Human Geography
by Mercier
© 2022 Oxford University Press
Chapter 5: Uneven Development and Global Inequalities
© 2022 Oxford University Press
Learning Objectives
1. Identify the tools used to measure development
2. Identify the theories that explain uneven development
3. Describe some of the main differences between more developed
and less developed places
4. Explain the underlying causes of food insecurity at the global scale
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Learning Objectives, continued
5. Explain the underlying causes of the global refugee crisis
6. Explain the interconnections between uneven development and
natural hazards
7. Describe the idea that industrialization is a potential pathway to
more development
8. Define sustainable development
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5.1 Identifying Global Inequalities
• Useful application of Geography’s three questions
• What is where?
– Identification and definition
• Why there?
– Attempt explanations
• Why care?
– Impacts of inequalities
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What (and Where) Are the More and Less Developed
Countries?
• Controversies over terminology:
– “Third World”
– North – South
– developing
• More developed countries:
– Most of Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel
• Less developed countries: everyone else?
– Outdated, but used as a historic generalization
• Other clarifying categories: Least Developed Countries
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Development: Problems of Definition and Measurement
Defining Development
• Common use of GDP, GNP, and GNI per capita
– Allows easy comparisons
– Used as proxy indicator of social development
• Problems
• Can’t capture spatial or social class differences
• Cannot capture any information about the low income majority
• Danger of ethnocentric definitions of development
• Are all development definitions Eurocentric?
– Income can capture some basic material deprivation
– Can’t capture complexity of daily life
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Measuring Economic Development
• World Bank use of GDP / GNI per capital to define income groups)
• Problematic assumption of a linear path
– Developmentalism
• Compares places with different costs of living
• Purchasing power parity (PPP) as one correction
– Large-scale difference in income still present
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Measuring Human Development
• Annual Human Development Report, United Nations
– Captures increasingly broad dimensions of development
• Human Development Index (HDI)
– Complements GNI measures
– Includes education and health dimensions
• Index compares countries on three components: life expectancy, education,
income
– There is also a HDI adjusted for inequality (IHDI)
• Adds some complexity to the general belief that income equals development
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5.2 Explaining Global Inequalities
• Rejected the 19th century race-based explanations
– Posited differing human and cultural potential
• No single explanation
– Explanations continue to reflect ideologies
• Two contrasting approaches
1. Influence of agricultural civilisations
• Criticised for its environmental determinism
2. Unequal relations established during European colonial expansion
• Created a world system of unequal relations, explained by dependency theory
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Agricultural Civilisations
• Ancient civilizations developed in many places
• Jared Diamond (1997)
– theorised that Eurasian civilizations interacted more
– Agricultural technology spread along east–west aligned regions
– Similar climatic conditions
– Critics concerned about environmental determinism
• Technologies eventually spread to Europe
• May explain Western Europe’s ability to colonize overseas
– Along with other factors
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World Systems and Dependency Theories
• Inequalities are better explained by legacy of European colonialism
– Colonialism enforced led to economic dependence
– Indigenous culture, social structures oppressed: lost decision-making power
• Contemporary aid continues unequal relations
• First theories to propose that inequality could be maintained politically
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World Systems and Dependency Theories, cont’d
• Dependency Theory explains inequalities as unequal relationship
between dominant and dependent states
• World Systems theory: inequality as a system of states in a global
capitalist economy
– Core countries extract surplus from periphery, semi-periphery countries
– Core countries maintain inequality
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5.3 Interpreting the Significance of Global Inequalities
• Differing outcomes of inequality
• Have differing impacts and potential solutions
• Examine:
• Food insecurity and hunger
• Population migration and refugee crises
• Differing impacts of natural disasters and disease
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5.4 Feeding the World
• Causes of famine and hunger have changed
– Historic causes: natural events
– Contemporary causes: social conditions which limit food access
• Contemporary famines are not the direct result of food shortages
• Poor dietary health can be defined in terms of
– Lack of food of quantity: undernutrition
– Lack of food quality: malnutrition
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Global Hunger
• Must be examined from multiple perspectives
• Historical context
– Relative reduction in past decades
– Not distributed equally
• Spatial concentrations
– sub-Saharan Africa,
– parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia
– Parts of Latin America
• Patterns in India and China show that large populations do not
necessarily lead to undernourishment
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Explaining Food Shortages
• Classic explanations:
• Overpopulation
– A problematic term, because it is relative to social and natural capacity
• Inadequate distribution of supplies
• Localized physical or human circumstances
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Political and Economic Explanations
• Capitalist pressure for profits, favouring
–export production over local food production
–large farmers and firms over small farmers and local firms
• The structure of the world economy and state system
• Need to restore locally-oriented peasant production
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The Role of Bad Government
• Lack of rights and ability to challenge government
• Poor governance underlies most factors causing hunger
– Governance is the processes and practices of traditions and institutions which
create policies and build relationships with authority
• Underinvestment in rural areas
• Political instability, leading to refugee populations
• Disease, affecting productive capacity
• High population growth
• Worldwide Governance Indicators
– show a link between hunger and corruption
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Providing Food Aid
• Can alleviate a specific food shortage
– Does not address root causes
• Can aggravate existing social inequalities
– Can favour urban over rural areas
– Can undermine local food production
– Can become embroiled in complex political and social conflicts
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5.5 Refugees
• Generally, consequence of conflict or natural disaster
• Formally defined in the post-World War II context
– Monitored by the UN High Commission for Refugees
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The Nature of
the Refugee Problem
• Refugees: individuals forced to move from their homeland
– War, famine, natural disaster
• UNHCR defines three additional classes of “persons of concern”:
1. Asylum seekers: people who have left their home country and have
applied for refugee status in some other country
2. Returnees: refugees who are in the process of returning home (the
desired goal for most refugees)
3. Internally displaced persons (IDPs): people who flee their homes but
remain within their home country
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The Refugee Problem Today
• Growing: numbers likely underestimated
