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This book grew out of the Global Issues
seminars and is itself a testament to that two-way dialogue:
the suggestion to compile the speakers' lecture notes
into a book came from the students themselves. Both the
seminars and this book reflect the Bank's conviction
that the seemingly intractable problems of our globalizing
world-from entrenched poverty, to climate change, to new
infectious diseases such as AIDS and avian flu-can be
solved, but only with the informed participation of a global
citizenry, cooperating toward global solutions through
global institutions that they themselves own. In
today's world, the unchecked spread of disease. We are
all called, as responsible global citizens, to inform
ourselves about these issues, to then inform others, and
finally to get involved in seeking solutions. One lesson
that emerges from the book is that the global issues are
very often interconnected, even if they may not seem so at
first. The book also reminds us that many global issues
derive from the undersupply of global public goods. The
objective of this paper is to promote an understanding of
key global issues and why they matter, to analyze the forces
shaping public and private actions to address these issues,
and to highlight the international actions that are being
taken to address the global issues.
