Appealing to the highly modern industrialized nations, the United Nations Development Project issued its 1999 report 'Human Development in this Age of Globalization. " The report recognizes the enormous strides those nations have made technologically and economically.
"Countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) began the dramatic transition from centrally planned economic systems to market democracies. China, Mongolia and Viet Nam also began to liberalize their economies and dramatically reshape their trading relationships, opening their economies to trade and foreign direct investment.
These changes sped the pace of globalization and deepened the interactions among people. They have also defined the character of global integration, giving rise to new markets, new actors, new rules and new tools ... And they have created an era of globalization that is intensifying contactsnot just between countries but between people.
THE LANDSCAPE IS CHANGING IN THREE DISTINCT WAYS:
Shrinking space. People's livestheir jobs, incomes and healthare affected by events on the other side of the globe, often by events they do not know about.
Shrinking time. Markets and technologies now change with unprecedented speed, with action at a distance in real time, with impacts on people's lives far away. An example is the rapid reversal of capital flows to the East Asian markets and its contagion from Thailand to Indonesia to Korea and also to faraway South Africa.
Disappearing borders. National borders are breaking down, not only for trade, capital and information but also for ideas, norms, cultures and values. Borders are also breaking down in economic policy-as multilateral agreements and the pressures of staying competitive in global markets constrain the options for national policy, and as multinational corporations and global crime syndicates integrate their operations globally.
What does all this mean for human development? People's lives around the globe are linked more deeply, more intensely, more immediately than ever before. This opens many opportunities, giving new power to good and bad, to global women's movements as well as to global crime syndicates. But it also exposes people to risks from changes far away. National governments cannot cope with these vulnerabilities and risks on their ownbecause their autonomy is weakening, and because "global bads" such as drugs and illegal arms travel the world with ease. Global integration is proceeding at breakneck speed and with amazing reach. But the process is uneven and unbalanced, with uneven participation of countries and people in the expanding opportunities of globalization-in the global economy, in global technology, in the global spread of cultures and in global governance. The new rules of globalization-and the players writing them focus on integrating global markets, neglecting the needs of people that markets cannot meet. The process concentrating power and marginalizing the poor, both countries and people..."
GLOBAL CULTURE
"Contacts between people and their cultures-their ideas, their values, their ways of life-have been growing and deepening in unprecedented ways. Television now reaches families everywhere. For many, the exposure to new cultures is exciting, even empowering. For others, it is disquieting, as they try to cope with a rapidly changing world...
The rise of culture as an economic good has added to the identification of culture with commodities that can be sold and traded-crafts, tourism, music, books, films. Although the spread of ideas and images enriches the world, there is a risk of reducing cultural concerns to protecting what can be bought and sold, neglecting community, custom and tradition.
Culture has become important economically. A UNESCO study shows that world trade in goods with cultural content -printed matter, literature, music, visual arts, cinema and photography, radio and television equipment-almost tripled between 1980 and 1991, from $67 billion to $200 billion. It continues to grow. For the United States, the largest single export industry is not aircraft, computers or automobiles-it is entertainment, in films and television programs. Hollywood films grossed more than 30 billion worldwide in 1997, and in 1998 a single movie, Titanic, grossed more than $1.8 billion.
The vehicles for this trade in cultural goods are the new technologies. Satellite communications technology from the mid-1980s gave rise to a powerful new medium with a global reach and to such global media networks as CNN. The number of television sets per 1,000 people worldwide almost doubled between 1980 and 1995, from 121 to 235. The 1990S have seen a boom in multimedia industries, with sales of the world's largest 50 multimedia companies reaching $110 billion in 1993. The development of the Internet is also spreading culture around the world, over an expanded telecommunications infrastructure of fiber optics and parabolic antennas.
But the global market for cultural products is becoming concentrated, driving out small and local industries. At the core of the entertainment industry-film, music and television there is a growing dominance of US products, and many countries are seeing their local industries wither. Although India makes the most films each year, Hollywood reaches every market, getting more than 50% of its revenues from overseas, up from just 30% in 1980. It claimed 70% of the film market in Europe in 1996, up from 56% in 1987 and 83% in Latin America and 50% in Japan. By contrast, foreign films rarely make it big in the United States, taking less than 3% of the market there ..."
" ...Faced with [a powerful resurgence of Hollywood], many countries argue that cultural goods should be exempt from free trade agreements. The Uruguay Round acknowledged the special nature of cultural goods, granting some exemptions. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) required substantial negotiations before limited exemptions or exclusions of cultural industries were adopted. The issue was reopened in the negotiations for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, polarizing countries that see cultural goods as an economic good or service like any other (Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States) and countries that see cultural goods as having intrinsic value to be protected for artistic diversity and national identity (Canada, France).
People are concerned about the spread of "global consumer culture" and cultural homogenization. Global producers market global productsbrands like Nike and Sony that symbolize the life styles that people aspire to. But there are countervailing trends. Culture does not always flow in one direction. Salsa music from the Caribbean, the cuisines of Ethiopia and Thailand and many other traditions are spreading globally, and, more nations are becoming multiethnic. Local cultures have also taken on renewed vigor and significance as political movements promote local culture and local identity. In the post-cold war world local culture has often replaced ideology in politics, as the rise of fundamentalist movements reflects.
The debate among anthropologists on Whether there is cultural homogenization remains open. There are no surveys showing that people are becoming alike. And while some argue that globalization is an ideological process imposing a global culture, others argue that while cultural products flow around the world, people receive, and use them differently.
