Globalisation EQ3

Question 1

Development

Answer 1

Development generally means the ways in which a country seeks to progress economically and to improve the quality of life for its inhabitants. A country’s level of development is shown firstly by economic indicators of average national wealth or income, but encompasses social and political criteria also.

Question 2

Economic development measures

Answer 2

• Income per capita: This is the mean average income of a group of people.
• GDP: This is the final value of the outputs of goods and services inside a nation’s borders. This includes the value added by any foreign-owned businesses that have located operations there.

Estimating the GDP is not easy because the earnings of every business needs be accounted for, including illegal or unregistered work in the informal sector. As well as this, some data may become unreliable as each country’s GDP is converted to US dollars for comparisons due to changes in currency exchange rates.

• Economic sector balance: A country’s economic sector balance is also used as part of the annual GDP calculation. Each country devises a formula that estimates the contribution that different economic sectors make to national income.

Question 3

Social (and economic) development measures

Answer 3

• Human development index: This is a composite rank that ranks countries according to economic criteria and social criteria.
• Gender inequality index: This a composite index that measure gender inequalities related to three aspects of social and economic development:
  1) reproductive health
  2) empowerment
  3) labour force participation

Question 4

Environmental development measures

Answer 4

Air pollution data shows that environmental quality is often poor in developing and merging economies. It usually improves as economic and social development occurs, and places make the transition to post-industrial forms of economic activity.

Question 5

Changing spatial pattern of global wealth

Answer 5

• Average incomes have risen in all continents since 1950, but only very slowly in the poorest parts of Africa
• The great gains made by Europeans
  and North American nations over the same time period has resulted in a widening income gap between wealthy and poor.
• Many countries have advanced from low-income to middle-income status since to 1970s.

There is a growing wealth divide within nations. The majority of people are better off than previous generations, but are economically worse off in relation to the richest members of their society.

Question 6

Environmental losers of globalisation

Answer 6

Major environmental issues are linked with globalisation, including climate change and biodiversity loss. While large-scale global flows of cheap food are good news for European and North American consumer nations, 40% of Earth’s terrestrial surface has been turned into productive agricultural land as a result. This has led to habitat loss and biodiversity decline on a continental scale.

The negative impacts of large agribusiness operations penetrate deeply into many of the world’s poorest regions.

Question 7

Varying attitudes towards cultural mixing

Answer 7

The open borders of EU nations have brought rapid cultural change. Migrants have sometimes concentrated in particular areas, for example new Polish migrants have joined a long-established diaspora community in Balham, London

Question 8

Tensions London surrounding FDI and migration

Answer 8

• The leaders of some of the UK’s biggest TNCs argued that migration restrictions threatens their own competitiveness and, more broadly, UK’s role as a global hub.
• London’s financial and legal firms have rotated staff between their different international offices, as well as other companies recruiting large numbers of skilled people overseas, such as Indian computer programmers.
• However, other Londoners feel very differently. They believe that too much in-migration has been allowed to take place. UKIP wants to see stricter even stricter controls on migration and an end to the UK’s participation in EU. Around 30% of London’s residents were born in another country. Some Londoners judge the scale and rate of cultural change to have been to great.

Question 9

Migration controls in the UK

Answer 9

Since 2010, a five-tier system has been in place to help control immigration by checking that economic migrants posses skills that the UK economy needs. These rules do not apply to EU migrants, who are allowed free movement.

Question 10

Legislating against global flows

Answer 10

Governments may try to prevent or control global flows of people, goods and information with varying success:

• Laws can be strengthened to limit the numbers of economic migrants. Illegal immigration is sometimes harder to tackle. For example, many arrive in leaky and overcrowded boats with great loss of life.
• Around 40 world governments limit their citizens’ freedom to access to online information. Violent or sexual information is censored in many countries. However, a ‘dark web’ also exists, which is harder to control.

Question 11

Globalisation and environmental insecurity

Answer 11

• Food: By 2050, food demand is likely to double worldwide. Middle-class diets are characterised by their consumption of meat and dairy with a higher ecological footprint.
• Water: Food production also depletes water supplies. Animal and crop production can be water-intensive activities. Many increasingly popular global commodities have a high water footprint. Additionally, as societies develop economically and urbanise, everyday household water use increases significantly.
• Energy: A 50% increase in global energy use is predicted by 2035. Extraction of fossil fuels scars local landscapes and threatens the transition to a cleaner energy economy.