This global issue is a cause celebre, if only because protest movements have chosen to concentrate on it so much more than on the other issues. It comprises one urgent ones, global investment and competition rules. Some people like to jumble them all up, but that just adds to the confusion.

During he 1990s, natural disasters-floods, groughts, earthquakes, storms, strong winds, torrential rais, and muudslides-hit the world 500-800 times a year and cost more than $600 billion, more than in the previous four decades combined. Losses in the 1990s were three times those in the 1908s and fifteen times those of the 1950s. 

The world suddenly faces an appalling health crisis. Once more, it originates largely in poverty and destitution-in developing world. AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea, and measles now kill 13 million people a year, and the numbers keep going up. They threaten to reverse decades of development in many developing countries.