SSE 204 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Geography is derived from the two Greek words such as: Geo (earth) and Graphos
(Writing). It simply means “Writing about the Earth.”
- It involves a much broader approach to examine the earth, as it involves the
study of humans as well.
Two Major subdivisions of Geography:
1. Human (Social Science) - demography
2. Physical (Natural Science) - spatiality
Human Geography is a Social Science that focuses on people, where they live, their
ways of life, and their interactions in different places, around the world.
Unit I. Introduction
Historical Evolution of Geographical Thought
A. Ancient Geography
Since sailors had determined that the earth was curved, it eventually fell to Pythagorean
theorists to theorize it must be a sphere: how else could its curvature, visible in all
directions when at sea, be explained? (Pythagoras in his “Sphericity of the Earth)
By the fourth century Before Common Era (BCE) or before the birth of Jesus, Aristotle
pointed out that if one sailed west from the entrance to the Mediterranean, one would
eventually reach India, a concept of great interest to Renaissance explorers such as
Columbus.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene in the second half of the third century BCE had determined that
at Syene (the first cataract of the Nile) the sun was directly overhead at the summer
solstice, and no shadows were cast. From Syene the Nile flowed due north to its mouth
at the great city of Alexandria, where, on the summer solstice, the sun was still
somewhat in the south, creating shadows whose angle could be determined.
(Eratosthenes in his Calculation of the Circumference of the Earth)
Using a measuring stick, called a gnomon (part of a sundial), it was possible to create a
great triangle from Alexandria to the sun (based on the angle of the shadow), and back
to Syene, where (since there were no shadows) a right angle existed. Since the
distance from Syene to Alexandria had been carefully measured, and two angles of the
triangle were known, it was possible to determine what portion of the earth’s
circumference was represented by the angle at Alexandria. This is a simplified summary
of Eratosthenes’ technique, which enabled him to calculate that the circumference of the
earth was 252,000 stadia (, remarkably close to the accurate figure.
Eratosthenes also invented the word “geography,” and using his techniques, it was now
possible to create a grid system and plot the location of almost any point on the surface

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of the earth. Krates of Mallus, in the second century BCE, created the first globe of the
earth. But it was soon realized that the earth was immense in its size and that despite
the extensive travels of Greeks (and eventually Romans) to what seemed to be the
ends of the earth, the known world was only a small part of the earth: Syene was far to
the south, but still well north of the equator, and the farthest north Greek settlements, on
the north shore of the Black Sea, were only halfway to the North Pole.
 Herodotus
 Ptolemy
B. Modern Geography
* German Geographers
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt synthesized a vast amount of
information (much of it on his travels, including five years in Central and South America)
to illustrate environmental variation, noting differences in agricultural practices and
patterns of human settlement that reflected the interactions of elevation, temperature,
and vegetation. His work emphasized field collection of data and their synthesis through
maps, leading to inductive generalizations regarding environmental characteristics and
their links with human activity.

Friedrich Ratzel. Ratzel, whose early studies were in biology and anthropology, was
much influenced by Darwinian thinking when linking human societies to their physical
environments. His two-volume Anthropogeography (1882–91) related the course of
history to Earth’s physical features, illustrating the principle of survival of the fittest. His
later Politics geography (1897) utilized Darwinian arguments to characterize nation-
states, which he treated as organisms that struggle for land (Lebensraum, or “living
space”), only the strongest being able to expand

* Geography - FRANCE
In France the discipline had roots in history and mapping. The first major practitioner
was Paul Vidal de la Blache, who had trained as a geographer and was appointed to
the Sorbonne in 1898, where he maintained close links with the Annales school of
historians. Vidal focused on defining and describing regions, or what he called pays—
relatively small homogeneous areas—whose distinctive genres de vie (“modes of life”)
resulted from the interactions of people with their physical milieux.

* Geography in the United States.

Foremost in the United States was William Morris Davis, a geologist at Harvard
University who published prolifically on landscape evolution (later called
geomorphology, or the study of landforms). He argued strongly for education in
geography, promoting an approach derived from German environmental determinism:
human behavior is strongly conditioned by environmental factors, so the study of
physical geography should be the basis for understanding human activity. Davis was
the principal author of an 1892 report on the teaching of geography, which
recommended replacing the rote learning with a more scientific approach based on

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physical geography but including “the physical influences by which man and the
creatures of the Earth are so profoundly affected.”

 The development of academic geography in the United Kingdom

Halford Mackinder. His 1887 paper to the Royal Geographical Society defined
geography as the scientific study of the interrelationship between society and the
environment.

C. APPROACHES TO GEOGRAPHY TODAY

A. Cultural Landscape, Traditional Regional Geography, and Spatial Science
 Cultural Landscape, 1920s (Sauer, Taffe, Denevan) – Term used in the field of
geography to describe the symbiosis of human activity and environment. It
stemmed from these approaches:
a. Environmental Determinism – The environment,
especially its physical factors as climate determines the
pattern of human culture and societal development.
b. Environmental Possibilism – All people are free to
choose what they want to do and how they want to live.
 Traditional Regional Geography, 1930’s (Hartshrone, Mackinder, Herbertson, de
la Blache and Sauer)– Characterized by a synthetic view of the world. The
advocates saw that humans, being an agent, had patterns in relation to
occupation of space, and this could be reflected by the changes in the earth’s
surface.
 Spatial Science, 1950s, 1960s, 1972 (Dacey, Burghardt, Kariel, – characterized
by analysis and visualization of our lived environment.
a. Empiricism – a theory that all knowledge is derived from
sense-experiences.
b. Rationalism – opinions and actions should be based on
reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or
emotional response.
c. Positivism – Phenomena had to be observed, and
measured, particularly through the formulation of
mathematical algorithms (process or set of rules) and
formulas.

B. Behavioral and Humanistic Traditions in Geography

 Behavioral Geography, 1960s, 1970s (Johnston, Gould and White, Brown and
Moore) – Study of the processes involved in spatial decision making and the
consequent traces of human decisions and movements in the environment.
 Humanistic Geography, 1970s, 1980s (Smith and Entrikin) – A value for action
supported by ordinary experience, which could draw guidelines for its practice.
Knowledge must be acquired from the individual.

