GEC 13: The Contemporary World

LESSON 7: The Globalization of Religion ●When followers reach this spiritual echelon, they’re
said to have experienced Nirvana.
RELIGION •believes in: Buddha
•The belief in and worship of a superhuman •holy book: Tripitaka/ Tipitaka/ Pali Canon
controlling power, especially a personal God •believers: Buddhists
or gods. •Jesus is not mentioned
•as a phenomenon looked on as universal, Eliade’s •Does not descended from Abraham
concept of the “sense of the sacred” •Believes in reincarnation
5 Major Religions of the World Hinduism
Christianity ●the world’s oldest religion, roots back more than
●is the most widely practiced religion in the world, 4,000y.
with >200 billion followers. ●with about 900M followers, it is the 3rd largest
●The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the religion behind Christianity and Islam
birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. ●95% Hindus live in India, w/ no specific founder and
●one of the most successful spiritual missions in history
human history. ●It is unique in that it’s not a single religion but a
•believes in: The Holy Trinity: (God the compilation of many traditions and philosophies.
Father, the Son/Jesus, Holy Spirit) ●They believe in the doctrines of:
•holy book: Bible Samsara-the continuous cycle of life, death, and
•believers: Christians reincarnation
•How Jesus is portrayed in the religion: Karma- the universal law of cause and effect.
Jesus Christ is the Messiah. The savior of the •believes in: Brahman, the eternal origin
world. who is the cause and the
•Descended from Abraham foundation of all existence.
•Does not believe in reincarnation •holy book: The Vedas
•believers: Hindus
Islam •Jesus is not mentioned
●2nd largest religion in the world with 1.8B Muslims •Does not descended from Abraham
worldwide. •Believes in reincarnation
●creation was way back 7th Century, making it the
youngest of major world religions.
●Started in Mecca, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, RELIGION GLOBALISM
during time of Prophet Muhammad. Sacred Material wealth
•believes in: Allah Follows divine Abide human-made laws
•holy book: Qur’an/Koran commandments
•believers: Muslims Possibility of How much human action
•How Jesus is portrayed in the religion: communication between can lead to the highest
Jesus Christ is a prophet. human and transcendent material satisfaction and
•Descended from Abraham and God/Allah/Yahweh subsequent wisdom that
•Does not believe in reincarnation defines and judges human this new status produces
action in moral terms
Judaism Less worried with wealth Less worried whether they
●world’s largest monotheistic religion dating back (social status, standard of will end up in heaven or
nearly 4,000y, believing in one God who revealed living and any worldly hell
himself through ancient prophets. things)
●its history is essential to understanding the Jewish Simple living – clothes they Aim to seal trade deals,
faith, which has rich heritage of law, culture, and wear, food they eat and raise the profits of private
tradition. manner that they talk enterprises, improve
•believes in: Yahweh (Hebrew for God) government revenue
•holy book: Torah/Pentateuch of the 5 collections, protect the elite
from being excessively
books of Moses
taxed by the state
•believers: Jews/Israelites
Aspires to become a saint, To be a shrewd
•How Jesus is portrayed in the religion:
sin less, virtuous businessperson, enrich
Jesus Christ is a prophet. themselves
•Descended from Abraham Religious people are: Globalists:
•Does not believe in reincarnation • less concern with wealth • Aimed to seal trade
• Focus to live a virtuous deals, raise the profits for
Buddhism life private enterprise
●a faith founded by Siddhartha Guatama (“The • Contributes to the
Buddha”) more than 2,500ya in India with 470M general progress of the
followers. community, nation, global
●Its practice has historically been most prominent in economic system
East and Southeast Asia, but its influence is growing Religious detests politics Means and ends to open
in the west. and the quest for power up further the economies
●Its followers don’t acknowledge a supreme god or of the world.
deity, instead, they focus on achieving enlightenment
—a state of inner peace and wisdom. However, religious evangelization is in itself a
form of globalization. Religious is concerned with

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 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
spreading holy ideas globally, while the globalist
wishes to spread goods and services.
