Assignment 3a Threats to the Global EnvironmentCongratula.docx

Assignment 3a: Threats to the Global Environment
Congratulations! The United Nations has hired you as a
consultant on global issues.
Many of the UN members are not satisfied with the progress of
the Millennium Development Goals.
They feel that the goals focus on the wrong issues. There is a
disconnect between what issues the
UN developed countries believe are priorities and what many
developing countries feel the
prioritized issues should be. For example, the country of
Burundi has asked that one of the goals
be focused on food security. Austria, however, is adamant that
the major current global issue is to
mediate ceasefires in countries in the midst of a civil war.
You have been asked to provide an unbiased perspective and
identify the four issues you feel most
impact the global environment. You will present your findings
at the next UN General Assembly.
Your goal is to provide a history of each issue, the number of
countries affected, and the effects of
this threat to the world population.
Of the eight major threats listed below, choose the four that you
consider the most critical.
Energy sources Civil war
Globalization Poor health of entire populations

Lack of educational opportunities Cultural taboos
Inappropriate uses of technology Climate change
For your presentation to the United Nations:
1. Develop a minimum of four slides per issue for a minimum
total of 16 slides.
2. Provide at least a paragraph on each slide (in the notes
section) to explain the reason this
information is relevant to the UN’s assessment.
a. To review how to do any of the required assignment
deliverables in PowerPoint,
please refer to your Lynda.com account or reach out to your
instructor ahead of time.
3. For each issue, create a graph or chart to analyze the data you
have collected.
4. Cite at least five credible sources excluding Wikipedia,
dictionaries, and encyclopedias.
This course requires use of Strayer Writing Standards (SWS).
The format is different compared to
other Strayer University courses. Please take a moment to
review the SWS documentation for
details. (Note: You’ll be prompted to enter your Blackboard
login credentials to view these
standards.)
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:
Examine the factors that account for why the growth in the

world’s population can
negatively affect global society.
3/2/19, 10)59 AM
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Assignment 2: Poverty and Food Security
The members of the United Nations appreciated the content you
provided on population
growth. Now they are asking you to expand the whitepaper to
include global food security
as it relates to population growth and poverty. Read the Case
Study and provide an
assessment based on the questions below.
(For a brief list of resources for this assignment, please see the
end of the course guide.)
Overview
We can view global food security as the effort to build food
systems that can feed everyone,
everywhere, and every day by improving food quality and
promoting nutritional agriculture.
[1] That said, there are certain practices that can advance this
project:
1. Identifying the underlying causes of hunger and malnutrition
2. Investing in country-specific recovery plans
3. Strengthening strategic coordination with institutions like the
UN and the World Bank
4. Developed countries making sustained financial commitments

to the success of the
project
We must bear in mind that more than three billion people,
nearly one-half of the global
population, subsist on as little as $2.50 a day and that nearly 1.5
billion are living in extreme
poverty on less than $1.25 a day. According to the World Health
Organization, the United
Nations, and other relief agencies, about 20,000 people (mostly
children) starve to death in
the world every day, for a total of about seven million people a
year.
In addition, about 750 million (twice the population of the
United States) do not have access
to clean drinking water, meaning that some one million people
die every year from diarrhea
caused by water-borne diseases.
The population of Earth is expected to grow from 7 billion in
2010 to 8 billion in 2025, 9
billion in 2040, and 11 billion by the end of the 21st century.[2]
If the demand for food is
predicted to grow by 50% by 2030 and 70% by 2050, the real
problem is not necessarily
growing that much food. Rather, it is making that amount
available to people.
Moreover, foodborne illnesses are prevalent, with nearly 600
million reported cases of
foodborne diseases each year. These affect mainly children, but
also negatively impact the
livelihood of farmers, vendors, trade associations and,
ultimately, the Gross Domestic

Product (national income) of a country. These issues can impose
tremendous human,
economic, social, and fiscal costs on countries Addressing them
allows governments to
devote more resources to making desperately needed
improvements in infrastructure that
raise the quality of life for everyone.
It is not enough to have adequate supplies of food available.
Policies that focus exclusively
on food production can exacerbate the problem, particularly if,
to satisfy the need for
quantity, the quality of the food is left wanting.
Reasons for Food Insecurity
Certainly, poverty and the systemic internal conditions creating
it inside a country are the
unmistakable driving factors behind keeping adequate food
resources from reaching people.
It is only one factor of several, however. Others include the
following:
Inadequate Food Distribution: The reality is that there is more
than enough food in the
world to feed its people. The primary cause of famines is not
poor weather conditions as
much as it is getting the needed amount of food to the people
who need it most. Quite often
causes result from political instability and poor infrastructure,
often involving a country’s
port facilities, transportation availability and quality of road
networks. Paradoxically,
although the population is going to increase in the coming
decades, the amount of food
potentially available will increase along with it. This is due
mostly to advances in bio