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 C. Structuralist and Structurationist Approaches in Geography

 Structuralist Approach (Peet, Wilson) – A study on the constraints in which the

phenomena are situated. Questions of “Why” and “How come” came to the
forefront, and the focus of research shifted to in what context decisions are
made. To understand the surface patterns of human behavior, it is necessary to
have knowledge about the structures underlying them which produce or shape
human actions.
3 main structures:
a. Capitalism (relationships:
1. Worker to employer;
2. Businesses to business/businesses to consumer)
b. Gender – social relationships between women and men, and
inter-family relationships.
c. Race – shaping of decisions one makes based on the race they
might be a part of.
 Structurationist Approach (Cloke, Pred) – A more sophisticated approach to
human geography by considering the structure and agencies that people’s lives
are in interaction with daily. The relation of structure and social practice is dual,
meaning that the social practices refer to social structures and that social
structures are the result of previously performed practices and social actions.
Independent Activity:
Choose a theory in relation to human geography and read at least five readings
regarding situations that support a theory. Make your analysis why those situations are
anchored to your selected theory.

Rubric:

Grammar: 25 points

Content: 25 points

Organization: 25 points

Thought: 25 points

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 UNIT II: POPULATION GEOGRAPHY
The Measurement and Implications of Growth
a) Population Distribution
Population distribution - describes how the individuals of a population spread
out across their habitat. Spatial patterns of population distribution may be clumped,
uniform, or random. A clumped distribution shows a high population density in one area
of the habitat. Uniform distribution of populations has individuals relatively equally
spaced across the habitat. Random distribution does not have a pattern to how
individuals spread out in their habitat.
Population distribution is how individuals of a species spread out in the
location that they live in. Geographical features such as resource availability drive
population distribution. Examples of what can drive population distribution are water,
soil, energy, minerals, climate, landforms, topography, and accessibility.
Both biogeographers and ecologists study the distribution of populations to
gain a better understanding of how people or a species utilize the resources and habitat
available to them. Since resources are not evenly distributed across the globe, this
means locations with favorable climates and abundant resources are more densely
populated while those with less favorable climates and fewer resources are sparsely
populated. With regard to the human population, features of population distribution also
include economics, politics, and history. In the United States, the majority of the
population is distributed along the east and west coasts where resources are plentiful
and climates are favorable. Less of the population is distributed in the heartland of
America due to scarce natural resources and less favorable climates.
Population distribution is a measure of how spread out a population is in any given
area. The simplest way to measure population distribution is to calculate the percentage
of a population over a specific geographic area. For example, forty percent of the United
States population resides along the coastline. Additionally, population distribution can
be measured with a rank order where the population sizes of geographical regions can
be compared from census to census. For example, the province of Koh Kong,
Cambodia ranked as the eighteenth largest providence in 1998 but fell in ranking to the
twentieth largest in 2008.
Indicators of population change, which would affect distribution, include birth
rate, death rate, immigration (to live), and emigration (to leave). Significant adjustments
to any of these indicators can alter how a population is distributed. The general patterns
to the distribution of a population are known as spatial distribution patterns. Spatial
distribution patterns can be uniform, random, or clumped. Additionally, population
distribution is affected by population density, which is the number of individuals within a
given area.

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 A uniform population distribution has individuals which are generally equally
spaced apart. An example of this in nesting penguins which build nests equal distance
from other nesting penguins. Clumped population distributions is observed with herding
animals such as American Bison. The animals move in large groups to forage and
protect the young. Random distribution does not have a pattern and the species exhibit
little competition with each other. This type of distribution in observed with wildflowers
whose seeds are dispersed by the wind. The seeds will germinate if they land in a
favorable location.
Countries that are physically larger can hold more people. We need to use a
method that changes from a measure of overall population to some kind of per capita
(per head) measure. There are many of these and each has its merits.
1. Arithmetic density is the simplest one. It is simply the number of people
divided by the area of the country. The area is usually measured in square
kilometers, since most of the world uses the metric system.
2. Physiological density has the same numerator (population), but the
denominator is different. Instead of using all the land in a country, it only
accounts for arable (farmable) land. Places that are not used for agriculture-
deserts, lakes, mountaintops and similar places – are subtracted from the
land total. This is useful for demonstrating how much pressure is being put on
the farmland that is available. Be aware that food that is gathered or hunted
from nonagricultural land is not considered in this number.
3. Agricultural density has the same denominator as physiological density, but
has a different numerator. Instead of using the entire population, it only uses
farmers. This provides a number that is a good measure of development, or
rather it’s a good measure of underdevelopment. Developed countries have
mechanized agriculture and few farmers per capita. Each farm tends to be
large in order to generate a sufficient income. Places with high agricultural
densities have more farmers per hectare, meaning that farms will likely
produce less revenue. Of course, an underlying assumption of this number is
the idea that people are growing food to earn a living. If they are eating the
produce directly, outside the cash economy, then the comparison is less
valid.
Related to food production is the concept of carrying capacity. Carrying
capacity is simply how many people can live from a given piece of land. However, it’s
not really that simple. Carrying capacity is not static throughout time. Not only do
environmental characteristics change (due to desertification, for example) but
technology changes as well. The carrying capacity of land in wealthy developed
countries has expanded tremendously due to the application of technology. These
technologies could be something as simple as irrigation ditches to something as
complex as genetic modification of the plants and animals themselves. Carrying
capacity is snapshot taken at a particular time.

