A SHORT HISTORY (STORY) OF GLOBALISATION
The brief historical time line in
the
previous notes suggests a possible story
about the processes of human and social evolution - the
underpinnings of globalisation (whatever we mean by the term):
- -200,000
yrs -> -10,000yrs. - our human ancestors multiplied
and migrated from their origins in
Africa to populate the global land mass, as hunter-gatherers
- -10,000 yrs -> - 5,000 yrs -
humans cultivated their
natural environment
and became farmers - and village/town dwellers - in the Neolithic
revolution following the last ice age.(1st
Agricultural revolution)
- -3000 yrs
- trade and exchange
already well established in the Near East , centering on raw materials
and artifacts: world population reaches 1 million.
- 'religion' and self/social-belief
systems well established.
- Empires emerge, grow, fight
and dissipate - the ancient empires of Mesopotamia,
Samarra, and Uruk
- 0 yrs. (1AD):
Global Population reaches
150 million (about twice the present UK population);
- Trade
routes span the known
world.
- Major Cities emerge. By
100 AD, two cities of >400,000 people, 2 of 250,000 and 4 of 100,000+
- 15th
C: Printing press and 'discovery' of the 'New World, world
popn. 300m
- 18th
C: Industrial
revolution (and 2nd. Agricultural revolution)-
coal,
steam, iron and machines (textiles and transport) + sanitation, clean water
and vaccination: world popn. grows from 600m to 900m. (2nd Ag.
Revolution - labour exodus, expansion of farm size &
commercialisation of agriculture (including application of science,
augmented by expansion of territory to 'new world')
- 1880-1914:
European
Empires and patterns of world trade. world
popn.
exceeds 1 bn to reach 1.6bn by 1900.
- 20thC World War I, Great
depression, World War II, Cold War, massive development, growth &
innovation, including '3rd' agricultural revolution
(green): mechanical & chemical & hybridisation and
-> (?)
- 21st C GLOBALISATION: world
popn reaches 7 bn., threatening to grow to 9bn. by 2050. Global mobile
phone accounts (2010) 4.6bn, (Economist). 4th. Ag. Rev needed (double
green)? GM/GE + precision agriculture? Information
& Communication revolution
Four authoritative and short assessments of the
recent dramatic changes in world relations:
Economist: "Rethinking
the “third world”: Seeing the world differently", June
10th, 2010. "
Since 2008, says the
World Bank, they (developing countries) have contributed almost all of
what economic growth there has been. In the 1980s they accounted for
33.7% of global income, at purchasing-power parities. This year, the
share will be 43.4%. ... (Nevertheless)
The world remains binary. Over 1 billion
people live on $1.25 or less a day, more than did when the term third
world was coined. Many live in countries, like Brazil and India, that
seem to have escaped from the third world. And 60 or so small poor
countries retain third-world characteristics: aid dependency,
corruption, violence."
Pscal
Lamy, WTO Director General, “
The
Doha Round marks a transition from the old governance of the old trade
order to the new governance of a new trade order”, speach on the
occasion of the WTO's 10th birthday (Oct. 1st, 2010) "
Developing countries' share of world trade
has grown from a third to over half in just fifteen years — and China
has just passed Japan as the world's second biggest national economy,
and Germany as the world's top exporter. ...We still think in terms of
Adam Smith's world of trade between nations, but in reality most trade
now takes place within globe-spanning multinational companies and their
suppliers. It is not competition between China and the US that is
relevant, so much as competition between Nokia's and Samsung's value
chains. Instead of “Made in China” on the back of an iPhone, the
label should read “Made in the World”, reflecting Japanese microchips,
US design, Korean flat-screens and Chinese assembly. (which
means that our traditional trade stats., by country, are now, perhaps,
almost meaningless).
This is an
important speach from the boss of the WTO.
Who Runs the
21stC. World? - a brief commentary on the major Global
Institutions (Economist, July 3rd. 2008),
including a table indicating their
relative size.
Special Report:
The World Economy (Economist), 13.10.2012 - 12 articles in all.
Why did Europe, and especially the UK lead
the recent development?
