TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.. 1
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW... 2
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION.. 3
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -. 5
5. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION: 8
6. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES. 10
7. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-. 13
8. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -. 15
9. CONCLUSION: 18
10. REFERENCE: 19
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper will focus on discussing Globalization in Relation to Development in the Global perspective. The paper will start by providing key definitions of globalization and Development, historical background of globalization and consequences of globalization to the World population in terms of development. Also the paper will provide some alternatives to overcome the negative impacts of globalization; and some principles to overcome globalization. Conclusion will be provided basing on lessons learned and individual opinions.
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW
Globalization affects everybody but more to the poorest nations and marginalized people.
It is not an issue for south Countries alone but the North are affected as well and both are seeking the best ways to global change. The use of natural resources is going very fast leaving the world under global warming situation. There is an also demographic change and new technologies have brought up to easier undertaking of activities. For globalization to be successful there should be ways to be taken to make it be acceptable, useful, and owned by the people in their locality. “There can not be a successful globalization without a successful localization”{Juan Soma via.(Ilo)}.
The current globalization trends have turned everything that would ensure a good life for all beings on this planet upside down. Many people still have a hard time. The horror we are experiencing is indeed a reality- a reality willingly produced, maintained and justified by “our politician”. But even if the alternative got half way on its feet-no more plundering, exploitation, destruction, violence, war, coercion, mercilessness, accumulation, greed, corruption-we would still be left with all the damage that the earth has already suffered. The destruction has been hard to believe, large parts of drinking water are disappearing mainly due to the melting of the glaciers and polar caps, climate has changed dramatically, causing turbulences and catastrophes the atmosphere is no longer protected against ultraviolet radiation, ozone layer has been destructed many species of our fauna and flora are extinguished, most cultures and their knowledge are destroyed, most natural resources exhausted. And all this happened slowly as globalization started and the situation is worse now. The big task we have now is to establish a new economy, new technology, and new relationship between developed and developing societies and finally put in place an equal world in terms of social-political economic and culture. We need also to establish a new political understanding based on egalitarianism and the acknowledgement of the dignity of each individual world-wide.
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization can mean many things. On the one hand, it is the World wide spread of modern technologies, industrial production, and communication of all kinds across frontiers, is itself a consequences of spread to hitherto pre-modern societies of new technologies. To say that we live in an era of globalization is to say that nearly every society is now industrialized or embarked on industrialization.
Globalization also implies that, nearly all economies are networked with other economies through out the world. There are few countries like North Korea, which seeks to cut their economies off from the rest of the world. They have succeeded in maintaining independent from World markets but at great costs, both in economies and human.
Three schools of thought viewed or interpreted globalization differently. These schools of thoughts are:-Neo-liberals schools of thought, Radicals school of thought, and Transformation list school of thought.
Neoliberals schools of thought : This School views Globalization as a progressive force for creating prosperity in a global market civilization. Inequalities are gradually overcomed and what was labeled the third world is increasingly differentiated as some countries become successfully industrialized
.
Radicals school of thought: This school suggests that globalization means exclusion deepening inequality and reinforce division of the world into core and periphery, is the new form of the Western Imperialism which dominates and exploits through multi nationals capital and investments of global governance such as World Bank and IMF.
Transformation list school of thought: These schools argue that globalization really is new, it has changed the configuration of global power so that there are growing concentrations of wealth and power in parts of South and increasing social exclusion and poverty in parts of the North. There is also a changed role of the states, which now share global political space with multination corporations Intergovernmental agencies NGOs and Social movements.
Globalization has also been referred as the growing sense of Interconnectedness between all parts of the world and the associated feelings of powerlessness and insecurity in the face of the spread and scale of global change. It is driven by a combination
Of three forces: 1.Economic forces (the tendency of capitalism to expand)
ii). Technological change (the informatics revolution)
iii) Political shifts (moving away from state intervention towards economic liberalizations policies). This implies globalization is also a process of increasingly extensity velocity and impact of global interactions. It both unites and divides-creating a more unruly and unequal World
.
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -
Development is the expansion of capabilities and possibilities for more people to realize their potential as human beings through the expansion of their capabilities for functioning (Nobel Prize-Winner, Amartya sen).according to sens capability approach, development should be about enrichment of human lives-not in the sense of having, more things ;but rather that of having the freedom to choose different ways of living (Sen,1990b).
5. HISTORICAL BACKGRUND OF GLOBALIZATION:-
Yale Global (2005) article provides a long-term view on globalization from the middle ages to the present. From the historical perspective globalization is much more about the “Changed environments people create and manipulate as the societies globally becomes interconnected” than about rampant capitalism technology or homogenization, the author argues. The process that has come to be known as globalization i.e. the progressively greater influence being exerted by worldwide economics, social, and cultural processes over national or regional, clearly leaves its mark on the world of today. This is not a new process. It has historical roots run deep. Yet the dramatic changes in terms of space and time being brought about by the communication and information revolution represent a qualitative break with the past. Policy forum (2006), traced the historical background of globalization that globalization go as far back as during the time of emergence of capitalism in Europe in the middle age, when innovation of science and cultural thinking started to speed up. The innovation led to the creation of the great European countries, rather it had to venture to less developed countries for:-
a) Source of cheap raw materials and market for industrial products which cannot longer be absorbed by the metropolitan markets.
b) Area of investing surplus capital, which is the result of the accumulated profits, which has to be re-invested. The Metropolitan economy could not absorb more Investments, and had to be undertaken to less developed or poor nations
c) Area of new employment of surplus, get new settlement, and cheap labor, as a result of colonialism. Globalization has undergone different phases the first phase was before the First World War (1870-1913), which was marked as great capital and labor mobility as well as trade. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly uncontrollable acceleration of basic technological analysis {Adams 1931(1904)}.John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implies the emergence of a “New world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European Exploitation and conquest in 1492.
For Dewly; Invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity.
Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. The rapid increasing of globalization in this phase was suddenly stopped by the emergence of the First World War, where all European countries were in tension and most of resources were directed to the war. After the Second World War the second phase of global integration began. This time the movement focused not in Europe but also in other regions in the world. The major focus was to disintegrate the macroeconomics regulation and developing International Institutions i.e. the UN organs.
From 1970s there was a gradual spread of free trade and mobility of capital (Investments in other countries).This gradual and long process of globalization was fuelled by the successive technology revolution which reduced the cost of transportation, information and communication. Advances in transportation, information, and communications are part of a wider range of technological innovations, which have resulted in unprecedented leaps in productivity economic expansion and increased international trade. In the European countries, the large capital cities have been engaged in International trade since inception of modern capitalism (Brandel, 1994).
The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Vivilio,1986[1977]).But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Hedger not only described the “ abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity .“All distances and space are shrinking. Man now reaches places by overnight using planes, which formally took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1971[1950]: 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality. “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic.
The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger, 1971[1950]: 165). Hedegger description of growing possibilities for simultaneously and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience everything is equally far and equally near” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most Individuals the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distance less” in which fundamentally distinct objects become part of a bland homogenous experiential mss ; (Heidegger, 1971[1950]; 165). The loss of any meaningful distinction between nearness “distances” contributed to a leveling down of human experience; which in turn spawned an indifferent that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.
The Wikipedia (2008) explains that the term “globalization” has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s,however, its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s.The earliest written theoretical concepts of globalization were penned by an American entrepreneur-turned Minister Charles Taze Russell who coined the term “corporate giants” in 1897.
Globalization is viewed as a century long process tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Early forms of globalization existed during the Roman Empire the Partian Empire and the Han Dynasty when the silk Road started in China reached the Dommandaries of of the Partian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. The Islamic golden age is also and example when Muslin traders and explorers established an early global economy across the old world resulting in a globalization of crops trade knowledge and technology; and later during the Mongol Empire when there was greater integration along the silk Road. Globalization in a wider context began shortly before the turn of the 16th century, with Spain and especially Portugal. Portugal’s global explorations in the 16th century, especially linked continents economies and cultures to a massive extent. Portugal’s exploration and trade with most of the coast of Africa and the territory of India was the first major trade based form of globalization. Wave of global trade, colonization, and enculturation reached all corners of the world.
6. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION:-
1. Neoliberal economic globalization has not brought about equality or eliminated poverty; it has instead resulted in a concentration of wealth in certain parts of the world and in hands of certain people. In most areas, marginalized members of society have not benefited from neo-liberal economic restructuring. For example, in many regions, small medium even bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to close or overshadowed by transnational corporations. This is so because their performances are below average when compared with products from trans-national corporations.
2.The public sector, which has been providing services for the majority of people who has no income to acquire the services were cut down and the sector eg Health, educations, water etc. The consequences of this situations resulted into a situation where social services that are necessary for the existence of people disappear. In such situation women and other marginalized groups were affected mostly.
3.Small and medium private businesses which recently employed 80% of the workforce and provided normal working conditions/employment are affected by globalization agendas. In this case the direct relationship between Economic growth and increase in employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses; jobs are lost (Mies/Wealhof 2003,P.fff);If one sought job most of them are temporary and underpaid in such a way that a person can not earn a decent living by depending on such a job.
4. Due to high technology many jobs have disappeared especially due to computerization, most people have less and less access to the means of production and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases.
5. The destruction of welfare state also eliminates the hope that individuals can rely on the community to provide assistance in times of dire needs. The majority of the population relies on private services, which in most cases are expensive and less affordable to the marginalized groups.
6. Social cultural traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. There is a very high speed of using all global resources such as natural resources, forests, water, etc, due to lack of formalized and legalized employment. For that matter there is rapid ecological destruction through depletion. People are making quick profits through for-example by cutting trees and selling timber, or burning charcoal. Climate, animal, plants, human and ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of immediate profits to the corporations or even individuals. The commander of the space shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning” She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo Natural resources the Diamond Gold and other valuable natural resources found in the Congo forest. That is the reasons for the wars that plague the republic of Congo today. The forests of Asia have been burning for may years too, and in late 2005,the Brazilian parliament has approved the clearing of 50% of the remaining Amazon forest. Mean while, there are rum ours that brazil and Venezuela have already sold their rights to the earths biggest remaining rain forest- to the Chinese who suffer from chronic wood shortage and can not sustain their enormous economic growth and economic super-power ambitions without securing global natural resources.
Given today’s race for the earths last resources one wonders that the world trade organization (WTO) thought when accepting China as a new member in 2001.Their minds were focused to the giant Chinese market but not the giant Chinese competition. Today’s, everything on earth is turned into commodities ie becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which means “liquidation”the transformation of all into liquid money).
In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost –intensive and preferably “Wage less” commodity production. The objective is to transformed everyone and everything into commodities including life itself.
One of the key points made by critics of recent economic globalization is that income inequality, both between and within nations is increasing as a result of these processes. On article from 2001 found that significantly in 7 out of 8 metrics income inequality has increased in the twenty years ending 2001.Also incomes in the lower decides of world income distribution have probably fallen absolutely since the 1980s.Further more the world Bank figures on absolute poverty were challenged. The article was skeptical of the World Bank’s claim that the number of people living on less than 81 a day has held steady at 1.2 billion from 1987 to 1988, because of biased methodology.
7. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
Every development undertaking has its impact in the community in a particular locality. Globalization as a development phenomenon is faced with the following challenges: -
1. Economic challenges:-
Advances in communication and transportation technology combined with free market policies have given goods and services and capital unprecedented (unique) mobility. Northern countries want to open world markets to their goods and services and take advantage of cheap labor and market in the developing countries. They use International Institutions (IMF, WB) and regional trade agreements to compel poor countries to integrate by reducing tariffs privatizing state enterprises, and relaxing environmental and labor standards. The results have been enlarging profits for investors but offered very little to laborers, provoking reaction from civil society.
Trade Agreements such as GAIT,FTAA, NAFTA, and CAFTA,AGOA PAFMECA, and many Others facilitate International trade thereby strongly involving people at all levels of the economy.
Rich countries often dictate terms and conditions to safeguard their interest of continuing to be economic giants embracing all the global wealth and just allowing a subsistence proportion of wealth to stay back in the poor countries.
The European Union is pressing former European colonies to sign an Economic partnership Agreement (EPA) before the end of 2007.The EU is attempting to reverse its previous discriminatory trade practices with these countries and appease (calm down) the World Trade Organization African and pacific countries report of massive lobbying and threats by the EU to withhold aids should the poor countries to sign the Agreement. East African governments and NGOs question the benefits of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the EU. These trade Agreements have not encouraged countries to add value to their exports; so many countries remain dependent on undefined primary product trade such as coffee and sugar.