These philosophical differences explain why certain
groups flee their communities and create
impenetrable sanctuaries where they can practice
their religion without meddling and control state
authorities
● Dalai Lama- believers established Buddhist
monasteries located away from civilization to pray and
contemplate; believers established Tibet
● Rizalistas of Mt. Banahaw- followers uses this
isolationist justifications and worship in Mt. Banahaw
located in Quezon Province
● Mormon of Utah- believed that living among “non-
believers” will distract them from their missions or
tempt them to abandon their faith and become sinners
like everyone else.
Communities justify their opposition to government
authority on religious grounds.
• Priestess and Monks led the first revolt s against
colonialism in Asia and Africa, warning that these
outsiders were out to destroy their people’s gods and
way of life.
• The Catholic priests greatly opposed the RH bill
before as it bypasses the divine commandment of
upholding life.
REALITIES
Religion and globalism’s relation is complicated.
Peter Berger
●(a sociologist that focused religion and
modernization) argues that far from being secularized,
the contemporary world is furiously religious.
●Far from being secularized, the “contemporary world
is… furiously religious.”
Religions are the foundation of modern republics.
Malaysian government places religion at the center of
the political system. Its constitution explicitly states
that “Islam is the religion of the Federation”, and
rulers of the states are “Head of the religion of Islam.”
Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini
●bragged about the superiority of Islamic rule over its
secular counterparts and pointed out that there is no
fundamental distinction among constitutional,
despotic, dictatorial, democratic, and communistic
regimes.
●All are flawed – and Islamic rule was the superior
form of government because it was spiritual. Yet, Iran
calls itself a republic, a term that is associated with
the secular.
●Religious Movement do not hesitate to appropriate
secular themes and practices Moderate Muslims
association Nahdlatul Ulama has an Islamic School in
Indonesia that taught modern science.
Religion was the result of a shift in state policy.
●The church of England was shaped by the rationality
of modern democratic culture. King Henry VIII broke
away from Roman Catholicism and established his
own church to bolster his own power.
● In the US, religion and law were fused together to
help build this “modern secular society”.
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Jose Casanova
● (a sociologist of globalization, religion and
secularization) confirms that historically, religion has
always been at the very center of all great political
conflicts and movements of social reform.
●From independence to abolition, from nativism to
women’s suffrage, from prohibition to civil rights
movement.
RELIGION FOR AND AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
●Religious movements profanely oppose
globalization. However, Christianity and Islam, two of
the old world religions, see globalization less as an
obstacle and more as an opportunity to expand their
reach all over the world.
●Globalization has “freed” communities from the
constraints of nation-state but in the process, it
threatens to destroy the cultural system that binds
them together.
●Religions seeks to take the place of these broken
traditional ties to either help communities cope with
their new situation or organize them to oppose this
major transformation of their lives.
●WORLD BANK brought in religious leaders in this
discussion about global poverty leading eventually to
a cautious and muted collaboration in 2000; WB
agreed to support some faith-based anti-poverty
projects in Kenya and Ethiopia.
●Thus, it is evident enough that institutional
advocates of globalization could be responsive to the
liberationist and moral critique of economic
globalization.
●Religious groups have failed to offer a viable
alternative in doing away from globalization.
RELIGION’S VIEW OF GLOBALIZATION
Muslims- view globalization as a “Trojan Horse” hiding
supporters of western values like liberalism or even
communism ready to spread these ideas in their
areas to eventually displace Islam
The World Council of Churches- criticized economic
globalization’s negative effects; we held themselves
accountable to the victims of the project of economic
globalization
The Catholic Church- condemned globalization’s
“throw-away culture” that is fatally destined to
suffocate hope and increase risks and threats.
