The Global Context

Some of the key issues that condition the global context within which DEVNET INTERNATIONAL operates:

 

• The international financial system and the speculators pulling its strings elude control and cast a long dark shadow on development prospects.

 

• Developing countries will have to adapt to growing urban populations; by 2050, 70 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas and megacities, and further growth will create new problems.

 

• The growing world population has been supported in part by the degradation of the natural environment, calling for societal behavioural change at unprecedented rates to curtail further degradation and restore life support systems in range, accessibility and velocity of communications.

 

• Conflict and poverty are increasingly forcing people to migrate in search of a safer and better life in countries where the capacity for acceptance and integration is either limited or is being deliberately restricted by conservative administrations.

 

• The risks of natural and man-made disaster are increasing under the pressure of increased concentrations of high density urban areas, the ravaging of natural eco-systems and climate change phenomena.

 

• Increasingly intensive agricultural production systems, coupled with freer movement of people, animals and goods, are likely to increase the possibility of the emergence of transboundary diseases posing a threat to human health and economic livelihoods.