• Patterns tend to reflect overall population structure
• Most flee to neighbouring LDCs
• Syria: 5–6 million displaced Syrians are mostly in neighbouring countries
– About one million are in MDCs, most in Europe
• European Refugee Crisis and Populism
• Receives more refugees than other MDCs
– Partly relative proximity
– Creates complex social and travel patterns and hazards
– Rising intolerance within Europe
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Solutions
• UNHCR: Voluntary repatriation, local settlement, resettlement
• Recent attempts to address underlying problems
• All approaches are difficult and complex
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5.6 Natural Disasters and Diseases
• Impact varies with social and economic well-being
• People in less developed countries are more negatively affected
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Natural Disasters
• The term “natural disaster” now considered less accurate
• Inability to plan for, or respond to, certain natural events can lead to disaster
– E.g., floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions
• Understanding how natural events become human disasters requires
understanding cultural, political, and economic frameworks
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Natural Disasters, cont’d
• Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions, and Tsunamis
– Points of earth’s surface prone to movement, eruptions
– Prediction is improving, but imperfect
• Hurricanes / Tropical Cyclones
– Tropical storms which build strength while moving over oceans
– Hurricane Katrina showed the differing impact on incomes groups in an MDC
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Diseases
• Treatable diseases can be devastating without resource access
• Development and health are linked
• In low-income countries, main causes of death:
– communicable disease, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional conditions
– Preventable and treatable
– E.g., diarrheal diseases, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, maternal and infant deaths
• In high-income countries, main causes of death
– non-communicable/degenerative diseases
– E.g., cancer, heart disease, stroke
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5.7 Facilitating Development
and Prospects for Growth
• Diversity in both LDCs and MDCs
• Generalisations are misleading, especially for LDCs
• Key issues
– Legacy of debt
– Industrialization
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Development Aid and Debt Relief
• Two types of aid
• Humanitarian aid: meant for crises, event specific, time sensitive
• Development aid or financial aid: strategic investments or grants
– Directly or indirectly supports social and economic change
• Types of development aid vary
• Official development assistance:
– member governments of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
– government to government aid
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Development Aid and Debt Relief, continued
• Non-governmental aid
– Many philanthropic and charitable foundations also lend or provide grants
• Remittances: money sent to family by LDC citizens working in M\\DCs
– Not aid
– Can be a significant part of LDC national income
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Development Aid and Debt Relief, continued
• Most aid is in loans, which are income earning transactions
– If project does not pay off, the borrower or lender can be left in debt
• 1970s saw high lending to LDCs by MDC agencies
• MDC lenders structured loans which were dependent on LDC growth
• 1980s recession and debt crisis
– LDCs faced with debt on very bad repayment terms
• Later, international programmes of debt relief
• Debates over MDC costs inflicted on LDCs
– Environmental impact
– Colonial legacy
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Industrialization and Development
• Industrialization is often equated with development
– Manufacturing value and employment overtakes agriculture in the economy
– Urban settlement patterns
• Varying explanations for successes and failures
– Dependency theory: colonial relations suppressed growth
– Alternative explanation: Low population density can prevent industrial production
• Attempts to foster industry: top-down and bottom-up
– Import-substitution to foster local capacity
– Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs): forced open markets, left a legacy of disruption
– Community-based initiatives attempt more socially appropriate development
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5.8 Sustainable Development
• Difficulties in defining, explaining, and fostering development
• Has led to the exploration of alternatives
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The Ideas of New Economic Geography
• Initiated by economists, not geographers
• Argues that economic difference is a result of other spatial difference
– E.g., Population density, distance, etc.
• Ignores issues of spatial injustice
– Places may be spatially distant and undeveloped because of historical exclusion
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Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• In 2000 the UN’s Millennium Summit of world leaders identified eight Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at improving the lives of people in poor countries
by 2015
• “Every individual has the right to dignity, freedom, equality, a basic standard of living
that includes freedom from hunger and violence, and encourages tolerance and
solidarity”
• Much progress was made toward achieving the MDGs by 2015
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Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), cont’d
• Identified by world leaders and adopted at a summit
• Reflect a broader definition of development
• Created global awareness of development concerns
• The eight MDGs:
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 disease.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a “global partnership for development.”
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Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Following on the successes of the MDGs
• Developed by the United Nations members
• 17 broader and more interrelated goals
– E.g., water quality, good governance
• to be achieved by 2030
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Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• The 17 SDGs:
1. End poverty.
2. End hunger.
3. Ensure good health and well-being for all.
4. Ensure quality education for all.
5. Achieve gender equality.
6. Ensure availability of clean water and sanitation.
7. Ensure access to affordable and clean energy.
8. Promote decent work and economic growth.
9. Promote industry and innovation, and build infrastructure.
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Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
10. Reduce inequalities.
11. Create sustainable cities and communities.
12. Ensure responsible consumption and production.
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change.
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources.
15. Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.
16. Promote peace, justice, and strong institutions.
17. Strengthen and revitalize partnerships to achieve the goals.
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Debating the Future
• Arguments of optimists and pessimists can be ideologically driven
• Unprecedented changes in the past few decades
• Unprecedented problems are emerging
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Conclusion
• Social and economic inequality is a world geographic pattern
• Often understood as a difference in “development”
– Difficult to define and measure
• Inequalities, in part, are a consequences of colonial rule
– Historic extraction
– Destruction of social, cultural, and economic systems
– Unequal access to resources, social and physical infrastructure, investment, production
and trade opportunity, government
• Meaningful reduction in inequalities requires
– investment in community-based economic activity
– spread of human rights and political participation
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