The Lutheran World Federation-“Our world is split
asunder by forces we often do not understand, but the
resulting stark contrasts between those who benefit
and those who are harmed under the forces of
globalization
CONCLUSION
•Religion: anathema to modernization. Modernization
will erode religious practices- secularization theory
• Religion is malleable. Globalists, therefore have no
choice but to accept the reality that religion is here to
stay.
LESSON 8: Media & Globalization
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
GLOBALIZATION
• entails the spread of cultures
• relies on media as its main conduit for the spread of
global culture and ideas
Jack Lule:
(Globalization and Media: Creating the Global Village)
“Could global trade have evolved without a flow of
information on markets, prices, commodities, and more?
Could empires have stretched across the world without
communication throughout their borders? Could religion,
music, poetry, film, fiction, cuisine, and fashion develop
as they have without the intermingling of media and
culture?”
• There is an intimate relationship between
globalization and media which must be unraveled to
further understand the contemporary world.
MEDIA AND ITS FUNCTIONS
Media
● means of conveying something, such a channel of
communication
● technologies of mass communication
• Print media – books, magazines, & newspaper
• Broadcast media – TV and Radio
• Digital media – internet (email, internet sites,
social media, internet-based video and audio)
mobile mass communication
Six Degrees is widely considered to be the very first
social networking site, founded by Andrew Weinreich
in May 1996.
Marshall McLuhan
●The medium is the message
His statement is to draw attention to how media, as a
form of technology reshapes societies.
●Thus, television is not a simple bearer of messages,
it also shapes the social behavior of viewers/users
and reorient family behavior.
● Media simultaneously extend and amputate human
senses.
New Media may expand the reach of communication,
but they also dull the user’s communicative capacities.
● Cellphones: they expand people’s senses because
they provide the capability to talk to more people
instantaneously and simultaneously. HOWEVER, they
also limit the senses because they make users easily
distractible and more prone to multitasking.
This is not a bad thing; it is merely change with a
trade-off
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE AND CULTURAL
IMPERIALISM
Television was turning into a “global village”.
(McLuhan)
• Tribal village sat in front of fires to listen to
collective stories VS. Global Village sat in
front of bright boxes in living rooms.
• Global media is homogenizing culture
People from all over the world begin to watch, listen to,
and read the same things.
Media globalization coupled with American
Hegemony would create a form of cultural
imperialism.
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Herbert Schiller
-Not only that the world being Americanized, but that
this process also led to the spread of American
capitalist values like consumerism.
John Tomlinson
-Cultural globalization is simply a euphemism of
western cultural imperialism since it promotes
“homogenized, westernized, consumer culture”
CRITIQUES OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
● Media consumers are active participants in
meaning-making process. Media text is view in their
own cultural lenses.
• WESTERN Influence: McDonald –food, Justine
Beiber-music
• Asian counter part: Jollibee – food (Phils.), BTS
– music (Korea)
● Globalization remains to be an uneven process but,
it leaves a room for dynamism and cultural change.
Note: This is not a contradiction; it is merely a testament
of the phenomenon’s complexity.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CREATION OF CYBER
GHETTOES
● the world is becoming culturally homogenous
● having diverse audiences, internet and social media
are proving that the globalization of culture and ideas
can move in different directions.
Social Media
● it has a democratized access
● the emergence of splinternet/cyberbalkanization.
Segmentation - read and share info and memes of
like-minded people; exploited by
politicians with less democratic intentions
Used as democratic propaganda – social media trolls
are hired
● Fake information can spread easily on social media
since they have few content filters. Unlike the
newspaper, FB does not have a team of editors who
are train to sift though and filter information.
NOTE: As consumers of media, users must remain
vigilant and learn how to distinguish fact from falsehood
in the global media landscape that allows politicians to
peddle “alternative facts”
CONCLUSION
● Different media has diverse effect to globalization
processes.
• TV was creating a global monoculture.