"The industrial
revolution is quite probably the most important economic development of
the past 500 years. It produced not a once-only step-up in productivity
but a century-and-a-half of industrial expansion and continuing
innovation that transformed lives everywhere. What is more, it stemmed
from the globalisation of the early-modern period and gave rise to
more. With global crisis raging anew, readers could do worse than
ponder that long-ago upheaval." [
Economist, review of Allen, British
Industrial Revolution.. (below), 21.05.2009]
The Traditional/Conventional View (?):
Max Weber
(1864 - 1920), and founder of modern sociology, argued that it was the
Protestant Work Ethic which was
decisive. (an interesting
history
of the ethic). Frey (
Economic
History net), 2010, argues "
More
recent quantitative evidence supports the hypothesis that cultural
values count in economic development. The cultural values examined in
recent studies are not religious values, as such. Rather, such
presumably secular values as the need
to achieve, intolerance for
corruption, respect for
property rights, are all correlated with economic growth.
However, in its own time Puritanism produced a social and economic
ethic known for precisely these sorts of values."
See
also,
David Landes: The Wealth and Poverty of
Nations (Abacus, 1998), which tends to side with the
cultural explanation, while also recognising the importance of climate,
geographical location etc.
An
alternative answer is provided by Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs
and Steel. (see,
also,
PBS pages)
- that geographical and biological advantage favoured the european land
mass (temperate, well connected and polulated with domesticable plants
(wheat, barley, flax, legumes) and animals (horse, cow, sheep, goats)
-> cultivation, civilisation and growth (specialisation and trade),
which provided both a base and a need for the development of military
force for both defence and expansion (guns); and also for steel
(machines and power); and also generated disease in dense populations
and disease resistance (germs), which, when transmitted to more
sparsely populated regions (the Americas) proved decisive. -an
evolutionary accident generating positive feedback loops which proved
self-reinforcing.
A further answer is provided by Robert Allen, The British Industrial
Revolution in
Global Perspective (
Cambridge,
2009), which relies more on economics: "In the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries a European-wide market emerged. England took a
commanding position in this new order as her
wool textile industry out
competed the established producers in Italy and the Low Countries.
England extended her lead in the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries by creating an intercontinental trading network including the
Americas and India. Intercontinental trade expansion depended on the
acquisition of colonies,
mercantilist
trade promotion, and naval
power." [Though the Dutch and others also managed similar expansion at
this time].
In England,
rapid urbanisation and
growth -> increased demand for fuel (wood replaced by easily
and cheaply available coal). ["Energy was more expensive on the
European continent and particularly expensive in China (
Figure 2)."
Rapid growth also -> higher wages
and incomes - rising
cost of
labour &
increased demand
for manufactured and imported goods
->
Commercialisation and
revolution of agriculture (to feed the rich and growing urban
population)
"
Success in international trade
created Britain’s high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the
spring board for the Industrial Revolution. High wages and cheap energy
created a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for
labour....
The technologies
that were used (in England vs, China)
reflected the relative prices of capital,
labour, and energy. Since it was costly to invent technology, invention
also responded to the same incentives."
"These technologies (steam driven)
eventually revolutionised the world, but
at the outset they were barely profitable in Britain, and their
commercial success depended on increasing the use of inputs that were
relatively cheap in Britain. In other countries, where wages were lower
and energy more expensive, it did not pay to use technology that
reduced employment and increased the consumption of fuel. ..
Since the technologies
of the Industrial
Revolution were only profitable to adopt in Britain, that was also the
only country where it paid to invent them." In addition,
the demand for R&D, education and training to develop the
industrial muscle and sophistication also generated a supply repsonse
(private education, apprenticeships, and respect for science and
research), and the development of venture capitalists (the early banks)
willing to finance R&D.
Once started, however, the drive for progress in harness with the
expansion of the British Empire, led rapidly to increasing efficiency
of steam power: "
The consumption of
coal in steam engines, for instance, was cut from 45 pounds per horse
power-hour in the early eighteenth to only 2 pounds in the
mid-nineteenth. The genius of British engineering undermined the
country’s technological lead by creating ‘appropriate technology’ for
the world at large. By the middle of the nineteenth century, advanced
technology could be profitably used in countries like France with
expensive energy and India with cheap labour. Once that happened, the
Industrial Revolution went world wide."
