Addressing the Climate Change, Article Review Example

Climate Change: Challenging Business, Transforming Politic

From the article Climate Change: Challenging Business, Transforming Politics, (Chukwumerije, Wittneben, & Bowen, 2011) I learned the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships in addressing climate change and sustainable development in developing countries.  These partnerships are a collaboration between Government, business and community representatives. Although I recognized the importance of business concerns as it relates to climate change and sustainable development, I viewed the problem as one that is characteristic of industrialized nations. I had not fully considered where developing and emerging nations fit in terms of efforts to address the causes of climate change and to develop new technology.

In this article, the authors state, “One of the problems in this regard is that sustainable development is at leastas difficult an issue as climate change, so adding development concerns to the climate equation appears to make matters more complex” (p. 178).  This quote surprised me as it seems that climate change is something over which we have little control.  Climate seems to be part of nature and the idea that we can control nature is hard to accept.  Yet creating sustainable development does seem to be under our control.  It takes innovation, creativity, and effort, but it is something towards which we can strive towards.  Equating sustainable development with control over climate change in terms of difficulty made me think about these two concepts differently.

After reading the article I wondered about the impact of globalization on how developing countries are viewed.  I am curious to learn if industrialize nations are willing to help developing countries learn new ways to create sustainable development.  I do not know if industrialized nations send help to those in developing countries to help them learn the latest methods for manufacturing, creating textiles, food production and other essential and non-essential products. I also wonder if the people in different developing nations have different values related to the costs and benefits of technology.  Finally, I am curious as to how helping nations advance in their understanding of climate change and technological level might alter long established cultures and ways of life.

References

Chukwumerije O., Bettina Wittneben, B. and Frances Bowen, F. (2011). Climate Change: Challenging Business, Transforming Politics. Business Society, 51: 7.