Globalisation extended prose questions/answers

From the Edexcel 2021 Assessment materials

Happy New Year to you all. Thank you to the 65 subscribers who signed up overnight. It is fascinating to see the global connections even within that number. I also recognise some familiar names, and former colleagues - good to know you are still ‘kicking around’. Please spread the word.

So, to celebrate the global theme, here are some Edexcel globalisation 12 mark questions from the recent past:

SAMs

Assess the impact of TNCs on creating both winners and losers for people and environments. (12)

Transnational corporations (TNCs) are large companies that produce or source goods and services internationally and market them worldwide. Many TNCs, such as McDonald’s, Shell and Apple are household names. TNCs are one of the major players in the global economy: the top 500 TNCs account for 70% of world trade and generate a large proportion of all foreign direct investment (FDI).

A clear set of ‘winners’ are therefore the owners and shareholders of the companies themselves, as well as the country of origin. For example, Apple contributes over $300 billion to the US economy, and is thought to add up to a third of one percentage point to the whole USA GDP. Other winners are the employees of these companies in the countries of origin and destination. In the USA, Apple directly employs 90,000 people in work such as engineering and software design. In addition, there are people employed in component factories, retail outlets, including online, and call centres.  One estimate of the total number of Apple-dependent employees in the USA is over half a million workers.

Similarly, TNCs employ millions of people in outsourced and off-shored work around the world, but these are often paid much less than the workers in the country of origin. In China, Apple has helped to raise overall living standards by employing people (e.g., Zhengzhou’s ‘iphone city’) and giving the ‘growing middle classes’ higher disposable incomes and more consumer choice over luxury goods. As a result, the extreme poverty rate in China has fallen from 84% in 1980 to 10% in 2016. However, Apple has been accused of creating sweatshop conditions. In 2006, there were reports of 200,000 workers living/working in the Shenzen factory working 60 hrs a week for $100 a month. Suicides have also occurred (due to severe working conditions), giving Apple a ‘bad press’. These latter people are clearly ‘losers’.

Environmentally, there are also ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Large energy and mineral extraction corporations such as Rio Tinto Zinc have especially poor environmental reputations for the devastation they bring to often pristine environments. Similarly, the TNC Shell has been accused of severely damaging the environment in the Canadian Tar Sands as they exploit the oil shales there. The damage that has been done is to pollute rivers, contaminate water supplies and destroy wildlife habitats.

Returning to Apple, they state that all of their US facilities, including offices, retail stores and data centers, are powered by 100% renewable energy sources like solar, wind and micro-hydro power, which Apple generates or purchases from local projects - winners. However, overseas they have received criticism from the group Greenpeace. They state that Apple uses toxic chemicals (PVC and brominated flame retardants) in their manufacturing process. Also, waste from electronic components not only pollutes waterways, e-waste often ends up in landfills, contaminating communities & spreading illness. Affected people are losers.

In conclusion, it is fair to say the role of TNCs within the global economy is highly significant. They have created a whole series of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, though the perception of those depends on the observer. In general, they have created lots of employment for a variety of people around the world, with some benefitting more than others. Similarly, they have created a range of environmental impacts, perhaps more problematic than beneficial overall.

June 2018

Assess the view that globalization inevitably damages the physical environment. (12)

Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected through the flows of capital, goods and people. As a result of this ‘shrinking world’ effect, the use of resources is increasing as well as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and plastic in the oceans. There is indeed some evidence that globalisation inevitably damages the environment.

Perhaps the main way in which globalisation causes damage to the environment is through increased resource consumption. Westernisation, the spread of western culture and value across the world, is leading to changing diets in Asia for example and the rise of middle-class consumption. An increased meat intake is encouraged by TNCs such as McDonalds who use glocalisation to ensure they can set up their products in more than one country. This leads to increased water usage as the water used in each pound of beef produced is equivalent to showering every day for a year. Similarly, there is increased methane in the atmosphere due to the cattle ranching as well as changing the land use of the area affected. Large parts of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared for the purpose of establishing cattle ranches to produce cheap beef for fast food outlets. However, McDonalds is strenuous in its denials that any of its beef comes from such farms in the rainforest. They even took some former employees to court for alleging such a link.

Similarly, the spread of global consumption has led to increased plastic usage polluting the world’s oceans as it is disposed. The amount of microplastic in the world’s oceans has now reached crisis proportions and there are reports of areas of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans being totally covered in plastic debris. Globalisation is accused of being the cause of this pollution, as more and more people become westernized and consumer activities take over, with more of us drinking water from plastic bottles. The Covid 19 pandemic has also seen the prevalence of face masks and other forms of PPE being discarded carelessly as people around the world are aware of the dangers of the disease and seek to protect themselves – a form of health or cultural globalisation. This reinforces the view that globalisation does inevitably damage the environment.

The global shift to Asia has also resulted in the increased burning of fossil fuels. China, for example, burns 50% of the world’s coal, and as result suffers air pollution which is expected to reduce life expectancy by 4 years. The burning of fossil fuels in both factories and car engines is a direct function of globalization. People’s living standards around the world have risen due to globalization with millions of newly created ‘middle classes’ in India and China, and many of them seeking to drive SUVs which consume huge amounts of petrol and diesel, thereby polluting the physical environment.

There have been attempts to reduce this damaging effect which include ethical consumption schemes such as transition towns which aim to encourage the use of local produce (decreasing transportation emissions) e.g. Stroud in Gloucestershire. However, unless adopted on a global scale, this will not be able to counter the inevitably of globalisation damaging the physical environment.

