Reflection

submitted by Kishieva Milena

GGL 1 year student
st

Global Governance
During our second semester of Global Governance and
Leadership program, we started new lectures and seminars.
Global Governance is one of the new subjects that we are
going to study. Here I will express all my thoughts, key
themes, important and interesting topics that puzzled me
during our 4 lectures and share the questions which were
raised during the material and discussions.

Lecture 1: Global Governance: Introduction

Lecture 2: Challenge to Global Governance
Lecture 3: Global Governance: Sustainable Development Goals
Lecture 4: Global Governance: Sustainable Development Goals

Lecture 1: Global Governance: Introduction

What seemed most important to me at first that there were the
different theories and goals of sustainable development. In my
opinion, it is most significant to know theories to understand
the course in general and understand the main goals of the
development of our world. I really don't know much about
these topics, but everything I know I learned during the
lectures and I want to express my own thoughts in my writing.

The beginning of the first lecture was very interesting and

active. Using Mentimeter, students from GGL and EBLC
program started to create the definition of the word
«governance». As for me, top-5 words describing governance
were: control, power, leadership, responsibility and policy. And
I was quite close to the right definition. Having said in the
Mentimeter there were another top-5 words: election,
democracy, president, parliament and constitution. Later on
we have had interesting discussion about our representations
of governance.
During the first lecture we have learned the information about
some theories. Such as: policy network theory, rational
choice theory, interpretive theory, organizational theory,
institutional theory, systems theory and development theory.
And right after our first lecture we decided to prepare our
homework for Friday. In our team there were 4 people:
Anastasia Akatyeva, Victoria Gordina, Margarita Ershova and
me. We did presentation on the topic which we were
interested in the most. And for all of us it was rational choice
theory, because we consider ourselves to be rational people
who have always made a choice after analyzing all advantages
and disadvantages. We started our discussions and searching
extra information for our presenting.

As for me, rational choice theory means taking actions,

whether we recognize them or not, we always succeed only
when our decisions and actions are rational or
reasonable. This means that we have found the best or
preferred solution among all possible solutions or alternatives
to action. In everyday life, we often do not even think about
such issues and often achieve success, based on common
sense, intuition and accumulated practical and everyday
experience. Undoubtedly, intuition, life experience and sound
reasoning are quite sufficient to solve the simplest practical
tasks in everyday life and even management activities, since
they do not require accurate analysis and
calculation. However, at present, in solving the complex tasks
of management in the economy, social life, politics and other
types of public activity, less rely on everyday experience,
intuition and common sense, but turn to accurate analysis of
the problem, calculation and construction of mathematical
models. That is why the theory of rational choice is so
important for us future managers.

Lecture 2: Challenge to Global Governance

Second lecture was the most interesting for me. Our new topic
was Magatrends, such as: demographic and social change,
rapid urbanization, shift in global economic power, climate
change and recourses scarcity, technological breakthrough.
And analyzed this topics in the example of countries Emerging
7 and Group of Seven.

At the lecture I knew that by 2050, the urban population will

increase by 72%. I suppose that urbanization has several
positive and negative effects, like each coin has two sides.
The positive factors of urbanization include job creation,
better and higher education, health and health care, housing,
transport, new technologies, social integration, electricity and
improved living standards. The negative effects of urbanization
include unemployment, overcrowding, global warming, traffic
congestion and air pollution, poverty, water shortages, urban
crime, garbage removal problems, and so on. Over time, the
negative effects of urbanization are increasing dramatically. In
order to address these problems, the Agenda for Sustainable
Development for the period adopted by all Member States of
the United Nations in 2015 provides a common vision of peace
and prosperity for people and the planet today and in the
future.

Lecture 3: Global Governance: Sustainable Development Goals

Lecture 4: Global Governance: Sustainable Development Goals
During our third and fourth lectures we started to study new
topic. It was Sustainable Development Goals. It is based on 17
Sustainable Development Goals, which are an urgent appeal
for action by all countries within the framework of global
partnership. They recognize that eradicating poverty and
other deprivation must go hand in hand with strategies to
improve health and education, reduce inequality, and
stimulate economic growth – all while addressing climate
change and conserving our oceans and forests. I hope
achieving all of these goals one day will make our world much
better.

Personally for me 10th Goal is the most important. It is about

inequality based on income, gender, age, disability, sexual
orientation, race, class and religion persist around the world,
within and between countries. In my life, I was faced with
humiliation over nationality and material income. That is why i
believe that inequality threatens social and economic
development, damages wellbeing, and destroys people’s sense
of self-fulfillment and self-worth. This, in turn, can create
crime, disease, and environmental degradation

In today's world, we are all interconnected. Problems and challenges, whether

in poverty, climate change, or economic crises, are never confined to one
country or region. Even in the richest countries, communities continue to live
in extreme poverty. The oldest democracies are still struggling with racism,
homophobia, transphobia, and religious intolerance. Global inequality affects
us all, regardless of who we are and where. It can and must be achieved to
ensure a decent life for all. I believe that it is essential to intensify efforts to
eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and to invest more in health,
education, social protection and decent jobs, especially for young people,
migrants and other vulnerable groups.

As for me, it is not yet clear what our sustainable future will
look like, but with new technologies and improved old cleaner
fuels, many people now look to the world beyond fossil fuels,
including businesses. Since the 1950’s, we have experienced
unprecedented growth, including intensive agriculture,
technological revolution, and massive increases in our energy
needs, which puts the planet’s resources further under strain.
We are also much better aware of the plight of the developing
world and of what our planet is facing when we are witnessing
both natural and man-made disasters and the consequences
that they can have for ecosystems and human populations. It
is vital that we develop new, cleaner technologies to meet our
energy needs, but sustainability is not just the environment.
 Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to say that our Global Governance
course is very important and interesting to me. Even after one
month of this course I have learned a great amount of
information I have never heard before. So I started to think not
about only present, mostly about future and global world!
Moreover, this subject already helped me in another course of
Global Institutions, where we just started to talk about Agenda
goals. In this reflection I tried to tell you everything about
what I found important in this course and what I think about
these topics. While I wrote it, I made a few more studies to
better understand the topics that were interesting.