The scenario becomes more complex when cultural factors influence the actions taken to mitigate outbreaks in animals, such as with the farmed minks leading to plans cull and a de factor closure of mink industry in some countries in Europe. Plans to cull of millions of animals often lead to conflicts with animal welfare activists. Their demands to phase-out a cruel industry resonates with a food culture that is less dependent on eating and enjoying animal flesh.
Globalization, corporate interests, travel / transport across vast geographic space
The process of globalization is facilitated, encouraged and promoted by corporate interests that trade across borders in order to maximize profits and exploit natural resources from different regions of the globe. One study linking commodities and their supply chains found that 30% of extinction threats were due to international trade [
52].
The current wave of globalization is driven by factors such as economic and financial, political, technological and social factors such as culture, mass media, and values of consumerism [
53].
Economic and financial factors that promote globalization are lower trade and investment barriers by nations and expansion of the financial sector. Political factors relate to government policies that facilitate trade across borders (e.g. promotion of foreign direct investment). Technology has accelerated globalization by developing low-cost, widespread, and rapid communication technologies (e.g. the internet) and enabling rapid distribution of products (e.g. multinational food chains through container shipments). Though beneficial from some perspectives, they could leave large ecological footprints. For example, food supply chains that span across continents could emit substantial pollution, require burning of fossil fuels and lead to unsustainable consumption that are unsustainable. These require action through novel concepts such as sustainable growth, circular economies and recycling of waste. Social factors such as mass media have brought a degree of cultural dominance and convergence, and promotion of travels across borders and the spread of values such as consumerism.
The economic, financial and political factors that drive globalization are biased towards corporate interests and are influenced by the structures, processes and mechanisms of global governance which reinforce asymmetries in power between the affluent and poorer nations [
54].
These are rooted in historical power structures and ideologies, for example histories of British colonization that have led to the formation of a Commonwealth of Nations and the Second World War that led to a UN Security Council that has a self-appointed group with powers to veto over any resolutions. These power structures may have fueled the widening of inequities or at the least, failed to counter the formation of elites or super-rich at a global level. For example, they were impotent and passive observers while the richest 22 individuals accumulated wealth more than the combined wealth of all women in Africa! [
55].
The Lancet’s Commission on Global Governance for Health identified five issues perpetuating this situation: insufficient representation of actors such as civil society in decision-making processes; weak accountability mechanisms; procedures that sustain existing disparities in power and maldistribution of health; inadequate means to protect health in non-health policy-making arenas; absence of institutions to protect and promote health [
54].
They proposed a way forward though a policy forum to frame and debate policies that impact on health and health equity, establishing health equity impact assessments within international organizations, strengthening human rights instruments for health, committing to global solidarity beyond traditional development assistance, and acknowledging the need for global cross-sectoral action and justice to address health inequity. However, 6 years after the Commission’s call for action, the failures global governance was revealed in the maldistribution of COVID vaccines [
56].
The very nations that preached social justice and fair play in international forums (e.g. Canada and members of the European Union) did the exact opposite by monopolizing the markets, purchasing vast stocks, and hoarding vaccines well above their immediate needs. Such violations of trade rules and discrimination that deprived many nations of a steady basic supply, were crouched behind terms such as ‘vaccine nationalism’. A recent Lancet editorial lamented of a “……startling lack of solidarity between countries”….. and complained that “Rich nations have given money to COVAX and paid lip service to the idea of vaccines for all while scrambling to buy up all the doses they can” Perhaps these actions should be labeled as a scandalous violation of our basic values at a time of a pandemic. It eroded values of treating all humans in the planet as equal and having a right to life, irrespective of the international borders that confine them to nation-states.
There are concerns whether it is ever possible to reform such ingrained and historically determined politico-economic structures that are a form of neo-liberal capitalism. It is difficult to expect them to spontaneously evolve to become fairer and more equitable.
Hopefully, a transformative approach such as the Sustainable Development Goals would achieve these noble objectives through popular consensus, democratic actions and non-violent means [
57,
58]. However, the already fragile initiative appears to have been compromised since the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated economies, destroyed livelihoods, and continues to crush communities [
59]. As a result, there are calls for recalibrating the targets e.g. school closured during the pandemic have reversed achievements in getting more children to primary schools. There is a more radical proposal to overhaul SDGs by decoupling goals from economic growth. This is because economic growth has failed to yield adequate benefits to a majority while absorbing large volumes of subsidies to industries that compromise many SDGs. An example is that “Each year, citizens are paying the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Japan to prop up an industry (
i.e. the fossil fuel industry) that is among the principal causes of climate change and unsustainable development. This money should be spent on achieving the goals, not undermining them” [
59].