Explaining Global Inequalities

• Differences between groups of people in terms of their human potential explains global differences in development.

• There is no answer to why world is categorized by their inequalities; such that it is routinely divided into two different and unequal parts.

• As we might expect, answers sometimes tend to be ideologically driven, reflecting a specific world view and related discourse. They are not necessarily wrong, but we must appreciate the larger intellectual context of the response.

The Shape of Continents

• Civilizations developed in some areas and not others and were a consequence of the slow transition from hunting and gathering societies to agricultural societies.

• Agricultural technologies are the pioneer to the rise of civilizations, this basic geographic circumstance is the ultimate factor in beginning a chain of causing effect that eventually leads to some societies’ ability to spread globally and dominate other societies.

• It is possible to conceive of Diamond’s ideas as aiding our understanding of why Europe was able to move overseas. The latitudinal extent of Eurasia is the first link in the chain because it permitted agricultural technologies to spread and, combined with suitable plant and animal species, led to a sophisticated agricultural region that became what we call civilization.

• Diamond proposes that different continental shapes have been crucial because latitudinal (east–west) extent allows agricultural technologies to spread great distances over areas of similar climate, but lack of significant latitudinal extent means that spread is necessarily more limited.

• Shape of continents argument is not proven, but it is a highly suggestive argument.

World Systems and Dependency Theories

• For many human geographers, the most important factor in explaining the plight of countries in the less developed world is their history of colonialism and subsequent ongoing relationship with more developed countries.

• A body of ideas that suggests a division of the world into a core, semi-periphery, and periphery, stressing that the periphery is dependent on the core; has numerous implications for an understanding of the less developed world.

• The indigenous cultures and social structures of former colonies have been largely relegated to secondary status, their place taken by European structures. Thus, in the broadest sense, the less developed countries lack power, including controlling and directing their own affairs.

• World Systems of Theory and Dependency Theory describe the dynamic capitalist world economy. World systems logic examines the roles that specific states play in the larger set of state interrelationships.

  • Capitalism emerged gradually from feudalism in the sixteenth century, consolidated up to 1750, and expanded to cover the world in the form of industrial capitalism by 1900.

  • In 1917, however, the capitalist system entered a long period of crisis that some suggest may eventually bring the world closer to a socialist system.

• Although the changes that have taken place since 1989 appear to make further movement towards peripheral status because the other states have vested interests in maintaining its dependency. The closely related logic of dependency theory, as developed, stresses that some areas have to remain underdeveloped for others to become developed.

  • This is because economic value is transferred in one direction only: from periphery to core.

Identifying Global Inequalities

Where is the Less Developed World?

• Term Third World was first used in the early 1950s in the context of suggestions that former colonial territories a different economic route from either the capital “first” or the socialist “second” worlds.

  • Later by 1960s the term was being used to designate a group of African, Asian and Latin American countries described as “poor, strife-ridden and chaotic”.

• Terms such as third world are largely out of favour today. Because the geopolitical bipolarity of the Cold War era and the First and Second Worlds effectively ceased to exist with the demise of the Soviet bloc, the term Third World is outdated.

• Moreover; North and South are geographically misleading; developed and underdeveloped seem to imply that nothing can change; and developing may be factually incorrect.

• The preferred terminology is that of more developed and less developed. These terms have the advantage of being relative rather than absolute and are used by organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Population Reference Bureau.

  • The more developed world comprises all of Europe and North America plus Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. All other countries in the world are classified as less developed.

• This division is unsatisfactory in many respects, particularly because it disguises significant differences among the countries classified as less developed. Indeed, the UN and other organizations sometimes find it useful to exclude China from the less developed category.

• To identify a group of countries within the less developed world as comprising the least developed world they assesed various countries;

  • least developed countries have especially low incomes, high economic vulnerability, and poor human development indicators.

  • generally, in the least developed parts, they have relatively high levels of mortality and fertility and relatively low levels of literacy and industrialization. In addition, they are often in trouble with political problems stemming from poor government and from ethnic or other rivalries.

Development: Problems of Definition and Measurement

Defining Development

• Normally, economic and social development has been measured by reference to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita or Gross National Product (GNP) per capita also known as Gross National Income (GNI) per capita - on the grounds that such macroeconomic indicators not only provide reliable data for comparing various countries’ economic performance but also serve as reliable surrogate measures of social development in the areas of health, education, and overall quality of life.

• However, many don’t believe that such measures are suitable because they do not take into account either the spatial distribution of economic benefits or the real life conditions that less developed countries face, such as;

  • population displacement,

  • inadequate food supplies,

  • vulnerability to environmental extremes.

