Volume 11 - Issue 59
/ November 2022
7
http:// www.amazoniainvestiga.info ISSN 2322- 6307
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.59.11.0
How to Cite:
Tkalych, M., & Arbeláez-Encarnación, T.F. (2022). Editorial. Amazonia Investiga, 11(59), 7-9.
https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.59.11.0
Editorial
The world in 2023: continuing uncertainty
Received: November 1, 2022 Accepted: November 30, 2022
Written by:
Maxym Tkalych
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4224-7231
Ph. D., Associate Professor of Civil Law Department of Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine.
Tanya Fernanda Arbeláez-Encarnación
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1635-4116
Estudiante Derecho, Universidad Libre de Colombia, Colombia.
The war started by Russia against Ukraine has
many negative consequences both for Ukraine
and for the world in general. In particular, it is
about food security. The president of Russia,
having realized that he is not able to take over the
country quickly, decided to take the whole world
hostage and blocked the export of food through
Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. Of course,
hundreds of tons of grain crops and other food,
which were in the Russian-occupied territories,
were mostly taken by force and exported to
Russia. In the summer of 2022, during a speech
at the G20 foreign ministers' meeting, the High
Representative of the EU Josep Borrell noted that
the aggressive war against Ukraine has
dramatically exacerbated the food crisis. In just
two years, the number of people who are severely
food insecure has doubled, from 135 million
before the COVID-19 pandemic to 276 million in
early 2022 and 323 million now. Now, with this
war, 1.2 billion people – one in six people in the
world – are in dire straits due to rising food and
energy prices and tighter financial conditions
(Voytiuk, 2022). Thanks to the incredible efforts
of world leaders, in the summer of 2022 it was
possible to establish a "grain corridor", within
which Ukrainians got the right to export their
grain from their ports and not be killed by the
Russians, who control the waters of the Black
Sea along the coast of Ukraine.
And if the problem of global hunger receded
somewhat after the opening of the "grain
corridors", other economic problems that lead to
the impoverishment of millions of people both in
Ukraine and in many other regions of the world
have not gone anywhere. According to Professor
Oleksandr Petryk, the war hit not only Ukraine –
its shock waves spread like circles on the water
throughout the world. With the global economy
still recovering from the devastating impact of
Covid-19, Russian aggression is once again
dragging it into a maelstrom of economic crisis.
Global economic growth, which accelerated in
post-Covid year 2021, began to wane rapidly.
According to IMF estimates, world economic
growth will slow to 3.2%, from 6% in 2021. It is
the lowest figure in the last twenty years, except
for the 2008 crisis and the «Covid» year 2020.
Meanwhile, high inflation has made a comeback
to the world economy and is the main challenge
for the central banks. A hybrid energy war waged
by Russia against Europe has pushed energy
prices higher. Destructions in Ukraine's
agricultural sector and food industry and the
blockade of Ukraine's exports are the primary
reasons for the rise in food prices worldwide.
According to the IMF, global inflation will reach
8.8% in 2022 compared to 4.7% in 2021. A
number of poor countries, especially from
Central and South America and also from Africa
directly or indirectly dependent on grain imports
and food prices, have ended up on the verge of
poverty. In other words, Russia's war on Ukraine
has slowed down world economic development
and nearly doubled the growth of world prices.
Therefore, Russia's actions provoked a global
economic crisis, as well as a number of other
crisis phenomena, including a humanitarian
crisis, a migration crisis associated with the
departure of millions of Ukrainians outside their
country, a demographic crisis, an environmental
crisis, and other crisis phenomena (Petryk, 2022).
As well as the massive exodus of people from
South America and Central America to the
United States of North America in search of
better life and employment opportunities. The
remittances in money that migrants make to their
relatives become the largest source of resources
for Latin American countries.
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Russia's war with Ukraine also demonstrated the
inefficiency of the institutional security system in
Europe and the world in general. In her speech at
the time of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize,
Oleksandra Matviychuk noted that the UN
system, created after the World War II by its
winners, provides for some unjustified
indulgences for individual countries. If we don’t
want to live in the world where rules are set by
states with stronger military capabilities, this has
to be changed. We have to start reforming the
international system to protect people from wars
and authoritarian regimes. We need effective
guarantees of security and respect for human
rights for citizens of all states regardless of their
participation in military alliances, military
capability or economic power. This new system
should have human rights at its core.
(Matviychuk, 2022).
Understanding the instability of the world order,
authoritarian regimes in various parts of the
planet have stepped up to achieve their domestic
and foreign policy goals. Literally before our
eyes, a military alliance of the authoritarian
regimes of Iran and Russia was formed. The first
of them dreams of the physical destruction of
Israel, spreading its influence over the entire
region and causing maximum damage to its
ideological enemy - the United States. At the
same time, any manifestations of democratic
freedoms are being suppressed within the
country, and the ruling regime is increasingly
using the repressive apparatus against its citizens
every day. After the start of Russia's terrorist war
against Ukraine, Iran began mass deliveries of its
drones to Russia, officially denying this fact. In
addition, according to the intelligence of a
number of countries, Iran is going to transfer
missiles of various ranges to Russia for use in
Ukraine. In other words, the authoritarian regime
of the Ayatollahs of Iran decided to strengthen its
position by entering into an alliance with Russia.
As for Russia itself, it dreams of the physical
destruction of Ukraine, to spread its influence
over the countries of the former socialist camp
and to cause maximum damage to the most
powerful country in the world so far - the USA.