agricultural engineering and increased seed immunity to molds.
Writing in the late 18th century, Thomas Malthus warned that
global population would
exceed the capacity of Earth to grow food, in that while
population would grow
exponentially, food production would grow only arithmetically.
Although this theory has
been proven invalid, the unfortunate result of its propagation
has been for some
governments to rationalize political choices that avoid helping
the poverty-ridden and
starving.
Political-Agricultural Practices: The widespread use of
microbiological, chemical, and
other forms of pesticides in food continues to be a serious issue
throughout the global food
chain. Widespread use of fertilizers also causes illness in
millions of people every year, not
only from the food itself, but from run-off into streams and
rivers, contaminating entire
water supplies. The human, social, and economic costs of such
practices impede
improvements being made not only in the raising of crops, but
in their distribution. Added
to this, the rising demand in developed countries for biofuels,
currently refined mostly from
corn and soy beans, reduces the amount of arable land devoted
to producing food.
The failure of many farmers in the developing world to rotate
their crops harms the
replenishing of nutrients necessary to continue growing crops.
In addition, the repeated use
of agricultural land without allowing it to lie fallow in order to

replenish needed soil
nutrients thereby increasing fertility and maximizing crop yield
results in reduced
agricultural output and insufficient crop yields.
Economic Issues: The fact is, government policies that focus on
growing cash crops, for
example, are designed solely to export them to earn foreign
exchange. This may be fine for
the government in its efforts to earn money, but the result is
that farmers end up growing for
foreign markets and not domestic ones. This leads to shortages
of necessary staples.
Consequently, the poorest of the population are frozen out of
the local markets because they
cannot afford the food that remains to be sold.[3]
Civil Strife: Civil war can interrupt the flow of food from
gathering depots, such as ports,
to distribution centers where it can be handed out to people.
During the 1990s, Somalia was
particularly hard hit by their civil war, as clans fought for
control of the main port at
Mogadishu. This affected the flow of food to the rest of the
population. In this case, as with
many civil wars, whoever controls the supply of food controls
the country. In failed and
failing states like Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Haiti, South Sudan, Yemen,
and Libya, food very often is another weapon used by one
segment of the population against
another.
II. Case Assessment
The issue is not the lack of food in the world, but the access to

food. Simply put, food is not
getting to where it needs to be in time. In developing countries,
the food shortage is due to
governmental control over food. These governments maintain
their control and preference
for certain groups by limiting access of nutritious food to
certain other groups. The result is
the weaponizing of food.
In this second part of your whitepaper, research the impact of
poverty on global food
security and the technology available potentially to remedy this
situation. Write a minimum
of four pages assessing the impact, citing at least five credible
sources in your research.
Refer specifically to the role these issues have had in the
developing country of your choice.
In this assessment, please include:
A cover page with your name, title of the course, date, and the
name of your instructor
A one-half page introduction
A middle section that is numbered and divided into three one-
page sections. Each of
these sections should answer one of the following questions:
1. What is food insecurity and what role does population growth
play in it?
2. What factors specifically interrupt the flow of food from the
source to the people in
the developing country you selected?
3. What forms of technology can be used to reduce hunger and
improve food security?
Explain how these technical solutions can do that.

A one-half page conclusion
Cite at least five credible sources excluding Wikipedia,
dictionaries, and encyclopedias
for your assessment.
For a brief list of resources for this assignment, please see the
end of the course guide.
This course requires use of new Strayer Writing Standards
(SWS). The format is different
than other Strayer University courses. Please take a moment to
review the SWS
documentation for details. (Note: You will be prompted to enter
your Blackboard login
credentials to view these standards.)
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:
Propose a plan to address the issue of global food security in
underdeveloped
countries that considers the impact of prior solutions.
[1] For a good overview of food security in general, see Peter
Timmer, Food Security and
Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger Is So Hard, Foreign Affairs,
May/June 2015, Reviewed by
Richard N. Cooper.
[2]World Population Prospects, United Nations Population
Division, 2017.
[3] Will Martin, Food Security and Poverty: A Precarious
Balance,The World Bank, (Blog,
Lets Talk Development), November 5, 2010.
3/2/19, 10)54 AM
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