In conclusion, there are concerns that globalisation has led to the ‘exporting’ of pollution and the activities that creates it from the developed to the developing world. However, it is also true that TNCs, countries and activists are taking steps to reduce, or deny, the environmental impacts of globalisation.

June 2019

Assess the methods used in local communities to reduce the impact of globalisation on the environment. (12)

Globalisation has created a number of negative impacts on the physical environment such as dereliction, contaminated land, and pollution of the air and oceans. Consequently, there have been a number of responses to the environmental issues caused. One key response in developed countries has been the move by many local communities to generate ‘localism’. This is the idea that food and goods should be grown and made locally, which then supports local jobs and reduces transport movement.

The practice of recycling is now widespread in most local communities. Local councils in the UK play a key role in reducing waste and ecological footprints through recycling and councils’ waste collection services. Recycling of household waste increased from 44% to 60% between 2013 and 2018 but this was still some way behind the 80% achieved in Germany. Recycling does reduce waste, but different councils have different schemes with different results and so reducing packaging at the outset might be a better way forward.

Another local initiative is that of Transition Towns. Transition Towns were founded in 2006 by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Transition Network’. This encourages towns to grow their own food in community gardens (and hence not import it) and reduce energy used in transport, e.g. cycling and recycle waste/reuse materials. Some towns like Totnes, Exeter and Stroud even have their own local currencies to encourage local trade. These initiatives are small scale, but some elements like ‘grow your own’ could have a big impact if widely adopted and promoting local sourcing became more widespread.

There has also been the growth of ethical consumption schemes. For example, in the UK, the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) uses its FSC logo on wood products that are sourced from sustainable forests thus helping consumers ensure that products are not contributing to environmental degradation. FSC’s criteria include that forestry must respect the land rights of indigenous people and that forestry workers are well treated and paid.

Finally, at a global scale, there is the concept of Fair trade, rather than free trade, which pays local farmers of cocoa, cotton, tea and coffee in developing countries a guaranteed price for their produce plus a ‘fair trade premium’ payment. This attempts to reduce the inequalities of global trade. The aim is to make incomes more sustainable for farming families and use some of the additional money to support community facilities like wells, schools and clinics. The downsides of fair trade are that the extra income is small, and Fairtrade products are more expensive for consumers, who are mainly in the developed world.

In conclusion, local community responses can form part of an attempt for a more ‘green’ lifestyle. In some cases, local scale initiatives have been taken up by national and supra-national governments, as with recycling and the EU. There is one big disadvantage though – producing and buying local may improve the local environment, but it is still the case that many farmers in the developing world depend on exporting their products to the developed world for their livelihoods.

Autumn 2020

Study Figure 1 which shows the relationship between GDP per capita and GII (gender inequality index). Assess the extent to which improvements in gender equality may lead to higher national incomes per capita. (12)

The Gender Inequality Index (GII) combines measures of the reproductive health of women, their participation in the workforce and empowerment (e.g. women in higher education and politics) to indicate gender aspects of development. Views differ on the validity of gender inequality as a development measure, but it is given here in a scatter graph with GDP per capita.

The graph in Figure 1 shows an inverse relationship between GDP per capita and increasing inequality. So, this means that as a country becomes richer in terms of its GDP per capita, then inequalities according to the GII decrease. An alternative way of saying this is that as the opportunities available to women in a country increase, then the chances of GDP per capita increasing also improve.

As explained above, one key element of the GII is raising the education standards of women and girls. It is a well-known fact that as education levels of females increase, then they are more likely to take control of their fertility, and birth rates fall. This is due to more women taking up places in the workforce and aspiring to better standards of living. Furthermore, as more women enter the workforce, then tax revenues for the whole country increase, again making it more likely that national GDP rates will increase. Looking at Figure 1, the countries with the lowest GDP per capita are the ones with highest level of GII inequality – Afghanistan and Kenya. The former is still regarded as a very backward society when it comes to the rights of women, many people still having the views of the outdated Taliban.

The reproductive health of women is closely linked to levels of education as explained above. With higher incomes, women are more likely to buy or make use of contraception from a younger age, and be more aware of the opportunities available to them. They also will be aware that maternal mortality can be high if childbearing begins too early, and hence the reproductive health of women is improved from that of more traditional attitudes.

It is interesting to note that China is an outlier on the graph, in the sense that levels of female inequality are relatively low compared to the level of GDP. China is a socialist country where equality as a concept is more prevalent. However, it is also the case that many factories in China make use of cheap female labour in sweatshops, so perhaps this is anomaly requires more consideration.

A third element of the GII is political empowerment. Once again, as more women enter the decision-making aspects of society, then GDP per capita rates increase. Although none of New Zealand, Finland and Germany are named on Figure 1, they do all share two characteristics – high GDP per capita indicating high standards of living, and female leaders e.g. Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern. But, this is more than just heads of government – when women take more control of day-to-day life in communities and small farms and workshops, it is the case that there is less waste, and greater efficiency of output. Standards of living increase not just nationally, but also in local communities.

A recent report from Oxfam stated that the wealth of the world’s richest 1% of people is equivalent to the wealth of the other 99%. This degree of income inequality is not new, but it may have become starker in the last few decades. It is hoped that as the GII improves in each country across the world, then the global gender gap will reduce, and national incomes per capita increase.