They also face further barriers as the EU increasingly hinders imports of industrialized products from outside the Union. The African countries are also concerned that their industries will not be able to out-compete Asian imports.(Interpress service).
Rich countries spend billions subsiding their agricultural sector leading to chronic overproduction and dumping surpluses on global markets. Poor countries demand reforms of this trade practice that impoverishes small-scale farmers while enriching large agro-business. Oxfam (2005) paper accuses the EU of dumping sugar and dairy products into developing countries, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in the Mozambique, India and Jamaica Oxfam calls on the EU address the “devastating “ impact of subsidies by promoting policy reforms. Interpress services {2007} The World Trade organization Dolia Development Round has been stalled since July 2006, when the US despite demanding market liberalization in developing countries refused to lower its domestic from subsides.
At the 2007 World Economic Forum, the G33 group of developing countries called for a formal resumption of negotiations, seeking a multilateral outcomes that would offer “The US, however, insisted that the Dolia Round not reconvene” until there is clear progress” in ongoing informal discussions which largely exclude members of the G33.
Can the less developed countries be drawn further into the world market and can they undergo a process of economic growth? The answer is no.
(2) Social Challenges: Globalization has a number of challenges in social aspect. These challenges have been described and responded in different ways depending on the society perspective. One of the challenges of globalization in the society is the increasing of the social inequalities among the communities within and outside countries. These inequalities resulted into political and economic instability.
The gaps between the rich and the poor countries are still widening despite of all so-called efforts from the institutions like IMF and World Bank and respective countries.
Due to the great demand of skilled labor most of the productive people fall under unemployed due to lack of appropriate skills. Hence the rate of poverty in the community increased.
As most of the young people are unemployed due to lack of the appropriate skills, most of them do engaged in drug trafficking and other related crimes.
(3) Political Challenges: It is globalization that influences to the highest degree the every day political decisions. In response to the great transformations at the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s, such as the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the soviet block in Europe, the rise of China and Japan as powerful competitors in the global economy as well as the extensive adoption of neo-liberalist ideology around the globe, new actors mainly none-state players and new movements have acquired the power to reshape the traditional world order.
Some of the new implications are harder to deal with such as implementing policies concerning migration, dislocation, integration in a multi-ethic setting etc. It has been more difficult to match the global market priorities with the national interests, especially in the area concerning public benefits. The state tends to protect the interest of its citizens, by resisting threats posed by globalization.
On the other hand from an economic point of view, the state especially the nations has very little or no say at all regarding international trade tendencies, at the same time they are unable to break-away from the system.
(4) Cultural Challenges:
The growth of Cross-cultural contacts advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion the desire to increase ones standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas of adopting new technologies and practices, and participate in a” world culture”. Some complain about the resulting consumerism and loss of languages. Spreading of multicultural diversity (eg through the export of Hollywood and Hollywood movies).some consider such “imported” culture a danger, since it may suppress the local culture causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism to promote peace and understanding between peoples.
Greater International travel and tourism lead to the exposure of the foreign cultures Especially the western cultures dominate most of the developed countries. For example; by visiting countries and being exposed to the new culture the people tend to change the way they cloth and their behavior.
8. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-
Intervention to overcome the Negative effects of globalization to development need to be harnessed in order to be able to influence the globalization process to have meaningful gains to the developing countries six principles has been suggested to be practiced by poor countries to be able to overcome the negative effects of globalization:-
1.Policy-Making Process must be participatory and transparent:-
In most cases those who are responsible in formulation of policies do not consider effective participation which guarantee majority interests especially marginalized majority! In poor countries, especially those that rely heavily on development assistance and loans from foreign sources, for example Tanzania; policies are often primarily developed based on growth models and economic theories advanced by the International Financial Institutions and certain world leading rich Nations. Alternatives arise when people themselves or groups, decide to take initiative in order to control their destiny.
2.Honouring-Diverse Experiences and identies to help determine who wins and who loses:-
Before adapting and implementing economic policies, it is therefore Important for the developing countries to take into account domestic experiences across social classes and gender considerations
3.Globalization processes must not ignore equity and dignity:-
Economic policies under globalization (capitalism economies) or neo-liberal policies should not be taken or practiced by developing nations, the way it is practiced in already developed countries. Developing countries should practice “holistic economic” whereby ownership of the means of production eg land should be equally distributed through the instruments of law and political will.
4.Recognition and motivation of the Informal sector:
One the biggest problems with may economic policies is their failure to recognize monitor and support the informal sectors. No adequate information is collected to measure the contribution of the informal sector in the National economy. The poor countries should have very clear policies which favor the development of informal sectors so as to make formal at the end of the day.
5.Making the links through Regional Integration: -
This is important in terms of advocacy and activism-raising a united strong voice against unfavorable trade and economic relationship which since long has favored the rich countries and continue to marginalize the poor countries
6.The role of state in provision of basic social services to cater for the need of the majority poor:-
In most cases many neo-liberal policies limits the involvement of the state in providing basic social services like education, health etc,often through privatization policies.
For growing economies in the poor countries the state should continue to play a bigger role in key sectors of the economy for the sake of safeguarding the rights of the poor majority.
9. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -
The movement towards globalization alternatives is very broad including church groups, national liberation factions, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists anarchists those in support of relocation and others. Some are reformists (arguing for a more humane form of capitalism) while others are more revolutionary (arguing for what they believe is more humane system than capitalism) and others are reactionary believing globalization destroys national industry and jobs. The World commission on the social Dimension of globalization established by the International labor organization.
(ILO) has come up with alternatives towards globalization as follows:
1. Making decent work a global goal:
At the global level, making decent work a key goal calls for a renewed focus on the fundamental goal of employment and enterprise creation. With this in mind, the commission calls for a greater presence for the ILO in the Multilateral system in line with its constitutional mandate to “examine and consider all human beings “to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity of economic security and equal opportunity “and having done this, to” include in its decisions and recommendations, any provisions which it considers appropriate.
2.National Policies to Address Globalization: -
The world commission’s had a vision emphasizing that the beginning of the response to globalization should always start at home. The commission argues strongly in favor of better and fairer governance of the global economy but at the same time maintains that national and local policies and institutions are just as important if the opportunities of globalization are to reach everyone. This view was widely supported. Parallel initiatives can be taken at national regional, regional and international levels, as long they are consistent and coherent.
3.Connectiveness-ie Acting on a broad front:
The commission underscores the importance of moving forward on abroad front of interconnected issues. The commission suggested four key issues, which has to be followed so that we achieve globalization alternative, which is faire for all.
First start at home:-
Much has been done to facilitate global finance trade and investments, But every little have been done to empower local communities and local markets where people live and want to stay if given opportunity the live hoods of many families throughout the world are under serious stress and social policies must respond to their needs and aspirations. There ca not be a successful globalization without a successful” localization”.
Second focus on fairness:-
Unbalanced patterns investments trade, and labor markets are prime sources of today’s political commotion. In the south most international trade and foreign direct investments is concentrated in a dozen countries and migration is seen as the cheap answer to move to those countries to look for a job and better living. The results had always been family break-ups and “brain drain” And worldwide many are convinced that the rights of capital are better protected than the rights of workers. Fair rules for trade ,capital, technology flows and dealing with unstable commodity prices and greater access to markets are needed to provide more policy space for developing countries especially the least developed. So are basic social protections, respect for core labor standards
Adequate adjustment assistance for workers in all countries to provide more security to individuals, families and communities, and true a global commitment to employment creation as the best way of eradicating poverty.
Third rethink of global governance:-
There is need for International institutions to consider the importance of policies Integration through analytical frame work that places a premium on understanding strategic interrelationships between economic social, environmental and other key variables as well as on the search of integrated and coherent policy solutions. Global problems-including poverty requires the capacity to agree on coordinated global responses and the mechanism to produce integrated decision making.
Fourth and fundamental-making decent work a global goal: -
Work is central to people’s lives. No matter where they live or what they do; Work is the source of dignity, stability, peace and credibility of governments and their citizens. Since job creation goes hand in hand with enterprise development it underpins private initiatives and investments. Reducing decent work deficits is central to reducing tensions behind so many security threats, as well as social challenges, such as rampant immigration, unemployment, gender inequality and achieving the millennium development goals.
4.Providing social security to the marginalized citizens: -
Globalization has to address the plight of the poor majority in the developing world . Good social protection systems are well developed in the rich countries, globalization should enhance the same in the poor countries, in order to built a fair world. The resolution concerning social security adopted at the International labor conference in 2001,identified the extension of social security to all those not covered by existing economic systems as priority. It is being encouraged for countries to undertake a compressive diagnosis of people’s social security needs and use the resources available to meet those needs and the various actors and institutions able to contribute to extending social security coverage. In developing countries the priority is to find ways of providing relevant and effective coverage to informal sector workers and their families. The basic options can be to start statutory social insurance; community managed mutual health funds, and the tax-financed social benefits eg solid waste management. This is possible if the state agree to incorporate in the national development strategies. In some cases private provision also plays a certain part but has major limitation in terms of equitable distribution across the majority of the citizens as in many cases they are profit centered.
5.Enhancing the international labor standards systems:
Managing globalization must be among other things; respects for human rights. “Neo-liberalism put profit first and human rights come later”. In order to increase cohesiveness within world societies and increase meaningful interaction among societies and countries, globalization system must not ignore human dignity, freedom, fairness solidarity, and equality. Together with ILO efforts there are other alternatives for globalization system. for example Idios in Latin America have turned into ways of agriculture and subsistence that had been practiced for millions of year and produced a diversity of concrete wealth .Idios have also established mini-markets to trade products they themselves do not need .By doing this, they secured both social and ecological survival of their immediate and extended environment
.
10. CONCLUSION:
Globalization has exacerbated the crisis of underdevelopment in most of Africa and the rest of poor countries of the world. At the economic and development levels, Africa and the rest of developing nations are still marginalized in the overall schemes of the global division of labor, where they continue to serve as producers of primary commodities and consumers of manufactured products produced by the metropolitan countries. The multinational corporations with their increased mobility continue to exploit African workers by paying them “starvation wages”. Essentially globalization constitutes a renewed assault on African economies, through coalition of imperialist powers multinational co-operations and profit thirsty metropolitan. The main goal of globalization is to further penetrate and weaken the economies of the developing nations in particular Africa and continue to exercise both economic political and even military powers for an indefinite period of time, as a strategy to strengthen neo-imperialism and its agents. It is high time for the poor nations to say enough is enough with neo-imperialism; by rejecting western branded economic policies and formulate their own domestic economic policies relevant in solving their immediate problems; foremost poverty. Africa and the rest of other poor countries, if the unite healthfully and avoid being hypocrites and puppets of the rich nations; they can reject and overcomes the current oppressive and exploitative economic and development policies dictated by the rich nations, the international trade organizations, and world financial institutions. Lastly Globalization should be viewed by the developing countries, as a bridge to localization; as in globalization a big field of learning is made possible.
11. REFERENCE:
1. Charles Kenney why are we worried about income? Nearly everything that matters is
Converging world development volume 33 Issue1 January 2005 pages 1-19 2005
UNESCO report.
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realities.
3. Bhagwati Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York; Oxford
University press.
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5. Coucher, S.L. (2004). Globalization and Belongings: The politics of Identity in a
changing world.
6. ILO (2001). Resolution and conclusions concerning social security, International
Labor Conference, 89th session, Geneva Para 5.
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civilization, in Corinne.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.. 1
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW... 2
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION.. 3
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -. 5
5. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION: 8
6. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES. 10
7. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-. 13
8. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -. 15
9. CONCLUSION: 18
10. REFERENCE: 19
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper will focus on discussing Globalization in Relation to Development in the Global perspective. The paper will start by providing key definitions of globalization and Development, historical background of globalization and consequences of globalization to the World population in terms of development. Also the paper will provide some alternatives to overcome the negative impacts of globalization; and some principles to overcome globalization. Conclusion will be provided basing on lessons learned and individual opinions.
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW
Globalization affects everybody but more to the poorest nations and marginalized people.