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Future Population
Estimating future populations is important, both at the global level and the
national level, but also at the local level as well. Societies large and small attempt to
plan their futures in terms of resource allocation and economic development. Population
projections are difficult. They attempt to take current circumstances and use them to
plot the likeliest future.
The problem is that the future may not be like the present. A disease that is
suppressing fertility may be cured. The climate may change more than expected. We
could experience another world war. Any number of unexpected large scale events
could occur that completely invalidate the reasoning behind a projection. Nicholas Talib
calls these Black Swan events. They are things that you don’t know about until you do
know about them.
b) Population Dynamics
Although the world’s population is still growing, the overall growth has slowed and
the growth has become very uneven. Some places are still growing very rapidly. Others
are growing much more slowly and some are shrinking in terms of population. We can
compare differences between places using a series of different rates. Rates are ratios
that divide the occurrence of a phenomenon with the population hosting the
phenomenon. For example, crude birth rate is calculated as the number of births per
1000 people in a particular place in a particular year. The crude death rate is similar. It
is calculated as deaths per 1000 people in a particular place in a particular year. These
numbers can be used to compare places, but they have great limitations.
The rates do not necessarily relate to one another, either. The crude birth rate
doesn’t tell you anything about the average number of children born per woman, at what
stage in their lives women tend to have children, etc. The crude death rates don’t
separate deaths of elderly people from deaths of infants. High rates of death are often
found in developed societies; in many ways it’s a sign of development, since developed
countries tend to have older populations. A high rate of infant mortality (children under 1
year of age) is a near-universal sign of underdevelopment. The countries with the
highest crude birth rates tend to be low income.
The crude death rate is more nuanced. Some countries on the map, for example,
Chad, have a high crude death rate due to a high rate of infant and child mortality.
Russia, on the other hand, has a rapidly aging population and a partially collapsed
social security network.
The replacement level of a population refers to the number of births that are
necessary to offset deaths. This is often referred to in terms of average fertility of
women. In modern societies, on average, women need to produce 2.1 (rate) children in
a lifetime to keep a place demographically stable. This number is derived by counting a
mother and her partner, and accounts for those who never reproduce.

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 What kinds of places are growing fastest?
These are places that are poor or economically or politically unstable. This may
seem counterintuitive.
Why would people have children in places that are already so poor?
Remember that individual families have children. Children can seem like a
mechanism for surviving bad situations.
What kinds of places are declining? This is more complicated, but in general the
more educated and empowered the female population is, the lower the birth rate. This
isn’t a perfect, linear relationship, but it’s useful as a start.
Why is there so much variability?
Because places matter. Uganda has a government advocating population growth,
while Afghanistan and Somalia have little governance at all. Russia and Australia have
similar fertility rates, and few other similarities.
General measurements of population are useful, but often if is useful to know the
age and gender structure of a population. This is shown using a population pyramid. A
population pyramid breaks the population into groups sorted by age ranges, called
cohorts, as well as by sex. The resulting shape tells you a great deal about the
population dynamic of the country. If the shape is actually a pyramid, then the country
has a high birth rate and a high death rate. Countries with stable populations look like a
column. Some countries even have their greatest population in the older cohorts with
comparably few young people.
Population momentum. When much of your population is older than 45, it isn’t
reasonable to expect that population will continue to grow quickly. Countries with young
populations should expect that their populations will grow when the large pool of young
people have children of their own.
The dependency ratio - simply the number of people within a society who do not
work compared to the number who do work. There are two main components of the
dependency ratio-children under 15 years old and the elderly over 65 years old,
although the degree to which either group is dependent is variable. Children need care
and schooling, but generally produce little of economic value. Elderly populations can
be too infirm to work and are the part of the population with the highest medical costs.
Where does the wealth come from to take care of these two groups? It comes from the
people working and producing wealth. If the dependency ratio is high, then each worker
can be responsible for a large number of dependents and less wealth will be left for the
workers.
Although the dependency ratio is used to compare places, this particular ratio can be
somewhat misleading. In many less developed places, children are not dependent.
They are not in school and they are employed. They are not consuming a family’s

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resources, but are instead contributing to them. In other places, the elderly may still be
in the workplace. The dependency ratio informs decisions regarding the future. Will a
country need more schools or assisted living centers.
c) Demographic Transition
Geographers have modeled the population dynamics of places for decades. The result
of these models is called the Demographic Transition model. It describes a series of
stages that societies pass through as they develop and industrialize. These models
represent the general demographic conditions that countries experience.
In Stage One, which is pre-modern, birth rates are high, and death rates are
high. As a result of these two factors, the population remains low, but stable.
By Stage Two as the society industrializes food becomes more steadily
available, water supplies get cleaner and sanitation and medical care improves. Death
rates fall, particularly infant mortality rates. However, there is a lag in the decline in birth
rates. It takes time for people to adjust to the new reality of urban industrial life. Since
the birth rate is still high and the death rate is low, population grows very rapidly.
Stage Three is characterized by a falling birth rate as the society begins to find
an equilibrium between birth and deaths. The birth rates are still higher than death rates
and population continues to increase. This continuation of population increase is known
as population momentum. The end of Stage Three is characterized by the general
balance between births and deaths.
Stage Four shows a return to population stability, but at a much greater number
of people.
Implications. At the global level, those extra billions will need food and water, houses
and clothing. That is to say that they will require resources. They will also have desires
that require even more materials and energy expenditure. In places like Niger, this will
be very difficult, if not impossible, to meet. In places like China, a completely different
problem presents itself. These populations are both shrinking and aging. Life
expectancy, the average lifespan in a country, has been increasing for decades in
developed and some developing countries. At the same time, birth rates have fallen for
a variety of reasons. This means that as time passes, the elderly portion of the
population has grown. Many countries will see their populations age until large
percentages will be unable to work. Societies for the past several centuries have
prepared themselves for population growth, and much of modern society is predicated
(affirmed) on it. Population growth is what has paid for social security for the elderly.
Few places have prepared themselves for fewer workers in the future (although robotics
may address this problem). This change will not happen at once, but the effects will be
tremendous.

