68 Human Health and Global Environmental Change
Global change & social science changing the tenor A.S. Yoosuf
KNOWLEDGE
Patient: Earth Take a dose of each to relieve the health environmental chan
IHDP Update Issue 1, 2011
Globalization is profoundly affecting the way we live on this planet in a multitude of ways that are diverse and beneficial, yet also intricately damaging. Hypermobility of information, people and goods usher in unprecedented business opportunities and fabulous wealth. Information technology enables us to live in a global village. The separation of physical space seems not to matter as ubiquitous audiovisual peripherals enable us to vicariously experience a competitive run of the real thing. Faster and larger vehicles ply our airspace and oceans to move us and our goods ever more rapidly. New ideas and value-laden visuals in full color also travel at lightning speed over broadband video technology to reach even the humblest living room. However, in this context of a booming global economy, cultural convergence and human mobility, stark and serious issues loom large. Issues of social justice, distribution of resources, and ethnic identity and social exclusion cry out to be heard. Underlying concerns related to the financial crises of the past 20 years, hypermobile capital, unstable labor markets, transmission of disease, brain drain and complex emergencies involving local and international conflict dot the terrain of international concerns. Abject poverty continues to grip a third of humanity, whereas the world’s top 10% have 3000 times more wealth than the lowest 10% of humanity (DAVIES ET AL. 2006). Global markets have grown through trade liberalization and market integration, but the parallel development of economic and social instruments and
laws have not kept pace. Consequently, the world, especially the poor, is faced with the unfairness of global rules and its cascading side-effects that manifest in tribulations such as job insecurity and gender inequality (WHO 2008). Such inequalities are projected to affect at least 80% of humanity in the next 20 years. And on top of this, the issue of climate change has emerged as perhaps the most pressing one of this century, and one that embodies the ills of all the above. We come with the belief that in an era of economic growth and overriding veneration of materialism, production is the competitive force that separates winners from the losers. The prevailing wisdom noted the availability of unlimited supplies of fossil fuel on this one earth to power this growth. However, time catches up with our folly and makes it clear that such a way of life cannot continue unabated. But the momentum of the economic behemoth cannot be halted at will too. Perhaps the glitter of gold is too bright and blinds our vision from the impending precipice which global warming and climate change are inexorably leading us to. Prescient warnings of scientists have fallen on deaf ears for several decades. More recently, the UNFCCC’s reports have repeated these warnings with embellished data. But there still are no takers as world leaders grapple with the tantalizing temptations of the global marketplace and the fear of losing out on market share. However, as blistering heat waves stupefy our minds and bodies with alarming regularity every year, devastating galeforce
Illustration: Louise Smith
FOOD