Right Livelihood

Social enterprise

Legal and Financial Issues

Shifting the global economy towards sustainability
How the Global Economy Works Today	Why the Global Economy Behaves As It Does	Turning the Global Economy Towards Sustainability

Social and Health Impacts

In addition to economic and ecological crises, we are seeing serious signs of social dislocation worldwide. This is happening on numerous different levels.

First, there is the large-scale displacement of people from the land they have inhabited and worked on for centuries. Much of the displacement is the result of land being integrated into industrial production systems. This applies to land directly transferred from subsistence to export-based agriculture, to the building of dams, roads and other elements of industrial production and distribution systems, and to tourist and other facilities built on behalf of the global consumer class.

Example
Somewhere between 80 and 110 million peasants are estimated to have migrated to the cities over the last decade – perhaps the largest displacement of population ever to have taken place.

Societies around the world have also come under considerable strain as a result of dramatically increasing disparities in wealth resulting from the concentration of economic power into ever fewer hands.

Example
The United Nations Development Programme estimates that the income gap between the top and bottom 20% of world population is now 150:1, double that of 30 years ago. A similar trend is evident within countries, significantly undermining social solidarity and cohesion.

Industrial systems based on mass production and distribution also have significant impacts in terms of human health.

Example

The World Health Organisation and the UN Environment Programme estimate that each year, 3 million agricultural workers in the global South experience severe poisoning from pesticides, about 18,000 of whom die. According to one study, as many as 25 million workers in economically poor countries may suffer mild pesticide poisoning yearly.
In the US, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that between 4,000 and 20,000 cases of cancer are caused per year by pesticide residues in food in legally permissible doses.
Industrial production systems also carry significant health risks as a result of industrial accidents. The most serious of these, the Bhopal disaster in India, occurred when a pesticide plant released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas, an intermediate chemical in the production of pesticides. The disaster immediately killed nearly 3,000 people and ultimately caused at least 15,000 deaths.

World wealth levels 2000
Click on the image to enlarge

Distribution of world GDP, 1989, UNDP - Click on the image to enlarge

Gap between the rich and the poor
Click on the image to enlarge

Population and wealth shares by region - Click on the image to enlarge