In short,
expensive labour and
cheap energy spawned the
industrial revolution. And
trade
helps enormously. The Black Death raised the price of labour and
boosted trade. English sheep grew longer fleeces as they grazed fields
newly left fallow, and local cloth improved. As Britain traded more,
extending its reach to the Americas and Asia, London, then other
cities, expanded. Agriculture became more productive. Between 1500 and
1800 England shifted people out of farming faster than any other big
European country. The coal that Britain was lucky enough to have was
mined in growing quantities to fuel city dwellings. By 1800 Britain was
producing “the vast preponderance” of the world’s coal, and it was
cheap.
Thanks to trade, wages stayed high although the population grew.
Education improved (though the Dutch still had a higher literacy rate
in 1800). So did diet, permitting people to work longer and harder. And
trade gave them a reason to, bringing in exotic products that well-paid
workers could aspire to. This “industrious revolution” made possible
the industrial revolution. Steam engines were originally designed to
pump water out of the pits and railways to move coal around them. The
watchmakers of southern Lancashire proved an unequalled source of
high-quality, low-cost gears."
DRH Note - the major migrations
to and colonisations of the 'new world'
also provided valuable 'safety valves' for European (and especially
British) industrialisation - by providing an escape route for the
disaffected and displaced (Scots from the Highland clearances, Irish
from the Potato famines); and also by providing both the means of and
demands for transport (ships and railways) and the food and raw
material supplies for the home population. Not only this, but the
revolution was also based (at least partly) on the slave trade. Could
the industrial revolution have happened without these
safety-valves? Would it have been different and had a different
development path without them?
See, also,
Angus Maddison: Contours
of the World
Economy 1-2030 AD : Essays in Macro-Economic History, Oxford, 2007 (e-book). "
Written by a pioneer
in the quantitative and macroeconomic analysis of economic history,
this book combines qualitative histories with quantitative data. It
also seeks a new understanding of the forces of economic growth and
development by taking the ultimate long view - the whole of the last
millennium - and looking to the future. This book seeks to identify the
forces which explain how and why some parts of the world have grown
rich and others have lagged behind. Encompassing 2000 years of history,
part 1 begins with the Roman Empire and explores the key factors that
have influenced economic development in Africa, Asia, the Americas and
Europe. Part 2 covers the development of macroeconomic tools of
analysis from the 17th century to the present. Part 3 looks to the
future and considers what the shape of the world economy might be in
2030. Combining both the close quantitative analysis for which
Professor Maddison is famous with a more qualitative approach that
takes into account the complexity of the forces at work, this book
provides students and all interested readers with a totally
fascinatingoverview of world economic history. Professor Maddison has
the unique ability to synthesise vast amounts of information into a
clear narrative flow that entertains as well as informs, making this
text an invaluable resource for all students and scholars, and anyone
interested in trying to understand why some parts of the World are so
much richer than others" [Angus Maddison passed away on 24 April
2010]
Maddison's
original website contains a number of 'seminal' papers on economic
growth and development - see, especially, "New Estimates of Chinese
Growth Performance and Potential 1952-2030", which shows how difficult
it is to measure economic growth; and "Economic Epochs and their
Interpretation", and "
European
Capitalism: an historic and comparative perspective" - an
excellent account of the last 200
years of economic development in the West.
For more on the genesis of the industrial revolution, see: The story
began in
Bedlington,
Northumberland: "The coming of the iron industry with the opening
of the Bedlington Ironworks Company in 1736 changed the town from an
isolated rural village to an industrial town."
Why didn't it happen in
China?
Interesting question (aka The Needham Puzzle). Diamond's
(Guns) argument is that Western success was a coincidence driven by
accidental good fortune - being in the right place at the right time -
a view which is quintessentially postmodern.
Ian Morris: "
Latitudes
not Attitudes: How Geography Explains History", History Today, 20.
Oct, 2010, argues a similar thesis.
Diamond's more recent book
- ''
Collapse'' posits that the
Western way of life is flirting with the sudden ruin that caused past
societies like the Anasazi and the Mayans to vanish. .“...“ The big
problem with this view (Guns) is explaining why China -- which
around the year 1000 was significantly ahead of Europe in development,
and possessed similar advantages in animals and plants -- fell behind.
