UN Millennium Development Goals

Introduction

• The United Nations (UN) attempted to address global issues through eight Millennium Development Goals, established in the 1990s.
• Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger was the primary goal.
• Other goals included achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and establishing global partnerships.
• The UN aimed to achieve these goals by 2015.
• In the Philippines, poverty is defined as earning less than 100,534 pesos per year, which is approximately 275 pesos per day.
• Extreme poverty is a condition marked by severe deprivation of basic human needs.
• The UN defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 a day and aims to eliminate it by 2030.
• In 2015, 836 million people lived in extreme poverty, a decrease from 1.9 billion.
• The World Bank projects that extreme poverty could drop to less than 400 million by 2030.
• Climate change is a threat to improvements in global poverty.
• Income inequality is widespread, and one in seven people lack electricity.
• Economic globalization is the greatest contributor.

Economic Globalization and Global Trade

• Economic globalization is the increasing interdependence of world economies via cross-border trade, international capital flow, and rapid technology spread.
• It reflects the expansion and integration of markets and is an irreversible trend.
• Protectionism and trade liberalization are two economic approaches tied to economic globalization.
• Protectionism involves systematic government intervention to promote domestic production, giving preference to domestic producers and discriminating against foreign competitors.
• Trade protectionism utilizes quotas and tariffs, such as fees on imports and exports.
• Protectionist policies were prevalent during the mercantilist era through the early years of the Industrial Revolution.
• The Great Depression of 1929 marked the height of protectionism.
• Protectionism still exists, with countries like China, Japan, and the United States accused of practicing it.
• World War II shifted economic policy from protectionism to trade liberalization or free trade.
• Free trade agreements and technology have enabled goods and services to move globally more easily.
• Mobile phones are cited as a transformative technology for the developing world by economist Jeffery Sachs.
• Leapfrogging is where countries skip directly to more efficient technologies.
• International trade has created opportunities for individuals to sell products and labor globally.
• Globalization has disproportionately benefited some countries, particularly developed ones, at the expense of developing nations.
• "Fair trade" can make trade easier while lessening the inequities in the global world.
• Fair trade, according to the International Fair Trade Association, prioritizes the social, economic, and environmental well-being of marginalized small producers.
• Fair trade promotes a more moral and equitable global economic system.
• It focuses on worker and producer protection, equitable prices, sustainable practices, relationships between producers in the South and consumers in the North, and safe working conditions
• Fair trade products include coffee, bananas, cotton, wine, tea, and chocolate.
• American chains like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts have boosted fair trade.
• In 2006, $2.2 billion was spent on certified products, a 42% increase from the previous year.
• Coffee growers in Brazil earned at least $1.29 per pound for coffee beans versus the $1.25 market price.

Economic Globalization and Sustainable Development

• A significant downside to trade globalization is the lack of sustainability, regarding resource usage and availability for future needs.

Environmental Degradation

• This era in human history created a "cycle of efficiency," making it easier for people to buy goods, which led to greater demand and increased efficiency.

Food Security

• Food demand is expected to be 60% greater and feeding 9 billion people will be a challenge by 2050.
• Achieving global food security requires providing enough food to the global population, a priority for all countries.
• Food security is linked to societal sustainability issues like population growth and climate change as shown in the case of India.

Dependency Theory

• Dependency Theory emerged around the 1950s.
• Dependency refers to a historical condition shaping the world economy to favor certain countries and limit the development of subordinate economies.
• It is where one economy is conditioned by the development and expansion of another.
• Dependency Theory was developed in the late 1950s under Raul Prebisch, Director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America.
• Raul Prebisch developed the theory in response to global development disparities
• Core countries are influential and developed nations, like France and the United States.
• Peripheral countries are weaker, and less developed nations.

Prebisch’s Industrialization Strategy

• There was a call to end the one-sided international division of labor.
• Latin America was to undergo industrialization.
• Industrialization would be sped up by substituting most current imports with domestic production.
• Income from raw materials would finance the import of capital goods.
• Governments were meant to actively coordinate industrialization.

Neo-Marxism

• Neo-Marxists view imperialism from a "peripheral" standpoint, focusing on its damages to Third World development rather than from a "center's" perspective.

Andre Gunder Frank

• Andre Gunder Frank was born in Germany in 1929 and died in 2005.
• He was an economic historian and sociologist.
• He made contributions to early neo-Marxist analysis of capitalist trade and exchange.
• Dependency focuses on understanding the periphery by examining core-periphery relations.

Immanuel Wallerstein

• Immanuel Wallerstein (born in New York in 1930), is an American sociologist, historical social scientist, and world system analyst.
• He studied and received degrees from Columbia University.
• From 1958 to 1971, he was on faculty in Columbia's Sociology Department.
• Dependency and world system theory suggest poverty and underdevelopment in poor countries are caused by a peripheral role in the global division of labor.

The World-Economy

• The world-economy has a tripartite division of labor.
• Core nations are free countries dominating others without being dominated.
• Core nations have economic power.
• Core nations are diversified, wealthy, and powerful: e.g., USA, Holland, Japan, France, Brazil, and China.
• Semi-periphery nations are midway between the core and periphery.
• Semi-periphery nations are dominated by core countries, while simultaneously dominating periphery countries.
• They are industrializing and have a more diversified economy, such as India, Pakistan, Sweden, Poland, and South Africa.
• Periphery nations are the least economically diversified with weak governments.
• Periphery nations are the least industrialized with peasant classes.
• They are extensively influenced by core nations. Areas such as Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Cuba, and Israel.

The Third World and the Global South

• "Third World" is an outdated term that describes a class of economically developing nations and is part of a four-part system to describe the world's economies.
• The First World included the U.S., Western Europe, and allies.
• The Second World was the Communist Bloc, including the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and allies.
• The remaining nations, not aligned with either group, were assigned to the Third World.
• Brazil is considered a Third World and developing country, and is part of BRICS.
• Brazil has the largest economy in South and Central America, but has a low GDP per capita, living standards, and high birth and death rates.
• "Global South" generally refers to Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, as well as other terms like "Third World" and "Periphery".

The Global City

• Global cities are urban centers with competitive advantages, serving as hubs in the global economy, based research from the 1980s.
• Global cities affect global issues and change the global outlook, using political, military, and economic systems.
• Examples include New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Brussels, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Beijing.

Walt Rostow’s Four Stages of Modernization

• Traditional Stage represents societies with small, local communities, family-based production, limited resources/technology, and a strict social hierarchy. Examples are Feudal Europe and Early Chinese Dynasties.
• Take-Off Stage is marked by a short period of intensive growth and the start of industrialization.
• Workers and institutions are concentrated around a new industry. People begin using their individual talents to produce beyond necessities, and develop new markets for trade and greater individualism.
• Technological Maturity occurs when technological growth results in population growth, reduced poverty, and more diverse job opportunities.
• Standards of living rise, technology use increases, and the national economy diversifies over a long period.
• High Mass Consumption occurs when production focuses more on wants than needs, and social support systems are implemented to ensure citizens have access to basic necessities.

Nelson Mandela quote

• "Where globalization means the rich and powerful have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.”