Article : Why Global Change ?

Creative Arts Solution

Foundation

Article : Why Global Change ?

Author : Olusola David, Ayibiowu

Year : July, 2017

Published: Online by Creative Arts Solution Foundation

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Introduction

The term “global change” encompasses: population, climate, the economy, resource use, energy development, transport, communication, land use and land cover, urbanization, globalization, atmospheric circulation, ocean circulation, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the water cycle and other cycles, sea ice loss, sea-level rise, food webs, biological diversity, pollution, health, over fishing, and more.

The word change are unique as a catalyst by nature. It can come in many forms in our lives, just like a tidal wave, or creep along incrementally like a glacier or forcefully. It might come in the form of devastating tragedy, difficult choices, broken relationships, or even new opportunities.

The Greek word for change are allázo̱ meaning to alter, change, chop, make over. 

Sometimes changes used to happen slowly, now people deal with change daily. The Globalization and  technology have taken us to a new level of complexity, rate of change, connectivity as well as  mobility. These changes in work and life have a two-way effect, presenting risks and opportunities, advantages and disadvantages to everyone.

Its happen slowly in business in the last century. They were anticipated and introduced gradually across the civilized world. People had time to assimilate them, learn to work with them and make the best use of new technology.

Let’s take a look today’s world, as the rate of change of the social, technical, economic and political landscape accelerates, people are expected to deal with change every day. New technology explodes onto the scene almost daily.

Towards the end of the millennium, and certainly in the new millennium, workers became more mobile and enabled by modern technology, speed of change accelerated and markets globalized.

The world of work has now changed more than it has changed since the Industrial Revolution. Globalization and technology have changed everything we were familiar with, taking us to a new level of complexity, rate of change, connectivity and mobility.

Social connectivity and technological empowerment has changed our relationship to old-style corporate models. The free market and traditional capitalism have been seen to fail, and work has changed forever.

People now work in call centres rather than factories, they work in virtual teams , many jobs are outsourced and offshored, everything is online, many people work from home, job for life no longer exists, people expect to have several short careers, lifelong learning is expected, there is a vast amount of employee legislation, pensions are no longer rock-solid. Everyone is connected by technology, employees have ownership, work life balance is taken seriously, there is more equal parenting, social networking is a key part of many people’s lives, social communities are important, and email changes everything.

Against this backdrop people’s relationships with their employers have altered significantly from a generation ago, and greatly affects what is known as the psychological contract.

 
The psychological contract?
The term ‘psychological contracts’ or ’emotional contracts’, describe the process of agreeing with the other person what they should do and the expectations linked to the responsibility. Now People can only be held responsible for something to which they have agreed, and will be more committed to delivering a responsibility if they’ve actively agreed to it. They might expect to be involved in discussions about time-scale, resources, budget, purpose and method.

Some certain responsibilities are effectively agreed implicitly within people’s job descriptions or employment contracts. But the tasks that you choose to delegate will not be, in which case specific discussion should take place to establish a proper agreement or ‘contract’ between you and the other person.

The Workers are increasingly mobile, flexible and adaptable – they no longer continue working for the same employer for as long as the employer needs them. Even good workers can easily find alternative employment. Meaning that they are not limited to working in their local town, or region, or not even in the same country. Geographical location is irrelevant, for many workers, and will become more so. 

Years ago, trade unions were the vehicle for people-power. Connectivity via the internet and modern social networking enables awareness and mobilisation of groups of people on a level of sophistication and scale we are only beginning to understand.

Workers used to rely on employers for access to technology, now employers will progressively depend on employees for its deployment.

Employees depended on their employer to advance their learning and skills, and therefore their value in the employment market. Now employees are able to control their own learning and development, and a sense of self-sufficiency is developing.

The Managers historically focused on retaining customers. Now they will have to re-focus and concentrate just as much on retaining good staff, with the right skills.