• It can be argued that, for the less developed countries, GDP or GNI may indicate how the minority wealthy population is progressing but tell us nothing about the poor majority, just as they tell us little about poor populations living in wealthier countries.

  • different opinions on this say measures of development reflect a lack of agreement on what development means.

Measuring Developments

• Publication of World Bank; The Development Report, measures development on the basis of selected economic criteria, grouping countries countries into;

  • low income,

  • lower-middle income,

  • upper-middle income,

  • high income.

• One issue with this way of ranking countries is that it reflects a developmentalist bias, suggesting that, as countries become more technologically advanced, they can and should increase their GNI.

• With that, World Bank has admitted, this measure does not by itself, constitute or measure welfare or success in development. It does not distinguish between the aims and ultimate uses of a given product, nor does it say whether it merely offsets some natural or other obstacle, orharms or contributes to welfare.

Measuring Human Development

• UN’s Human Development Report, published to complement GNI measures of development. It had three main characteristics, as follows;

  • its underlying concept of developmental focuses on the satisfaction of basic needs and environmental issues,

  • it uses wide variety of data to construct a Human Developmental Index (HDI) that is based on three primary development goals;

    • life expectancy,

    • education, and

    • income.

  • the UN report is explicitly concerned with how development affects the majority poor populations of the less developed world and recognizes a need to enlarge the range of individual choice.

• The HDI has been modified to incorporate inequalities within countries by considering national disparities in gender, income, health and education. It does not measure absolute levels of human development but ranks countries in relation to one another.

Feeding the World

• Early famines including, famine in Northern Europe, Mexico and Japan are mainly due to geographic circumstances.

• This situation has changed with physical geography playing a secondary role as most famines are caused by political circumstances such as war, policy failures, and bad government.

• World Bank estimates that about a billion people receive insufficient nourishment to support normal activity and work. It is important to understand, without proper nutrition, the body, including the brain, cannot develop fully and therefore that food shortages contribute to poverty.

• Food problem exists despite evidence that nobody would go hungry if the world’s food production were equally divided among the world’s 7.2 billion people. Thus, the problem is not one of global production.

• Human diet requirement varies according to age, sex, weight, average daily activity and climate, but; an insufficient quantity of food results in undernutrition.

• A diet deficient in quality results in malnutrition, a chronic illness condition.

Explaining Food Shortages

Three factors causing food shortages

1. Overpopulation: increased number of people

2. Inadequate distribution of available supplies: most countries have the transportation infrastructure to guarantee the intranational movement of food, but other factors prevent satisfactory distribution.

3. Physical or human circumstances: factors such as flooding, drought or war effect.

Political and Economical Explanations

• Most recent explanations of the food problem have tended to focus on the political and economic aspects. For example, the world systems perspective suggests that global political arrangements are making it increasingly difficult for many in the less developed world to grow their own food.

• Not only is the percentage of population involved in agriculture in the less developed world declining, but the vast majority of those remaining in agriculture are incapable of competing with the handful of commercial agricultarists who can benefit from technological advances.

• Majority of the agricultural farmers have lost control over their own production because of larger causes. Such as, in Kenya farmers are encouraged to grow export crops such as tea and coffee instead of staple crops. Also peasant farmers in many countries are losing their freedom of choice because credit is increasingly controlled by large corporations and governments; many governments make it their policy to provide cheap food for urban populations at the expense of peasant farmers.

  • essential argument here is that the capitalist mode of production is affecting peasant production in the less developed world in such a way as to limit the production of staple foods, thus causing a food problem.

• In exactly the same way; global economic considerations make it increasingly difficult for people for people in less developed countries as here food becomes expensive and only a portion of people can buy.

• Many differences of opinion suggest that the causes of the world food problems is the peripheral areas dependance on the core area. Yet any idea attempt to correct this problem is likely to be failed because the more developed world is not about to initiate changes that would lessen its power and profits.

  • If these opinions are bought to a conclusion, world food crisis could be worsened regardless of technological change, because the cause of the problem lies in global political and economic patterns.

• Food problems are not mostly caused by overpopulation; we cannot solve food problems by decreasing human fertility rate. A concerned and co-operative international effort is needed to improve the quality of peasant farming and to reorient it towards the production of staple foods.

• Undernutrition and malnutrition are not disappearing, and famines will continue to occur unless there is meaningful political change.

The Idea of Entitlements

• Entitlements are the factors and mechanisms that explain people’s ability to acquire food in terms of their power. In addition to entitlements at the international scale, this identifies entitlements at three other scales: national, regional, and household.

• Small changes in the price of a commodity can significantly affect entitlements.

• During the late 1980s, high levels of debt led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to require that countries in the less developed world adopt structural adjustment policies— involving even greater emphasis on export production—before additional loans would be issued or existing loans restructured.

