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Cultural Taboos and Globalization as Less Critical Threats to Global Environment

Global Threats of Globalization and Cultural Taboos

This paper discusses the reasons why globalization and cultural taboos are less critical to the global environment relative to the global environmental threats of climate change, poor health of entire population, inappropriate use of technology, and absence of educational opportunities. McNamara and Wood (2019) define cultural taboos as social customs or institutions that restrict or prohibit a given practice or forbid association with a given thing, place, or person. Cultural taboos govern the way individual interact with the world surrounding them by forbidding the employment or use of particular items considered sacred (Alexander et al., 2017). On the other hand, globalization refers to the increasing interdependence of the globe’s economies, populations, and cultures, resulting from cross-border trade in services and goods, and flows of investments, information, and people (Petricevic & Teece, 2019). These two less critical threats are discussed in the subsequent headings.

Threat 1: Cultural Taboos

Cultural taboos are less critical to the global environment relative to climate change, inappropriate employment of technology, absence of educational opportunities, and poor health of entire population, as it does not make populations vulnerable to diseases and deaths, does not pose a threat to the existence of life on earth, and does not threaten critical infrastructure and lives.

Cultural taboos do not make global populations vulnerable to illnesses or infections and mass deaths and decreased productivity, which is often associated with poor health of populations as established by Barreto (2017). Cultural taboos do not threaten the existence of life on earth as in the case of climate change. Butler (2018) highlights adverse impacts of climate change including massive decrease in water supplies, enormous wildfires, increase drought, heat, and outbreaks of insects, poor agricultural yields, and negative health effects in cities. Cultural taboos lack the ability to impact the global environment to this magnitude. Cultural taboos are less critical as they do not threaten critical infrastructure and mass loss of lives, as in the case of inappropriate use of technology. Inappropriate employment of technology as evident in cybercrime and nuclear weapons can result in devastating impacts on global populations in terms of massive deaths and damage to critical information systems and infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, water systems among others (Voulvoulis & Burgman, 2019). Cultural taboos lack the capacity to cause such magnitude of damages. 

Threat 2: Globalization

Globalization is less critical relative to inappropriate employment of technology, climate change, poor health of entire population, and absence of educational opportunities as it does not make populations susceptible to diseases, infections and deaths, does not threaten life’s existence of on the planet, does not threaten the global critical infrastructure and lives of populations.

Globalization does not make global populations susceptible to infections and diseases and mass deaths to the level presented by poor health of entire populations. Contrary to globalization poor health of populations makes them vulnerable to communicable diseases and pandemics, which in turn can lead to massive loss of lives, as argued by Barreto (2017). Globalization does not threaten the existence of life on the planet as evidenced by climate change. According to Butler (2018), climate change poses enormous threat to the global environment including loss of aquatic life, drying of water sources, decline in agricultural production, erosion and flooding in coastal regions, and adverse health impacts within cities. Globalization is less critical as it does not present a threat to critical infrastructure or mass loss of lives, as posed by inappropriate use of technology. Whereas the impacts of globalization are limited to issues such as dumping, cultural erosion, and domination of local markets by foreign firms, inappropriate technology use is associated with devastating consequences such as damage to critical infrastructure including water and information systems, as well as massive deaths in situations associated with nuclear or biological weapons, as suggested by Voulvoulis and Burgman (2019). 

Conclusion

United Nations can employ mass education, awareness creation, and policy implementation in addressing the priority concerns associated with cultural taboos and globalization in an effective manner. Mass education and awareness can equip populations with adequate knowledge   and information on the dangers posed by cultural taboos to health and lives of individuals, which in turn can encourage them to abandon such practices. For instance, in communities that consider it a taboo for females not to be circumcised, emphasizing the dangers posed by female genital mutilation to the lives and health of the victims including excessive bleeding and possible HIV contamination can enable societies practicing these behaviors to abandon them (Williams-Breault, 2018). Moreover, awareness and education can make individuals who consider certain foods a taboo knowledgeable and informed of the benefits of such foods to their health or nutrition (McNamara & Wood, 2019). When it comes to globalization, Petricevic and Teece (2019) assert that the implementation of robust policy measures in countries can also play a vital role in addressing the issue of globalization by avoiding issues such as dumping and exploitation of economies of developing nations by the developed countries.

he growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.