Fernando M. Reimers et a1.

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Achieving these ambitious goals requires the hard work, expert knowl-
edge, and collaboration of groups of supranational institutions, public
and private, and of individuals from all nations. They require the coop—
eration of governments, international and local nongovernmental orga—
nizations (NGOs), and other global and national institutions. Global
citizenship is a condition of support for the work of those institutions,
whether it’s expressed in the form of elected officials devoting taxpayers’
funds to international—development assistance or public diplomacy ef—
forts, in the form ofindividuals who fund international nongovernment
organizations, or in the myriad ways in which ordinary people can now
take responsibility to address some of the global challenges and goals
mentioned above.

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP BENEFITS INDIVIDUALS

The individual advantages of cosmopolitanism have been evident for centu—
ries. Globalization, which will be discussed later, has enhanced those advan—
tages. Businesses are increasingly enmeshed in both the global and the local
through supply chains, broad customer bases, and the proliferation of large
multinational conglomerates. It could be argued that the heir to the age of
empires, when a few countries controlled much of the world, is the age of
the multinational corporation, when companies have operating budgets larger
than the GDP of some countries. In some real ways, Yahoo is bigger than
Mongolia, Nike is bigger than Paraguay, and Amazon is bigger than Kenya
(Trivett, 2011).

McDonalds, for example, operates in more than sixty countries——more coun—
tries than initially ratified the UN charter (McDonalds, 2012). Not only its
leadership team but also a significant proportion of its rank—and—file corporate
employees need strong inter— and intrapersonal skills, intercultural competen—
cies, knowledge of different countries and their business and food cultures, and
positive attitudes and dispositions toward others. These skills, attitudes, and

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