• Social Media will splinter culture and ideas into
bubbles of people who do not interact.
● Societies can never be completely prepared for the
rapid changes in the systems of communication
● Instead of fearing these changes, everyone must
collectively discover ways of dealing with them
responsibly and ethically
LESSON 9: The Global City
WHY STUDY GLOBAL CITIES?
● Globalization is spatial.
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
•It occurs in physical spaces.
✔ Movement of investments
✔ Skyscrapers built by big companies.
✔ High rise condominium – eventually drove
those who cannot afford out of the city centers
•It is based in places.
Los Angeles – Hollywood
Tokyo –headquarters of Sony
● Cities are sites as well as medium of globalization.
●In the years to come, more and more people will
experience globalization through cities.
✔ 1950 – 30%
✔ 2014- 56%
✔ 2050 – projected 66%
GLOBAL CITY
Saskia Sassen
●popularized the term “global city” in 1990s
●Criterion:
1. ECONOMIC Strength of a city
2. Hubs of global finance and capitalism
✔ New York- New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
✔ London- Financial Times Stocks Exchange
(FTSE)
✔ Tokyo- Nikkei
● recent commentators have expanded the criterion
used by Sassen:
✔Los Angeles- movie-making Mecca
✔San Francisco- home of the most powerful
internet companies (FB, Twitter, Google)
✔Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou- centers of
trade and finance.
● A global city is a great place to live in.
✔ Melbourne – described as Sydney’s rival
global city because many magazines and lists have
now referred to it as the world’s “most livable city”.
✔ Miami – most preferred place to retire. Beach
front condominiums are among the most expensive in
the world.
INDICATORS FOR GLOBALITY
●In what ways are cities global and to what extent
are they global?
•New York- largest stock market in the world
• Tokyo- greatest number of corporate headquarters
• Shanghai has the world’s busiest container port,
moving over 33 million units in 2013.
• Singapore (a city-state)- considered Asia’s most
competitive city because of its strong market, efficient
and incorruptible government, and livability.
✔ Economic opportunities in a global city make it
attractive talents from across the world.
• San Francisco- Silicon Valley
• London preferred destination for many Filipino
nurses.
✔ Market Size
✔ Purchasing Power of Citizens
✔ Size of the Middle Class
✔ Potential for Growth
✔ Centers of Political Influence - House of Major
International Organizations
• NY- United Nations
• Brussels- European Union
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• Jakarta- location of the main headquarters of
ASEAN
• Frankfurt- The European Central Bank
✔ Centers for Higher Learning and Culture
• NY-The New York Times is published. This
paper is far from just being local, it is read by
many people from all over the world.
• Boston- Harvard University’s location- the
world’s top university.
• English- Language Universities in the Cities of
Australia- 3rd largest export in the country.
● More global cities…
• Los Angeles- American Center for film Industry
• Mumbai - Bollywood
• Copenhagen - culinary capital of the world
THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL CITIES
● Global City’s undersides:
• Sites of inequality and poverty as well as
tremendous violence.
• It creates winners and losers. Density (Tokyo vs.
Mumbai)
• Urban areas consume most of the world’s energy.
• Sites of potential terrorist violence. (911 attack,
Paris attack in 2015)
THE GLOBAL CITY AND THE POOR
● Economic globalization pave the way to massive
inequality. And this phenomenon is very much
pronounced in cities.
• Mitigation effort:
• State-led social redistribution programs.
● Global cities are sites of contradiction
•Gleaming buildings alongside massive
shantytowns.
• Gentrification (aboriginal Australians; Banlieue)
• Paradise for some, purgatory for others
CONCLUSION
Global Cities are sites and mediums of
globalization.
• Material representations of the phenomenon.
• A place that creates the fusions of culture and ideas.
• A place that create tremendous wealth.
However, they remain to be sites of great inequality.
Where global servants serve global entrepreneurs.
