Name

Institutional Affiliation

Course Name
 Globalization and Poverty

The purpose of this survey is to examine the association between globalization and

poverty. This comes against a background where a deal of scholarly work has recommended that

the global economic integration should seek to help the poorer nations, since they are capable of

producing goods that use unskilled man power. The author proposes a similar view, since

globalization can be defined as the process of moving people, businesses and other

organizations. Critics of globalization, such as Martel (2010), define it as the integration of poor

nations in to a world economy full of open competition. He describes it as the process which

allows the few to live with little to no worries about food, shelter and healthcare, while

remaining oblivious of the inequality gap. The debate on globalization, poverty and the increased

inequality centres on the premises that poverty and inequality are not synonyms, and that one can

rise or fall independent of the other. This essay argues that even though globalization has

wrought much havoc on the developing world, it has significantly contributed to the reduction of

poverty levels in these countries. I present the contrary perspective that globalization alone can

not account for the inequalities in the world, but that such matters ought to be introspected

through a larger perspective.

For the sake of this paper, we will adopt World Bank’s definition of poverty. Poverty is

the state in which a society, or an individual has insufficient financial muscle to lead the most

basic decent life. One important conclusion from poverty is that the income from employment

and business is very low that basic human needs cannot be met. In this perspective, the poor

refers to the people whose resources are greatly limited that they are excluded from the lowest

acceptable way of life in their country. The poor lack proper housing, decent meals, safe drinking

water and proper medical attention. Different nations have different thresholds for poverty line.

2
The World Bank categorizes poverty as any income that is less than $1.90 per day (World Bank

2020). This is the extreme poverty line. The categorization also considers the people living in

less than $3.20 a day and those living at $5.50 a day. This groups cumulatively account for 9.2%

at the extreme poverty, and abut 44% for the higher poverty lines.

Poverty becomes a global concern when introspected in regards to its causes, its effects

and its eradication. The World Bank oversees that close to half of the world poor live in areas

affected by fragility, conflict and violence, projecting the number to raise before the 2030.

Climatic change and population growth are also major causes of poverty in most of the nations.

The discussion on the cause’s poverty revolves around political causes, environmental

causes and man-made causes. For the purpose of this paper, we will only consider the two most

important causes which have a global perspective.

Fragility, conflict and violence are categorized as important causes of human suffering.

These often tend to bring about a great destruction of the social fabric and infrastructure. A

people who are insecure can not readily access the human basic needs of food, housing and

education. Conflicts either destroy the social amenities for providing such services, destroy the

roads to access such, or push people to places where it is hard to access these services. The

effects of Fragility, Conflict and Violence are so elaborately intertwined it would be hard to

describe each independently. Other than the obvious results such as scarce resources, threat to

human life, violence tends to spiral over its effects to economies in the neighborhood and abroad,

making it a serious global problem. For instance, the violence in Syria has brought more than

70% of its population to live below the poverty line. It has also created the largest refugee

population in the world, of about 6.5 million people. The foremost global problem brough about

by this is the humanitarian crisis. The nations surrounding Syria, and the world at large is obliged

3
to act in such times to rescue innocent children and women facing starvation, death and gross

violation of human rights. Financial resource that would have been used for development

projects is used to cater for the effects of the war. It is estimated that the UN has collectively

send more than $32 billion to Syria to help with the humanitarian crisis, which is quite a big

financial burden to the global economy (Beaujouan & Rasheed 2019).

Again, adverse environmental conditions can bring about poverty. Climatic change and

global warming are the most important causes of adverse climatic conditions around the world.

