Simultaneity as a challenge for development

Societies in the Global South are simultaneously confronted with various challenges that societies in the Global North faced over a long period of time. From the beginning of the 18th century the Global North has faced challenges in line with its industrialization and modernization processes including population growth with the necessity to feed that growing population, rapid urbanization or infrastructure development. Solving these challenges during past centuries has led to highly developed societies but produced new threats: environmental degradation and climate change—features of Beck’s ‘reflexive modernity’. Today, societies in the Global South not only face similar challenges such as population growth, malnutrition or lacking infrastructure, but also the consequences of the human-made environmental change and its related risks. Change in the Global South has reached a previously unseen pace and notable simultaneity. This paper aims to operationalise and visualise the challenge of simultaneity. By identifying six indicators for three main issues, the extent of simultaneity will be analysed using the examples of Kenya, India, Brazil and Germany. The findings show that simultaneity is a key challenge for current social, economic and ecological transformations in the Global South.