One of the challenges of a student of globalization is to grasp the trends in challenges various countries face from time to time and their approaches in addressing and tackling them. The last three decades - the 1990s, 2000s and the 2010s have had their challenges - while learning to live and endure globalization. They have to do, adopting to internet driven global flux in 1990s, the sudden bust of burgeoning global trade due to US financial meltdown and natural disasters like Tsunami in 2000s, and sweeping political upheavals interlinked to brave economic reforms, starting with US and EU to other countries.
Looking through this backdrop, when one tries to understand the 2014 World Development Report, and subsequent supportive and/or negating prescriptions of other global policy making institutions, what unfolds is a different picture of global economic environment.
The initial steps towards this direction can be made by incisive study of WDR 2014. These may be outlined as below. For the sake of simplicity, this report is broken into six modules and twelve focus areas, which will help student groups to easily address the coverage of the WDR.
A. The setting and the reality
A. 1. what is risk - in global context; what is the process of risk management in general (country perspective)
A.2. what are the benefits of risk management - to individuals, corporate enterprises and states
B. Some Insights into the present status
B.1. what are the trends in risks across different regions?
B.2. How to appreciate the Risk - what is meant by Analysis of Choice under uncertainty
C. Conceptual Pathway
C.1. what is an ideal analytical framework for risk management?
C.2. what is the concept of risk chain? How do one appreciate these conceptual frameworks in current global scenarios?
D. The Solutions
D.1. What are the components of risk management? Knowledge-Protection-Insurance-Coping - what do they mean and imply?
D.2. how prepared are countries in risk management sphere? what is the Index of Risk Preparation across countries? what does it indicate and lead to? How does Risk Management Index help in business decisions and global trade and economy improvement?
E. Practical Considerations for Solutions
E.1. What are some of the common obstacles to risk management? and how can one address them?
E.2. What is meant by "holistic approach to risk management" and how can one implement it?
F. The Road Ahead and Implementation strategy
F.1. Where does the Financial System of a country fit into Risk Management? How does it help a country to develop resilience to risks?
F.2. What does WDR prescribe? What are the salient policy recommendations of WDR 2014 and how practical are they for a country to adopt? what support should global policy institutions offer to countries to implement some of the risk management measures?
It is intended that each of these modules are addressed and learnt by looking up for examples and cases for successful handling - and interventions that are noteworthy for emulation and adoption. As such, look for ground realities and relate them to the above.