LESSON 10: Global Demography
Demography
● Statistical study of human population
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
● Examines the size, structure and movement of the
population over space and time.
Population trend
● Agricultural population is declining
● Urban populations have grown
● Almost 200 million people live in other countries
rather than their own
Rural Family
• farming families
• 5 or more children
• view multiple children and large kinship networks as
critical investments
• children can take over agricultural work
• children will also take care of their parents when
they are old
Urban Family
• urbanized, educated, and professional families
• 1-3 children
• often do not live with large kinship and lives far away
• resolve issues on their own
• have their sights on long-term saving plans for
retirement, health care, and future education of the
child/children
Overpopulation is the state whereby the human
population rises to an extent exceeding the carrying
capacity of the ecological setting.
THE “PERILS” OF OVER POPULATION
Thomas Malthus
•population growth will exhaust world food supply (An
Essay on the Principle of Population)
Paul and Anne Ehrlich
•overpopulation brings global environmental disasters
that would lead to food shortage and mass starvation
(The Population Bomb)
● Recommendations for control - castration,
monetary incentives, policy orientated (taxing a
child), institution building.
● After WWII normalcy – growth rate rose
● Population Control in different countries:
•China, India, & Ph.-Unless controlled it would
lead to crisis in resources...then mass hunger,
widespread poverty would follow
• US –contraception and sterilization as practical
solutions
•Puerto Rico – reproductive health supporters
believed that this would transform their
country from “poor” to “modern” nation.
● Developed countries support for birth control in
developing countries
• Egyptians irresponsible fecundity; Iranian
peasant’s natural libidinal tendencies; Indian working
poor, Muslims and lower castes as hypersexual;
• Result: India – forced sterilization;
China-one-child policy; Vietnam and Mexico
• coercive mass sterilization
IT’S THE ECONOMY, NOT THE BABIES
Betsy Hartmann
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• population control as a substitute for social justice
and much needed reforms – land distribution,
employment and emancipation
● Population growth aided economic development –
spurring technological and institutional innovation and
increasing supply of human ingenuity.
● Megacities amidst having population problems
remain “centers of economic growth”.
● Working population vs. dependent population
● Green Revolution as solution to Malthusian
prediction
WOMEN AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
●Women – be given power to pursue their vocations
● First World Countries’ measure –giving women the
power of choice
●Increase in Physical health and mental health
among women.
● Opponents regard reproductive right as false front
of abortion, as it actually endangers the life of
the mother.
● Western European countries impose restrictive
reproductive health programs;
● Muslim countries do not condone abortion and limit
wives to domestic chores and delivering
babies;
● Philippines has reproductive health policy but
enfeebled it through budget cuts and stalled
its implementations.
THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE
●Feminist opposed any form of population control as
this is compulsory by nature. Thus, it does not
empower women.
● Viewing poverty, environmental degradation as
caused by overpopulation is wrong. Equally important
factors such as unequal distribution of wealth, lack of
public safety nets like universal health care and
education should be accounted also.
POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD SECURITY
● 7.4 Billion – today’s global population; 9.5 Billion –
in 2050; 11.2 Billion in 2100
● 30.1 male median age; 29.4 female median age
● 95% population growth will happen in developing
countries
●FAO recommends that countries should increase
investments in agriculture and craft long-term policies
aimed at fighting poverty and to invest in research
and development.
Challenge?
The POLITICAL WILL of the country…
LESSON 11: Global Migration
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
Internal migration refers to people moving from one
area to another within the country.
International migration refers to people that cross
the borders of one country to another.
5 groups of international migrants:
●Immigrants- those who move permanently to
another country
●Workers who stay in another country for a fixed
period (at least six months in a year)
●Illegal migrants
●Migrants whose families have petitioned them to
move to the destination country
●Refugees (asylum-seekers)- those who are unable
to return because of a well-founded fear of
persecution on account of race, religion,
nationality, membership in a particular social
group or political opinion.
