Global Challenges at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century

Table 1:
Scientific and Technological Development in Uganda and Sweden (1995)

		Uganda	Sweden
Personal Computers	per 1,000 people	0.53	192.55
International telephone calls	minutes per person	0.25	108.17
Telephone lines	per 1,000 people	2.30	681.10
Cellular mobile phone subscribers	per 1,000 people	0.09	229.36
Internet users	per 1,000 people	<0.10	51.00
R & D scientists and technicians (1990-1996)	per 1,000 people	0.06	6.81

Source: UNDP 1998: Human Development Report 1998, New York

To illustrate this point, one might consider some basic data gathered by the UNDP regarding two very contrasting nations located in the Caribbean and Central America, namely, Haiti and Costa Rica.

Table 2:
Development Indicators for Haiti and Costa Rica

	Costa Rica	Haiti
Economic growth rate per year (1980-95) (%)	3.41	-2.14
Military spending as a percentage of expenditure on education and health (1990-91)	5.0	30.0
Life expectancy at birth in years (1995)	76.6	54.6
Infant mortality per 1000 live births	13	94
Literacy rate (1995)	95	45
Human development index (ranking of all countries)	34	159
Gender-related development index	28	71

Source: see Table 1

They have roughly the same climatic conditions, so that cannot explain the great differences. Haiti has 7 million inhabitants, Costa Rica around 4 million. Yet there are incredible differences in their social and economic indicators. In every one of these indicators, the differences are so striking that they must seem incomprehensible to an outside observer. Moreover, these are chiefly data upon socio-economic indicators, and do not reflect political conditions. In addition, therefore, we should notice that, whereas Costa Rica is regarded as the model democracy of Central America and has led the efforts to arrange regional peace accords, Haiti is seen as a terrible "basket-case" with little prospect of significant improvement.

Yet it seems likely that one of the greatest contrasts between these two countries is much less known about, namely, the differences in military spending and in the role of the military. Haiti still has too many people in uniform, whether soldiers or armed

police. Its spending on the military is high, and remains a diversion from much-needed investments in the civilian sector. Its government is ineffective and corrupt, and relies upon armed force. By contrast, Costa Rica has gone further perhaps than any other society in demilitarizing itself. It has abolished its Army, and invites its neighbors to do the same. Its political leaders, like Nobel Peace-Prize winner Oscar Arias, preach against the arms trade and against spending on weapons, whether of the large or small variety.

For all readers deeply interested in understanding global trends, this concern is worthy of being taken much more seriously by our governments, whether in the rich countries that make and supply the weapons (and here, ironically, the liberal-democratic Americans are well in the lead of arms sales) or in poor, corrupt, non-democratic developing states that so willingly make the purchases.

The data available about armaments leads to a further matter for general concern, namely, the remarkable spending by rich and poor countries on

their military compared with spending on education and health. Clearly, the developed nations have nothing to boast about; their spending on students and on healthcare are significant, but it is dwarfed by their spending on their military forces, and this despite the ending of a 40-year major arms race

which we termed the "Cold War". But the disproportionality of spending on military and non-military services is even more acute in the developing world, with rare exceptions like Costa Rica, Botswana and a few established democracies. A poor country which spends a mere $ 22 per head annually on healthcare but $ 9,000 on each of its soldiers (as many of them do) shows a warped sense of priorities that is not simply immoral and offensive; it is also probably the single best indicator that that country is in deep trouble or soon will be in trouble.

There are simple, understandable reasons why the Costa Ricas of the world flourish and the Haitis flounder. These have to do with human rights, transparent government, the rule of law, correct investments in society and infrastructure, the empowerment of women, the education of young girls, and freedom of expression. They have also to do with job opportunities, or lack of them, for the millions of young people coming onto the job market. Will they find gainful employment, or turn in

unemployed frustration to youth armies, violence, and fundamentalist or ethnic movements? The answer to that critical question is a complicated one, but the basic data is not in dispute regarding the location of the major armed conflicts that have occurred on this puzzling and contradictory planet during the past decade.

Here, disturbingly, is a very real and persistent global trend. The 1990s conflicts were and are all in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, the Balkans, and parts of Latin America, that is, in regions experiencing a lack of a decent social fabric and the constant pressures of ever-growing populations. The latter is a point worth stressing, lest recent demographic indicators cause us to be over-sanguine about the future of our planet. Is it simply a coincidence that the country in Africa with the highest fertility rate is Rwanda, and the country in the Western hemisphere with the highest rate is Haiti, and the region in Europe with the highest rate is the province of Kosovo? A population explosion does not necessarily cause political and social collapse by itself, but it certainly produces a tinderbox of frustrations that can feed upon other reasons for conflict.

