Globalisation has brought benefits to the world such as lower prices for many goods and services, as well as economic growth for a number of developed and developing economies. But globalisation has also had some less positive impacts.
For example, in many cases domestic manufacturing or agriculture has been decimated as production moves to lower-cost countries. Aside from the tragedy of unemployment, lost skills and the rise in carbon emissions from transporting goods around the world, another serious impact of globalisation has been the damage done to resilience.
Over the last few years, we have had drought, locusts, Covid, war, climate change, inflation, rising energy and food prices, geopolitical muscles being flexed, wild fires, heat domes, monkeypox and China’s zero tolerance policy on Covid.
Sometimes it seems like there is a new curved ball every day. Longer-term shocks haven’t gone away either such as water scarcity, growing demand for protein, loss of nature, the growth of non-communicable “lifestyle” diseases such as stroke, heart disease, some cancers and diabetes, along with poor nutrition, social alienation and poverty to name but a few of the oncoming trains heading our way.
So, resilience, our ability to withstand shocks to the system, has never been more important. Yet the march of globalisation started back in 1817, has eroded our resilience and left us vulnerable to malign natural and man-made crises.
We are seeing the consequences of weakened resilience right now in Africa particularly. While the need to invest in domestic agriculture and manufacturing is urgent, the continent’s ability to do so is severely compromised by high levels of public debt.
This is where the global community needs to come together, not to lurch to the extreme of protectionism and pulling up the drawbridge, but to strengthen global resilience and spread our risks so we are better prepared.
Because if every nation is more resilient, we are all more resilient. When we are stronger together as a global community we can not only deal with the horrors ahead but we can adapt more rapidly and thrive on change rather than be crippled by it.
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