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Independent Activity:
Select one City in the Philippines and describe its population-characteristics
based on the following: a. Population distribution b. Population Dynamics
c. Demographic transition
Rubric:
Grammar: 25 points
Content: 25 points
Organization: 25 points
Thought: 25 points

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 Unit III: The Geography of Migration
Migration and Population
Even though people generally migrate to find/make a better life for themselves and
for their families, the benefits and pitfalls of migration affect different countries and
regions in very different ways. Demography (age structure) has a lot to do with
understanding how does a differentiation occurs.
The demographic transition model explains how countries experience different
stages of population growth and family sizes, but the model also works well to
understand sources and destinations for migrants.
Let’s think about this for just a moment. At what age are people most likely to take
the risk to move to a completely different country to seek their fortune? Would you move
to Slovenia next year, if you could earn triple your current salary? Most international
migrants tend to be relatively young (18-35) during the prime of their working years.
Countries that tend to have an abundance of working-age people also tend to be early
in stage 3 of the model. Countries like Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and India
had large families a generation ago. As those children enter their working years, there
are not enough jobs created due to an “oversupply” of laborers. Meanwhile, countries in
late stage 4 find that because of low fertility rates a generation earlier, the economy now
faces a shortage of working-age residents to do all kinds of jobs. Birth rates were high
during the 1950’s in the US, but as women had fewer children in subsequent
generations, fewer workers were entering the workforce every year. Unsurprisingly,
young workers from Mexico, El Salvador, Jamaica, etc., began to immigrate as the
demand for their labor increased. In Europe, the same pattern occurred as those from
higher fertility countries like Turkey migrated to lower fertility countries like Germany.
Migration Push and Pull Factors
Demographic realities can be push factors or pull factors that serve to push
people away from a place or pull them towards a place as explained in the previous
paragraph. Push and pull factors can be cultural, economic, or ecological. Baptists
might be “pulled” towards the American South, and Mormons might be “pulled” to
Utah for cultural reasons. Meanwhile, the devastation of Hurricane Maria (2017)
“pushed” hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans off the island. The most common
destination for Puerto Ricans was Florida for economic (jobs), ecological (warm
weather), and cultural (existing Spanish speakers) reasons. When the push factors
and pull factors fit together nicely, migration can benefit both the sending and
receiving regions.
Though twenty-first century anti-immigrant sentiment remains high in countries
like the US, Australia, and the U.K., the benefits for receiving countries are well
documented. Apart from the demographic advantages already described, employers
and consumers tend to benefit markedly from the low-cost, readily-available supply

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 of labor provided by immigrants. Everything from the cost of fruit, construction, fast
food, and lawn care tends to be cheaper owing to an immigrant labor force.
Evidence also indicates that wages in low-skilled jobs may be suppressed by
immigrants, but the overall economic benefit is widely reported by economists to be
favorable when unemployment rates are low. Immigrants have higher rates of
employment, are more likely to start businesses and are less likely to commit crimes
than the native-born population in the US Sending countries also tend to benefit from
emigration in two ways. First, emigration provides an opportunity for young workers
who cannot find employment at home. Second, emigrants tend to send home the
majority of their overseas earnings. Money sent home by overseas workers is called
remittances. Countries that send large numbers of workers overseas benefit from
the large infusion of foreign capital into the local economy, which tends to spur new
investment opportunities. When migration is working smoothly, both sending and
receiving countries can benefit.
Besides low-skilled workers and refugees, a third category of immigrant has
increased dramatically under globalization. Highly-skilled immigrants represent a
unique contradiction. On the one hand, countries seek to increase border security,
limit asylum seekers, and build walls. On the other, those same countries actively
recruit and seek to attract immigrants with specific skills, training, and educational
levels. Most commonly, wealthy countries like the U.K. regularly recruit nurses,
scientists, and engineers from poorer countries to meet the needs of an aging
population. As British residents have fewer children and society gets older, there is
more demand specifically for healthcare workers of all kinds. As such, the best and
brightest minds from poorer countries become attracted to the much higher wages
outside of their countries and they leave—resulting in a brain drain. Nearly sixty
percent of all doctors born in Ghana and eighty-five percent of nurses born in the
Philippines have left the country to work elsewhere! Wealthy countries reap the
benefits of this brain gain. Although highly-skilled and educated individuals and
families that emigrate for higher pay undoubtedly benefit from emigration, the
countries that experience brain drain persistently lose a very valuable resource.
Besides losing most of its doctors, Ghana also now faces a major shortage of those
qualified to teach the next generation of medical professionals, so the negative effect
crosses multiple generations.

Internal Migration

According to International Organization for Migration (IOM), people who move

voluntarily within a country are called internal migrants and move for several reasons,
both formally and informally. If their movement is forced, they are referred to as
Internally Displaced Persons (IDP).

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Internal movements from rural areas to urban areas is called urbanization or urban
transition.

Migrants who move within the borders of their country are called internal migrants, that
is, people seeking a new temporary or permanent residence, regardless of the reasons
for doing so. A conservative estimate from United Nation Development Program
(UNDP) in 2009 estimated that the global figure of internal migrants was 740 million.
However, this estimate is uncertain, in part because according to the series of research
on migration “International migration, internal migration, mobility and urbanization”, the
greater the population of a country, the greater its percentage of internal migrants. This
is also partly because of the complexity of defining the limits of this category: how far
should a person be mobilized to be considered an internal migrant? How much time
should they spend in this new residence? These and other questions make it difficult to
measure the population that migrates within the borders of a State, and few countries
keep records in this regard. Population censuses are often the most frequently used
instruments to measure internal migration.

Within the category of internal migrants are internally displaced persons, who,
although they do not cross an internationally recognized state border, are forced to
move, “in particular as a result of or to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of
widespread violence , violations of human rights or natural or human-caused disasters ”,
as defined by the Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement.

According to the Global Internal Displacement Report 2019, in 2018, the Americas
region represented 3.7% of global internal displacements due to conflict, and 9.8% of
displacements due to natural disasters. This reinforces, as the report says, that internal
displacement is a global challenge, but it is concentrated mainly in some countries and
regions, such as Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria.

According to the UN Population and Development Commission, urbanization or urban

transition is related to “a change in a population that is dispersed in small rural
settlements, in which agriculture is the dominant economic activity, towards one that is it
concentrates on larger and denser urban settlements characterized by a domain of
industrial activities and services”. Urbanization differs from urban growth in that the
former means a movement of people, and the latter refers to an increase in the urban
population. The definition of what is urban and rural changes from country to country. It
is relevant to note that Central America is the second highest region in the world in
terms of urbanization rates and is only surpassed by Africa.

