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Travel
Impact Newswire by Imtiaz Muqbil - Distinction in
Travel Journalism
THE OTHER FACE OF GLOBALISATION (3,785 words)
Summary: In 1998, the top 10 corporations controlled 86% of the global
telecommunications market and 35% of pharmaceuticals. Industrialised
countries today hold 97% of all patents world-wide. These inequalities
and imbalances of globalisation are raising the risk of conflict. That
warning, in the UN Human Development Report 1999 (HDR), is part of a
growing debate about who is dictating the terms of globalisation and
in turn benefitting from it. The Travel & Tourism industry, very much
in the throes of globalisation, still has time to debate and think it
through. A four-part excerpt:
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PART I -
1. THE OTHER FACE OF GLOBALISATION
Editor's
Note:
For the last few years, globalisation has been touted as a be-all,
end-all panacea for global problems. A creator of millions of jobs and
billions of dollars in foreign exchange, the Travel & Tourism industry
has been a highly visible vanguard of globalisation. Many in the
industry have blindly backed it as the ''only way'' to progress and
prosperity.
Today, some educated and well-informed research is querying the
distribution of benefits of globalisation and indeed its future
beneficiaries. That is a change from the heretofore sporadic and
disorganised warnings which have been easily pooh-poohed by the
powerful media-massaging machinery of the pro-globalisation forces.
On July 12, the UN Human Development Report 1999 delivered a damning
indictment of globalisation. Commissioned by the UN Development
Programme, the 10th annual report argues that while globalisation, as
it has been allowed to proceed so far, has created ''unprecedented
wealth'' for those who have been able to take advantage of the
increasing flows of goods and services across national boundaries, it
has also been driving a deeper wedge between richer and many poor
countries, and among people within countries.
''People in some 85 countries are in fact worse off in many respects
than they were a decade ago,'' says the Report. ''The challenge then
is to ensure that the benefits of globalisation are shared equitably."
It urges governments, international organisations and individuals not
to be passive observers of global change but to get organised and
involved in re-writing the rules under which this change is taking
place.
The following excerpts from the UN HDR 1999 are being reproduced here
to trigger a rational and objective debate about the impact of
globalisation on Travel & Tourism. Just like telecommunications and
computing, the Travel & Tourism industry over the next few years will
be almost entirely in the hands of global companies, from credit-cards
to cruising, airlines to tour wholesalers and entertainment giants.
What are the implications, especially for the Asia-Pacific? Has the
issue been studied seriously? If not, why not? This report is food for
thought. Many will clearly see the implications for their own
respective sectors. More important, they will think outside the box
and see the implications for the industries on which Travel & Tourism
depends.
As long as people think and debate, the process of democratic
discussion will be in full swing. And my purpose will be served. --
Imtiaz Muqbil.
THE FACTS OF GLOBAL LIFE
-- The fifth of the world's people living in the highest income
countries has 86% of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 82% of world
export markets, 68% of foreign direct investments and 74% of world
telephone lines: the bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, has about
one per cent in each sector.
-- The percentage share of the market by the top 10 corporations in
each sector in 1998 was: telecommunications, 86%; pesticides, 85%;
computers, almost 70%; veterinary medicine, 60%; pharmaceuticals, 35%;
commercial seed, 32%.
-- Industrialised countries hold 97% of all patents world-wide.
-- Production losses from the East Asian crisis and its global
repercussions are estimated at nearly $2 trillion over the three years
from 1998 to 2000.
-- The 200 richest people in the world more than doubled their net
worth in the four years to 1998, to $1 trillion.
-- Organised crime syndicates are estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a
year.
-- The value of the illegal drug trade was estimated at $400 billion
in 1995, about eight per cent of world trade, more than the shares of
iron and steel or of motor vehicles, and roughly the same as textiles
and gas and oil.
-- The income gap between the richest fifth of the world's people and
the poorest fifth, measured by average national income per head,
increased from 30 to one in 1960 to 74 to one in 1997.
-- More than US$1.5 trillion a day is exchanged in the world's
currency markets.
-- Foreign direct investment (FDI) reached $400 billion in 1997, but
58% of it went to industrialised countries, and just five per cent to
the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Of: the FDI
that went to developing and transition countries in the 1990s, more
than 80 per centre went to just 20 countries, mainly to China.
