GEOG2400 SPRING 2003 THE GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT

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GEOG2400 SPRING 2003 THE GEOGRAPHY OF WORLD
DEVELOPMENT

• CLASS 1
• World geography is our view of the world real?
• What exactly is development?
• How can we define it, measure it, and compare it?

Element 3 Sophomore GE Cluster Global Wealth,
Poverty and Inequality
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How we view the world
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How the world really is
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Challenging Our Perceptions

• We have become accustomed to viewing the Northern
  Hemisphere and Europe and North America as being
  geographically larger, more central and therefore
  more prominent.
• The tropics and southern land masses have been
  marginalized in our perceptions even though the
  majority of the worlds people reside there.

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Where do we live? How do we live?

• From space we can pick out the lights of towns
  and cities across the world.
• We can see where populations are most dense
  and/or where energy consumption is greatest
  thus this image is a composite of population and
  economic development status.

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Variations are the norm
Both of these images are from Africa. In all
developing countries you find the
same disparities of wealth and poverty, frequently
even more extreme than we find here at home.
The gains from human development are unequally
distributed within and between nations.
Development assistance or ODA seeks to
redress some of these imbalances.
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Global Inequality

• The assets of the worlds richest 200 people are
  more than the combined income of 41 of the
  worlds population.
• The assets of the 3 richest people in the world
  are more than the combined income of all of the
  least developed countries (600 million people).
• The income gap between the top and bottom
  countries increased from 3 to 1 in 1820, to 7 to
  1 in 1870, to 11 to 1 by 1913, to 74 to 1 by 1999.

Source UNDP HDR 1999 2000.
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Dimensions of Inequity

• By the late 1990s, the 1/5 (20) of the worlds
  population living in the highest-income countries
  had
• 86 of the worlds wealth (the bottom 1/5 had
  just 1),
• 82 of the world exports,
• 68 of the worlds foreign investment,
• 74 of the worlds telephone lines (the bottom
  1/5 had just 1.5).

Source UNDP HDR 1999.
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Average Incomes by Region
Source UNDP HDR 2001.
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What is Development?

• A term that implies the achievement of some level
  of economic, social and political development
  which some countries have managed to attain, and
  others have not.
• A moving target, not defined by some universal,
  unwavering standard.
• Permits, sometimes with difficulty, the
  characterization of some nations as developed
  and others as under-developed, less-developed
  or developing.
• Characterization requires some agreed upon
  threshold or thresholds.

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A Temporal Perspective

• Development the processes by which economic,
  social and political changes have taken place (an
  historical perspective).
• The movement of a nations society from one type
  of system (inferior?) to another (superior?).
• Development the achievement of progress (a
  forward looking perspective).
• The political and social changes that can be
  expected to take place or are necessary to create
  the conditions by which more of the worlds
  resources will be distributed more equitably and
  to any given nation.

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Development as a Positive

• Development implies beneficial change for the
  citizens of a nation.
• Increased economic well-being,
• Enlightened and efficient political systems,
• Supportive and culturally enriched social
  systems.
• Creates an important gray area for development
  analysts.
• Involves many ideological, value judgments e.g.
  what comprises an appropriate political system or
  social system? 
• For example, Fidel Castro would say that Cuba is
  more developed that the USA clearly George Bush
  would not agree!

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The Development Continuum

• Nominal status (yes/no)
• e.g. status of selected international human
  rights instruments (ratified/unratified), womens
  right to vote, etc.
• Ordinal status (rank)
• e.g. Human Development Index (1-174)
• Interval/Ratio status (a real number along some
  kind of continuous scale)
• e.g. Prisoners per 100,000 people 1994 (for
  those reporting data Kuwait _at_ 2.0 to Russian
  Federation _at_ 580.2 USA was 553.9)

Source UNDP, 1999.
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Economic Criterion

• The most universal notion of development uses
  economic terms - from some notion of poverty to
  some notion of wealth.
• The mean or median per capita GDP worldwide is
  often used as a measure to separate out the
  developed from the developing nations.
• Currently, a rule of thumb of 6,000 GDP/cap is
  being used (1999 mean GDP/cap PPP was 6,980).

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Faulty Economics?

• Environmental economists question whether GDP/cap
  really captures the notion of true economic
  development.
• Includes good and bad GDP.
• Ignores sustainability questions and diminishing
  natural capital.
• Doesnt capture income/wealth inequalities in a
  given nation.
• Hides interactions between economic
  growth/decline and population growth/decline.

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The Poverty Trap

• Averages hide inequalities.
• With a GDP/cap PPP of 31,872, USA had 17 of
  its households living below the income poverty
  line of 50 of median income in 1999.
• Many poorer nations have lower poverty s e.g.
  Mexico 10, Thailand 13.
• Many developing nations have enormous s below
  their official poverty line e.g. Honduras 50,
  Sierra Leone 68 .
• UNDP uses 1 per day 1993 PPP as one of its
  measures e.g. Honduras 40.5 , Sierra Leone 57.