Latest statistics on migration:
● 247 million people are currently living outside the
countries of their birth. 90% - for economic
reasons 10% - refugees/asylum-seekers
●The top three regions of origin are Latin America
(18% of global total), followed by Eastern
Europe and Central Asia (16%), and the
Middle East and North Africa (14%).
● USA – top 1 country destination
● 50% moved from developing countries to developed
countries which subsequently contribute 40%
- 80% of their labor force.
● Migrant population has outstripped the population
growth in developed countries- 3% vs 0.6%
● McKinsey Global Institute 13% of migrants are in
West Europe, 15% in North America, 48% in
GCC countries (Gulf Cooperation Council)
● Most migrants are in the cities. 92% in the US; 95%
in the UK; 99% in Australia
MIGRANTS: ASSETS OR LIABILITIES?
● Magnitude of adverse labor market effects for native
from immigration are weaker.
● Fiscal impact of immigration on social welfare is
very small
● Native citizens still receive higher support compared
to immigrants.
● Massive inflow of refugees from Syria and Iraq has
raised alarming concern, but has not proven to be as
damaging.
● In Germany, the inflow of refugees from the Middle
East has not affected the social welfare programs and
a very little impact on wages and employment.
President Donald Trump & UK Prime Minister
Theresa May reverse the existing pro – immigration
and refugee sympathetic policies of their states.
Harvard Business School survey in 2011,
concluded that “likelihood and magnitude of adverse
labor market effects for native from immigration are
substantially weaker that often perceived.”
Organization for Economic Co – Operation and
Development (OECD) report on 2013, shows that
native- born citizens still receive higher support
compared to immigrants.
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IMF predicted that the flow of refugees feeling the war
in Syria and Iraq would actually grow Europe’s GDP,
albeit “modestly”.
BENEFITS AND DETRIMENTS FOR THE SENDING
COUNTRIES
● In 2014, the REMITTANCES given back to sending
countries is totaled $580 billion.
•India $70 billion
• China $62 billion
•Philippine $28 billion
•Mexico $25 billion
●Remittances make significant contribution to the
development of small- and medium-term industries
that help generate jobs.
●the serious concern is economic sustainability of
those reliant on migrant moneys.
• Asian Development Bank (ADB) observes that in
PH, remittances do not have a significant influence on
other key items on consumption or investment such
as spending on education and health care.
● help in lifting the household from poverty but not in
rebalancing growth, especially in the long run.
Brain Drain
●usually happens when skilled individuals and
professionals leave the home countries and go
elsewhere to take advantage of better opportunities
●Global migration is siphoning qualified personnel
and removing dynamic young workers.
● Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa lost 1/3 of their
college graduates.
● 52% of Filipinos who leave for work in developed
countries have tertiary education
● In 2006, doctors in Africa left their countries to seek
better opportunities.
Human Trafficking is the unlawful act of transporting
or coercing people in order to benefit from their work
or service, typically in the form of forced labor or
sexual exploitation.
THE PROBLEM IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING
• Human trafficking is the 3rd largest criminal activity
worldwide.
• ILO identified 21 million men, women and children
are victims of forced labor.
• 90% of the victims (18 million) are exploited by
private interprises; 22% (4.5 million) are sexually
abused; and 68% (14.2 million) work under
compulsion in agricultural, manufacturing,
infrastructure, and domestic activities.
• In 2014, a profit of $150 billion in HT.
Integration
● How migrants interact with their new home
countries?
•Access to housing, health care and education is
not easy
•Filipinos in US and Singapore with white-collar
jobs are easier to integrate than those with
blue-collar jobs.
• Democratic states assimilate immigrants by
granting citizenship.
•Linguistic difficulties, customs from old country
create cleavage between migrants and the
citizens of the receiving countries.
•Issues with the xenophobic citizens.
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
CONCLUSION
● Global migration entails globalization of people.
