Global Issues and Inequality

Global Issues in the 21st Century

  • The new millennium brought issues requiring global perspectives and responses.
  • These issues could affect all people and lack easy solutions.

Population Pressures and Climate Change

  • Post-World War II: global population increased due to advances in agriculture, industry, science, and medicine.
  • The UN estimates the population will stabilize around 9.8 billion in 2050 due to falling fertility rates.
  • Climate change: Human-induced climate change, or global warming, is a key issue.
  • Global warming: Increasing average air temperature near the Earth's surface over the past two centuries.
  • Scientists attribute temperature increases to greenhouse gases from human activities.
  • Kyoto Protocol: In 1997, 187 nations agreed to cut greenhouse emissions; went into force in 2005.
  • Paris Agreement: In December 2015, set global goals for capping greenhouse emissions.

The Continuing Inequality of Women

  • Women in industrialized states gained more economic, social, and sexual rights after World War II but have not achieved full equality.
  • Gender equality is often linked to women's access to employment, which is higher in industrialized nations.
  • Women earn less than men for the same work and are often excluded from high-paying careers.
  • More women live in extreme poverty than men.
  • UN and NGO data show that improving women's status enhances public health, education, and sustainable development.
  • Feminist movement: Stimulated by workplace discrimination in industrialized nations.
  • Women demanded control over their bodies and reproductive systems, with access to birth control and abortion as essential.
  • China: Constitutionally, women's position closely matches that of men in communist countries.

Economic Inequities and Labor Servitude

  • Unequal distribution of resources and income results in poverty.
  • Poverty: Lack of basic human necessities, leading to malnutrition, stunted growth, and high infection rates.
  • Causes of Poverty: Worldwide shortage of natural resources, uneven distribution of resources, high population densities, and environmental degradation.
  • Colonialism: Appropriation of labor and natural resources have contributed to poverty in former colonies. Economic globalization has also deepened the divide between rich and poor countries.
  • Labor Servitude: Forced and bonded labor practices affect millions in the developing world.
  • Child-Labor: Affects an estimated 250 million children, mainly in agriculture, domestic service, and the sex trade.
  • Trafficking: Involves the buying and selling of one to two million human beings annually across international and national boundaries.