Sources UNDP, 2001.
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Indicators of development?

• Indicators of development are the variables we
  can quantify that allow us to make meaningful
  comparisons between nations or groups with
  respect to their relative standings.
• Whether an indicator measures positive or
  negative levels of development determines what
  its value means i.e. what it says if the numbers
  are high or low.
• Does it try and measure beneficial or prejudicial
  dimensions of development?
• Does it try and capture how far an entity still
  has to go or how far it has progressed?
• i.e. (1.0 - x) or (0.0 x)

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Glass half empty?

• Deciding on appropriate indicators sparks fierce
  debate.
• Developing nations prefer indicators that give
  them the chance to show how well they are doing,
  not how poorly.
• Development workers want indicators that focus on
  improvement and not on decline (i.e. that set
  positive goals and articulate beneficial
  standings).
• Single indicators are limited in their ability to
  capture the multiple dimensions of quality of
  life.
• Suites (indices) of indicators must be
  appropriately grouped to facilitate calculations
  and interpretations of what an index means.

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Some indicators
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Popular Indices of Development

• GDP/GNP per cap total wealth of a nation
  divided by its population (can be in adjusted
  PPP or non-adjusted form).
• Physical Quality of Life Index used life
  expectancy at birth, infant mortality and
  literacy (popular in the 1970s).
• Index of Social Progress (Estes, 1988) uses 46
  separate variables to try and include such issues
  as political participation and stability.
• Human Development Index (UNDP, 1991) very
  similar to the PQLI, but instead combines income,
  life expectancy, educational opportunity and
  literacy.
• The HDI is used by the UN for their annual report
  on the state of the world (your text).
• The mirror image of the HDI is the Human Poverty
  Index, e.g. HPI-1 measures probability of not
  surviving to age 40, adult illiteracy rate, and
  average of population not using improved water
  sources and children under five that are
  underweight.

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Development Indices

• Difficult to develop meaningful combinations.
• Nations may be consistently high scoring,
  consistently low scoring, or more commonly, may
  vary rank enormously depending on the mix of
  indicators.
• Depends on how strongly the suite of indicators
  favors economic, social or cultural factors
  (countries like Cuba will zoom up and down!).
• What is the purpose or value of development
  indices?
• Allows us to categorize nations based on a
  broader notion of development achievement.
• Allows us to capture and track real progress over
  time.
• Permits us to develop more objective criteria for
  the study of regions and nations and for
  practical matters such as the allocation of
  international aid, debt relief, and so forth.

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Key Steps to Development

• Those nations who have achieved high economic
  status today have generally successfully passed
  through
• Demographic transition
• Transitioning from high birth/high death (45/40)
  to low-birth/low death rate (11/10).
• Demographic transformation
• Transitioning from a predominantly agrarian/rural
  to an industrial/urban society.
• Economic transition
• Transitioning from a predominantly raw
  materials-based economy to a more diversified
  manufacturing and services economy.

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The Demographic Transition
(source Wright Nebel, 2002)
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Regional Demographic Progress
(source Wright Nebel, 2002)
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Taking Off Economically

• Has needed strong central government.
• Has needed capitalists/risk takers to invest in
  manufacturing and trade.
• Has needed reinvestment of a large portion of
  current income into capital development.
• Has needed valued natural resources (or cheap
  access to them) to provide raw materials to
  exploit (and export).
• Has needed key industries to develop able to add
  value to raw materials and trigger raw material
  processing (upstream) and manufacturing and
  service industries (downstream) growth.
• Has needed application of modern technology to
  all sectors of society.

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Resources for Development

• We can think in terms of raw material resources,
  human resources and knowledge/technology
  resources.
• Similar material resources may be found in many
  different locations/nations (http//www.geohive.co
  m/global/ec_natres.php).
• However the human potential to exploit them, and
  the knowledge and technology used in that
  exploitation can and will differ greatly.
• Resources are not static - their character and
  uses have changed through time as a result of
  human actions.
• Many resources are mobile - they can be imported
  (by force or payment) - note that this includes
  human resources.
• Many countries are dependent on one or two
  resources and are very vulnerable to competition
  and substitution.

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Contemporary Obstacles

• Social systems prolonging high birth rates (30),
  low death rates (10) - prevents closing of
  demographic gap, leads to rapid population
  growth, and a relatively small of economically
  active persons.
• Structural dominance in global markets - the
  richer countries use their political and economic
  power to set the rules governing international
  trade, boosting their interests, often at the
  expense of the poorer nations.
• Heavy debt burdens - governments must direct
  capital to interest payments, not
  growth-producing investments.

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Bursting populations outstrip economic growth
(source Wright Nebel, 2002)