And like broader globalization process, it is uneven.
● For professionals, it is a liberating process, but for
the victims of human trafficking, it is the other way.
● XENOPHOBIA for receiving countries,
● DEPENDENCE for sending countries.
LESSON 12: Environmental Crises and Sustainable
Development
The World’s Leading Environmental Problems:
● Depredation caused by industrial and transportation
toxins and plastic in the ground; the defiling of the
sea, rivers, and water beds by oil spills and acid rain;
the dumping of urban waste.
● Changes in global weather patterns and the surge
in ocean and land temperatures
● Overpopulation
● Exhaustion of the world’s natural non-renewable
resources from oil reserves to minerals to potable
water.
● Waste disposal catastrophe
● Destruction of million-year-old ecosystems and the
loss of biodiversity
● Reduction of O2 and the increase in CO2 in the
atmosphere
● Depletion of the ozone layer protecting the planet
from the sun’s deadly ultraviolet rays
●Deadly acid rain
●Water pollution
● Urban sprawls that continue to expand as a city
turns into a megalopolis, destroying farmlands,
increasing traffic gridlock, and making smog cloud a
permanent urban fixture.
● Pandemics and other threats to public
● Radical alteration of food systems because of
genetic modifications in food production.
MAN-MADE POLLUTION
●Fossil fuel power station
●Fuel-burning heating devices
●Motor vehicle and aircraft
●Fumes from chemicals
●Waste deposition in landfills
●Chemical Weapons
●Agricultural burning
●Public Buildings & Households
●Factories
●Saudi Arabia, sandstorms combined with
combustion exhaust from traffic and industrial waste
has led WHO to declare Riyadh as one of the most
polluted cities in the world.
●Gaborone, capital of Bostwana, is the 7th most
polluted city in the world.
●For over a century, coal mines in West Virginia have
pumped “chemical-laden waste waterdirectly into the
ground, where it can leech into the water table and
turn what had been drinkable water into a poisonous
cocktail of chemicals.”
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CHANGES IN WEATHER PATTERNS
●Pollution in West Africa has affected “the
atmospheric circulation system that controls
everything from wind and temperature to rainfall
across huge swathes of the region.” The Asian
monsoon, in turn, had become the transport of
polluted air into the stratosphere, and scientists are
now linking Pacific storms to the spread of pollution in
Asia.
●Aerosol is tagged as the culprit in changing rainfall
patterns in Asia and Atlantic Ocean
SICKNESS CAUSED BY POLLUTION:
●An archived article in the journal Scientific
American blamed the pollution for “contributing to
more than a half a million premature deaths each year
at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.”
●The International Agency for Research on Cancer
blamed air pollution for 223,000 lung cancer deaths in
2010
● coal mining in West Virginia has made people sick,
some with “rare cancers, little kids with kidney stones
and premature deaths,” and children born with
congenital disabilities and adults having shorter life
expectancy.
THE POOR SECTOR AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL
CRISES
The poor are the most severely affected by
environmental problems.
●In India, studies on adults’ health revealed that 46%
in Delhi and 56% of in Calcutta have “impaired lung
function” due to air pollution.
●In China, the toxicity of the soil has raised concerns
over food security and the health of the most
vulnerable, especially the peasant communities and
those living in factory cities.
●In Metropolitan Manila, 37% of the population live in
slum communities, where “the effects of urban
environmental problems and threats of climate
change are also pronounced… due to their hazardous
location, poor air pollution and solid waste
management, weak disaster risk management, and
limiting coping strategies of households”.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Global Warming is the result of billions of tons of
carbon dioxide various air pollutants trap the sun’s
radiation causing the warming of the earth’s surface.
●The global temperature has risen at a faster rate in
the last 50 years.
The greenhouse effect is responsible for recurring
heat waves and long droughts in certain places, as
well as for heavier rainfall and devastating hurricanes
and typhoons in others.
