Mentor’s Comment:

It is no doubt that the globalization has made the life easy. The world has become better place to live in terms of economic development, peace, opportunity, human rights etc. however, it has also given a number of ethical concerns like climate change due to increased industrialization and other activities, development and proliferation of weapons, Intellectual Property Rights etc. to talk some.

Here we need to elaborate the ethical concerns related to each of the aspects raising question on various aspects of efforts taken to resolve the issues as examples.

Model Answer:

As  interaction,  competition  and  collaboration  among  the  nations  are  continuously  increasing  we  find that  it  has  raised  many  ethical  issues  in  the  global  arena.  It  is  observed  that  though  the  world  is becoming  a  better  place  to  live  in  terms  of  economic  prosperity,  but  in  terms  of  equality,  peace, environment and human rights, there have been number of issues involving some ethical concerns also. Some of them being:

Climate Change: Countries are divided on the issue of common but differentiated responsibility and on technology transfer and funding arrangements. It is the responsibility of both the big and  the smaller powers to ensure that we leave behind a world that is safe for future generations to live in.

Disarmament: World  today  has  become  a  treasury of  all  the  kinds  of  mass  weapons  of  destruction. Ironically the cause of disarmament at the international stage is being promoted by those states, which have massive reserves of nuclear armaments, missiles and nuclear powered submarines. Also, countries like  the  USA  impose  economic  and  other  sanctions  on  countries  like  Iran  to  prevent  them  from developing  nuclear  weapons.  There  are  unanswered  questions  like  how  it  is  ethical  for  a  country  to impose sanctions on the others without discarding their own weapons of mass destruction.

IPRs: The developed countries are depriving the poor countries from accessing the new technologies by the restrictive clauses of IPRs. Ironically, the same restrictive provisions are also applied on things like the life saving drugs. In this debate, it is essential to determine whether it is justifiable for a country to defend its IPRs on the ground of commercial benefits, or they should ethically share the technology for the greater cause of the humanity.

Trade Negotiations: The Doha Round of world Trade Organization is pending to reach a consensus. In this context, the basic question involved is whether the developing countries are ethically and morally correct when they demand higher concession in international trade.

Outer space

Humanitarian interventions

Management of Common goods

In such issues it has been observed that countries  have gone on to give more importance to national issues  than  to  ethical  responsibility  as  per  humanitarian  values.  This,  in  the  long  term,  would be detrimental  not  only  for  the  other  counties  but  for  the  country  in  question  also.  It is,  therefore, important to consider the ethical grounds and take a holistic approach to all issues in order to ensure equitable development.