The Migration Data Portal indicates that urbanization generally occurs through
processes such as natural population growth; when more people move from rural to
urban areas; when the limits of what is considered urban are extended; and as a result
of the creation of new urban centers. Although there are other types of internal
migration flows, such as rural-to-rural, urban-to-urban, and urban-to-rural, it is the
transition to the urban that has gained increased the most significantly.

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Internal migrants, internally displaced persons and those who move to urban areas can
be in more than one category at the same time and from there they can sometimes get
confused. In addition, we must bear in mind that people come and go, adjust their
residence for short or long periods of time, and therefore migration is not necessarily a
linear process. Instead, it is complex and fluid and occurs in different times and spaces.
The factors that promote internal migration are multiple and combine with each other.
These include social, political, economic, demographic, environmental and climate
issues. Internal migration can also give rise to international movements, both within the
framework of forced displacement and more voluntary processes.

International Migration
Globalization is defined as the set of forces and processes that involve the entire
planet, making something worldwide in scope. Although 246 million people live outside
of their birth country, more than 96 percent of the world’s people do not ever move
outside of their birth country, so in the case of migration, globalization might not be as
powerful as once believed. While geographers try to understand where people move
and why, a more significant question might be why so many people do not move. If you
live in one of the places on Earth where you interact with people from all over the globe
on a regular basis, then it might seem to you that globalization is operating at full speed.
Yet, the vast majority of humans don’t leave their home country and have limited
interactions with people from other places, even if the products they consume and
produce might be worldwide in scope.
As we entered the new millennium in 2000, scholars were convinced that a new
age was upon us. Some went so far as to say that geography was “dead” and that place
didn’t matter. A best-selling book written by Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat
(2005), decreed that humanity was becoming more connected all the time to the point
that it didn’t matter if you were in the streets of Bombay or in a classroom at Harvard.
The best minds and the best ideas would always rise to the top, regardless of their
origin. Inherent in this argument was the assumption that more people would be on the
move, and international migration would accelerate as people and products would just
zoom across the “flat earth” at lightning speed.
In 2017, however, geography has re-emerged to re-stake its claim. While more
people than ever are, in fact, living outside of their birth countries, there is a growing
resistance across the planet to “outsiders.” In response to the attacks of September 11,
2001, President George W. Bush firmly asserted that “every nation in every region now
has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Perhaps
that is the moment in which the earlier hope of a fully-integrated world with open
borders and full mobility was deemed too optimistic. In the years since that speech,
western nations have taken a collective stance against immigration often based upon
religious or ideological grounds. In 2017, for example, Donald Trump called for a “total
and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in response to a

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shooting in San Bernadino, California. Meanwhile, Britain moved to cut immigration
levels dramatically as it exited the European Union and took a more isolationist position,
and Australia moved to prevent refugees from arriving on its shores.

Refugees
Very often in the case of forced migration, however, migration does not benefit
both parties. Those migrants who flee their country based upon claims of danger based
upon race, religion, nationality, or other pertinent identifiers are known as asylum
seekers. They seek a country willing to take them in permanently for fear of
imprisonment, retribution, or death in their country of origin. When asylum seekers have
satisfactorily demonstrated a claim in court, their status changes to refugee. Under
international agreement, refugees cannot be forced to return to any country where they
are deemed to be in danger, so refugee status provides displaced people with a legal
protection against deportation. The number of refugees worldwide at the end of 2016
was 22.5 million, the highest total of refugees since the end of WWII. There were also
40.3 million people uprooted within their own country, known as internally displaced
people (IDP), bringing the total number of displaced people to an all-time high of nearly
63 million. In recent years, large numbers of asylum seekers have left Syria, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela, and Myanmar (formerly
Burma) as wars and political conflict have endangered millions. During previous wars,
wealthier countries in Europe, North America, and Australia accepted large numbers of
asylum seekers, but anti-immigrant sentiments have risen in many parts of the world,
leaving the majority of would-be refugees without refuge. Opponents of resettlement
argue that the cost is just too great, and they fear that accepting refugees would
encourage more unwelcome immigration in the future, so this has significantly reduced
the number of migrants that countries are willing to accept.

Migration Policies
[Link]
microsites/IDM/workshops/global_labour_mobility_0809102007/presentations/
paper_calzado.pdf
Independent Task
Try to interview your Barangay Chairman about the migration flow in your locality.
Make your own analysis in the light of push and pull factors that affect the flow.
Rubric:
a. Content: 25
b. Grammar:25

15
c. Organization:25
d. Thought:25

References:
1. [Link]
58d9565e-2696-43f3-b68c-836a0cec0365
2. [Link]

16
Unit 4. The Geography of Culture, Language and Religion
The word culture itself comes the Latin word cultura, meaning cultivation or
growing. This is precisely what humans do with both their material and abstract cultural
components. Humans, since early childhood, learn to shape, create, share, and change
their culture. Culture is the very vehicle we use to navigate through our environments.
Culture is a form of communication and it evolves. And as a type of compass, it leads.
Culture can be classified into three different categories: mentifacts (ideas or beliefs),
artifacts (goods or technology), and sociofacts (forms of social organization).
1. All cultures have underlying beliefs and thought processes. These beliefs include
religion (Chapter 6) and language (Chapter 5) but go far beyond that. Other
important beliefs include things like nationalism (see Chapter 8), customs or
prejudices. These beliefs can be expressed through various avenues, using a
variety of auditory, visual, and tactile means. For example, nationalism can be
expressed through song, cuisine, dress, and public events. You can hear
nationalism in the form of an anthem, see it in the form of a flag, taste it when
you eat a dish that represents a group of people, and feel it in the form of a piece
of jewelry.

2. Technology is a human construct. From our earliest inventions (fire, weapons) to

a supercomputer, the things that people build are products of their perceived
needs, their technical abilities and their available resources. Technology includes
clothing, foods and housing. Another name for technology is material culture.
Think of material culture as the material that archaeologists study. The materials
that we use are often left behind for later people to study, like the clay tablets the
Sumerians used to record their writing or the remnants of an Iroquois longhouse
used for shared living. Other components of culture (like ideas) leave fewer
traces. We can find material culture related to burial practices that date back
millennia but may not always have the material evidence to show how people
grieve.

