Hitchhikers' Guide to Globalisation! (:

Environment & Human Health@
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 12:45:00 AM

As I have mentioned in my previous post, globalisation harms the environment. However, globalisation not only harms the environment, but also impacts and harms human health.

Refer to: http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/health.pdf

The Human Development Report 1999 noted a few trends in this era of globalisation. It states that AIDS is now a poor people’s epidemic with 95% of all HIV infected victims in the Third World, some 1.3 billion people do not have access to clean water, and about 840 million people are malnourished, etc.

The .pdf file that I have read, gave an example of slave trade in Africa. I believe slavery is definitely part of globalisation. Slavery has existed throughout the world from the olden days. As http://www.answers.com/slave%20trade states, slaves were taken from Slavs and Iranians from antiquity to the 19th century, from the sub-Saharan Africans from 1st century AD to the mid-20th century, and from the Germanic, Celtic, and Romance peoples during the Viking era. In other words, slaves were being sold and brought to different countries to work. Is this not globalisation?

From the .pdf file, it is said that 60 million Africans were kidnapped and shipped to Americas and the Caribbean to work in the mines, coffee, cocoa and sugar plantations. Just because of this, they suffered and died of over-crowding, hunger, diseases and unlivable conditions. I feel that all these deaths are cause by globalisation, slave trade. Furthermore, there were other slave trades in the past, such as Atlantic slave trade, Arab slave trade, Swedish slave trade, etc. If there are so many slave trades around in the world, doesn’t that mean that there are many out there who dies because of globalisation as well?

The people who bought the slaves were not let off either. It is precisely the slaves who brought with them yellow fever, leprosy, yaws and hookworm from West Africa to Americas. In a way, diseases are globalisation. Take Bird Flu for example. Birds migrate from countries to countries and if the bird happens to be infected with the Flu, they will be passing the Flu to all the countries they have been to. I think this is shows how diseases can be globalisation.

Refer to: http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/charter.htm

In this article above, it is said that economic changes world-wide have profoundly affected people’s health. Globalisation affects the economy. And this probably results in the difference between the richer countries and the poorer countries.

With less globalisation in a country, there will be less economy. With less economy, the people will lack access to money, to food, to clean water, to education, to sanitation, to employment and health care services. And what do all these lead to? It leads to worsening health conditions.

Firstly, with no food, the people will suffer malnutrition and in some cases, die of hunger. With no water, one cannot even survive for a few days! With no education, there will be less information on medical knowledge, and so people with diseases or even normal illnesses cannot be cured. With no sanitation, people know nothing of being clean and hygienic. Not being hygienic will lead to the development of diseases. With no health care services, those who are sick cannot be taken care of.

In conjunction to my previous post “globalisation & the environment”, globalisation causes pollution of our environment. What do you think will happen if our environment is polluted?

Take air pollution for example. Air pollution is whereby there is a mixture of solid and gas particles in the air. Car emissions, chemicals from factories and dust all contribute to air pollution. From our group post, we have explained before that cars are part of globalisation. I believe our group’s economical expert will have touched upon the fact that factories are needed to produce products. Thus, globalisation increases pollution in the world.

Still taking air pollution for example, what adverse impacts has air pollution on us? If there is sulphur dioxide in the air, which is highly possible since sulphur dioxide is always produced in factories, the sulphur dioxide will react with other chemicals in the air to form tiny sulphate particles. When we breathe in these particles, they gather in our lungs and cause us to have difficulty in breathing and in worse cases, leads to premature death.

When we are exposed to toxic air pollutants at sufficient concentrations and durations, we may have increased chance of getting cancer or experiencing other serious health effects such as damage to immune system, as stated from http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/allabout.html. I think it is sad to know that globalisation, something we cannot live without, is actually harming us. Then again, we are the ones who started globalisation. Sometimes I wonder, is this retribution? Starting globalisation is a selfish need for us humans, is that why now we are facing the dire consequences? That human population will ultimately be extinct? These are some of the questions I feel that cannot be answered until the day of doom really comes.

Environmental & Health Expert,
Elysia Ong.

Labels: Globalisation and Environment

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