This happened, Diamond says, because China adopted a single-ruler
society that banned change, at least after the
Ming dynasty (
1368 -1664) - [as does Menger (
op cit)].
True, but how did environment or animal
husbandry dictate this? China's embrace of a change-resistant society
was a political/cultural phenomenon. During the same period China was
adopting
centrally regimented life, Europe was rapidly developing the idea of
individualism. Individualism proved a potent force, a source of power,
invention and motivation. Yet Diamond considers ideas to be nearly
irrelevant, compared with microbes and prevailing winds. Supply the
right environmental conditions, and inevitably there will be a factory
manufacturing jet engines." (Gregg Easterbrook,
NYTimes)
- Socio-economic development is a political/cultural
phenomenon, then, as argued by Landes (above).
See, also:
Daniel
Venn, Warwick University, "Why Did The Industrial Revolution Take
Place In Europe And Not Asia?" (2005), who surveys the arguments,
without coming to a major conclusion - other than that the industrial
revolution might well have happened in China. Stenger (op.cit,
intro)
suggests that China turned inwards rather than outwards at the time
when industrialisation was possible and made sense, and (by
implication) only reversed this position in the last 30 years, and is
now experiencing its own industrial revolution - the implication being
that China's failure to 'capitalise' on her early technological and
knowledge base was largely political.
See, also: John Darwin "After Tamerlane: the global history of
Empire since 1405", excerpted in this
blog.
Or,
Justin Yifu
Lin, "The
Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in
China",
Economic Development and
Cultural Change, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Jan., 1995), pp. 269-292, who
suggests that China, while demonstrating major technical advance based
on experience (and practitioner trial & error), did not manage to
make the transition to the science/experimental methods developed in
Europe in the 17th C., and develops an argument based on the conditions
necessary for significant advance by experiential trial and error
versus by scientific expermentation. He concludes that the cultural
legacy of well organised bureaucracy (and associated service to the
'state') in China, in contrast to the more individually hierarchical
social 'systems' in Europe, is at least a part of the explanation.
Dr.
Patrick Leung,
Economic History of China: "Why industrial revolution did not occur in
China?" argues along similar lines.
Or, for a
sociological perspective,
Mark Elvin,
"Why
China failed to create an endogenous industrial capitalism",
Theory and Society, Volume 13,
Number 3, 379-391, DOI: 10.1007/BF00213231 for a critique of the
Weberian explanation, and arguing that an economic and ecological
explanation is simpler, more internally consistent, and more capable of
empirical examination than Weber's cultural and ideological explanation
(though possibly less entertaining and intuitively appealing?)
And Naill Ferguson: "
The
6 killer apps of prosperity"
(neither geography nor national character/culture can explain the
differences in prosperity) - as
presented
in his recent book and TV
series:
Civilisation.
What should we learn? Is
collapse inevitable?
Diamond (
Collapse, above)
suggests that collapse is inevitable until and unless we take much
better care of our
environments. Those
subscribing to the cultural explanation necessarily require that our
cultures have to change if we are to
be sustainable, which seems to suggest that collapse is inevitable
short of a second coming. Joseph Tainter (author of the classic -
The
Collapse
of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988) -
library
catalogue) argues that complexity of problem solving is the major
difficulty, requiring ever increasing effort and resource which
ultimately undermines the capacity of the society to survive. See
Tainter:
Complexity,
Problem Solving and Sustainable Societies, for a synopsis - though
this argument does not indicate any clear directions to avoid collapse.
Others might reasonably complain that our
politics are too cumbersome,
incomplete, divisive, corrupt, etc. etc. to offer much prospect for
future sustainable development. On the other hand, surely our command
of
technology can be harnessed
ensure a more sustainable future? Not, might come the response,
unless our
economics is very
substantially revised. So, do we need a new, revised, different
IDEOLOGY?