It is not an issue for south Countries alone but the North are affected as well and both are seeking the best ways to global change. The use of natural resources is going very fast leaving the world under global warming situation. There is an also demographic change and new technologies have brought up to easier undertaking of activities. For globalization to be successful there should be ways to be taken to make it be acceptable, useful, and owned by the people in their locality. “There can not be a successful globalization without a successful localization”{Juan Soma via.(Ilo)}.
The current globalization trends have turned everything that would ensure a good life for all beings on this planet upside down. Many people still have a hard time. The horror we are experiencing is indeed a reality- a reality willingly produced, maintained and justified by “our politician”. But even if the alternative got half way on its feet-no more plundering, exploitation, destruction, violence, war, coercion, mercilessness, accumulation, greed, corruption-we would still be left with all the damage that the earth has already suffered. The destruction has been hard to believe, large parts of drinking water are disappearing mainly due to the melting of the glaciers and polar caps, climate has changed dramatically, causing turbulences and catastrophes the atmosphere is no longer protected against ultraviolet radiation, ozone layer has been destructed many species of our fauna and flora are extinguished, most cultures and their knowledge are destroyed, most natural resources exhausted. And all this happened slowly as globalization started and the situation is worse now. The big task we have now is to establish a new economy, new technology, and new relationship between developed and developing societies and finally put in place an equal world in terms of social-political economic and culture. We need also to establish a new political understanding based on egalitarianism and the acknowledgement of the dignity of each individual world-wide.
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization can mean many things. On the one hand, it is the World wide spread of modern technologies, industrial production, and communication of all kinds across frontiers, is itself a consequences of spread to hitherto pre-modern societies of new technologies. To say that we live in an era of globalization is to say that nearly every society is now industrialized or embarked on industrialization.
Globalization also implies that, nearly all economies are networked with other economies through out the world. There are few countries like North Korea, which seeks to cut their economies off from the rest of the world. They have succeeded in maintaining independent from World markets but at great costs, both in economies and human.
Three schools of thought viewed or interpreted globalization differently. These schools of thoughts are:-Neo-liberals schools of thought, Radicals school of thought, and Transformation list school of thought.
Neoliberals schools of thought : This School views Globalization as a progressive force for creating prosperity in a global market civilization. Inequalities are gradually overcomed and what was labeled the third world is increasingly differentiated as some countries become successfully industrialized
.
Radicals school of thought: This school suggests that globalization means exclusion deepening inequality and reinforce division of the world into core and periphery, is the new form of the Western Imperialism which dominates and exploits through multi nationals capital and investments of global governance such as World Bank and IMF.
Transformation list school of thought: These schools argue that globalization really is new, it has changed the configuration of global power so that there are growing concentrations of wealth and power in parts of South and increasing social exclusion and poverty in parts of the North. There is also a changed role of the states, which now share global political space with multination corporations Intergovernmental agencies NGOs and Social movements.
Globalization has also been referred as the growing sense of Interconnectedness between all parts of the world and the associated feelings of powerlessness and insecurity in the face of the spread and scale of global change. It is driven by a combination
Of three forces: 1.Economic forces (the tendency of capitalism to expand)
ii). Technological change (the informatics revolution)
iii) Political shifts (moving away from state intervention towards economic liberalizations policies). This implies globalization is also a process of increasingly extensity velocity and impact of global interactions. It both unites and divides-creating a more unruly and unequal World
.
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -
Development is the expansion of capabilities and possibilities for more people to realize their potential as human beings through the expansion of their capabilities for functioning (Nobel Prize-Winner, Amartya sen).according to sens capability approach, development should be about enrichment of human lives-not in the sense of having, more things ;but rather that of having the freedom to choose different ways of living (Sen,1990b).
5. HISTORICAL BACKGRUND OF GLOBALIZATION:-
Yale Global (2005) article provides a long-term view on globalization from the middle ages to the present. From the historical perspective globalization is much more about the “Changed environments people create and manipulate as the societies globally becomes interconnected” than about rampant capitalism technology or homogenization, the author argues. The process that has come to be known as globalization i.e. the progressively greater influence being exerted by worldwide economics, social, and cultural processes over national or regional, clearly leaves its mark on the world of today. This is not a new process. It has historical roots run deep. Yet the dramatic changes in terms of space and time being brought about by the communication and information revolution represent a qualitative break with the past. Policy forum (2006), traced the historical background of globalization that globalization go as far back as during the time of emergence of capitalism in Europe in the middle age, when innovation of science and cultural thinking started to speed up. The innovation led to the creation of the great European countries, rather it had to venture to less developed countries for:-
a) Source of cheap raw materials and market for industrial products which cannot longer be absorbed by the metropolitan markets.
b) Area of investing surplus capital, which is the result of the accumulated profits, which has to be re-invested. The Metropolitan economy could not absorb more Investments, and had to be undertaken to less developed or poor nations
c) Area of new employment of surplus, get new settlement, and cheap labor, as a result of colonialism. Globalization has undergone different phases the first phase was before the First World War (1870-1913), which was marked as great capital and labor mobility as well as trade. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly uncontrollable acceleration of basic technological analysis {Adams 1931(1904)}.John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implies the emergence of a “New world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European Exploitation and conquest in 1492.
For Dewly; Invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity.
Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. The rapid increasing of globalization in this phase was suddenly stopped by the emergence of the First World War, where all European countries were in tension and most of resources were directed to the war. After the Second World War the second phase of global integration began. This time the movement focused not in Europe but also in other regions in the world. The major focus was to disintegrate the macroeconomics regulation and developing International Institutions i.e. the UN organs.
From 1970s there was a gradual spread of free trade and mobility of capital (Investments in other countries).This gradual and long process of globalization was fuelled by the successive technology revolution which reduced the cost of transportation, information and communication. Advances in transportation, information, and communications are part of a wider range of technological innovations, which have resulted in unprecedented leaps in productivity economic expansion and increased international trade. In the European countries, the large capital cities have been engaged in International trade since inception of modern capitalism (Brandel, 1994).
The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Vivilio,1986[1977]).But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Hedger not only described the “ abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity .“All distances and space are shrinking. Man now reaches places by overnight using planes, which formally took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1971[1950]: 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality. “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic.
The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger, 1971[1950]: 165). Hedegger description of growing possibilities for simultaneously and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience everything is equally far and equally near” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most Individuals the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distance less” in which fundamentally distinct objects become part of a bland homogenous experiential mss ; (Heidegger, 1971[1950]; 165). The loss of any meaningful distinction between nearness “distances” contributed to a leveling down of human experience; which in turn spawned an indifferent that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.
The Wikipedia (2008) explains that the term “globalization” has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s,however, its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s.The earliest written theoretical concepts of globalization were penned by an American entrepreneur-turned Minister Charles Taze Russell who coined the term “corporate giants” in 1897.
Globalization is viewed as a century long process tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Early forms of globalization existed during the Roman Empire the Partian Empire and the Han Dynasty when the silk Road started in China reached the Dommandaries of of the Partian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. The Islamic golden age is also and example when Muslin traders and explorers established an early global economy across the old world resulting in a globalization of crops trade knowledge and technology; and later during the Mongol Empire when there was greater integration along the silk Road. Globalization in a wider context began shortly before the turn of the 16th century, with Spain and especially Portugal. Portugal’s global explorations in the 16th century, especially linked continents economies and cultures to a massive extent. Portugal’s exploration and trade with most of the coast of Africa and the territory of India was the first major trade based form of globalization. Wave of global trade, colonization, and enculturation reached all corners of the world.
6. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION:-
1. Neoliberal economic globalization has not brought about equality or eliminated poverty; it has instead resulted in a concentration of wealth in certain parts of the world and in hands of certain people. In most areas, marginalized members of society have not benefited from neo-liberal economic restructuring. For example, in many regions, small medium even bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to close or overshadowed by transnational corporations. This is so because their performances are below average when compared with products from trans-national corporations.
2.The public sector, which has been providing services for the majority of people who has no income to acquire the services were cut down and the sector eg Health, educations, water etc. The consequences of this situations resulted into a situation where social services that are necessary for the existence of people disappear. In such situation women and other marginalized groups were affected mostly.
3.Small and medium private businesses which recently employed 80% of the workforce and provided normal working conditions/employment are affected by globalization agendas. In this case the direct relationship between Economic growth and increase in employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses; jobs are lost (Mies/Wealhof 2003,P.fff);If one sought job most of them are temporary and underpaid in such a way that a person can not earn a decent living by depending on such a job.
4. Due to high technology many jobs have disappeared especially due to computerization, most people have less and less access to the means of production and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases.
5. The destruction of welfare state also eliminates the hope that individuals can rely on the community to provide assistance in times of dire needs. The majority of the population relies on private services, which in most cases are expensive and less affordable to the marginalized groups.
6. Social cultural traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. There is a very high speed of using all global resources such as natural resources, forests, water, etc, due to lack of formalized and legalized employment. For that matter there is rapid ecological destruction through depletion. People are making quick profits through for-example by cutting trees and selling timber, or burning charcoal. Climate, animal, plants, human and ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of immediate profits to the corporations or even individuals. The commander of the space shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning” She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo Natural resources the Diamond Gold and other valuable natural resources found in the Congo forest. That is the reasons for the wars that plague the republic of Congo today. The forests of Asia have been burning for may years too, and in late 2005,the Brazilian parliament has approved the clearing of 50% of the remaining Amazon forest. Mean while, there are rum ours that brazil and Venezuela have already sold their rights to the earths biggest remaining rain forest- to the Chinese who suffer from chronic wood shortage and can not sustain their enormous economic growth and economic super-power ambitions without securing global natural resources.
Given today’s race for the earths last resources one wonders that the world trade organization (WTO) thought when accepting China as a new member in 2001.Their minds were focused to the giant Chinese market but not the giant Chinese competition. Today’s, everything on earth is turned into commodities ie becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which means “liquidation”the transformation of all into liquid money).
In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost –intensive and preferably “Wage less” commodity production. The objective is to transformed everyone and everything into commodities including life itself.
One of the key points made by critics of recent economic globalization is that income inequality, both between and within nations is increasing as a result of these processes. On article from 2001 found that significantly in 7 out of 8 metrics income inequality has increased in the twenty years ending 2001.Also incomes in the lower decides of world income distribution have probably fallen absolutely since the 1980s.Further more the world Bank figures on absolute poverty were challenged. The article was skeptical of the World Bank’s claim that the number of people living on less than 81 a day has held steady at 1.2 billion from 1987 to 1988, because of biased methodology.
7. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
Every development undertaking has its impact in the community in a particular locality. Globalization as a development phenomenon is faced with the following challenges: -
1. Economic challenges:-
Advances in communication and transportation technology combined with free market policies have given goods and services and capital unprecedented (unique) mobility. Northern countries want to open world markets to their goods and services and take advantage of cheap labor and market in the developing countries. They use International Institutions (IMF, WB) and regional trade agreements to compel poor countries to integrate by reducing tariffs privatizing state enterprises, and relaxing environmental and labor standards. The results have been enlarging profits for investors but offered very little to laborers, provoking reaction from civil society.
Trade Agreements such as GAIT,FTAA, NAFTA, and CAFTA,AGOA PAFMECA, and many Others facilitate International trade thereby strongly involving people at all levels of the economy.
Rich countries often dictate terms and conditions to safeguard their interest of continuing to be economic giants embracing all the global wealth and just allowing a subsistence proportion of wealth to stay back in the poor countries.
The European Union is pressing former European colonies to sign an Economic partnership Agreement (EPA) before the end of 2007.The EU is attempting to reverse its previous discriminatory trade practices with these countries and appease (calm down) the World Trade Organization African and pacific countries report of massive lobbying and threats by the EU to withhold aids should the poor countries to sign the Agreement. East African governments and NGOs question the benefits of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the EU. These trade Agreements have not encouraged countries to add value to their exports; so many countries remain dependent on undefined primary product trade such as coffee and sugar.
They also face further barriers as the EU increasingly hinders imports of industrialized products from outside the Union. The African countries are also concerned that their industries will not be able to out-compete Asian imports.(Interpress service).
Rich countries spend billions subsiding their agricultural sector leading to chronic overproduction and dumping surpluses on global markets. Poor countries demand reforms of this trade practice that impoverishes small-scale farmers while enriching large agro-business. Oxfam (2005) paper accuses the EU of dumping sugar and dairy products into developing countries, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in the Mozambique, India and Jamaica Oxfam calls on the EU address the “devastating “ impact of subsidies by promoting policy reforms. Interpress services {2007} The World Trade organization Dolia Development Round has been stalled since July 2006, when the US despite demanding market liberalization in developing countries refused to lower its domestic from subsides.