-- English is used in almost 80% of websites although fewer than one
in 10 people world- wide speak the language.
-- The number of Internet hosts -- computers with a direct connection
to the Internet -- rose from under 100,00 in 1988 to over 36 million
in 1998.
-- Tanzania's debt service payments are nine times what it spends on
primary health care and four times what it spends on primary
education.
-- The cost of a three-minute phone call from New York to London fell
from $245 in 1930 (in 1990 dollars) to 35 cents in 1998.
REDUCING THE GAP BETWEEN THE KNOWS AND THE
KNOW-NOTS
In the race to lay claim to knowledge, "the global gap between haves
and have-nots, between knows and know-nots, is widening." Writing
computer programmes and revealing genetic codes have replaced the
search for gold, the conquest of land and the command of machinery as
the path to economic power, says the HDR 1999.
The Internet, the world-wide computer link-up, is "the fastest-growing
tool of communication ever," with the number of users expected to grow
from 150 million today to more than 700 million in 2001.
Information and communications technology are tremendous tools for
development and can open a fast track to knowledge-based growth, a
track followed by India's software programming, Ireland's computing
services and the Caribbean's data processing.
But many of those who most need access cannot obtain it. An invisible
barrier has emerged that, "true to its name, is like a world wide web,
embracing the connected and silently, almost imperceptibly, excluding
the rest."
The United States has more computers than the rest of the world
combined. South Asia, with 23% of the world's people, has less than
one per cent of the world's Internet users.
Everywhere, Internet access divides educated from illiterate (60% of
users in China have a university degree), men from women (in Brazil,
75% of users are men), rich from poor (a computer costs the average
Bangladeshi more than eight years' income, compared with one month's
wage for the average American), young from old (the average British
user is under 30) and urban from rural.
"The typical Internet user world-wide is male, under 35 years old,
with a university education and high income, urban based and English
speaking -- a member of a very elite majority," says the Report.
The literally well connected have an overpowering advantage over the
unconnected poor, whose voices and concerns are being left out of the
global conversation.
Market forces alone will not rectify the imbalance, the Report warns.
Governance of the Internet should be widened to bring in the needs and
concerns of developing countries. To ensure that the global
communications revolution is truly global, funding is required. The
Report suggests a "bit tax" on data sent through the Internet. A tax
of one US cent on every 100 lengthy e-mail [electronic messages] would
generate well over $70 billion a year.
A second race to lay claim to knowledge, particularly in
biotechnology, has been sparked by the privatisation of research and
development, market liberalisation and the tightening of intellectual
property rights. As with global communications, "the risk is that poor
people's and poor countries' interests are being left on the
sidelines."
"In defining research agenda, money talks louder than need -- cosmetic
drugs and slow- ripening tomatoes come higher on the list than a
vaccine against malaria or drought-resistant crops for marginal
lands," says the Report. "Tighter control of innovation in the hands
of multinational corporations ignores the needs of millions. From new
drugs to better seeds for food crops, the best of new technologies are
designed and priced for those who can pay. For poor people, the
technological progress remains far out of reach."
Huge corporations are controlling ever-growing shares of the global
market. The Report calls for a shift of research towards the needs of
the world, rather than just of those who pay. It recommends the
establishment of a group of independent scientists to identify
technological problems that, if solved, would contribute to human
development, particularly of the world's poorest people,
and to human security.
Every five years the group would offer money and recognition to
researchers in areas such as robust new crops, malaria and HIV
vaccines, solar-powered or wind-up computers, and renewable energy
sources. Funding could be provided by a levy on patents or from a
reallocation of research subsidies, grants and tax breaks currently
given to industry.
The Report calls for a review of the intellectual property rights
agreement under the World Trade Organisation -- first raised in world
trade talks in 1986 to crack down on counterfeit goods, but now
involved in the ownership of life itself.
Although trade and intellectual property laws, such as patent
legislation, are increasingly determining the path of nations, the
intellectual property rights agreement was negotiated with little
input from many of the developing countries, which are now feeling its
impact. In addition, it was negotiated before most governments and
people understood the social and economic implications of patents on
life.
Patent laws pay little attention to the knowledge of indigenous
people, and on what can be owned: "The result: a silent theft of
centuries of knowledge from developing to developed countries."
Continued
next page - Part II
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