Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the international level the G8 club of the most powerful leaders of the most powerful
countries in the world does deliver on most of its governance functions, but its
members' compliance with its commitments varies by year, by country, and by issue.
and while the new physical challenges have yet to become a security challenge of
the dimensions they were in 1918 or in ancient athens, the real connections and
costs are becoming clear.
this analysis of system responsiveness produces three propositions to guide
further empirical and ultimately policy work. The first hypothesises that the more
pathogenic and contagious the disease, the greater the supply side and the demand
side shocks and costs will be. the second suggests that large open countries are
likely to be hit with quarantines, and thus be induced to cope with them in innovative
ways. The third proposes that the openness of the political regime and the size of the
state determine the effectiveness of the governance response.
Systemic Transformation
In the face of such large and widespread costs there is considerable
prima facie
evidence that much more innovation is urgently needed than that which has arisen to
date. Indeed, to achieve it, the global community may need to replace the westphalian
principles and practices it has long relied on for global health governance with some
as yet only dimly identifiable post-Westphalian and even anti-Westphalian forms
(ruggie 1993).
Neo-vulnerability
The first sign of this post-Westphalian transformation is the rise of the new vulnerability
to replace relative capability as the driver of how an anarchic, competitive, state-
centric system works. This new vulnerability flows from non-state sources, through
uncontrolled processes that flow into other countries to assault their human security,
no matter how great the capability of the assaulted country to provide a defence.
In the ive cases explored in this topic there are many signs of the power of this new
vulnerability and of the transformation from a world of relative national capability
to one of equalised global vulnerability. In the face of the SarS coronavirus that
invisibly and quickly spread from asia into north america, the sealed hospitals of
a highly capable canada compounded the harm to innocent civilians in toronto,
whereas the open-area hospitals of a much less capable vietnam did not. with the
world economy becoming more dependent on china's industry in a globalised
production system, an avian influenza pandemic that starts there or elsewhere in Asia
could quickly cripple even the most powerful countries in the world, with those that
are most open being hit the most. Indeed, some research shows that the most capable
countries are also the most vulnerable to an avian influenza pandemic, with the
United States leading the organisation for economic co-operation and Development
(oecD) and china, Hong Kong, and Singapore coming first in asia (newcomb