At the 2007 World Economic Forum, the G33 group of developing countries called for a formal resumption of negotiations, seeking a multilateral outcomes that would offer “The US, however, insisted that the Dolia Round not reconvene” until there is clear progress” in ongoing informal discussions which largely exclude members of the G33.
Can the less developed countries be drawn further into the world market and can they undergo a process of economic growth? The answer is no.
(2) Social Challenges: Globalization has a number of challenges in social aspect. These challenges have been described and responded in different ways depending on the society perspective. One of the challenges of globalization in the society is the increasing of the social inequalities among the communities within and outside countries. These inequalities resulted into political and economic instability.
The gaps between the rich and the poor countries are still widening despite of all so-called efforts from the institutions like IMF and World Bank and respective countries.
Due to the great demand of skilled labor most of the productive people fall under unemployed due to lack of appropriate skills. Hence the rate of poverty in the community increased.
As most of the young people are unemployed due to lack of the appropriate skills, most of them do engaged in drug trafficking and other related crimes.
(3) Political Challenges: It is globalization that influences to the highest degree the every day political decisions. In response to the great transformations at the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s, such as the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the soviet block in Europe, the rise of China and Japan as powerful competitors in the global economy as well as the extensive adoption of neo-liberalist ideology around the globe, new actors mainly none-state players and new movements have acquired the power to reshape the traditional world order.
Some of the new implications are harder to deal with such as implementing policies concerning migration, dislocation, integration in a multi-ethic setting etc. It has been more difficult to match the global market priorities with the national interests, especially in the area concerning public benefits. The state tends to protect the interest of its citizens, by resisting threats posed by globalization.
On the other hand from an economic point of view, the state especially the nations has very little or no say at all regarding international trade tendencies, at the same time they are unable to break-away from the system.
(4) Cultural Challenges:
The growth of Cross-cultural contacts advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion the desire to increase ones standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas of adopting new technologies and practices, and participate in a” world culture”. Some complain about the resulting consumerism and loss of languages. Spreading of multicultural diversity (eg through the export of Hollywood and Hollywood movies).some consider such “imported” culture a danger, since it may suppress the local culture causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism to promote peace and understanding between peoples.
Greater International travel and tourism lead to the exposure of the foreign cultures Especially the western cultures dominate most of the developed countries. For example; by visiting countries and being exposed to the new culture the people tend to change the way they cloth and their behavior.
8. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-
Intervention to overcome the Negative effects of globalization to development need to be harnessed in order to be able to influence the globalization process to have meaningful gains to the developing countries six principles has been suggested to be practiced by poor countries to be able to overcome the negative effects of globalization:-
1.Policy-Making Process must be participatory and transparent:-
In most cases those who are responsible in formulation of policies do not consider effective participation which guarantee majority interests especially marginalized majority! In poor countries, especially those that rely heavily on development assistance and loans from foreign sources, for example Tanzania; policies are often primarily developed based on growth models and economic theories advanced by the International Financial Institutions and certain world leading rich Nations. Alternatives arise when people themselves or groups, decide to take initiative in order to control their destiny.
2.Honouring-Diverse Experiences and identies to help determine who wins and who loses:-
Before adapting and implementing economic policies, it is therefore Important for the developing countries to take into account domestic experiences across social classes and gender considerations
3.Globalization processes must not ignore equity and dignity:-
Economic policies under globalization (capitalism economies) or neo-liberal policies should not be taken or practiced by developing nations, the way it is practiced in already developed countries. Developing countries should practice “holistic economic” whereby ownership of the means of production eg land should be equally distributed through the instruments of law and political will.
4.Recognition and motivation of the Informal sector:
One the biggest problems with may economic policies is their failure to recognize monitor and support the informal sectors. No adequate information is collected to measure the contribution of the informal sector in the National economy. The poor countries should have very clear policies which favor the development of informal sectors so as to make formal at the end of the day.
5.Making the links through Regional Integration: -
This is important in terms of advocacy and activism-raising a united strong voice against unfavorable trade and economic relationship which since long has favored the rich countries and continue to marginalize the poor countries
6.The role of state in provision of basic social services to cater for the need of the majority poor:-
In most cases many neo-liberal policies limits the involvement of the state in providing basic social services like education, health etc,often through privatization policies.
For growing economies in the poor countries the state should continue to play a bigger role in key sectors of the economy for the sake of safeguarding the rights of the poor majority.
9. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -
The movement towards globalization alternatives is very broad including church groups, national liberation factions, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists anarchists those in support of relocation and others. Some are reformists (arguing for a more humane form of capitalism) while others are more revolutionary (arguing for what they believe is more humane system than capitalism) and others are reactionary believing globalization destroys national industry and jobs. The World commission on the social Dimension of globalization established by the International labor organization.
(ILO) has come up with alternatives towards globalization as follows:
1. Making decent work a global goal:
At the global level, making decent work a key goal calls for a renewed focus on the fundamental goal of employment and enterprise creation. With this in mind, the commission calls for a greater presence for the ILO in the Multilateral system in line with its constitutional mandate to “examine and consider all human beings “to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity of economic security and equal opportunity “and having done this, to” include in its decisions and recommendations, any provisions which it considers appropriate.
2.National Policies to Address Globalization: -
The world commission’s had a vision emphasizing that the beginning of the response to globalization should always start at home. The commission argues strongly in favor of better and fairer governance of the global economy but at the same time maintains that national and local policies and institutions are just as important if the opportunities of globalization are to reach everyone. This view was widely supported. Parallel initiatives can be taken at national regional, regional and international levels, as long they are consistent and coherent.
3.Connectiveness-ie Acting on a broad front:
The commission underscores the importance of moving forward on abroad front of interconnected issues. The commission suggested four key issues, which has to be followed so that we achieve globalization alternative, which is faire for all.
First start at home:-
Much has been done to facilitate global finance trade and investments, But every little have been done to empower local communities and local markets where people live and want to stay if given opportunity the live hoods of many families throughout the world are under serious stress and social policies must respond to their needs and aspirations. There ca not be a successful globalization without a successful” localization”.
Second focus on fairness:-
Unbalanced patterns investments trade, and labor markets are prime sources of today’s political commotion. In the south most international trade and foreign direct investments is concentrated in a dozen countries and migration is seen as the cheap answer to move to those countries to look for a job and better living. The results had always been family break-ups and “brain drain” And worldwide many are convinced that the rights of capital are better protected than the rights of workers. Fair rules for trade ,capital, technology flows and dealing with unstable commodity prices and greater access to markets are needed to provide more policy space for developing countries especially the least developed. So are basic social protections, respect for core labor standards
Adequate adjustment assistance for workers in all countries to provide more security to individuals, families and communities, and true a global commitment to employment creation as the best way of eradicating poverty.
Third rethink of global governance:-
There is need for International institutions to consider the importance of policies Integration through analytical frame work that places a premium on understanding strategic interrelationships between economic social, environmental and other key variables as well as on the search of integrated and coherent policy solutions. Global problems-including poverty requires the capacity to agree on coordinated global responses and the mechanism to produce integrated decision making.
Fourth and fundamental-making decent work a global goal: -
Work is central to people’s lives. No matter where they live or what they do; Work is the source of dignity, stability, peace and credibility of governments and their citizens. Since job creation goes hand in hand with enterprise development it underpins private initiatives and investments. Reducing decent work deficits is central to reducing tensions behind so many security threats, as well as social challenges, such as rampant immigration, unemployment, gender inequality and achieving the millennium development goals.
4.Providing social security to the marginalized citizens: -
Globalization has to address the plight of the poor majority in the developing world . Good social protection systems are well developed in the rich countries, globalization should enhance the same in the poor countries, in order to built a fair world. The resolution concerning social security adopted at the International labor conference in 2001,identified the extension of social security to all those not covered by existing economic systems as priority. It is being encouraged for countries to undertake a compressive diagnosis of people’s social security needs and use the resources available to meet those needs and the various actors and institutions able to contribute to extending social security coverage. In developing countries the priority is to find ways of providing relevant and effective coverage to informal sector workers and their families. The basic options can be to start statutory social insurance; community managed mutual health funds, and the tax-financed social benefits eg solid waste management. This is possible if the state agree to incorporate in the national development strategies. In some cases private provision also plays a certain part but has major limitation in terms of equitable distribution across the majority of the citizens as in many cases they are profit centered.
5.Enhancing the international labor standards systems:
Managing globalization must be among other things; respects for human rights. “Neo-liberalism put profit first and human rights come later”. In order to increase cohesiveness within world societies and increase meaningful interaction among societies and countries, globalization system must not ignore human dignity, freedom, fairness solidarity, and equality. Together with ILO efforts there are other alternatives for globalization system. for example Idios in Latin America have turned into ways of agriculture and subsistence that had been practiced for millions of year and produced a diversity of concrete wealth .Idios have also established mini-markets to trade products they themselves do not need .By doing this, they secured both social and ecological survival of their immediate and extended environment
.
10. CONCLUSION:
Globalization has exacerbated the crisis of underdevelopment in most of Africa and the rest of poor countries of the world. At the economic and development levels, Africa and the rest of developing nations are still marginalized in the overall schemes of the global division of labor, where they continue to serve as producers of primary commodities and consumers of manufactured products produced by the metropolitan countries. The multinational corporations with their increased mobility continue to exploit African workers by paying them “starvation wages”. Essentially globalization constitutes a renewed assault on African economies, through coalition of imperialist powers multinational co-operations and profit thirsty metropolitan. The main goal of globalization is to further penetrate and weaken the economies of the developing nations in particular Africa and continue to exercise both economic political and even military powers for an indefinite period of time, as a strategy to strengthen neo-imperialism and its agents. It is high time for the poor nations to say enough is enough with neo-imperialism; by rejecting western branded economic policies and formulate their own domestic economic policies relevant in solving their immediate problems; foremost poverty. Africa and the rest of other poor countries, if the unite healthfully and avoid being hypocrites and puppets of the rich nations; they can reject and overcomes the current oppressive and exploitative economic and development policies dictated by the rich nations, the international trade organizations, and world financial institutions. Lastly Globalization should be viewed by the developing countries, as a bridge to localization; as in globalization a big field of learning is made possible.
11. REFERENCE:
1. Charles Kenney why are we worried about income? Nearly everything that matters is
Converging world development volume 33 Issue1 January 2005 pages 1-19 2005
UNESCO report.
2. Roxana Georgiana Radu (2008). Coping with Globalization: Political Challenges and
realities.
3. Bhagwati Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York; Oxford
University press.
4. ILO;(2004). A fair Globalization, the role of the ILO.
5. Coucher, S.L. (2004). Globalization and Belongings: The politics of Identity in a
changing world.
6. ILO (2001). Resolution and conclusions concerning social security, International
Labor Conference, 89th session, Geneva Para 5.
7. Werthof, C. (2008). The Consequences of Globalization and Neo-liberal policies. What
are the alternatives?
8. Werthof, C. (2007). The Interconnectedness of all being: A New spirituality for a new
civilization, in Corinne.
9. Nor berg, H. (2001). Local lifeline: Rejecting Globalization, Embracing Localization.
10. Ginneken, W. (2003). Extending social security. Policies for developing countries,
Ess paper No.13.
11. Human security now, Report of the Commission on Human Security, May 2003.
12. Bhaduri, A. (2007). An alternative to globalization. Builder. Delhi India.
13. Fair Trade. An alternative Economic Model (2007).
14. Wikipendia, the free encyclopedia (2008). Globalization Us.
15. Awid (1905). Resistance to Globalization: What woks for positive change?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.. 1
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW... 2
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION.. 3
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -. 5
5. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION: 8
6. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES. 10
7. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-. 13
8. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -. 15
9. CONCLUSION: 18
10. REFERENCE: 19
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper will focus on discussing Globalization in Relation to Development in the Global perspective. The paper will start by providing key definitions of globalization and Development, historical background of globalization and consequences of globalization to the World population in terms of development. Also the paper will provide some alternatives to overcome the negative impacts of globalization; and some principles to overcome globalization. Conclusion will be provided basing on lessons learned and individual opinions.
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW
Globalization affects everybody but more to the poorest nations and marginalized people.
