ABSTRACT
Even a brief glance at global politics shows all too clearly that there is no room for being complacent about how the world is governed. There is the problem of global warming; if the lack of progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions continues at today’s alarming pace, these emissions will have increased by 50-100 percent above 2000 levels by 2030. This is predicted to lead, among other things, to reduced agricultural productivity, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, scarcity of drinking water, and serious health problems (UNDP 2007: 27-30). There are severe distributive injustices. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) reports that global inequalities have doubled since 1970 (UNDP 2007: 3). One billion people in the world live on less than US$ 1 a day; 2.6 billion live on less than US$ 2 a day (UNDP 2007: 25). There are the casualties of civil wars – most of whom are civilians. Between 1983 and 2002, the civil war ravaging southern Sudan claimed 2 million lives (Bethany and Gleditsch 2005: 159) and the ongoing tragedy in Dharfur threatens to become as destructive if not even worse (United Nations 2008). The death toll of the 1994 Rwandan genocide was 800,000 (United Nations 1993: 3). Since the outbreak of civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 5.4 million people have died of directly and indirectly war-related causes (International Red Cross 2008). Interrelated with these figures, health statistics are at least equally shocking. According to United Nations AIDS (2007: 1), about 2 million people die of AIDS-related illnesses each year. Every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria; overall 1 million people die of malaria each year (World Health Organization 2006: 2). This list of global tragedies could be extended almost indefinitely.