The short answer to the issue of what we might learn from history is
that it all depends on the 'story' about why what has happened has
happened - and thus what we might expect to happen in the future (or at
least to identify either the major and fundamental problems, and/or
outline the major alternative options). However, there is NO
SINGLE, COHERENT AND CONSISTENT THEORY about the development of people
and nations, other than some form of
Socio-Economic,
and therefore political and cultural Evolution, which necesarily
happens in interaction with our natural and physical environments, and
is not necessarly continually progressive. A major problem with
this evolutionary foundation is that it is fundamentally a-scientific -
there are no (or very few) testable (refutable) propositions from the
theory of evolution, which raises (even generates) some interesting
philosophical issues.
Since understanding
Globalisation Patterns
and Processes necessarily involves consideration of what the
nature of
patterns and
processes might be - we need to
consider the philosophy of what we think we know - the philosoph(ies)
of social science. What (Metaphysical) stories do social
scientists subscribe to? What sort of
ideological alternatives are
available - ideology: "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one
which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy", or
"the set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual". In
short -
What do we need from Social Science?
This might seem a large jump - from ideology to the philosophy of
social science - but what else could possibly underlie any "scientific
study of human society and social relationships" i.e social
science, other than a system of ideas and ideals forming the basis of
economic, political or social theory? Is the apparent fact that
modern (economist) use of the term 'globalisation' arose following the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the USSR and the
effective demise of Communism (with a capital C) as a credible
alternative to liberal, democratic capitalism a clear signal that
ideology is a fundamental part of the phenomenon?
Is the apparent dominance of the liberal, democratic capitalist system
(and assocated ideology) the 'climax' state of socio-economic and
political evolution - as approximately argued by Fukuyama - really the
"The
End of History" (1992)? More importantly, will we only know
when it is too late? [A
little more on social science
foundations and philiosophy, if you are interested, while the paper
underlying 'what do we need from social science' is
here.]
MAJOR STATISTICAL & REFERENCE SOURCES:
IMF -
Global economic data, including commodity price indices, and a
visualisation-
data mapper.
- World
GDP/capita in ppp terms, (IMF Data Mapper)
1980 - 2010 + forcasts to 2015, showing an apparently increasing
divergence between the 'advanced' and 'emerging and developing'
economies - note the capacity to alter the countries and the
scales of these graphs, and also the plots. Is Germany richer in terms
of GDP/hd than the UK? Was it? How come?
WTO:
statistical information on:
- Trade Profiles provide predefined information leaflets
on the trade situation of members, observers and other selected
economies;
- Tariff Profiles provide information on the market
access situation of members, observers and other selected economies;
- Services Profiles provide detailed statistics on key
infrastructure services (transportation, telecommunications, finance
and insurance) for selected economies;
- Time Series section allows an interactive data
retrieval of international trade statistics.
OECD
- basic data for each and all OECD countries (not for emerging or
developing countries).
See, especially,
Perspectives
on Global Development 2010: Shifting Wealth: the first
edition of Perspectives on Global Development, a new publication from
the OECD Development Centre: "Shifting Wealth examines the changing
dynamics of the global economy over the last 20 years, and in
particular the impact of the economic rise of large developing
countries, such as China and India, on the poor. It details new
patterns in assets and flows within the global economy and highlights
the strengthening of “South-South” links – the increasing interactions
between developing countries through trade, aid and foreign direct
investment. What do these changes imply for development and
development policy? The report explores potential policy responses at
both national and international levels. Nationally, developing
countries' need to re-position their development strategies to
capitalise on the increasing potential of South-South co-operation and
to fully benefit from new macroeconomic drivers. Internationally, the
global governance architecture needs to adjust to better reflect
current economic weights." [
You can
browse this volume, in read only form, from the OECD web site].
Some Highlights:
- Non OECD countries (developing countries) are projected to
win a majority share of Global GDP within the next 5 years (p24, Fig
0.6)
- More countries now (in the 'noughties') converging with the
affluent, and fewer are struggling or remain poor cf. the 1990s (p 34,
Figs. 1.5 & 1.6) - note that Brazil still labled here as
'struggling', but see Appendix.
- per capital GDP growth rates (% terms)) converging over the
2000s decade, after diverging during the 90s. (page 38, Fig 1.7) - the
90s a 'lost/disappointing' decade.