It is not an issue for south Countries alone but the North are affected as well and both are seeking the best ways to global change. The use of natural resources is going very fast leaving the world under global warming situation. There is an also demographic change and new technologies have brought up to easier undertaking of activities. For globalization to be successful there should be ways to be taken to make it be acceptable, useful, and owned by the people in their locality. “There can not be a successful globalization without a successful localization”{Juan Soma via.(Ilo)}.
The current globalization trends have turned everything that would ensure a good life for all beings on this planet upside down. Many people still have a hard time. The horror we are experiencing is indeed a reality- a reality willingly produced, maintained and justified by “our politician”. But even if the alternative got half way on its feet-no more plundering, exploitation, destruction, violence, war, coercion, mercilessness, accumulation, greed, corruption-we would still be left with all the damage that the earth has already suffered. The destruction has been hard to believe, large parts of drinking water are disappearing mainly due to the melting of the glaciers and polar caps, climate has changed dramatically, causing turbulences and catastrophes the atmosphere is no longer protected against ultraviolet radiation, ozone layer has been destructed many species of our fauna and flora are extinguished, most cultures and their knowledge are destroyed, most natural resources exhausted. And all this happened slowly as globalization started and the situation is worse now. The big task we have now is to establish a new economy, new technology, and new relationship between developed and developing societies and finally put in place an equal world in terms of social-political economic and culture. We need also to establish a new political understanding based on egalitarianism and the acknowledgement of the dignity of each individual world-wide.
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization can mean many things. On the one hand, it is the World wide spread of modern technologies, industrial production, and communication of all kinds across frontiers, is itself a consequences of spread to hitherto pre-modern societies of new technologies. To say that we live in an era of globalization is to say that nearly every society is now industrialized or embarked on industrialization.
Globalization also implies that, nearly all economies are networked with other economies through out the world. There are few countries like North Korea, which seeks to cut their economies off from the rest of the world. They have succeeded in maintaining independent from World markets but at great costs, both in economies and human.
Three schools of thought viewed or interpreted globalization differently. These schools of thoughts are:-Neo-liberals schools of thought, Radicals school of thought, and Transformation list school of thought.
Neoliberals schools of thought : This School views Globalization as a progressive force for creating prosperity in a global market civilization. Inequalities are gradually overcomed and what was labeled the third world is increasingly differentiated as some countries become successfully industrialized
.
Radicals school of thought: This school suggests that globalization means exclusion deepening inequality and reinforce division of the world into core and periphery, is the new form of the Western Imperialism which dominates and exploits through multi nationals capital and investments of global governance such as World Bank and IMF.
Transformation list school of thought: These schools argue that globalization really is new, it has changed the configuration of global power so that there are growing concentrations of wealth and power in parts of South and increasing social exclusion and poverty in parts of the North. There is also a changed role of the states, which now share global political space with multination corporations Intergovernmental agencies NGOs and Social movements.
Globalization has also been referred as the growing sense of Interconnectedness between all parts of the world and the associated feelings of powerlessness and insecurity in the face of the spread and scale of global change. It is driven by a combination
Of three forces: 1.Economic forces (the tendency of capitalism to expand)
ii). Technological change (the informatics revolution)
iii) Political shifts (moving away from state intervention towards economic liberalizations policies). This implies globalization is also a process of increasingly extensity velocity and impact of global interactions. It both unites and divides-creating a more unruly and unequal World
.
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -
Development is the expansion of capabilities and possibilities for more people to realize their potential as human beings through the expansion of their capabilities for functioning (Nobel Prize-Winner, Amartya sen).according to sens capability approach, development should be about enrichment of human lives-not in the sense of having, more things ;but rather that of having the freedom to choose different ways of living (Sen,1990b).
5. HISTORICAL BACKGRUND OF GLOBALIZATION:-
Yale Global (2005) article provides a long-term view on globalization from the middle ages to the present. From the historical perspective globalization is much more about the “Changed environments people create and manipulate as the societies globally becomes interconnected” than about rampant capitalism technology or homogenization, the author argues. The process that has come to be known as globalization i.e. the progressively greater influence being exerted by worldwide economics, social, and cultural processes over national or regional, clearly leaves its mark on the world of today. This is not a new process. It has historical roots run deep. Yet the dramatic changes in terms of space and time being brought about by the communication and information revolution represent a qualitative break with the past. Policy forum (2006), traced the historical background of globalization that globalization go as far back as during the time of emergence of capitalism in Europe in the middle age, when innovation of science and cultural thinking started to speed up. The innovation led to the creation of the great European countries, rather it had to venture to less developed countries for:-
a) Source of cheap raw materials and market for industrial products which cannot longer be absorbed by the metropolitan markets.
b) Area of investing surplus capital, which is the result of the accumulated profits, which has to be re-invested. The Metropolitan economy could not absorb more Investments, and had to be undertaken to less developed or poor nations
c) Area of new employment of surplus, get new settlement, and cheap labor, as a result of colonialism. Globalization has undergone different phases the first phase was before the First World War (1870-1913), which was marked as great capital and labor mobility as well as trade. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly uncontrollable acceleration of basic technological analysis {Adams 1931(1904)}.John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implies the emergence of a “New world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European Exploitation and conquest in 1492.
For Dewly; Invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity.
Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. The rapid increasing of globalization in this phase was suddenly stopped by the emergence of the First World War, where all European countries were in tension and most of resources were directed to the war. After the Second World War the second phase of global integration began. This time the movement focused not in Europe but also in other regions in the world. The major focus was to disintegrate the macroeconomics regulation and developing International Institutions i.e. the UN organs.
From 1970s there was a gradual spread of free trade and mobility of capital (Investments in other countries).This gradual and long process of globalization was fuelled by the successive technology revolution which reduced the cost of transportation, information and communication. Advances in transportation, information, and communications are part of a wider range of technological innovations, which have resulted in unprecedented leaps in productivity economic expansion and increased international trade. In the European countries, the large capital cities have been engaged in International trade since inception of modern capitalism (Brandel, 1994).
The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Vivilio,1986[1977]).But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Hedger not only described the “ abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity .“All distances and space are shrinking. Man now reaches places by overnight using planes, which formally took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1971[1950]: 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality. “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic.
The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger, 1971[1950]: 165). Hedegger description of growing possibilities for simultaneously and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience everything is equally far and equally near” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most Individuals the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distance less” in which fundamentally distinct objects become part of a bland homogenous experiential mss ; (Heidegger, 1971[1950]; 165). The loss of any meaningful distinction between nearness “distances” contributed to a leveling down of human experience; which in turn spawned an indifferent that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.
The Wikipedia (2008) explains that the term “globalization” has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s,however, its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s.The earliest written theoretical concepts of globalization were penned by an American entrepreneur-turned Minister Charles Taze Russell who coined the term “corporate giants” in 1897.
Globalization is viewed as a century long process tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Early forms of globalization existed during the Roman Empire the Partian Empire and the Han Dynasty when the silk Road started in China reached the Dommandaries of of the Partian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. The Islamic golden age is also and example when Muslin traders and explorers established an early global economy across the old world resulting in a globalization of crops trade knowledge and technology; and later during the Mongol Empire when there was greater integration along the silk Road. Globalization in a wider context began shortly before the turn of the 16th century, with Spain and especially Portugal. Portugal’s global explorations in the 16th century, especially linked continents economies and cultures to a massive extent. Portugal’s exploration and trade with most of the coast of Africa and the territory of India was the first major trade based form of globalization. Wave of global trade, colonization, and enculturation reached all corners of the world.
6. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION:-
1. Neoliberal economic globalization has not brought about equality or eliminated poverty; it has instead resulted in a concentration of wealth in certain parts of the world and in hands of certain people. In most areas, marginalized members of society have not benefited from neo-liberal economic restructuring. For example, in many regions, small medium even bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to close or overshadowed by transnational corporations. This is so because their performances are below average when compared with products from trans-national corporations.
2.The public sector, which has been providing services for the majority of people who has no income to acquire the services were cut down and the sector eg Health, educations, water etc. The consequences of this situations resulted into a situation where social services that are necessary for the existence of people disappear. In such situation women and other marginalized groups were affected mostly.
3.Small and medium private businesses which recently employed 80% of the workforce and provided normal working conditions/employment are affected by globalization agendas. In this case the direct relationship between Economic growth and increase in employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses; jobs are lost (Mies/Wealhof 2003,P.fff);If one sought job most of them are temporary and underpaid in such a way that a person can not earn a decent living by depending on such a job.
4. Due to high technology many jobs have disappeared especially due to computerization, most people have less and less access to the means of production and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases.
5. The destruction of welfare state also eliminates the hope that individuals can rely on the community to provide assistance in times of dire needs. The majority of the population relies on private services, which in most cases are expensive and less affordable to the marginalized groups.
6. Social cultural traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. There is a very high speed of using all global resources such as natural resources, forests, water, etc, due to lack of formalized and legalized employment. For that matter there is rapid ecological destruction through depletion. People are making quick profits through for-example by cutting trees and selling timber, or burning charcoal. Climate, animal, plants, human and ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of immediate profits to the corporations or even individuals. The commander of the space shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning” She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo Natural resources the Diamond Gold and other valuable natural resources found in the Congo forest. That is the reasons for the wars that plague the republic of Congo today. The forests of Asia have been burning for may years too, and in late 2005,the Brazilian parliament has approved the clearing of 50% of the remaining Amazon forest. Mean while, there are rum ours that brazil and Venezuela have already sold their rights to the earths biggest remaining rain forest- to the Chinese who suffer from chronic wood shortage and can not sustain their enormous economic growth and economic super-power ambitions without securing global natural resources.
Given today’s race for the earths last resources one wonders that the world trade organization (WTO) thought when accepting China as a new member in 2001.Their minds were focused to the giant Chinese market but not the giant Chinese competition. Today’s, everything on earth is turned into commodities ie becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which means “liquidation”the transformation of all into liquid money).
In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost –intensive and preferably “Wage less” commodity production. The objective is to transformed everyone and everything into commodities including life itself.
One of the key points made by critics of recent economic globalization is that income inequality, both between and within nations is increasing as a result of these processes. On article from 2001 found that significantly in 7 out of 8 metrics income inequality has increased in the twenty years ending 2001.Also incomes in the lower decides of world income distribution have probably fallen absolutely since the 1980s.Further more the world Bank figures on absolute poverty were challenged. The article was skeptical of the World Bank’s claim that the number of people living on less than 81 a day has held steady at 1.2 billion from 1987 to 1988, because of biased methodology.
7. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
Every development undertaking has its impact in the community in a particular locality. Globalization as a development phenomenon is faced with the following challenges: -
1. Economic challenges:-
Advances in communication and transportation technology combined with free market policies have given goods and services and capital unprecedented (unique) mobility. Northern countries want to open world markets to their goods and services and take advantage of cheap labor and market in the developing countries. They use International Institutions (IMF, WB) and regional trade agreements to compel poor countries to integrate by reducing tariffs privatizing state enterprises, and relaxing environmental and labor standards. The results have been enlarging profits for investors but offered very little to laborers, provoking reaction from civil society.
Trade Agreements such as GAIT,FTAA, NAFTA, and CAFTA,AGOA PAFMECA, and many Others facilitate International trade thereby strongly involving people at all levels of the economy.
Rich countries often dictate terms and conditions to safeguard their interest of continuing to be economic giants embracing all the global wealth and just allowing a subsistence proportion of wealth to stay back in the poor countries.
The European Union is pressing former European colonies to sign an Economic partnership Agreement (EPA) before the end of 2007.The EU is attempting to reverse its previous discriminatory trade practices with these countries and appease (calm down) the World Trade Organization African and pacific countries report of massive lobbying and threats by the EU to withhold aids should the poor countries to sign the Agreement. East African governments and NGOs question the benefits of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the EU. These trade Agreements have not encouraged countries to add value to their exports; so many countries remain dependent on undefined primary product trade such as coffee and sugar.
They also face further barriers as the EU increasingly hinders imports of industrialized products from outside the Union. The African countries are also concerned that their industries will not be able to out-compete Asian imports.(Interpress service).
Rich countries spend billions subsiding their agricultural sector leading to chronic overproduction and dumping surpluses on global markets. Poor countries demand reforms of this trade practice that impoverishes small-scale farmers while enriching large agro-business. Oxfam (2005) paper accuses the EU of dumping sugar and dairy products into developing countries, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in the Mozambique, India and Jamaica Oxfam calls on the EU address the “devastating “ impact of subsidies by promoting policy reforms. Interpress services {2007} The World Trade organization Dolia Development Round has been stalled since July 2006, when the US despite demanding market liberalization in developing countries refused to lower its domestic from subsides.
