Globalization and Public Relations in Postcolonial Nations: Chal ...

Chapter 1

The Role Of
Public Relations
In Global Issues

We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed.

—United Nations Millennium Declaration, September 18, 2000

In the 1970s and 1980s many people believed globalization would lead to economic, social, and cultural enrichment across geopolitical divides. But optimism faded in the 1990s when instead of growing opportunities, increasing disparities appeared. World Bank (1999) data demonstrated that with the exception of China, there were 100 million more poor people in “underdeveloped” countries in 1999 than there had been a decade earlier. In 1999 some 1.6 million people in 100 countries made less money, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1980. In 70 of those countries, actual average incomes were lower than they had been in 1980; in 43 they were