ÖThe challenge of globalization in the new century is not to stop the expansion of global markets. The challenge is to find the rules and institutions for stronger governance-local, national, regional and global-to preserve the advantages of global markets and competition, but also to provide enough space for human, community and environmental resources to ensure that globalization works for people not just for profits. Globalization with:
Ethics- less violation of human rights, not more.
Equity-less disparity within and between nations, not more.
Inclusion-less marginalization of people and countries, not more.
-Human security-less instability of societies and less vulnerability of people, not more.
Sustainability-less environmental destruction, not more.
Development-less poverty and deprivation, not more.
GLOBAL INSECURITIES
One achievement of recent decades has been greater security for people in many countries-more political freedom and stability in Chile, peace in Central America, safer streets in the United States. But in the globalizing world of shrinking time, shrinking space and disappearing borders, people are confronting new threats to human security-sudden and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of daily life.
Financial volatility and economic insecurity. The financial turmoil in East Asia in 1997-99 demonstrates the risks of global financial markets ... The swing amounted to I I % of the precrisis GDPs [economic productivity] of these countries. Two important lessons come out of this experience:
First, the human impacts are severe and are likely to persist long after economic recovery.
BANKRUPTCIES SPREAD.
Education and health budgets came under pressure. More than 13 million people lost their jobs. As prices of essentials rose sharply, real wages fell sharply, down some 40-60% in Indonesia. The con sequences go deeper-all countries report erosion o their social fabric, with social unrest, more crime, more violence in the home...
Second, far from being isolated incidents, financial crises have become increasingly common with the spread and growth of global capital flows ...
JOB AND INCOME INSECURITY.
In both poor and rich countries, dislocations from economic and corporate restructuring, and from dismantling the institutions of social protection, have meant greater insecurity in jobs and incomesÖ
France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries have weakened worker dismissal laws. Mergers and acquisitions have come with corporate restructuring and massive layoffs. Sustained economic growth has not reduced unemployment in Europe-leaving it at 11 % for a decade, affecting 35 million. In Latin America growth has created jobs, but 85% of them are in the informal sector.
HEALTH INSECURITY.
Growing travel and migration have helped spread HIV/AIDS. More than 33 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in 1998, with almost 6 million new infections in that year. And the epidemic is now spreading rapidly to new locations, such as rural India and Eastern Europe and the CIS. With 95% of the 16,000 infected each day in developing countries, AIDS has become a poor person's disease, taking a heavy toll on life expectancy, reversing the gains of recent decades. For nine countries in Africa, a loss of 17 years in life expectancy is projected by 2010, back to the levels of the 1960s.
CULTURAL INSECURITY.
Globalization i opens people's lives to culture and all its creativity-and to the flow of ideas and knowledge. But the new culture carried by expanding global markets is disquieting. As Mahatma Gandhi expressed so eloquently earlier in the century, 'I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any." Today's flow of culture is unbalanced, heavily weighted in one direction, from rich countries to poorÖ
The expansion of global media networks and satellite communications technologies gives rise to a powerful new medium with a global reach. These networks bring Hollywood to remote villages-the number of television sets per 1,000 people almost doubled between 1980 and 1995, from 121 to 235. And the spread of global brands-Nike, Sony-is setting new social standards from Delhi to Warsaw to Rio de Janeiro. Such onslaughts of foreign culture can put cultural diversity at risk, and make people fear losing their cultural identity. What is needed is support to indigenous and national cultures-to let them flourish alongside foreign cultures.
PERSONAL INSECURITY.
Criminals are reaping the benefits of globalization. Deregulated capital markets, advances in information and communications technology and cheaper transport make flows easier, faster and less restricted, not just for medical knowledge but for heroin-not just for books and seeds, but for dirty money and weapons.
Illicit trade-in drugs, women, weapons and laundered money is contributing to the violence and crime that threaten neighborhoods around the world . .
The Internet is an easy vehicle for trafficking in drugs, arms and women through nearly untraceable networks. In 1995 the illegal drug trade was estimated at 8% of world trade, more than the trade in motor vehicles or in iron and steel. Money launderingwhich the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates at equivalent to 2-5% of global GDP-hides the traces of crime in split seconds, with the click of a mouse. At the root of all this is the growing influence of organized crime, estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a year, rivaling multinational corporations as an economic power. Global crime groups have the power to criminalize politics, business and the police, developing efficient networks, extending their reach deep and wide.
ENVIRONMENTAL INSECURITY.
Chronic major armed conflicts fought between environmental degradation-today's silent emergency-threatens people worldwide and undercuts the livelihoods of at least half a billion people. Poor people themselves, having little choice, put pressure on the environment, but so does the consumption of the rich. The growing export markets for fish, shrimp, paper and many other products mean depleted stocks, less biodiversity and fewer forests. Most of the costs are borne by the poor-though it is the world's rich who benefit most. The fifth of the world's people living in the richest countries consume 84% of the world's paper.
POLITICAL AND COMMUNITY INSECURITY.
Closely related to many other forms of insecurity is the rise of social tensions that threaten political stability and community cohesion. Of the 61 major armed conflicts fought between 1989 and 1998, only three were between states- the rest were civil.
Globalization has given new characteristics to conflicts. Feeding these conflicts is the global traffic in weapons, involving new actors and blurring political and business interests. In the power vacuum of the post-cold war era, military companies and mercenary armies began offering training to governments; and corporations. Accountable only to those who pay them, these hired military services pose a severe threat to human security