At the 2007 World Economic Forum, the G33 group of developing countries called for a formal resumption of negotiations, seeking a multilateral outcomes that would offer “The US, however, insisted that the Dolia Round not reconvene” until there is clear progress” in ongoing informal discussions which largely exclude members of the G33.
Can the less developed countries be drawn further into the world market and can they undergo a process of economic growth? The answer is no.
(2) Social Challenges: Globalization has a number of challenges in social aspect. These challenges have been described and responded in different ways depending on the society perspective. One of the challenges of globalization in the society is the increasing of the social inequalities among the communities within and outside countries. These inequalities resulted into political and economic instability.
The gaps between the rich and the poor countries are still widening despite of all so-called efforts from the institutions like IMF and World Bank and respective countries.
Due to the great demand of skilled labor most of the productive people fall under unemployed due to lack of appropriate skills. Hence the rate of poverty in the community increased.
As most of the young people are unemployed due to lack of the appropriate skills, most of them do engaged in drug trafficking and other related crimes.
(3) Political Challenges: It is globalization that influences to the highest degree the every day political decisions. In response to the great transformations at the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s, such as the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the soviet block in Europe, the rise of China and Japan as powerful competitors in the global economy as well as the extensive adoption of neo-liberalist ideology around the globe, new actors mainly none-state players and new movements have acquired the power to reshape the traditional world order.
Some of the new implications are harder to deal with such as implementing policies concerning migration, dislocation, integration in a multi-ethic setting etc. It has been more difficult to match the global market priorities with the national interests, especially in the area concerning public benefits. The state tends to protect the interest of its citizens, by resisting threats posed by globalization.
On the other hand from an economic point of view, the state especially the nations has very little or no say at all regarding international trade tendencies, at the same time they are unable to break-away from the system.
(4) Cultural Challenges:
The growth of Cross-cultural contacts advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion the desire to increase ones standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas of adopting new technologies and practices, and participate in a” world culture”. Some complain about the resulting consumerism and loss of languages. Spreading of multicultural diversity (eg through the export of Hollywood and Hollywood movies).some consider such “imported” culture a danger, since it may suppress the local culture causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism to promote peace and understanding between peoples.
Greater International travel and tourism lead to the exposure of the foreign cultures Especially the western cultures dominate most of the developed countries. For example; by visiting countries and being exposed to the new culture the people tend to change the way they cloth and their behavior.
8. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-
Intervention to overcome the Negative effects of globalization to development need to be harnessed in order to be able to influence the globalization process to have meaningful gains to the developing countries six principles has been suggested to be practiced by poor countries to be able to overcome the negative effects of globalization:-
1.Policy-Making Process must be participatory and transparent:-
In most cases those who are responsible in formulation of policies do not consider effective participation which guarantee majority interests especially marginalized majority! In poor countries, especially those that rely heavily on development assistance and loans from foreign sources, for example Tanzania; policies are often primarily developed based on growth models and economic theories advanced by the International Financial Institutions and certain world leading rich Nations. Alternatives arise when people themselves or groups, decide to take initiative in order to control their destiny.
2.Honouring-Diverse Experiences and identies to help determine who wins and who loses:-
Before adapting and implementing economic policies, it is therefore Important for the developing countries to take into account domestic experiences across social classes and gender considerations
3.Globalization processes must not ignore equity and dignity:-
Economic policies under globalization (capitalism economies) or neo-liberal policies should not be taken or practiced by developing nations, the way it is practiced in already developed countries. Developing countries should practice “holistic economic” whereby ownership of the means of production eg land should be equally distributed through the instruments of law and political will.
4.Recognition and motivation of the Informal sector:
One the biggest problems with may economic policies is their failure to recognize monitor and support the informal sectors. No adequate information is collected to measure the contribution of the informal sector in the National economy. The poor countries should have very clear policies which favor the development of informal sectors so as to make formal at the end of the day.
5.Making the links through Regional Integration: -
This is important in terms of advocacy and activism-raising a united strong voice against unfavorable trade and economic relationship which since long has favored the rich countries and continue to marginalize the poor countries
6.The role of state in provision of basic social services to cater for the need of the majority poor:-
In most cases many neo-liberal policies limits the involvement of the state in providing basic social services like education, health etc,often through privatization policies.
For growing economies in the poor countries the state should continue to play a bigger role in key sectors of the economy for the sake of safeguarding the rights of the poor majority.
9. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -
The movement towards globalization alternatives is very broad including church groups, national liberation factions, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists anarchists those in support of relocation and others. Some are reformists (arguing for a more humane form of capitalism) while others are more revolutionary (arguing for what they believe is more humane system than capitalism) and others are reactionary believing globalization destroys national industry and jobs. The World commission on the social Dimension of globalization established by the International labor organization.
(ILO) has come up with alternatives towards globalization as follows:
1. Making decent work a global goal:
At the global level, making decent work a key goal calls for a renewed focus on the fundamental goal of employment and enterprise creation. With this in mind, the commission calls for a greater presence for the ILO in the Multilateral system in line with its constitutional mandate to “examine and consider all human beings “to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity of economic security and equal opportunity “and having done this, to” include in its decisions and recommendations, any provisions which it considers appropriate.
2.National Policies to Address Globalization: -
The world commission’s had a vision emphasizing that the beginning of the response to globalization should always start at home. The commission argues strongly in favor of better and fairer governance of the global economy but at the same time maintains that national and local policies and institutions are just as important if the opportunities of globalization are to reach everyone. This view was widely supported. Parallel initiatives can be taken at national regional, regional and international levels, as long they are consistent and coherent.
3.Connectiveness-ie Acting on a broad front:
The commission underscores the importance of moving forward on abroad front of interconnected issues. The commission suggested four key issues, which has to be followed so that we achieve globalization alternative, which is faire for all.
First start at home:-
Much has been done to facilitate global finance trade and investments, But every little have been done to empower local communities and local markets where people live and want to stay if given opportunity the live hoods of many families throughout the world are under serious stress and social policies must respond to their needs and aspirations. There ca not be a successful globalization without a successful” localization”.
Second focus on fairness:-
Unbalanced patterns investments trade, and labor markets are prime sources of today’s political commotion. In the south most international trade and foreign direct investments is concentrated in a dozen countries and migration is seen as the cheap answer to move to those countries to look for a job and better living. The results had always been family break-ups and “brain drain” And worldwide many are convinced that the rights of capital are better protected than the rights of workers. Fair rules for trade ,capital, technology flows and dealing with unstable commodity prices and greater access to markets are needed to provide more policy space for developing countries especially the least developed. So are basic social protections, respect for core labor standards
Adequate adjustment assistance for workers in all countries to provide more security to individuals, families and communities, and true a global commitment to employment creation as the best way of eradicating poverty.
Third rethink of global governance:-
There is need for International institutions to consider the importance of policies Integration through analytical frame work that places a premium on understanding strategic interrelationships between economic social, environmental and other key variables as well as on the search of integrated and coherent policy solutions. Global problems-including poverty requires the capacity to agree on coordinated global responses and the mechanism to produce integrated decision making.
Fourth and fundamental-making decent work a global goal: -
Work is central to people’s lives. No matter where they live or what they do; Work is the source of dignity, stability, peace and credibility of governments and their citizens. Since job creation goes hand in hand with enterprise development it underpins private initiatives and investments. Reducing decent work deficits is central to reducing tensions behind so many security threats, as well as social challenges, such as rampant immigration, unemployment, gender inequality and achieving the millennium development goals.
4.Providing social security to the marginalized citizens: -
Globalization has to address the plight of the poor majority in the developing world . Good social protection systems are well developed in the rich countries, globalization should enhance the same in the poor countries, in order to built a fair world. The resolution concerning social security adopted at the International labor conference in 2001,identified the extension of social security to all those not covered by existing economic systems as priority. It is being encouraged for countries to undertake a compressive diagnosis of people’s social security needs and use the resources available to meet those needs and the various actors and institutions able to contribute to extending social security coverage. In developing countries the priority is to find ways of providing relevant and effective coverage to informal sector workers and their families. The basic options can be to start statutory social insurance; community managed mutual health funds, and the tax-financed social benefits eg solid waste management. This is possible if the state agree to incorporate in the national development strategies. In some cases private provision also plays a certain part but has major limitation in terms of equitable distribution across the majority of the citizens as in many cases they are profit centered.
5.Enhancing the international labor standards systems:
Managing globalization must be among other things; respects for human rights. “Neo-liberalism put profit first and human rights come later”. In order to increase cohesiveness within world societies and increase meaningful interaction among societies and countries, globalization system must not ignore human dignity, freedom, fairness solidarity, and equality. Together with ILO efforts there are other alternatives for globalization system. for example Idios in Latin America have turned into ways of agriculture and subsistence that had been practiced for millions of year and produced a diversity of concrete wealth .Idios have also established mini-markets to trade products they themselves do not need .By doing this, they secured both social and ecological survival of their immediate and extended environment
.
10. CONCLUSION:
Globalization has exacerbated the crisis of underdevelopment in most of Africa and the rest of poor countries of the world. At the economic and development levels, Africa and the rest of developing nations are still marginalized in the overall schemes of the global division of labor, where they continue to serve as producers of primary commodities and consumers of manufactured products produced by the metropolitan countries. The multinational corporations with their increased mobility continue to exploit African workers by paying them “starvation wages”. Essentially globalization constitutes a renewed assault on African economies, through coalition of imperialist powers multinational co-operations and profit thirsty metropolitan. The main goal of globalization is to further penetrate and weaken the economies of the developing nations in particular Africa and continue to exercise both economic political and even military powers for an indefinite period of time, as a strategy to strengthen neo-imperialism and its agents. It is high time for the poor nations to say enough is enough with neo-imperialism; by rejecting western branded economic policies and formulate their own domestic economic policies relevant in solving their immediate problems; foremost poverty. Africa and the rest of other poor countries, if the unite healthfully and avoid being hypocrites and puppets of the rich nations; they can reject and overcomes the current oppressive and exploitative economic and development policies dictated by the rich nations, the international trade organizations, and world financial institutions. Lastly Globalization should be viewed by the developing countries, as a bridge to localization; as in globalization a big field of learning is made possible.
11. REFERENCE:
1. Charles Kenney why are we worried about income? Nearly everything that matters is
Converging world development volume 33 Issue1 January 2005 pages 1-19 2005
UNESCO report.
2. Roxana Georgiana Radu (2008). Coping with Globalization: Political Challenges and
realities.
3. Bhagwati Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York; Oxford
University press.
4. ILO;(2004). A fair Globalization, the role of the ILO.
5. Coucher, S.L. (2004). Globalization and Belongings: The politics of Identity in a
changing world.
6. ILO (2001). Resolution and conclusions concerning social security, International
Labor Conference, 89th session, Geneva Para 5.
7. Werthof, C. (2008). The Consequences of Globalization and Neo-liberal policies. What
are the alternatives?
8. Werthof, C. (2007). The Interconnectedness of all being: A New spirituality for a new
civilization, in Corinne.
9. Nor berg, H. (2001). Local lifeline: Rejecting Globalization, Embracing Localization.
10. Ginneken, W. (2003). Extending social security. Policies for developing countries,
Ess paper No.13.
11. Human security now, Report of the Commission on Human Security, May 2003.
12. Bhaduri, A. (2007). An alternative to globalization. Builder. Delhi India.
13. Fair Trade. An alternative Economic Model (2007).
14. Wikipendia, the free encyclopedia (2008). Globalization Us.
15. Awid (1905). Resistance to Globalization: What woks for positive change?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION.. 1
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW... 2
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION.. 3
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -. 5
5. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION: 8
6. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES. 10
7. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-. 13
8. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -. 15
9. CONCLUSION: 18
10. REFERENCE: 19
1. INTRODUCTION
This paper will focus on discussing Globalization in Relation to Development in the Global perspective. The paper will start by providing key definitions of globalization and Development, historical background of globalization and consequences of globalization to the World population in terms of development. Also the paper will provide some alternatives to overcome the negative impacts of globalization; and some principles to overcome globalization. Conclusion will be provided basing on lessons learned and individual opinions.