3. Lifestyle is a component of culture that can be overlooked, but it is vitally

important. In many cultures, a family is a very large unit and people can tell in
great detail their exact relationship to everyone else in a place. In the modern
context, a family could consist of a single parent and a child and it is possible to
live in a neighborhood filled with unrelated people and not know the name of a
single neighbor.
Cultural Reproduction
As human beings, we reproduce in two ways: biologically and socially. Physically
we reproduce ourselves through having children. However, culture consists solely of
learned behavior. In order for culture to reproduce itself, it has to be taught. This is

17
 what makes culture a human creation. How is culture transmitted? Human beings
are natural mimics. This is the way we learn to speak, and it is the way we learn the
rest of our culture as well. We learn through observation and, subsequently, through
practice. At another scale, mimicry is the mechanism that drives cultural diffusion.
Human beings copy the things we like. The old line “Imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery,” perfectly describes the human desire to incorporate successful adaptations.
How people have shared culture has changed drastically over time. This can
partly be attributed to the channels in which we share culture. In the past, culture
was shared orally and in person. Words eventually became written, the written
became electronic, and we now have access to things from anywhere at any time.

Folk and Popular Culture

Culture can be seen either through the lens of a microscope or through that of a
telescope. Folk culture is local, small and tightly bound to the immediate landscape.
Popular culture is large, dispersed, and globalizing. These two forms of culture are not
totally separated. They are related and both currently exist in the world. Prior to about
2008, most people on Earth lived in rural communities, often practicing a folk culture.
The world as a whole is moving toward popular culture.
1. Folk Culture
The term folk tends to evoke images of what we perceive to me traditional costumes,
dances, and music. It seems that anything with the prefix folk refers to something that
somehow belongs in the past and that is relegated to festivals and museums. The word
folk can be traced back to Old Norse/English/Germanic and was used to refer to an
army, a clan, or a group of people. Using this historic information, folk culture (folktales,
folklore, etc.) can be understood as something that is shared first among a group of
people and then with the more general population. It is a form of identification. Folk is
ultimately tied to an original landscape/geographic location as well. Folk cultures are
found in small, homogeneous groups. Because of this, folk culture is stable through
time, but highly variable across space.
Folk customs originate in the distant past and change slowly over time. Folk cultures
move across space by relocation diffusion, as groups move they bring their cultural
items, as well as their ideas with them.
Folk culture is transmitted or diffused in person. Knowledge is transmitted either by
speaking to others, or through participating in an activity until it has been mastered.
Cooking food is taught by helping others until an individual is ready to start cooking.
Building a house is learned through participating in the construction of houses. In all
cases, folk cultures must learn to use the resources that are locally available. Over time
folk cultures learn functional ways to meet daily needs as well as satisfy desires for

18
meaning and entertainment. Folk cultures produce distinctive ways to address
problems.
Houses tend to be similar within a culture area, since once a functional house type is
developed, there is little incentive to experiment with something that may not work.
Food must be grown or gathered locally. People prefer variety, so they produce many
crops, plus relying on only a few foods is dangerous. Clothing is made from local wool,
flax, hides, or other materials immediately available. Local plants serve as the basis of
folk medicinal systems. People are entertained by music that reinforces folk beliefs and
mythologies, as well as reflects daily life. Folktales or folklore exists as foundational
myths, origin stories or cautionary tales.
Holidays provide another form of entertainment. Special days break the monotony of
daily life. A holiday such as Mardi Gras, which has its roots in the Catholic calendar
provides an occasion to flout cultural norms and relieve tension. Another way of
providing escape from monotony is provided by intoxicants. Although often not
considered when discussing culture, human beings have been altering their own mental
states for millennia. The production of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco or coca demonstrates
that folk cultures understood the properties of psychoactive substances. Later these
substances would be commercialized into modern products.
As folk cultures have receded there has been a return to valuing the folk. The Slow-food
movement and the growth of cultural tourism has largely been driven for the desire
experience elements of folk culture. As early as the German Grimm Brothers (19th
Century Germany) people have wanted to preserve and promote folk culture. John
Lomax (1867-1948) traveled the United States trying to record as many folk songs and
folk tales (including slave narratives) as they faded from human memory.
Folk culture can also be expressed as craftsmanship versus factory work. Hand
production of goods requires a great amount of knowledge to select materials, fabricate
components, assemble and finish a product. Contrast this with industrial production in
workers need to know very little about the final product, and have little relationship with
it. This difference in modes of production was first discussed by Ferdinand Tönnies and
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. These two words denote the relationship between
people and their communities, and by extension, their landscapes. Gesellschaft is the
way life is lived in a small community. Gemeinschaft is the way that life is lived in a
larger society.
2. Popular Culture
Popular culture is culture that is bought. Think about your daily life. You work to buy
food and clothing, pay your rent, and entertain yourself. The origin of each ingredient in
your food could be hundreds or even thousands of miles in either direction. Your
clothing almost certainly wasn’t made locally, or even in this country. Your house might
look just like any house in any subdivision in North America, placeless and with little
connection to local resources.

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Popular culture is driven by marketing. Entire industries exist to convince us that our
desires and needs will be best met through shopping. Why is this? Because without
sales, the companies that produce pop culture will go bankrupt.
Popular culture industries must continuously reinvent themselves. Being popular today
is not a guarantee of longevity. In order to convince consumers that last year’s t-shirt is
now unacceptable, it is necessary to promote fashion. Fashion is not just a concept
related to clothing. It is the reason that automobile companies make cosmetic changes
to their products every year. It is why fast food restaurants continually change some
parts of their menus. Without the cachet of fashion, consumers may feel socially
disadvantaged. This explains why some people with very limited incomes will spend
money on expensive luxuries.
In terms of popular culture holidays are simply reasons to sell merchandise. The
commercialization of Christmas has been increasing for over a century in western
countries. Now it is possible to see Christmas displays in Japan or China, places with
few Christians, but many available consumers. The same sort of marketing can be seen
in the expansion of Halloween globally, and in the growth of Cinco de Mayo in the
United States.
Hierarchical diffusion plays prominently in popular culture diffusion. Larger places tend
to generate many of pop culture’s hit songs, clothing styles, and food trends. Diffusion in
popular culture is highly related to technology. Although it wasn’t invented as such, the
internet has become a venue for advertisement. Clickbait headlines and ad revenue
have created an atmosphere where every conversation is a sales pitch.
This hierarchical diffusion means that innovations tend to diffuse from large, well-
connected places to other large-well-connected places first, then trickle-down to smaller
and smaller places. The gap in time that it takes for a new idea or product is known as
cultural lag. In some places, there is almost no cultural lag. To very remote places,
some innovations take a very long time to arrive. Bear in mind that there are places in
the United states that still have no internet service.
Popular culture covers large populations with access to similar goods and services, but
the pressing need to sell drives almost incessant modification, generally at a superficial
level. Because of this we usually describe pop culture as stable across space, but highly
variable across time.
Geography of Language
Language is central to daily human existence. It is the principal means by which
we conduct our social lives at home, neighborhood, school, work place and recreation
area. It is the tool we use to plan our lives, remember our past, and express our cultural
identity. We create meaning when we talk on the cell phone, send an e-mail message,
read a newspaper and interpret a graph or chart. Many persons conduct their social
lives using only one language. Many others, however, rely on two languages in order to

