ABSTRACT
The global systems of economic production and distribution that determine the allocation of the earth’s resources have created and maintain a world of gross disparities. The 85 percent of the world’s population living in the Other World of the Global South possess only 20 percent of the planet’s wealth, while 80 percent goes to the 15 percent living in the industrialized Global North; these disparities in wealth translate into related inequities in food, health, shelter, and life expectancy.2 And current world trends are toward rapidly increasing inequality: As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon observes above, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 is widening the separation between the very rich and most of the world’s peoples, while climate change driven by global warming is unleashing devastating environmental transformations being felt immediately and most severely in the Other World.