Still, these are the "basket-cases" and it may be unwise to allow ourselves to be mesmerized by them lest we draw too gloomy a picture of the

Earth’s condition at the close of a century – which is why viewing the WHOLE planet as outside observers in space is so useful an exercise.

Thus, a more balanced way of looking at this problem might be to think of the 190 or so nation-states on our planet, or at least the 175 countries

that are ranked in the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report as being located in one of three groups:

The first is the prosperous, democratic, developed countries, chiefly in Europe, North America, Japan, and Australasia but joined by several others like Israel and Singapore, probably Chile and Argentina. They number around 30 to 40, depending on the "cut-off" point one makes to the composite list.¹

Then, at the lower end of the human development totem-pole, there are about 50 or 60 chronically low-income countries, chiefly in Africa but also in Asia and Central America. These are the poorest of the poor. It is highly unlikely that they will be able to rescue themselves, or that private international capital flows will come to help them. They all need help from the global community and trans-national bodies, presumably orchestrated by the World Bank.

The third and final group, perhaps the most important for the future condition of our planet, consists of the 60 or 70 states that are in the

middle. Like the poorest group, they have large environmental and population and structural and social challenges, but they also have some educational and infrastructural resources, plus considerable (if rather unpredictable), access to capital. These include small island nations like Jamaica, but also big, populous countries such as

India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia. With the addition of China, we are talking here about 60 % of the world’s population. Where they go, you might say, goes the future of the Earth.

These are the nations, it will be recalled, that at present are being globalized, modernized, brought into the world markets and world labor force in an unprecedentedly swift time, virtually within one generation. Not surprisingly, these countries are often full of contradictions. India, for example, has the world’s largest middle class, almost 200 million people, and the Bangalore region in the southeast is the second-biggest producer of computer software in the world; but those 200 million middle-class folks are surrounded by 750 million impoverished peasants and by chronic environmental stress. It is not an exaggeration to argue that these societies are in a race against time. Can they increase their standards of living without committing ecocide, or being overwhelmed by the sheer press of young people seeking work? It is staggering to think that

India adds to its population EACH YEAR the equivalent of the total population of Australia, around 17 million people. Will they all get jobs in 2020?

This is why the final chart is perhaps the most interesting of them all. It shows the growth of the world labor force over the past few decades and up

to 2020, and then the breakdown between labor in the industrialized countries and labor in developing nations.

Once again, it will be noted that in the richer countries the absolute numbers are virtually static whereas those in poorer lands are booming. This then becomes the great challenge facing the peoples of the Earth over the next generation: can they bring several BILLION new workers into production for the global marketplace and steadily raise their standards of living without environmental disaster? Or are these numbers simply too big to absorb? Will the richer countries tolerate an ever-increasing flow of imports from counties with low labor costs, even if it hurts domestic workers in similar industries, or will they seek to protect themselves and hurt these developing nations’ trade? If sufficient jobs cannot be created in the developing societies, will their hundreds of millions of ambitious young people be permitted to move elsewhere, to the ageing nations

of Japan and Europe? Are these developing societies being compelled to modernize too fast, and in too many ways?

It is probable that a group of extraterrestrial observers of our planet would focus on many other things than those presented here, were they writing their own succinct report on global trends. Still, whoever steps back and attempts to survey our

planet as a whole is probably likely to arrive at a few basic conclusions, the most obvious of which is that sweeping generalisations about the fate of the Earth really have to be avoided.

For the plain fact is that the planet in which we live is neither enjoying neither a new, wonderful "world order" for everyone nor sustaining an outright disaster for all. It has great problems, but also great potential and great resources. As it enters the twenty-first century, it is easy either to be too optimistic or too pessimistic, because we only look at one side of the story. It is perhaps particularly easy for Americans, enjoying their eighth year of boom and an unprecedented prosperity and stock market, to assume that all is going well in the world except for some crazy people in the Balkans and some other madmen who shoot up schools in the United States itself.

But the planet is a lot more complicated than that.

That is why it would take any Martian observers such a lot of time to study it, and to try to understand the broader picture. And this is why we all need to take more time to study global trends, and to reflect on where we are going. The Chinese curse says it all: "May you live in interesting times." These certainly are interesting years, and they are likely to become even more interesting times to live in when our children grow up. Knowing about these

matters therefore becomes a prime prerequisite for all of us, and for membership of the world citizenry as we advance into the twenty-first century. One hundred years ago that great seer H. G. Wells said that human civilization was engaged in a race between education and its own destruction. After the wars and barbarism of the twentieth century, his forebodings look horribly accurate. Let us hope that Homo Sapiens can get through the next century with less self-inflicted damage.

 

¹ The 1997 Human Development Report (published for the UNDP by Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford, 1997), pp. 146–148, lists 64 countries with "high human development", another 65 in the "medium" category and a final 45 as possessing "low human development", but the cut-off points seem more designed to fit the printed page than to be based upon major distinctions.