20
participate effectively in the community, get a job, obtain a college degree and enjoy
loving relationships. We live in a discourse world that incorporates ways of speaking,
reading and writing, but also integrates ways of behaving, interacting, thinking and
valuing. Language is embedded in cultural practices and, at the same time, symbolizes
cultural reality itself.
Language as a Mental Capacity
To understand the nature of human language, one needs to approach the
concept as a complex system of communication. An important distinction should be
considered when using the term language. It can be viewed as an internal mental
capacity (langue) as well as an external manifestation through speech (parole). As
human beings, we are able to produce and understand countless number of utterances
which are characterized by the use of grammatical elements such as words, phrases
and sentences.
With a limited number language forms, we can produce numerous utterances
that can be easily understood by other members of the speech community who share a
similar cultural background and language knowledge. This underlying mental capacity is
embodied in the concept that language is rule-governed creativity, operating at different
grammatical levels in the formation of utterances or sentences.
Language as a Means of Communication
A salient aspect of language involves the use of the communication system to
perform a broad range of conversational acts/functions in “face-to-face” situations. Four
major types of conversational acts have been proposed:
assertives (speaker informs/answers/agrees/confirms/rejects/suggests)
directives (speaker directs/ invites/ questions/orders someone else to do something),
commissives (speaker makes an offer/promise involving some future action),
expressives (speaker apologizes/evaluates/greets/thanks/expresses opinion/reacts).
Language as Cultural Practice
Speakers view language as a symbol of their social identity. As the sayings go: “You are
what you speak” and “you are what you eat.” The words that people use have cultural
reality. They serve to express information, beliefs and attitudes that are shared by the
cultural group. Stereotype perceptions come into play when we think about race (Asian,
African, European, Native American), religion (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist), social
status (working class, middle class, wealthy, upper class) and citizenship status (US
born, visa holder foreigner, undocumented worker). Cultural stereotypes are formed by
extending the characteristics of a person or group of persons to all others, as in the
belief that “all Americans are individualists and all Chinese are group-followers,
collectivists.”

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Along with cultural beliefs about groups of people, individuals manifest specific views
regarding languages themselves. Some make judgments about Language X as being
“difficult to learn”, “not useful in society” and “too boring”. Others might view Language Y
as the means “to get ahead”,“to make friends”, “to complete a college requirement” or
“to participate in the global marketplace”.
According to royal court gossip in the 16th century, King Charles V of Europe had
definite opinions about the languages he spoke: French was the language of love;
Italian was the best language to talk to children; German was the appropriate language
to give commands to dogs; Spanish was the language to talk to God.
Cultural meanings are assigned to language elements by members of the speech
community who, in turn, impose them to others who want to belong to the group.
Expressions such as “bug off”, “you know”, “you don’t say” and “crack house” have a
common meaning to members of a cultural group. Members in a speech group tend to
share a common social space and history and have a similar system of standards for
perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting. Based on one’s experience of the world in
a given cultural group, one uses this knowledge (cultural schemata) to predict
interactions and relationships regarding new information, events and experiences.
Schemata function as knowledge structures that allow for the organization of
information needed to perform daily cultural routines (eating breakfast, going shopping,
planning a party, visiting friends). We can examine cultural patterns of behavior in
relation to cultural scripts. The concept of cultural scripts is a metaphor from the
language of theater. They are the “scripts” that guide social behavior and language use
in everyday speaking situations.
Lingua Franca
There are cases in which one existing language gains the status of a lingua franca. A
lingua franca may not necessarily be the mother tongue of any one speaker group, but it
serves as the medium of communication and commerce among diverse language
groups.
Language and Place Names
The names people give to their physical environment provide a unique source of
information about cultural character of various social groups. Place names often reveal
the history, beliefs and values of a society. Toponymy is the study of place names, and
the names people assign to specific geographic sites offer us the opportunity to
recognize a country’s settlement history, important features of the landscape, famous
personalities, and local allusion to distant places and times. Place names can change
overnight, often depending of political factors and social considerations.
Language of the Digital World