• Contemporary globalizing trends provoke this situation because the demand for food continues to increase in parts of the world that already are poor and lack power supply.

• At the national scale, governments may not be committed to ensuring that economic growth is accompanied by the elimination of food shortages. This is due to distribution of power, national governments may support urban activities and commercial agriculture at the expense of rural peasant sector.

• At the regional scale, governments may neglect areas inhabited by relatively powerless minority ethnic groups.

• Further, problems are often regionally seen;

  • some areas may be more subject to conflict or environmental problems than other areas.

  • at the household scale, the most vulnerable family groupings are those that are poorest, that include many dependants, that are isolated, and that are powerless. Even within households, there are differences in the ability to command food; females and the elderly are frequently the most vulnerable.

The Role of Bad Governmnent

• In a similar way, bad government is a cause of food problems and lack of economic and social development more generally.

• Sen points out that famine does not occur in democratic countries because, even in the poorest democracy, famine would threaten the survival of the ruling government. As they say widespread hunger has nothing to do with food production and everything to do with poverty—which in turn is closely related to political governance.

• A cursory review of current global famine areas confirms that famine seems to have principal causes;

  • by bad government

    • a prolonged period of underinvestment in rural areas

    • political instability related to conflict that causes refugee problems

    • HIV/AIDS and other diseases depriving families of productive members and damaging family structures and continued population growth because of high birth rates

  • by bad weather

Providing Food Aid

• Food aid by developed countries to less developed world enormously is not proven to be a solution of famine.

• Aid is often directed to urban areas, even though the greatest need is usually in rural areas; indeed, much donated food goes to governments, which then sell it for profit.

• It tends to depress food prices in the receiving country, reducing the incentive for people to grow crops and increasing their dependance.

• In many cases it is not effectively distributed, whether because of inadequate transport or transport or because undemocratic governments in the receiving countries control the food supply and feed their armies before anyone else.

• Food aid funds are normally sent to countries known to be governed by corrupt politicians.

Refugee

• First major movement of refugees took place after World War II due to political circumstances.

• Partition of India and Pakistan caused movement of 16 million people - 8 million Muslims fled from India to Pakistan, while 8 million Hindus and SIkhs fled from Pakistan to India.

• A migration took place prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, when 3.5 million moved from communist East Germany to democratic West Germany. Even after the wall was in place, about 300,000 succeeded in fleeing west before it was taken down in late 1989.

• Since about 1960 to the mid 1970s, the annual total number of refugees in the world was low. However, in 1973 in the end of the Vietnam War; rise of first transcontinental movement of refugees took place. Around two million people fled to Vietnam, necessitating a major international relief effort. US received about half of these refugees.

The Problem Today

• According to a report, refugee is a person owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.

• Most of the countries offer protection to their citizens and some are unable to do so which gives rise to refugee movement.

• Refugee movements are prompted by civil wars and forms of ethnic conflicts.

• A country that receives refugees is known as asylum.

• In addition to refugees, UNHCR is concerned with the following category of people:

  • Asylum Seekers - people who have left their home country and applied for refugee status in some other country, usually in more developed world.

  • Returnees - ae refugees who are in process of returning home.

  • Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) - people who flee their homes but remain within their home country; unlike refugees they do not cross international boundary.

• UNHCR estimates there are 60 million people worldwide forced to leave their homes - the difference between that and the official figure reflects many distressing situations for which reasonably detailed data are not available.

  • For example; about 258,000 Urdu speaking Muslims; Biharis, have been stranded in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) since the 1947 partition. The Biharis were in a difficult situation because of their past support for the former West Pakistan (now Pakistan).

• Globally about 48% of refugees are women and 12% are children under five. These percentages do not differ radically from standard gender and age distributions. It seems that, when a population is displaced as a whole, its demographic structure remains relatively balanced.

• Most refugees move to an adjacent country, which results in some very complicated regional patterns when the same nation is both a country of asylum for some refugees and the home from which others have fled. Such situations often arise in the context of ethnic conflict and civil war, and those affected are usually in serious need of aid and support.

  • Some current day examples are Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda, Afghanistan, Iran and others.

Solutions

• UNHCR has proposed three solutions

  • voluntary repatriation

  • local settlement

  • resettlement

• Voluntary repatriation - is not possible for most refugees because in most cases the circumstances that cause them to leave have not changed.

• Local settlement - is difficult in areas that are poor and have lack of resources. It will be difficult to provide refugees with food, water and shelter they need.

• Resettlement - in some countries is an option for a few. No country is legally obliged to accept refugees for resettlement, and only about 20 countries do so.

• The first step in solving the many refugee and related problems is working towards national stability.

