*The Debatewise Blog
The Dutch role within Globalisation
Today it's Leon Simons's turn to talk about Globalisation. Leon has been a fantastic member of our Global Youth Panel and his perspective on the Dutch influence on, and benefits from, globalisation is well worth a read.
Our world famous windmills were able to drive a saw. This saw would make planks out of trees. From these planks we were able to build ships. And with these ships we were able to help globalising the globe.
Globalisation gave the excess to new commodities such as spices, food and labour in the shape of human and animal slaves. Being able to have power over animals, other people and even wind and trees, we were able to colonise land surfaces all over the globe. The VOC (United East-Indian Company) has been the worlds biggest trading company for a long time and was the first real multinational.
Through this global exploration/exploitation, all the land of the world came into contact with one another. Species of flora and fauna where introduced at areas where their kinds had not been seen for millions of years if ever. Some species where able to expend rapidly, others have become extinct.
These where strange times indeed. But still there where stranger times to come.
When the fossil energy sources were discovered, the Dutch trading spirit came in handy again. In the kingdom of the Netherlands, a country with only a few million people, stood the cradle of what is now the worlds biggest company: Royal Dutch Shell.
The seemingly endless flow of ancient energy out of the ground into the earth system, drove global development into an overdrive. Cities build from wood and laid bricks have turned into gigantic concrete metropolitans. Human population is now 6 times what it was only 200 years ago. These humans are able to communicate and learn from one another over long and short time scales while distances have relatively disappeared. This makes it for instance possible that someone in China works together with someone located in South-America to develope a way to turn mass into energy considering the mind work done by a scientist 100 year earlier in Europe.
We are is still working towards a more globalised world. This is having local and global, positive and negative effects on culture, biodiversity, resource availability, climate, economy, education, communication, agriculture and on almost everything else. Therefore it is important to understand what the effects are of our actions.
I find myself lucky to be born in a country which is mainly experiencing the the advantages of globalisation. Where I born in a third world countries, I most likely would find myself looking at globalisation in different way.
Leon Simons
Autodidact Climate Change