They are no longer viewed as imaginary threats, but a present and growing reality, that must be

handled urgently. Climatic change is responsible for hurricanes, droughts, floods and forest fires

that often run out of control, consuming millions of acres of arable land. The contrast is that

climatic change is primarily man-made. Statistics show that human influence accounted for

100% of Global warming from the 1950s (Hallegatte, 2016), with some arguing that it could be

slightly higher than 100%, since natural occurrences such as volcanoes could have cooled the

earth a little bit, cancelling out some of the human activity (Stilglitz 2015). The catastrophes that

come as a result of climate change wreck serious damage on the livelihood of the vulnerable

communities. For instance, droughts in the African continent often consume millions of

livestock, as well as the lives of many. The lack of grain for planting and making meals, the lack

of domestic animals for labor and financial exchange, as well as the inability of parents to

provide for their young ones owing to malnutrition, diseases or death is a sure path to extreme

poverty. The children, and few grown-ups who survive these busts of drought are too weak to

reclaim their lands for agriculture and often end up in vicious cycles of abject poverty.

Finally, probably the global factor that has wrought greatest damage in recent history

within the shortest time is the COVID-19 pandemic. After having being declared a global health

4
emergency in early 2020, COVID-19 has threatened to crush the world economy, overwhelm the

world health, and destroy the concept of globalization as we know it.

Perhaps an important demerit to globalization would suggest that if the world was not as

closely connected, the Corona Virus would not have spread as fast, and would not have as many

lives as it has presently. Worldometers approximates that the virus has of 7th December 2020

killed more than 1.5 million people, after infecting more than 67 million people. The effects of

COVID-19 are twofold. On one end, the virus itself incapacitates productivity, takes a big deal of

both the national and personal budget and even brings about death. On the other end, the

measures such as social distancing have led to great downsizing of companies and left people

jobless, and millions of families without a sustainable source of income.

The debate on the best approach to combat COVID-19 surrounds vaccines and trying out

available medication. Nevertheless, there is need for the concerned parties to continually check

out on the measures taken, and see if they can improve on their governments. For instance, as

people are treated, governments should be keen to provide relief to their citizens.

The ongoing discussion goes a long way to show how one small action by one person or

a community in a distant country can adversely affect another person in another part of the globe.

When one pursues to cut down an entire forest, the effect ripples across the globe. When a

government opts to be oppressive and undemocratic, the ensuing rebellions affect the global

economy albeit in varying dimensions. It thus calls for a collective responsibility, for world

governments and individuals, as well as the developed and underdeveloped nations, for

globalization to be a beneficial feat for all.

5
 As noted earlier, the causes and effects of poverty only come as a result of deeper issues

which were neglected or taken for granted in a society. To combat this verse calls for political

goodwill, global participation and determination on all fronts.

For instance, government stability is an important factor in combating violence, conflict

and fragility. An oppressive government, even though stable, might eventually fall from

international pressure such as the case of Libya, or internal protests, such as in the Arab world of

Egypt and Syria. Thus, to tackle poverty, issues on governance should be approached and

handled with a perspective of helping the citizens of the land through equitable distribution of

resources, justice for all, and the improvement of the standards of living for its people (Martel,

2010).

In conclusion, we have seen the association between poverty and globalization. The

relationship is so intertwined sch that a change in one trigger a change in the other. That

globalization has the improvement of the standard of living as a primary concern, addressing

poverty in the world becomes an important issue in globalization.

6
 References

Beaujouan, J. Rasheed, A, (2019). Syrian Crisis, Syrian Refugees: Voices from Jordan and

Lebanon. New York: Springer Publishing

Hallegatte, S. (2016). Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty.

Washington D.C: World Bank Publications.

Martel, L. (2010). The Sociology of Globalization. Boston: Polity.

Mercy Corps (2019). How Climate Change Affects People Living in Poverty. Mercy Corps.

Retrieved from https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/climate-change-poverty#effects-

climate-change on 7th December 2020

Stiglitz, J. (2015). Globalization and its Discontents. Westminster: Penguin Books.

World Bank (2020). COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021. World

Bank. Retrieved from

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-

as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021

Worldometer (2020). Coronavirus Update. Worldometer. Retrieved from

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ on 7th December 2020.