2. GLOBALIZATION OVERVIEW
Globalization affects everybody but more to the poorest nations and marginalized people.
It is not an issue for south Countries alone but the North are affected as well and both are seeking the best ways to global change. The use of natural resources is going very fast leaving the world under global warming situation. There is an also demographic change and new technologies have brought up to easier undertaking of activities. For globalization to be successful there should be ways to be taken to make it be acceptable, useful, and owned by the people in their locality. “There can not be a successful globalization without a successful localization”{Juan Soma via.(Ilo)}.
The current globalization trends have turned everything that would ensure a good life for all beings on this planet upside down. Many people still have a hard time. The horror we are experiencing is indeed a reality- a reality willingly produced, maintained and justified by “our politician”. But even if the alternative got half way on its feet-no more plundering, exploitation, destruction, violence, war, coercion, mercilessness, accumulation, greed, corruption-we would still be left with all the damage that the earth has already suffered. The destruction has been hard to believe, large parts of drinking water are disappearing mainly due to the melting of the glaciers and polar caps, climate has changed dramatically, causing turbulences and catastrophes the atmosphere is no longer protected against ultraviolet radiation, ozone layer has been destructed many species of our fauna and flora are extinguished, most cultures and their knowledge are destroyed, most natural resources exhausted. And all this happened slowly as globalization started and the situation is worse now. The big task we have now is to establish a new economy, new technology, and new relationship between developed and developing societies and finally put in place an equal world in terms of social-political economic and culture. We need also to establish a new political understanding based on egalitarianism and the acknowledgement of the dignity of each individual world-wide.
3. CONCEPTUAL MEANING OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization can mean many things. On the one hand, it is the World wide spread of modern technologies, industrial production, and communication of all kinds across frontiers, is itself a consequences of spread to hitherto pre-modern societies of new technologies. To say that we live in an era of globalization is to say that nearly every society is now industrialized or embarked on industrialization.
Globalization also implies that, nearly all economies are networked with other economies through out the world. There are few countries like North Korea, which seeks to cut their economies off from the rest of the world. They have succeeded in maintaining independent from World markets but at great costs, both in economies and human.
Three schools of thought viewed or interpreted globalization differently. These schools of thoughts are:-Neo-liberals schools of thought, Radicals school of thought, and Transformation list school of thought.
Neoliberals schools of thought : This School views Globalization as a progressive force for creating prosperity in a global market civilization. Inequalities are gradually overcomed and what was labeled the third world is increasingly differentiated as some countries become successfully industrialized
.
Radicals school of thought: This school suggests that globalization means exclusion deepening inequality and reinforce division of the world into core and periphery, is the new form of the Western Imperialism which dominates and exploits through multi nationals capital and investments of global governance such as World Bank and IMF.
Transformation list school of thought: These schools argue that globalization really is new, it has changed the configuration of global power so that there are growing concentrations of wealth and power in parts of South and increasing social exclusion and poverty in parts of the North. There is also a changed role of the states, which now share global political space with multination corporations Intergovernmental agencies NGOs and Social movements.
Globalization has also been referred as the growing sense of Interconnectedness between all parts of the world and the associated feelings of powerlessness and insecurity in the face of the spread and scale of global change. It is driven by a combination
Of three forces: 1.Economic forces (the tendency of capitalism to expand)
ii). Technological change (the informatics revolution)
iii) Political shifts (moving away from state intervention towards economic liberalizations policies). This implies globalization is also a process of increasingly extensity velocity and impact of global interactions. It both unites and divides-creating a more unruly and unequal World
.
4. CONCEPTUAL MEANINGS OF DEVELOPMENT: -
Development is the expansion of capabilities and possibilities for more people to realize their potential as human beings through the expansion of their capabilities for functioning (Nobel Prize-Winner, Amartya sen).according to sens capability approach, development should be about enrichment of human lives-not in the sense of having, more things ;but rather that of having the freedom to choose different ways of living (Sen,1990b).
5. HISTORICAL BACKGRUND OF GLOBALIZATION:-
Yale Global (2005) article provides a long-term view on globalization from the middle ages to the present. From the historical perspective globalization is much more about the “Changed environments people create and manipulate as the societies globally becomes interconnected” than about rampant capitalism technology or homogenization, the author argues. The process that has come to be known as globalization i.e. the progressively greater influence being exerted by worldwide economics, social, and cultural processes over national or regional, clearly leaves its mark on the world of today. This is not a new process. It has historical roots run deep. Yet the dramatic changes in terms of space and time being brought about by the communication and information revolution represent a qualitative break with the past. Policy forum (2006), traced the historical background of globalization that globalization go as far back as during the time of emergence of capitalism in Europe in the middle age, when innovation of science and cultural thinking started to speed up. The innovation led to the creation of the great European countries, rather it had to venture to less developed countries for:-
a) Source of cheap raw materials and market for industrial products which cannot longer be absorbed by the metropolitan markets.
b) Area of investing surplus capital, which is the result of the accumulated profits, which has to be re-invested. The Metropolitan economy could not absorb more Investments, and had to be undertaken to less developed or poor nations
c) Area of new employment of surplus, get new settlement, and cheap labor, as a result of colonialism. Globalization has undergone different phases the first phase was before the First World War (1870-1913), which was marked as great capital and labor mobility as well as trade. Modern society could only be properly understood if the seemingly uncontrollable acceleration of basic technological analysis {Adams 1931(1904)}.John Dewey argued in 1927 that recent economic and technological trends implies the emergence of a “New world” no less noteworthy than the opening up of America to European Exploitation and conquest in 1492.
For Dewly; Invention of steam, electricity, and the telephone offered formidable challenges to relatively static and homogeneous forms of local community life that had long represented the main theatre for most human activity.
Economic activity increasingly exploded the confines of local communities to a degree that would have stunned our historical predecessors, for example, while the steamship, railroad, automobile and air travel considerably intensified rates of geographical mobility. The rapid increasing of globalization in this phase was suddenly stopped by the emergence of the First World War, where all European countries were in tension and most of resources were directed to the war. After the Second World War the second phase of global integration began. This time the movement focused not in Europe but also in other regions in the world. The major focus was to disintegrate the macroeconomics regulation and developing International Institutions i.e. the UN organs.
From 1970s there was a gradual spread of free trade and mobility of capital (Investments in other countries).This gradual and long process of globalization was fuelled by the successive technology revolution which reduced the cost of transportation, information and communication. Advances in transportation, information, and communications are part of a wider range of technological innovations, which have resulted in unprecedented leaps in productivity economic expansion and increased international trade. In the European countries, the large capital cities have been engaged in International trade since inception of modern capitalism (Brandel, 1994).
The compression of territory thereby paved the way for executive-centered emergency government (Vivilio,1986[1977]).But it was probably the German philosopher Martin Heidegger who most clearly anticipated contemporary debates about globalization. Hedger not only described the “ abolition of distance” as a constitutive feature of our contemporary, but he linked recent shifts in spatial experience to no less fundamental alterations in the temporality of human activity .“All distances and space are shrinking. Man now reaches places by overnight using planes, which formally took weeks and months of travel” (Heidegger 1971[1950]: 165). Heidegger also accurately prophesied that new communication and information technologies would soon spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality. “Distant sites of the most ancient cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s street traffic.
The peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (Heidegger, 1971[1950]: 165). Hedegger description of growing possibilities for simultaneously and instantaneousness in human experience ultimately proved no less apprehensive than the views of many of his predecessors. In his analysis the compression of space increasingly meant that from the perspective of human experience everything is equally far and equally near” Instead of opening up new possibilities for rich and multifaceted interaction with events once distant from the purview of most Individuals the abolition of distance tended to generate a “uniform distance less” in which fundamentally distinct objects become part of a bland homogenous experiential mss ; (Heidegger, 1971[1950]; 165). The loss of any meaningful distinction between nearness “distances” contributed to a leveling down of human experience; which in turn spawned an indifferent that rendered human experience monotonous and one-dimensional.
The Wikipedia (2008) explains that the term “globalization” has been used by economists since the 1980s although it was used in social sciences in the 1960s,however, its concepts did not become popular until the latter half of the 1980s and 1990s.The earliest written theoretical concepts of globalization were penned by an American entrepreneur-turned Minister Charles Taze Russell who coined the term “corporate giants” in 1897.
Globalization is viewed as a century long process tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Early forms of globalization existed during the Roman Empire the Partian Empire and the Han Dynasty when the silk Road started in China reached the Dommandaries of of the Partian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. The Islamic golden age is also and example when Muslin traders and explorers established an early global economy across the old world resulting in a globalization of crops trade knowledge and technology; and later during the Mongol Empire when there was greater integration along the silk Road. Globalization in a wider context began shortly before the turn of the 16th century, with Spain and especially Portugal. Portugal’s global explorations in the 16th century, especially linked continents economies and cultures to a massive extent. Portugal’s exploration and trade with most of the coast of Africa and the territory of India was the first major trade based form of globalization. Wave of global trade, colonization, and enculturation reached all corners of the world.
6. CONCEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION TO THE WORLD POPULATION:-
1. Neoliberal economic globalization has not brought about equality or eliminated poverty; it has instead resulted in a concentration of wealth in certain parts of the world and in hands of certain people. In most areas, marginalized members of society have not benefited from neo-liberal economic restructuring. For example, in many regions, small medium even bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market, forced to close or overshadowed by transnational corporations. This is so because their performances are below average when compared with products from trans-national corporations.
2.The public sector, which has been providing services for the majority of people who has no income to acquire the services were cut down and the sector eg Health, educations, water etc. The consequences of this situations resulted into a situation where social services that are necessary for the existence of people disappear. In such situation women and other marginalized groups were affected mostly.
3.Small and medium private businesses which recently employed 80% of the workforce and provided normal working conditions/employment are affected by globalization agendas. In this case the direct relationship between Economic growth and increase in employment is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses; jobs are lost (Mies/Wealhof 2003,P.fff);If one sought job most of them are temporary and underpaid in such a way that a person can not earn a decent living by depending on such a job.
4. Due to high technology many jobs have disappeared especially due to computerization, most people have less and less access to the means of production and so the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases.
5. The destruction of welfare state also eliminates the hope that individuals can rely on the community to provide assistance in times of dire needs. The majority of the population relies on private services, which in most cases are expensive and less affordable to the marginalized groups.
6. Social cultural traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. There is a very high speed of using all global resources such as natural resources, forests, water, etc, due to lack of formalized and legalized employment. For that matter there is rapid ecological destruction through depletion. People are making quick profits through for-example by cutting trees and selling timber, or burning charcoal. Climate, animal, plants, human and ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests of immediate profits to the corporations or even individuals. The commander of the space shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that “the center of Africa was burning” She meant the Congo, in which the last great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo Natural resources the Diamond Gold and other valuable natural resources found in the Congo forest. That is the reasons for the wars that plague the republic of Congo today. The forests of Asia have been burning for may years too, and in late 2005,the Brazilian parliament has approved the clearing of 50% of the remaining Amazon forest. Mean while, there are rum ours that brazil and Venezuela have already sold their rights to the earths biggest remaining rain forest- to the Chinese who suffer from chronic wood shortage and can not sustain their enormous economic growth and economic super-power ambitions without securing global natural resources.
Given today’s race for the earths last resources one wonders that the world trade organization (WTO) thought when accepting China as a new member in 2001.Their minds were focused to the giant Chinese market but not the giant Chinese competition. Today’s, everything on earth is turned into commodities ie becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which means “liquidation”the transformation of all into liquid money).
In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost –intensive and preferably “Wage less” commodity production. The objective is to transformed everyone and everything into commodities including life itself.
One of the key points made by critics of recent economic globalization is that income inequality, both between and within nations is increasing as a result of these processes. On article from 2001 found that significantly in 7 out of 8 metrics income inequality has increased in the twenty years ending 2001.Also incomes in the lower decides of world income distribution have probably fallen absolutely since the 1980s.Further more the world Bank figures on absolute poverty were challenged. The article was skeptical of the World Bank’s claim that the number of people living on less than 81 a day has held steady at 1.2 billion from 1987 to 1988, because of biased methodology.
7. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES
Every development undertaking has its impact in the community in a particular locality. Globalization as a development phenomenon is faced with the following challenges: -
1. Economic challenges:-
Advances in communication and transportation technology combined with free market policies have given goods and services and capital unprecedented (unique) mobility. Northern countries want to open world markets to their goods and services and take advantage of cheap labor and market in the developing countries. They use International Institutions (IMF, WB) and regional trade agreements to compel poor countries to integrate by reducing tariffs privatizing state enterprises, and relaxing environmental and labor standards. The results have been enlarging profits for investors but offered very little to laborers, provoking reaction from civil society.
Trade Agreements such as GAIT,FTAA, NAFTA, and CAFTA,AGOA PAFMECA, and many Others facilitate International trade thereby strongly involving people at all levels of the economy.
Rich countries often dictate terms and conditions to safeguard their interest of continuing to be economic giants embracing all the global wealth and just allowing a subsistence proportion of wealth to stay back in the poor countries.
The European Union is pressing former European colonies to sign an Economic partnership Agreement (EPA) before the end of 2007.The EU is attempting to reverse its previous discriminatory trade practices with these countries and appease (calm down) the World Trade Organization African and pacific countries report of massive lobbying and threats by the EU to withhold aids should the poor countries to sign the Agreement. East African governments and NGOs question the benefits of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the EU. These trade Agreements have not encouraged countries to add value to their exports; so many countries remain dependent on undefined primary product trade such as coffee and sugar.
They also face further barriers as the EU increasingly hinders imports of industrialized products from outside the Union. The African countries are also concerned that their industries will not be able to out-compete Asian imports.(Interpress service).
Rich countries spend billions subsiding their agricultural sector leading to chronic overproduction and dumping surpluses on global markets. Poor countries demand reforms of this trade practice that impoverishes small-scale farmers while enriching large agro-business. Oxfam (2005) paper accuses the EU of dumping sugar and dairy products into developing countries, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers in the Mozambique, India and Jamaica Oxfam calls on the EU address the “devastating “ impact of subsidies by promoting policy reforms. Interpress services {2007} The World Trade organization Dolia Development Round has been stalled since July 2006, when the US despite demanding market liberalization in developing countries refused to lower its domestic from subsides.
At the 2007 World Economic Forum, the G33 group of developing countries called for a formal resumption of negotiations, seeking a multilateral outcomes that would offer “The US, however, insisted that the Dolia Round not reconvene” until there is clear progress” in ongoing informal discussions which largely exclude members of the G33.
Can the less developed countries be drawn further into the world market and can they undergo a process of economic growth? The answer is no.
(2) Social Challenges: Globalization has a number of challenges in social aspect. These challenges have been described and responded in different ways depending on the society perspective. One of the challenges of globalization in the society is the increasing of the social inequalities among the communities within and outside countries. These inequalities resulted into political and economic instability.
The gaps between the rich and the poor countries are still widening despite of all so-called efforts from the institutions like IMF and World Bank and respective countries.
Due to the great demand of skilled labor most of the productive people fall under unemployed due to lack of appropriate skills. Hence the rate of poverty in the community increased.
As most of the young people are unemployed due to lack of the appropriate skills, most of them do engaged in drug trafficking and other related crimes.
(3) Political Challenges: It is globalization that influences to the highest degree the every day political decisions. In response to the great transformations at the end of 1980s and beginning of 1990s, such as the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the soviet block in Europe, the rise of China and Japan as powerful competitors in the global economy as well as the extensive adoption of neo-liberalist ideology around the globe, new actors mainly none-state players and new movements have acquired the power to reshape the traditional world order.
Some of the new implications are harder to deal with such as implementing policies concerning migration, dislocation, integration in a multi-ethic setting etc. It has been more difficult to match the global market priorities with the national interests, especially in the area concerning public benefits. The state tends to protect the interest of its citizens, by resisting threats posed by globalization.
On the other hand from an economic point of view, the state especially the nations has very little or no say at all regarding international trade tendencies, at the same time they are unable to break-away from the system.
(4) Cultural Challenges:
The growth of Cross-cultural contacts advent of new categories of consciousness and identities which embodies cultural diffusion the desire to increase ones standard of living and enjoy foreign products and ideas of adopting new technologies and practices, and participate in a” world culture”. Some complain about the resulting consumerism and loss of languages. Spreading of multicultural diversity (eg through the export of Hollywood and Hollywood movies).some consider such “imported” culture a danger, since it may suppress the local culture causing reduction in diversity or even assimilation. Others consider multiculturalism to promote peace and understanding between peoples.
Greater International travel and tourism lead to the exposure of the foreign cultures Especially the western cultures dominate most of the developed countries. For example; by visiting countries and being exposed to the new culture the people tend to change the way they cloth and their behavior.
8. PRINCIPLES TO OVERCOME NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:-
Intervention to overcome the Negative effects of globalization to development need to be harnessed in order to be able to influence the globalization process to have meaningful gains to the developing countries six principles has been suggested to be practiced by poor countries to be able to overcome the negative effects of globalization:-
1.Policy-Making Process must be participatory and transparent:-
In most cases those who are responsible in formulation of policies do not consider effective participation which guarantee majority interests especially marginalized majority! In poor countries, especially those that rely heavily on development assistance and loans from foreign sources, for example Tanzania; policies are often primarily developed based on growth models and economic theories advanced by the International Financial Institutions and certain world leading rich Nations. Alternatives arise when people themselves or groups, decide to take initiative in order to control their destiny.
2.Honouring-Diverse Experiences and identies to help determine who wins and who loses:-
Before adapting and implementing economic policies, it is therefore Important for the developing countries to take into account domestic experiences across social classes and gender considerations
3.Globalization processes must not ignore equity and dignity:-
Economic policies under globalization (capitalism economies) or neo-liberal policies should not be taken or practiced by developing nations, the way it is practiced in already developed countries. Developing countries should practice “holistic economic” whereby ownership of the means of production eg land should be equally distributed through the instruments of law and political will.
4.Recognition and motivation of the Informal sector:
One the biggest problems with may economic policies is their failure to recognize monitor and support the informal sectors. No adequate information is collected to measure the contribution of the informal sector in the National economy. The poor countries should have very clear policies which favor the development of informal sectors so as to make formal at the end of the day.
5.Making the links through Regional Integration: -
This is important in terms of advocacy and activism-raising a united strong voice against unfavorable trade and economic relationship which since long has favored the rich countries and continue to marginalize the poor countries
6.The role of state in provision of basic social services to cater for the need of the majority poor:-
In most cases many neo-liberal policies limits the involvement of the state in providing basic social services like education, health etc,often through privatization policies.
For growing economies in the poor countries the state should continue to play a bigger role in key sectors of the economy for the sake of safeguarding the rights of the poor majority.
9. PROPOSED GLOBALIZATION ALTERNATIVES: -
The movement towards globalization alternatives is very broad including church groups, national liberation factions, peasant unionists, intellectuals, artists, protectionists anarchists those in support of relocation and others. Some are reformists (arguing for a more humane form of capitalism) while others are more revolutionary (arguing for what they believe is more humane system than capitalism) and others are reactionary believing globalization destroys national industry and jobs. The World commission on the social Dimension of globalization established by the International labor organization.
(ILO) has come up with alternatives towards globalization as follows:
1. Making decent work a global goal:
At the global level, making decent work a key goal calls for a renewed focus on the fundamental goal of employment and enterprise creation. With this in mind, the commission calls for a greater presence for the ILO in the Multilateral system in line with its constitutional mandate to “examine and consider all human beings “to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity of economic security and equal opportunity “and having done this, to” include in its decisions and recommendations, any provisions which it considers appropriate.
2.National Policies to Address Globalization: -
The world commission’s had a vision emphasizing that the beginning of the response to globalization should always start at home. The commission argues strongly in favor of better and fairer governance of the global economy but at the same time maintains that national and local policies and institutions are just as important if the opportunities of globalization are to reach everyone. This view was widely supported. Parallel initiatives can be taken at national regional, regional and international levels, as long they are consistent and coherent.
3.Connectiveness-ie Acting on a broad front:
The commission underscores the importance of moving forward on abroad front of interconnected issues. The commission suggested four key issues, which has to be followed so that we achieve globalization alternative, which is faire for all.
First start at home:-
Much has been done to facilitate global finance trade and investments, But every little have been done to empower local communities and local markets where people live and want to stay if given opportunity the live hoods of many families throughout the world are under serious stress and social policies must respond to their needs and aspirations. There ca not be a successful globalization without a successful” localization”.
Second focus on fairness:-
Unbalanced patterns investments trade, and labor markets are prime sources of today’s political commotion. In the south most international trade and foreign direct investments is concentrated in a dozen countries and migration is seen as the cheap answer to move to those countries to look for a job and better living. The results had always been family break-ups and “brain drain” And worldwide many are convinced that the rights of capital are better protected than the rights of workers. Fair rules for trade ,capital, technology flows and dealing with unstable commodity prices and greater access to markets are needed to provide more policy space for developing countries especially the least developed. So are basic social protections, respect for core labor standards
Adequate adjustment assistance for workers in all countries to provide more security to individuals, families and communities, and true a global commitment to employment creation as the best way of eradicating poverty.
Third rethink of global governance:-
There is need for International institutions to consider the importance of policies Integration through analytical frame work that places a premium on understanding strategic interrelationships between economic social, environmental and other key variables as well as on the search of integrated and coherent policy solutions. Global problems-including poverty requires the capacity to agree on coordinated global responses and the mechanism to produce integrated decision making.
Fourth and fundamental-making decent work a global goal: -
Work is central to people’s lives. No matter where they live or what they do; Work is the source of dignity, stability, peace and credibility of governments and their citizens. Since job creation goes hand in hand with enterprise development it underpins private initiatives and investments. Reducing decent work deficits is central to reducing tensions behind so many security threats, as well as social challenges, such as rampant immigration, unemployment, gender inequality and achieving the millennium development goals.
4.Providing social security to the marginalized citizens: -
Globalization has to address the plight of the poor majority in the developing world . Good social protection systems are well developed in the rich countries, globalization should enhance the same in the poor countries, in order to built a fair world. The resolution concerning social security adopted at the International labor conference in 2001,identified the extension of social security to all those not covered by existing economic systems as priority. It is being encouraged for countries to undertake a compressive diagnosis of people’s social security needs and use the resources available to meet those needs and the various actors and institutions able to contribute to extending social security coverage. In developing countries the priority is to find ways of providing relevant and effective coverage to informal sector workers and their families. The basic options can be to start statutory social insurance; community managed mutual health funds, and the tax-financed social benefits eg solid waste management. This is possible if the state agree to incorporate in the national development strategies. In some cases private provision also plays a certain part but has major limitation in terms of equitable distribution across the majority of the citizens as in many cases they are profit centered.
5.Enhancing the international labor standards systems:
Managing globalization must be among other things; respects for human rights. “Neo-liberalism put profit first and human rights come later”. In order to increase cohesiveness within world societies and increase meaningful interaction among societies and countries, globalization system must not ignore human dignity, freedom, fairness solidarity, and equality. Together with ILO efforts there are other alternatives for globalization system. for example Idios in Latin America have turned into ways of agriculture and subsistence that had been practiced for millions of year and produced a diversity of concrete wealth .Idios have also established mini-markets to trade products they themselves do not need .By doing this, they secured both social and ecological survival of their immediate and extended environment
.
10. CONCLUSION:
Globalization has exacerbated the crisis of underdevelopment in most of Africa and the rest of poor countries of the world. At the economic and development levels, Africa and the rest of developing nations are still marginalized in the overall schemes of the global division of labor, where they continue to serve as producers of primary commodities and consumers of manufactured products produced by the metropolitan countries. The multinational corporations with their increased mobility continue to exploit African workers by paying them “starvation wages”. Essentially globalization constitutes a renewed assault on African economies, through coalition of imperialist powers multinational co-operations and profit thirsty metropolitan. The main goal of globalization is to further penetrate and weaken the economies of the developing nations in particular Africa and continue to exercise both economic political and even military powers for an indefinite period of time, as a strategy to strengthen neo-imperialism and its agents. It is high time for the poor nations to say enough is enough with neo-imperialism; by rejecting western branded economic policies and formulate their own domestic economic policies relevant in solving their immediate problems; foremost poverty. Africa and the rest of other poor countries, if the unite healthfully and avoid being hypocrites and puppets of the rich nations; they can reject and overcomes the current oppressive and exploitative economic and development policies dictated by the rich nations, the international trade organizations, and world financial institutions. Lastly Globalization should be viewed by the developing countries, as a bridge to localization; as in globalization a big field of learning is made possible.
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