New generation of workers has been conditioned not to expect a job for life. They expect and accept variety and change, where previous generations expected routine and security. They have access to substantial new technologies which will continue to evolve in favour of the individual, rather than the organization.

Leaders now need to lead differently to retain the best people, and to develop better relationships and reputation among staff, customers and opinion-formers...

Earth as a complex system

Earth behaves as a complex system. Complex systems can respond abruptly to changes within the system - these abrupts changes can be highly non-linear. There is strong evidence that the Earth system is prone to such abrupt changes.

The Earth system has always changed. But right now it has an additional pressure forcing change: human activites. This force is now global and dominant. The response of the Earth system to this pressure is an important area of science. 

The Great Acceleration

The industrial revolution led to a significant acceleration in human activity, but the real acceleration at a global level began in the 1950s. The period since then has become known as the "Great Acceleration". 

The Anthropocene

Some scientists suggest we have entered a new geological period dominated by human influence. But what is the case for the Anthropocene and what is the origin of the phrase? It was coined in the 1980s by Eugene F. Stoermer and popularized by Paul J. Crutzen in 2000.

Earth is a complex system.

In the last two decades we have rapidly increased knowledge of how the Earth system responds to change, including feedback mechanisms and boundaries.                                                                                                                                                         

Changes in the Earth system. The system consists of the land, oceans, atmosphere, polar regions, life, the planet’s natural cycles and deep Earth processes. These constituent parts influence one another. The Earth system now includes human society, so global change also refers to large-scale changes in society.

The global change in climate and human health.                                                                                          

IGBP Climate-Change Index. The Climate-change index provides an instant snapshot of how fast the climate is changing and in which direction. Find out more about the index and how it is calculated

Large-scale and global environmental hazards to human health include climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, changes in ecosystems due to loss of biodiversity, changes in hydrological systems and the supplies of freshwater, land degradation, urbanization, and stresses on food-proms. Protecting health from global environmental change requires management at many levels, from the social and economic drivers of environmental change, to the resulting hazards and exposures for human populations. WHO supports this linkage of environmental and health agendas,

For example by providing health expertise into the UN Conventions on Climate Change, Biological Diversity and Desertification, and by advising the health sector on the necessary responses to address the health risks posed by large-scale environmental change.

In 1980, a group of scientists led by Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin set up an international program called the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), to determine whether the climate was changing, whether climate could be predicted and whether humans were in some way responsible for the change. The programme was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science (ICSU). As time went on, there was a growing realisation that climate change was one part of a larger phenomenon, global change. In 1987, a team of researchers, led again by Bert Bolin, James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen, H. Oeschger and others, successfully argued for an international research programme to investigate global change. This programme, sponsored by ICSU, is the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). The programme has eight projects investigating different parts of the Earth system and links between them.

In the past, the main drivers of global change have been solar variation, plate tectonics, volcanism, proliferation and abatement of life, meteorite impact, resource depletion, changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun and changes in the tilt of Earth on its axis. There is overwhelming evidence that now the main driver of planetary-scale change, or global change, is the growing human population’s demand for energy, food, goods, services and information, and its disposal of its waste products. In the last 250 years, global change has caused climate change, widespread species extinctions, fish-stock collapse, desertification, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, pollution, and other large-scale shifts.

Today as we view the world around us, we are compelled to observe the manifold evidences of that universal fermentation which, in every continent of the globe and in every department of human life, be it religious, social, economic or political, is purging and reshaping humanity in anticipation of the Day when the wholeness of the human race will have been recognized and its unity established. 

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In summary

It’s obvious that many nations now have their own global change programmes and institutes, like the US Global Change Research Program and the UK’s Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST) programme. And since the Amsterdam conference another international programme focusing on biodiversity has been set up, DIVERSITAS. These programmes form the Earth System Science Partnership.

References:

WHO-www.who.int
Wikipedia
Management Skills Courses
www.keepinspiring.me