The Unfinished Global Revolution: the Pursuit of a New International Politics - Mark Malloch-Brown

Abstract

Several themes run throughout this book, in which Mark Malloch-Brown melds his personal experience as a British civil servant with his career as an international civil servant, working at various times at the World Bank, as the head of the United Nations Development Program, and UN Secretary-General’s Kofi Annan’s assistant. The central theme of the book revolves around the need for an effective system of global governance to cope with the major challenges which the international community faces in the age of globalization in the 21st century. Some of the problems involve the darker side of globalization, such as terrorism which was symbolized by the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and witnessed by Malloch-Brown while he was working in New York City at the UN Headquarters. Other critical problems are the growth in the world’s population, which will result in overcrowded cities especially in the developing world; limits to the amount of natural resources (especially energy); continuing degradation of the environment (pollution of the environment as a result of economic growth); and the growth in trade which will benefit some of the developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, more than the developed countries, although extreme economic inequality still exist in countries like India that are undergoing significant economic growth.