Discuss how geographical thinking can help us to better understand issues of responsibility in today’s globalised world. Draw on ideas and examples which range across the course.
(1,448 words)
In a globalised world, the demands to take responsibility are everywhere and extend across the globe. Modern communications technologies compress time and space and bring to us images and stories of people who live hundreds of thousands miles away. These images and stories compel us to think further beyond our usual boundaries and sometimes urge us to take responsibility not only for other human beings but also for the non-human world. Thinking geographically can also mean going back in time to take responsibility by putting things right. Some events of the past can come back to haunt us and influence our thinking or shape present events. This essay will attempt to demontrate how geographical thinking can help us understand the issues of responsibility that a global world places demands of us .
Geographical thinking involves looking into the way things are distributed in the world; the relations between things which are distributed and their continuity and change. For instance, there is no denying that the gap between rich and poor countries is wide and appears to get wider as time progresses. A report by the United Nations Development Programme in 2007 shows that the poorest 40 per cent of the world’s population accounts for only five per cent of global income, while the richest 20 per cent accounts for three-quarters.
Inequality between rich and poor countries is one of most contentious global issues. The world is divided by the poverty line of the rich North and the poor South. Rich and powerful nations are often blamed for hardships facing many poor countries in Africa and elsewhere with their political and economic manipulation. America and Europe insist on their agricultural subsidies and tariffs on food imports at the expense of poorer trading economies....