The Connected World

By: Bikal Dhungel 

There are 194 countries registered in the United Nations. Within the countries, there are many sectors, like agriculture, energy, trade, service, production etc. For a long time, these sectors and countries were seen as separate entities. Some countries were rich, some were poor, some had a large agricultural sector, some had big service sector, some were energy producers, some were consumers and so on. But they were still separate nations and separate sectors. Although humans have always been a nomadic folk, from around 1600, there were quests for resources from abroad. Dutch East India Company started its operation since then bringing raw materials and agricultural products from abroad to the Netherlands. This culture was continued by others as soon as they grew. There was also trade between nations. But still, nations remained nations and they were busy increasing their own wealth without regard of other countries. Thus, there was colonization, there was unfair resource extraction and there was even slave trade. With this, some countries were also able to achieve economic development. But others remained poor. Countries fought war, for more power, for more wealth and the loss of others were not important.

In mid 20^th century, for the first time, humans could see the picture of the earth from space. This picture was stunning. In contrast of what people used to think about the countries, our earth was rather a small ball, around which there were white clouds and most of the earth was covered by blue ocean. It was round and it was connected. All countries were connected either by land or by ocean. It was also realised, how small was human family that time, with 3-4 billion people. Today were are 7 billion but still, we are more connected than we can think of. It was also seen that, when there was a gas emission from one place anywhere on earth, it reached the atmosphere which was shared by the whole world.

There is a thin ozone layer on top but this is being depleted by green house gas emission from one place with consequences that can be felt anywhere. One lesson we got from that picture was, no matter how many polluting industries we have in any country, the effect will be shared or in other words, we are ecologically connected and dependent.

Melting of ice in the Himalayas will cause floods in lowlands in India and Bangladesh. Deforestation in an area cause floods in lowlands. Draining hazardous waste in the river will kill the species in the ocean far away. Polluting the air with hazardous waste will affect other countries across borders with the wind. Nature sees no boundaries. Everything is regional or global. While ecological problems migrate towards the boundaries, economical aspects do the same. Economic activity in one country affect the other by the consequences it places on nature as a whole and the other should also bear the cost. We, the world community have slowly started to understand that, no matter what others do it will affect us. For example, developing countries have high debts. Their economic situation is not so good. But as they are paying heavy debts back to rich countries, they are allowing companies from rich countries to have an access to their resources, which then extract the resources in the form of exploitation. Actually this is the matter of two countries but what about the environmental consequences it cause ? Why should other countries pay the cost of this ? So, it is also the concern of third countries about what kind of bilateral relations do countries have. Moreover, not only economic activities affects the environment, but also environment affects economic activities. A city that is under water due to flood will have to stop its economic activities. As a result, its supply of goods to the other parts of the world will be halted or postponed. Imagine, the country US is out of order today due to some climate disaster. All the goods going from Europe and Asia will not go anymore because there is a crisis. There will be heavy loss in Europe and Asia. Similarly, goods coming from the US will also not come to Europe and Asia, causing scarcity. When there is no trade, there will be no production, no employment and the economy collapses. So, both, economy and ecology are connected to each other. Likewise, trade has an impact on environment, environment has impact on trade, energy has impacts on environment and the environment has an impact on energy.

Recently, we have seen that heatwaves in the US and Australia caused a sharp rise in food prices in the whole world. We have also seen that energy crisis, for example when oil exporting countries decided to cut the supply, caused a huge economical consequences. We have seen that, due to poverty, when poor people dump their waste in the rivers, sea creatures die. We have seen, when poor people cut trees for firewood, the nature will suffer and the cost will have to be paid by international community as a whole. We have also seen that population growth in India will cause the rise in food prices in the whole world. Even when Nepal has a negative population growth, the growth in India will affect Nepal. We also know that, a political instability in one country will cause refugee flow to the other and pressures the other country to tackle the problem. Simplifying everything, till now we thought that we were not so connected. We only thought that the world has globalized, there is free movement of people, goods and capital and what we do in one place will be known to the other due to advances in telecommunication technologies. But we never realised that we are also connected economically, ecologically, politically and many other cally.

Thus, it is important that we manage this inter-connectedness intelligently. Probably this is a good thing. Good because then we care about the whole world in every matter, political stability, economical stability, environmental standards, health issues etc. when we realise this, our greediness will also decrease. No national boundary is a good thing per see to solve worldly problems. For example, when we come back to the global issues, over-fishing is a big problem. It is very hard to agree on how many fishes to catch every day. Some countries are heavily dependent on it and are less willing to agree to catch less whereas others point on the extinction of fishes and tell that it is not good to allow over fishing. Both are right but if we have resource transfer scheme to the community that depended on fishing until now, they will probably agree on reducing the catches but as countries are governed by different governments, such thing is not possible. Also when we have a world as a whole, there is no need to fight for boundaries where they are allowed to fish. Administration costs to handle global issues will be less if we have fewer nations.

If we fail to manage the inter-connectedness, mistakes of one nation will impose burdens on others who did not do anything. This will be socially unjust. Though, we are far from creating 'One World'. But we might start by regionalism. There are already few successful regional cooperation units like the European Union. In the creation of such unions internationally, there will be a better management of inter-connectedness.