Global Governance, Human Needs, and Values

• Main Authors: Winston Nagan, Brittany Dicaprio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva 2018-10-01
• Series: Cadmus
• Online Access: http://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-3/issue-5/global-governance-human-needs-and-values
• ISSN: 2038-5242; 2038-5250

The anthropological literature has given us a key to understanding life in a very elementary community. Life revolves around human beings energized to satisfy human needs. Anthropologists also identify the structures that emerge from society which are specialized in whatever degree of efficacy to facilitate securing those needs. When we map needs onto institutions, we emerge with a social process* that is based on the interaction of energies directed at securing needs through institutions. These institutions direct human energies, in some degree, to the satisfaction of those needs. We can now begin to identify basic human needs as the goods, services, honors, and gratifications that people in society desire or need. Moreover, we can classify these desires/needs in terms of the basic values that the individual social participant pursues to secure for himself and those dependent on him. Thus, we may emerge with a model of social process in which human beings pursue values through institutions based on resources. Now, this is a purely descriptive inquiry, but it is possible to observe that the needs/values and the institutions specialized to secure them are, generally speaking, identifiable. What are these values and what are the institutions specialized to secure them in any social process? This essay concludes with an overview of some of the central global governance issues of the climate change crisis.