Effects of global warming:
● California has experienced its worst water shortage
in 1,200 years due to global warming.
● Storms brought heavy rains and resulted to worst
flash floods in the 21st century.
● In India and Southeast Asia, global warming altered
the summer monsoon patterns, leading to intermittent
flooding that seriously affected food production and
consumption as well as infrastructure networks.
 GEC 13: The Contemporary World
• Glaciers are melting every year since 2002, with
Antarctica losing 134 billion metrics of ice.
COMBATING GLOBAL WARMING
Kyoto Protocol (1997)
● Signed by 192 countries
● reduce greenhouse gases, following the 1992
United Nations Earth Summit where a
Framework Convention for Climate Change
was finalized.
● However, US (the biggest polluter of the world) is
not joining the effort
● The protocol set targets but left it to individual
countries to determine how best they would
achieve these goals.
● The protocol only had a slight impact on reducing
global emissions (World Bank, 2010),
Paris Accord (Dec 2015)
● Negotiated by 195 countries.
● seeks to limit the increase in global average
temperature based on targeted goals as
recommended by scientists
●In South Africa, communities engage in
environmental activism to pressure industries to
reduce emissions and to lobby parliament to the
passage of pro-environment laws.
● In El Salvador, local officials and grassroot
organizations from 1,000 communities push for crop
diversification, a reduction of industrial sugar cane
production, the protection of endangered sea species
from the devastating effects of commercial fishing, the
preservation of lowlands being eroded by
deforestation up in rivers and inconsistent release of
water from a nearby dam.
●The University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute
sent teams to India to work with government offices,
businesses, and communities in coming up with
viable ground-level projects that “strike a balance
between urgently needed economic growth and
improved air quality.
●In Japan, population pressure forced the
government to pass “a blizzard of laws – 14 passed at
once – in what became known as the Pollution Diet
of 1970. These regulations did not eliminate
environmental problems, but today, Japan has the
least polluted cities in the world.
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LESSON 13: The Global Filipino
Today, the Philippine economy depends largely on
incomes from jobs with global connections.
Migrant Labor
●In 2015, DOLE reported that the number of Filipinos
leaving the country to work overseas rose from 4, 018
in 2010 to 6, 092 in 2015, a 51% increase in the span
of five years.
• In 2016, there were 2.4 million Filipinos leaving
and/or working outside of the country. They
sent back $25.8 billion in 2015, roughly 8.5%
of the country’s gross domestic product.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is an
industry provided for foreign clients.
• In 2015, BPO operations yield $24 billion.
Combined, these two economic activities have
plowed over $51 billion in the country’s
national coffers.
Exports
• The 3rd source of national income is comprised
of exports.
• The Philippines exports machinery,
semiconductors, wood, cars, exports crops
and fruits, minerals, ships, and vehicles to
other Asian countries, Europe, and North
America.
Tourism
• The 4th largest source of income, which reached
about $6.05 billion by the end of 2016.
• Added to the $51 billion from OFW and BPO
earnings, the total revenue of $113.35 billion
makes the Philippines the 36th largest
economy in the world.
PH is the 8th largest rice producer in the world and is
also one of the largest importers of this basic staple.
• PH became a colony of two empires-the
Western powers and Japan had extended
their reach.
• English is now the older largely spoken lingua
franca of the country, and American popular
culture-from basketball to fashion to hip-hop
remains the model of modernity.
• The 2014 Pew Research Center survey showed
that 92% of Filipinos are pro-American.
The peculiar “preservation” of “tribal” (sic) Pilipino
arts” indicates a “reverse flow” in which the local is
now transposed overseas. Again, these are indicative
of global connections.
CONCLUSION
●Globalization’s impact has been uneven and often
does not benefit most Filipinos.
●Yet, there is some movement; there is progress
when thePhilippines at the end of the 20th century is
analyzed.
●right or wrong- Philippines political leaders decided
to open up the country to theworld.