It is not even accepted to talk about democratic
freedoms inside Russia, because they have been
successively destroyed during the last twenty
years. Anyone who disagrees with the regime, or
anyone in general, can be imprisoned for a long
time on a fabricated sentence or simply killed. At
the same time, a distinctive feature of the Russian
regime is the use of lying and sometimes absurd
propaganda on an unprecedented scale. Crazy
informational influence is exerted both on the
outside and on the residents of Russia
themselves, who are ready to fight with the whole
world and die en masse, without even
understanding why. Authoritarian tendencies are
also strengthening in China, however, this
country is currently refraining not only from
occupying rebellious Taiwan, but even from
openly supporting Russia's actions in Ukraine, as
it is wary of US sanctions, on the cooperation of
which it is completely dependent. Surprisingly,
autocratic populist forces are gaining popularity
even within the European Union. In particular,
Hungary, being a member of the EU, has been
trying to implement a nationalist and sometimes
anti-Western policy for a long time. It is logical
that in Russia's war against Ukraine, Hungary de
facto supports the aggressor and tries to play the
role of a kind of Trojan horse within the
European community. A similar role, but within
NATO, is played by Turkey, which in recent
years has increasingly resembled an Eastern
autocracy rather than a Western-style
democracy. In particular, blocking the entry of
Sweden and Finland into NATO due to the desire
to bargain for more preferences in the West is
outright blackmail and a dangerous geopolitical
game. So, being at a point of complete
uncertainty, we are witnessing an active phase of
the struggle between authoritarian and
democratic regimes, on which the future of our
world depends. If Western democracies dare to
defend their values with all the means available
to them, humanity has a chance for a dignified
existence, and if not, our world can turn into an
arena of constant wars.
Another problem related to the war in Ukraine
concerns local and global ecology. In the summer
of 2022, the whole world experienced abnormal
weather phenomena. Europe faced the worst
drought in the last 500 years. High temperatures
were also recorded in other countries. All these
problems are caused by climate change, the cause
of which is human activity. And the worst thing
that people can do in this difficult time is to start
an invasion of a neighboring country, thereby
increasing greenhouse gas emissions many times
over, creating hype around carbon fuels, and
calling into question the goal of achieving
climate neutrality. This is exactly what Russia
did in February 2022 and continues to destroy
with its actions everything that has been done by
the world community to adapt to climate change
in recent years. For example, in 2021, about 2
tons of toxic substances were released into the
atmosphere in Ukraine. During the six months of
the war in Ukraine in 2022, emissions into the
atmosphere amounted to 46 million tons
(Melnyk, 2022).
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In the same way, the beginning of migrations due
to the climate crisis and the disappearance of
water sources is evident. Citizens of the African
continent today are in displacement from their
countries in search of land to cultivate and water
to live. Situation that is not alien to other
countries and continents. Of course, the biggest
migration crisis today is the migration of
Ukrainians fleeing the war. According to
unofficial data, up to 20 million people left the
territory of Ukraine. This is an unheard of
number since World War II. But even without
taking into account the migration of Ukrainians
caused by the Russian attack, the global
migration crisis in the world is not abating.
Mostly people migrate to more prosperous
countries, looking for a better fate. For example,
the flow of migrants to the United States from
Latin American countries, mainly from Mexico,
reached such a level that the Americans declared
the migration crisis a threat to national security,
and the former populist president Donald Trump
even decided to wall himself off from
neighboring countries. At the same time, the
desire of people to change their place of
residence and earn more is justified, because they
want to feed themselves and their families. At the
same time, the cost of food in the world is
constantly increasing. Accordingly, people need
a job with a decent wage to be able to provide for
themselves and their families. And if the
migration crisis related to Ukrainian refugees can
be resolved after Ukraine's victory over Russia
and the return of Ukrainian territories, then the
migration related to the search for well-being will
not stop until the level of well-being in most
regions of the world increases.
Therefore, taking into account the trends that
formed during 2022 and taking into account the
dynamics of events in Ukraine and the world,
with a high degree of probability, the world in
2023 will continue to be in a zone of uncertainty,
with a large number of risks of a diverse nature
that can potentially destroy humanity. However,
with the joint efforts of the entire world
community, it is still possible to change negative
trends for the better. But there is not much time
left.
Bibliographic references
Matviychuk, O. (2022) Speech of the 2022 Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate of the Center for Civil
Liberties. The Nobel Peace Prize. Recovered
from:
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2022/12
/center-for-civil-liberties-lecture-
ukrainian.pdf
Melnyk, V. (2022). Chemical reactions that we
cannot see. How the remnants of Russian
missiles affect our health. Vikna. Recovered
from https://vikna.tv/styl-zhyttya/zdorovia-
ta-krasa/yak-vijna-vplyvaye-na-ekologiyu-
ukrayiny-ta-zhyttya-lyudej/
Petryk, O. (2022) Consequences of the war for
the global economy and some European
countries: Czechia. Vox Ukraine. Recovered
from
https://voxukraine.org/en/consequences-of-
the-war-for-the-global-economy-and-some-
european-countries-czechia/
Voytiuk, T. (2022) The invasion of Russia put
more than three hundred million people at
risk of starvation – Borrell. Suspilne Media.
Recovered from
https://suspilne.media/258719-vtorgnenna-
rosii-postavilo-pid-zagrozu-golodu-ponada-
trista-miljoniv-ludej-borrel/