Globalisation and Global Development: Good Resources

Some useful links to good teaching resources for Globalisation and Global Development.

Good resources providing an overview of global trends and global inequalities:

Firstly, this 2016 video imagines the world as 100 people, and so illustrates what percentage of people live on less than $2 a day and so on (once you get through the ‘basic’ stuff on ethnicity/ religion etc…

A few stand-out facts are:

• 1% of the population own 50% of the world’s wealth
• 15% don’t have access to clean water
• less than 50% have access to the internet

Secondly, Worldometers provides real time world statistics on population, the environment, food, health and media and society.

A few stand-out facts are…..

• The total number of malnourished people in the world is decreasing!
• The total number of people with no access to clean drinking water is also decreasing!
• HOWEVER, we’re losing approximately 20 HA a minute to desertification and 10 HA a minute to deforestation, which could undermine both of the above in the future.

Good resources for researching individual countries

• The United Nation’s Country Profiles are probably the most accessible place to start – each country’s page gives you basic development indicators which you can then click on to expand.
• The World Bank’s Open Data is also useful – follow the link and you can either search or browse by country.
• The CIA World Fact Book is a useful source for more qualitative information on a country by country by country basis, organised into various categories such as geography, population, economics, politics and so on…

Good Resources for tracking ‘Indicators of Development’

• The United Nations Human Development Report – Data – click on the links to the left to access tables which rank countries according to the basic Human Development Index, the Gender Equality Index and more.
• World Health Organisation – very useful for tracking trends in health and development.

Good Resources for other aspects of global development

• PISA homepage – monitors educational achievement in over 40, mainly developed, countries.
• PISA 2015 Results – scroll down to find the ‘league tables’ which rank all participating countries in order.
• Stockholm Peace Institute – tracks trends in global military expenditure and other issues related to peacefulness.
• Perceived Corruption Index – Transparency International
• The World Happiness Report – An attempt to measure and track trends in feelings of happiness and well-being.

More to follow shortly!