer. Many other countries did
not develop industrially. In fact, they were often exploited by the industrial nations and
remained poor. These countries had to borrow from the developed countries and still owe
huge amounts of money in foreign debt. One final cause of poverty is politics. Countries
which are unstable politically, especially those which have suffered war or civil war, tend to
be poorer.
Here it is worth mentioning the poverty trap, what we might call the “vicious circle” of
poverty. This is very important at a personal level. Many poor children in the world have to
work to help their families. This means they don’t get a good education. Because they do not
have educational qualifications, they can only get the worst jobs. These jobs pay low wages,
and so they have little money to bring up their children. Now their children have to go to work
and so their education suffers - and so the vicious circle continues.
So what can be done about poverty? In 1996, the United Nations asked the world’s richest
countries to put aside 0.7 percent of their GNP, that’s their gross national product, for aid to
developing countries. Only a few countries met that target and some even cut down on aid
programmes! However, governments must take up the challenge and come up with solutions.
Natural Disasters
In the last decade, floods, droughts, windstorms, earthquakes, avalanches, volcanic eruptions
and forest fires have become increasingly common. There has been disastrous flooding in
Asia, Africa, Central and South America and Oceania. Even prosperous Europe has suffered
and large areas of France, Britain and Germany have all been under water. Storms have been
getting worse everywhere too, with a growing number of hurricanes hitting the US, the
Caribbean and Central America. Drought has affected large areas of Sub-Saharan Africa for
years and many other zones are becoming drier. For example, the Yellow River, once
notorious for flooding the Chinese landscape, failed to reach the sea at all on 226 days in
1997. A number of nations have already been in armed conflict over water, and drought in the
West of the US has resulted in enormous forest fires.
Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes have always been a threat in certain parts of the world. A
volcanic eruption virtually wiped out the small Caribbean island of Montserrat in 1997 and
there have been serious earthquakes in Greece, Turkey and El Salvador. The quake that
rocked the small Central American country of El Salvador in 2001 came as the people were
still rebuilding their houses and recovering from 1998’s Hurricane Mitch.
So why is nature beginning to turn on us? One answer is overpopulation. The population of
the world is growing at the rate of 10,000 people an hour, 240,000 every day, nearly 90
million a year, with most of the growth in the developing world. People in agricultural areas,
unemployed and sometimes undernourished, move to the cities, and then set up homes on
poor soil, crowded into substandard buildings. On top of all that, add climate change and the
spectre of global warming. This has mainly been caused by the mismanagement of the
world’s resources: carbon emissions from rich countries; the activities of the big multinational
companies; the deforestation of the world’s forests. As a result, a hotter ocean breeds fiercer
cyclones and hurricanes. It surrenders greater quantities of water as evaporation, and more
powerful winds dump this water against mountainsides with increasing fury. Atlantic
hurricanes, for instance, are 40 percent more intense now than they were 30 years ago.
Terrorism
Terrorism has been practiced by a broad array of political organizations for furthering their
objectives. It has been practiced by both right-wing and left-wing political parties,
nationalistic groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and ruling governments.
Broadly speaking there are two types of international convention on terrorism. First there are
truly international conventions which are open to ratification to all states. There are thirteen of
these international conventions at present, though as of Feb 2006 only 12 are in force.
Second there are regional multilateral terrorist conventions, such as the Council of Europe
Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism(2006); the Inter-American Convention Against
Terrorism (2002); and the Organization of African Union Convention on the Prevention and
Combating of Terrorism (1999) and Protocol (2004).
Racism and Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination is treating people differently through a process of social division into
categories not necessarily related to race. Racial segregation policies may officialize it, but it
is also often exerted without being legalized. Researchers, including Dean Karlan and
Marianne Bertrand, at the MIT and the University of Chicago found in a 2003 study that there
was widespread discrimination in the workplace against job applicants whose names were
merely perceived as "sounding black". These applicants were 50% less likely than candidates
perceived as having "white-sounding names" to receive callbacks for interviews. The
researchers view these results as strong evidence of unconscious biases rooted in the United
States' long history of discrimination.