- public (government) debt as % of GDP climbing since 1990 in
advanced economies, and both lower and falling in developing and
emerging countries (p62, fig 2.8)
- Poverty rates (% popn. on <$1.25/day) falling in
developing world (even excluding China), from >40% in 1990 to
<30% in 2005 (p99, Fig, 4.1)
- Strong relationship between declining poverty rates and
economic growth (p 99, Fig. 4.2) BUT with much 'unexplained' variation.
World Bank:
a vast amount of data by country, including 420 indicators from the
World
Development Indicators (WDI) covering 209 countries from 1960 to
2008, which can be displayed as tables, maps or graphs, under the
headings:
Agriculture & Rural Development; Infrastructure; Aid
Effectiveness; Labor & Social Protection; Economic Policy and
External Debt; Poverty; Education; Private Sector; Energy & Mining;
Public Sector; Environment; Science & Technology; Financial sector;
Social Development; Health; Urban Development.
The World Bank
Group comprises five somewhat seperate but closely associated
agencies: the
IBRD
(
International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development), 1944 - serving 'middle-income' countries with
investment and advice; the
IDA
(
International Development Association),
1960 - concentrating on the world's poorest countries; the
International Finance Corporation (
IFC), 1956,
providing investments and advisory services to build the private sector
in developing countries (with a
timeline
showing some of the development of the Bank); the Multilateral
Investment Guarantee Agency (
MIGA),
1988, which promotes foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing
countries to help support economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve
people's lives, by providing political risk insurance (guarantees) to
the private sector; the International Centre for Settlement of
Investment Disputes (
ICSID), 1966,
which does what it says on the tin.
WB's
Annual World
Development Reports "Published annually since
1978,
the World Development Report has long been an influential publication
and an essential reference on the world economy and the state of
economic and social development. Each year's report focuses on a
specific topic in development such as labor, infrastructure, the role
of the state, transitional economies, health, the environment,
agriculture, or poverty."
World
Development Report, 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography:
Abstract: "
Places do well when they promote
transformations along the dimensions of economic geography: higher
densities as cities grow; shorter distances as workers and businesses
migrate closer to density; and fewer divisions as nations lower their
economic borders and enter world markets to take advantage of scale and
trade in specialized products. World Development Report 2009 concludes
that the transformations along these three dimensions—density,
distance, and division—are essential for development and should be
encouraged.The conclusion is controversial. Slum-dwellers now number a
billion, but the rush to cities continues. A billion people live in
lagging areas of developing nations, remote from globalization’s many
benefi ts. And poverty and high mortality persist among the world’s
“bottom billion,” trapped without access to global markets, even as
others grow more prosperous and live ever longer lives. Concern for
these three intersecting billions often comes with the prescription
that growth must be spatially balanced.This report has a different
message: economic growth will be unbalanced. To try to spread it out is
to discourage it—to fi ght prosperity, not poverty. But development can
still be inclusive, even for people who start their lives distant from
dense economic activity. For growth to be rapid and shared, governments
must promote economic integration, the pivotal concept, as this report
argues, in the policy debates on urbanization, territorial development,
and regional integration. Instead, all three debates overemphasize
place-based interventions.Reshaping Economic Geography reframes these
debates to include all the instruments of integration—spatially blind
institutions, spatially connective infrastructure, and spatially
targeted interventions. By calibrating the blend of these instruments,
today’s developers can reshape their economic geography. If they do
this well, their growth will still be unbalanced, but their development
will be inclusive."
World Development Report 2010:
Development and Climate Change; 2011 - Jobs.
See, also, a 2010 World Bank report on
Changing
the Industrial Geography in Asia: The Impact of India and China, by
Ysuf & Nabeshima, available to browse at this site.
And, finally, IFC's Doing Business
Economy Rankings, "Economies are ranked on their ease
of doing business, from 1 – 183. A high ranking on the ease of doing
business index means the regulatory environment is more conducive to
the starting and operation of a local firm. This index averages the
country's percentile rankings on 9 topics, made up of a variety of
indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings are from
the Doing Business 2011 report, covering the period June 2009 through
May 2010."