Disasters and Diseases

Disasters

• Geographers use the term natural disasters to refer to physical phenomena such as floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and their human consequences. After long use of this term geographers have realised this label is inappropriate.

• Such events are natural in the sense they occur naturally but not all of them become disasters (in some circumstances).

• As with food supplies, the less developed world suffers the most during a disaster

Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions and Tsunamis

• Earthquakes and Volcanic eruptions are regular occurrences.

• The impact of an earth movement on the Indian Ocean seabed resulted in a devastating tsunami that hit parts of Asia and Africa in December 2004.

  • The tsunami moved across the ocean with little loss of energy, resulting in much destruction when it reached land.

  • There were about 283,000 deaths and around 1.1 million people were displaced.

• Most earthquakes occur at the margins of tectonic plates, when the plates move against each other.

Tropical Cyclones

• Typhoon is a regional term used for tropical cyclone.

• It can kill people and complicate population’s living such by destruction of bridges, overpasses, and roads which makes transportation of food, medicine and clean areas.

  • This was seen in 2008 when a typhoon hit Burma, when it was being ruled by military non-democratic group; they did not respond effectively to the disaster.

  • Some people died immediately, the vast majority of deaths occured in the next few days as corpses spread disease and victims were unable to obtain food and pure water.

  • After a month when the cyclone struck, UN estimated that around 2.4 million people were in need of food, shelter or medical care.

  • Even after a year, UN reported several hundreds and thousands of people were still in need of assistance, ma ny continued to live in flimsy shelters, water supplies were contaminated and reconstruction had barely begun.

  • The inhumane government was more concerned with minimizing outside influences; but the aid was for saving lives.. They chose not to save lives.

Diseases

• Diseases which are fatal;

  • Pneumonia

  • Polio

  • Tuberculosis

  • Cholera

  • Whooping Cough

  • Tetanus

  • Meningitis

  • Syphilis

  • Lung and Heart Cancer

• Reason for reduction of deaths by some of these diseases are use and development of vaccine.

  The Tragedy of AIDS

• Origin of AIDS ( Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) was first identified in 1981, and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency virus) in 1984.

• AIDS can be described as a pandemic as it has spread to all parts of the world. - AID honours no social or geographical boundaries. It is therefore very difficult to predict its spatial spread.

• Sub-Saharan Africa is the area with worlds most devastated cases.

  • Some national death rates doubled; rates of infant mortality increased sharply, and life expectancy was reduced by as much as 23 years.

• %%__Poverty __%%is one of the biggest single factors contributing to spread of AIDS. Poverty means that infections remain untreated, increasing the risk of further transmission.

Ebola

• Since, it was first discovered in 1976, near the Ebola river in the DR of Congo, there have been occasional outbreaks, in all Africa.

• It is a rare deadly disease caused by infection with one of of virus strains. It is unclear, that whether this virus is animal borne, with bats as the probable reservoirs.

• Some reasons for its spread;

  • Illness was seen as more of a spiritual problem rather than a medical problem.

  • it was taken as Lassa fever due to its similar symptoms.

  • distrust on government and medical officials by population.

  • movements of people from place to place with limited or no health care.

Prospects for Economic Growth

Solving the Debt Crisis

• Importance of a country’s debt to a country depends on its economy. For example in Industrialization.

• For many less developed countries, the cost of servicing the foreign debt accounts for much of the income from exports. For those countries it can be a burden.

• Debt for less developed countries - these loans, intended for establishment and support of economic and social programs had long paybacks terms because it was expected. In the long run, the less developed economies would boom and eventually provide good returns.

• Instead of providing loan to countries, an alternate approach is to provide loan to the poor individuals who need it.

Industrial Growth

• Difference between less developed and developed countries is the level of industrialization.

• For many countries it is difficult to achieve industrialisation; as most countries in less developed world have neither the necessary capital nor infrastructure to develop it.

  • Furthermore, fundamental social problems resulting from limited educational facilities do not encourage the rise of either a skilled labour force or domestic entrepreneurial class.

  • Secondly, the domestic markets in many of these countries lack the spending capacity to make industrial production economically feasible.

• In some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, industrialisation of many light industries that are not technologically advanced, such as food processing and textiles have taken place. After production, they sell it out to international markets.

• Governments are encouraged to open their economies to increase international trade, privatize previously state-owned enterprises, and reduce government spending. It is thought that such policies will generate wealth and development that will trickle down through all sectors of the economy to benefit all the people. This approach has been criticized on the grounds that, in fact, most of the wealth stays with the elite and any trickle-down benefits are minimal.

Millenium Development Goals

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

4. Reduce child mortality

5. Improve maternal health

6. Combat diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

8. Develop a ‘global partnership for development’