IB Geography Unit 6: Global risks and resilience

What Unit 6 covers

Unit 6 is the third unit of the HL core extension. Geopolitical and economic risks: sovereignty and hegemony, a multipolar world, nationalism, multilateralism and isolationism, economic interdependence and the contagion that spreads financial crises, sovereign default and capital flight, sanctions, and threats to trade such as piracy and choke points. Environmental risks: transboundary pollution such as acid rain and haze, microplastics, the global commons and the tragedy of the commons, and the precautionary and polluter pays principles. Local and global resilience: risk perception, global governance, insurance and social capital, megatrends such as ageing and urbanisation, and new ways of gathering information, from crowdsourcing to remote sensing.

Where students slip

• The precautionary principle means acting to prevent serious harm before the scientific evidence is complete. The polluter pays principle is about who bears the cost: those who cause environmental damage.
• The tragedy of the commons happens because each user keeps the whole gain from taking more of a shared resource, while the cost of overuse is spread among everyone. The global commons, such as the atmosphere and the high seas, are at risk because no single state controls them.
• Sovereignty is a state's authority over its own territory; hegemony is one state's dominance over others. A small state can be fully sovereign without any hegemony.