United
Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), (whose site notes that
20.10.2010 is World Statistics Day) has major collections of data on
economic, social and development conditions world-wide. Especially
important are the
Millenium Development
Goals data ("This site presents the official data,
definitions, methodologies and sources for more than 60 indicators to
measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. You will
also find the official progress reports and documents produced by IAEG.
Links to related sites and documents and constantly updated news will
keep you up to date with the ongoing activities on MDG
monitoring."). This site also includes
MDGInfo 2010 online
See also:
Vandemoortele, 2009, "
The
MDG Conundrum: Meeting the Targets Without Missing the Point",
Development Policy Review, 27, 4,
November, 355 - 371.
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
(DESA), Population
Division:
World
Population
Prospects: 2009 revision.
See, also, the UN
Human Development Reports and
Human
Development Index (for what the HDI measures, see the
Compsite
Indices page) and
Interactive
map of migration data.
UNITED
NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (UNEP) - and the related
site:
GRID ARENDAL,
"Environmental Knowledge for Change", for detailed maps, graphics and
data. "Established
in 1989 by the
Government of Norway as a Norwegian Foundation, our mission is to
communicate environmental information to policy-makers and facilitate
environmental decision-making for change." Especially informative are
the
Global
Maps and Graphics. - e.g.
World
Greenhouse Gas Emissions by sector, and
by
country, and
population
by income level.
See, also, the complete
United
Nations 'family' for links to other parts of the organisation,
United Nations World Food
Programme. See, e.g.
World Hunger
Map
FAO
(Food and Agriculture Organisation) for comprehensive data
on food supply, food balance sheets, food security, resources (land and
water etc.).
See if you can discover what has happened to GDP (real
terms) per unit of energy use
(i.e. the efficiency of energy use) for the major players:
Canada, China, Russia, India, Brazil, US, Germany, UK, Australia,
Nigeria, South Africa.
What do you conclude?
See, also, an excellent interactive data source for a new
Multidimensional
Poverty Index, developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human
Development Initiative (
OPHI)
in conjunction with the UNDP.
UNCTAD
- United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development, especially their
Foreign
Direct Investment Database (FDI), which presents
aggregate
inflows, outflows, inward stocks and outward stocks of foreign direct
investment (FDI) for 196 reporting economies in an interactive format.
Also produces the
World
Investment Report (WIR).
Detailed statistics on foreign direct investment (FDI) and operations
of transnational corporations (TNCs) in selected countries are
available at the
World
Investment Directory on-line, which includes country fact
sheets
and profiles.
International
Labour Organisation: one of whom's major themes is
Globalisation (alongside Sustainability, Poverty, Gender and Aid) -
see, especially, their
database of labour statistics,
including international labour migration stats (which tend to be
incomplete).
International Food Policy Research Institute (
IFPRI) (part of the
CGIAR
network) for major international food issues and data, including the
2010
Global Hunger Index.
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION SITES:
World
Public Opinion: "The WorldPublicOpinion.org website
provides information and analysis about public opinion on international
policy issues from around the world. While the studies of the
WorldPublicOpinion.org network figure prominently, the website draws
together data from a wide variety of sources from around the world. We
have found that data from all reliable sources are important
contributions and that as more studies are integrated into analyses,
world public opinion comes into increasing focus." See, for
example, their recent report of a BBC poll on what opinion is on
free
market capitalism.
UNU-Wider:
United Nations University, World Institute for Development Research,
which also has the
World Income
Inequality Database. Country information sheets
provide information about the sources and the surveys used as far as
documentation was available. Country information sheets are only
available in pdf format. The dataset is downloadable as an xl file.
World Economic Forum: (the organisor of the annual Davos
Conference), produces the annual
Global
Competitiveness Report, from its Centre for Global Competitiveness
and Performance, (The rankings are calculated from both publicly
available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual
survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with its network
of Partner Institutes (leading research institutes and business
organizations) in the countries covered by the Report). WEF also has a
Corporate Global Citizenship initiative. See the
previous page for a complete
listing of the indicators used to compile their
Global Competitiveness Index.
Encyclopedia of
Earth: "an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural
environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a
free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars,
professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each
other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and
are useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as
to the general public."
Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR) [Publisher of
Foreign Affairs] has a recent
(19.09.2009) comprehensive report on
World
Opinion on the Global Economy. "International polls find strong
support for globalization, though views lean moderately toward the
position that the pace of globalization is too fast. People generally
see international trade as positive for their country, their self and
family, consumers, and their nation’s companies. However, views are
more mixed about the impact of international trade on jobs and the
environment. Polling conducted in the spring of 2009—during the depths
of the global recession—found some softening of majority support for
globalization in general with majorities in many nations favoring a
temporary increase in protectionism in light of the recession.".
CIESIN "The
Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is
a center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. CIESIN
works at the intersection of the social, natural, and information
sciences, and specializes in on-line data and information management,
spatial data integration and training, and interdisciplinary research
related to human interactions in the environment. See, especially,
Thematic
Guide on Political Institutions and Global Environmental Change,
key documents and data sets pertaining to the relationship between
political institutions and the human dimension of global environmental
change. This guide provides only an overview of available information.
Centre for Global Policy: "The Center for Global Policy at
George Mason University, directed by Professor Jack A. Goldstone,
conducts research on a wide range of global policy issues. Center
faculty undertake basic academic research on such topics as foreign
trade, democratization and state-building, and transnational networks,
and analyze specific policy issues for a variety of government
agencies. The Center's faculty work in four main clusters:
* Conflict, Terrorism, Democratization, and
State-Building
* International Trade, Finance, and International
Organizations
* Culture, Opinion, and Global Policy
* Information Technology, Learning, and Development"
This site is also home to the
Political Instability Task
Force - which "lists comparative information on cases of total and
partial state failure (i.e., periods of political instability) that
began between 1955 and 2006 in independent countries with populations
greater than 500,000. The four types of events included are
revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime changes, and genocides
and politicides."
Globalisation:
a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the examination of social,
political, economic, and technological globalization
Uni>ersia: Knowledge@Wharton: a leading business school's
contribution to global (business) learning, with business-focused
research and 'hot' studies/cases.
GDAE
(pronounced gee-day) Global Development and Environment Institute at
Tufts University. "In our effort to understand actual and possible
trajectories of economic development, GDAE researchers emphasize
ecological health and the correlation between social and economic
well-being. This requires expanding our theoretical understanding of
economic systems, recognizing that they are embedded in the physical
contexts of technology and the natural world, as well as in the
social/psychological contexts of history, politics, ethics, culture,
institutions, and human motivations. Throughout all of its activities,
theoretical advances at GDAE are informed by the Institute's applied
and policy work, while its practical applications of economics are
enhanced by a growing theoretical understanding of what is required to
promote socially and environmentally just and sustainable
development." GDAE is one of three institutions running the
Triple Crisis Blog
: “
The world is experiencing three
simultaneous crises in finance, development, and the environment.
A number of economists are questioning the mainstream narratives and
analyses of these crises. Some of us have joined to create Triple
Crisis blog to contribute to a more open and global dialogue around
these three crises: about how they interact, and how they can
collectively be solved.”
Global
Dashboard Notes from the future: "Global Dashboard explores
global risks and international affairs, bringing together authors who
work on foreign policy in think tanks, government, academia and the
media. It was set up in 2007 and is edited from the UK by Alex Evans
and David Steven".
'Food
security: feeding the world in 2050' Special issue of the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, September 27, 2010;
365 (1554), compiled and edited by H. Charles J. Godfray, John R.
Beddington, Ian R. Crute, Lawrence Haddad, David Lawrence, James F.
Muir, Jules Pretty, Sherman Robinson and Camilla Toulmin
BreathingEarth:
Population growth and CO2 emissions starkly and vividly portrayed
(though with no easy access to the underlying data) (
link supplied by a member of the 2010
class - thanks.)
International
Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) - "an
independent international research organisation, we are specialists in
linking local to global. .. launched in 1971 by renowned economist and
policy advisor Barbara Ward, making it one of the very first
organisations to link environment with development. The institute has
played key roles in the Stockholm Conference of 1972, the Brundtland
Commission of 1987, the 1992 Earth Summit and the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development, and is now helping to shape the global debate
on climate change."
And, finally and of course, the
Economist.
as a major source of world news and informed commentary.
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