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Social media are computer-mediated technologies which allows multiple senders and
receivers to create and share information, ideas, career interests and other forms of
expression via virtual communities and communication networks. Social media use
relies on web-based technologies such as desktop computers, smartphones and tablet
computers to create highly interactive formats which allow individuals, communities and
organizations the possibility to share, co-create, discuss diverse topics and comment on
content previously posted online. Social media allows for mass cultural exchanges and
intercultural communication among people from different regions of the world.
The term social media is often used to indicate that many senders and receivers can
communicate almost simultaneously across space and time. At the same time, the term
social media is used to mean social networks (relationships and contacts among many
individuals). If one is using the term to mean social networks (who interacts with whom
in the linguistic community), then the researcher can “observe” and document the
interactional patterns or the researcher can “interview” the participants to determine the
type of social networks. Social networks, from a sociolinguistic perspective, can be
differentiated on the basis of whether they are “dense” or “loose”. In dense networks all
members know each other. In loose networks not all members know each other.
Networks can also be distinguished with the quality of ties (connections) that exist
among the members. In uniplex ties, individuals are connected by one type of
relationship (participate in the same swim club, take same courses at a college, work in
the same business). In multiplex ties, members know each other in several different
roles (student/friend/classmate; parent/co-worker/neighbor).
The term social media is usually associated with different networking sites such as the
following:
Facebook, an online social network which allows users to create personal profiles,
share photos and videos and communicate with other users.
Twitter, an internet service that allows users to post “tweets” (brief messages totaling
140 characters) for their followers to see in real-time.
LinkedIn, a network designed for the business community allowing users to create
professional profiles, post resumes, and communicate with other professionals and job-
seekers.
Pinterest, an online network that allows users to send photos of items found in the web
by“pinning” them and sharing comments with others in the virtual community.
Snapchat, an application on mobile devices that allows users to send and share photos
of themselves performing daily activities.12
Social media takes many other forms including blogs, forums, product/services reviews
and social gaming and video sharing. The social networking world has changed the way
individuals and organizations use language to communicate with each other. Research

23
findings indicate the significant impact that social media is having on society in the
United States and elsewhere.
There are both positive and negative effects associated with social media. The positive
effects include the ability to document memories, learn about and explore different
topics, advertise oneself and form many friendships. On the negative side, social media
often invades on personal privacy, fosters information overload, promotes isolation,
affects users’ self-esteem and creates the possibility for online harassment and
cyberbullying.
Mapping actual language use in the context of the digital world is problematic. It is a
complex communication universe. Unlike the geography of place names and the
discourse of advertisement, social networking occurs in a virtual environment, involving
many senders/receivers and different computer-mediated technologies. Data “mining” is
a technique employed to analyze large-scale social media data fields to establish
general patterns regarding the content/topics that emerge from people’s actual online
activities. Usage patterns in social media interest many advertisers, major businesses,
government organizations and political parties. Research methods from the social
sciences have been used to establish user’s activities with different types of social
media technologies. These include pencil-and-paper questionnaires, individual/group
oral interviews and focus group sessions. These methods involve language-driven
interactions with a limited number of users who may or may not reveal their actual social
media
Geography of Religion
“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church.
For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the Spirit.”
- Khalil Gibran
Like language and ethnicity, religion is a cultural characteristic that can be closely
bound to individual identity. Religion can provide a sense of community, social
cohesion, moral standards, and identifiable architecture. It can also be a source of
oppression, social discord, and political instability. Religion is more than metaphysics-
magical explanations for natural phenomena; it is also a governing philosophy of
behavior and an organizing cosmology of the universe.
Bear in mind that these numbers are estimates; there is no world governing body
collecting detailed statistics of religion. Christians and Muslims make up over half of the
world’s population. The next category, the unaffiliated, are a large but diffuse body
containing people who do not identify with any religion. Hindus, who cluster in the Indian
subcontinent, are the next largest group. The category of Folk religion is similar to that
of Unaffiliated-it is a large group of religions that are bound into one category solely for
logical consistency. Folk religions may consist of ancestor worship in China, animism in
central Africa, or any other number of indigenous, local religions. The Other category

24
contains newer religions that are just gaining their footholds and other religions that may
be fading in the contemporary milieu. Judaism is included in the chart, although it has
comparatively few adherents. It is included for two reasons. First, it provided the cultural
spoor for both Christianity and Islam, and second, it is the predominant religion of the
modern state of Israel.
State religions are religions that are recognized as the official religion of a
country. In some places with a state religion, such as Denmark or the United Kingdom,
the official status of one religion has little effect either on the practice of other religions
or on the society at large. In places like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, however, the official
religion is closely connected to the power of the state, most obviously in the form of
blasphemy laws which allow for state penalties (including death) for violations of
religious statutes.
Religious Contribution to Culture and Identity
Religions are not isolated social phenomena. They exist within a cultural complex
that nurtures and sustains them, or conversely, demeans and undermines them.
Religion can be closely bound to other elements of identity -language, or nationality. In
many societies, the boundaries between religion and social life, family structure, and
law and politics are nonexistent. Religion in those places is the center of all life and
everything else revolves around religious concepts. A place that is purely governed by a
religious structure is known as a theocracy (. There are very few of these in the modern
world, although many states have strong religious influence. Many modern societies
have built barriers between religious influence and political life. These places are called
secular and are much more common in the developed world.
Religion, along with ethnicity and language, are very often core components of
an individual’s identity. It can define the way a person sees the world, what clothing is
appropriate, gender roles, employment, and even your position within the greater
society. As such, it has tremendous cultural influence, and this influence is visible in the
landscape.
Esthetics and Religion
Religion has a motivating factor that few other social phenomena can match.
When people are doing something for God, they generally have fewer limits than in
other spheres of life. One of the ways this lack of limits is manifest in the landscape is
through religious architecture.
Sacred spaces can be religious structures, but they can also be historic
battlefields, cemeteries, mountains, or rivers. Anything that humans use to generate a
sense of the divine can be considered a sacred space. Sacred spaces have
expectations of behavior. In some places, it is still possible to claim sanctuary in a
sacred place. The small altars that mark roadside fatalities in the United States can be
considered sacred spaces, as could a closet that is used as a prayer room.

25
 Elements of culture may be manifest in different types of churches, temples on
the landscape, as well as clothing, the food grown, and small home devotionals.
Another way that religion manifests in the visible sphere is through codes of acceptable
dress as well as acceptable public behaviors.
A less obvious way that religions may influence the landscape is through
religious influences on dietary choices. Food production can be influenced by religions.
Many religions have doctrine regarding what is acceptable food, and what is not. Halal
(Arabic: Lawful or permitted), Kosher (Hebrew: satisfying Requirements of Jewish Law)
and Ital (Rastafarian in Jamaica) based on fresh, organic and preferably homegrown
produce) are all representative of food restrictions. Religions that prohibit the
consumption of pork will probably not have swine farms. Cattle wander through the
countryside in India, since they are religiously protected from harm. Another effect that
religion has on the landscape is the effect of pilgrimage. Many religions have an activity
that requires gathering at a particular place. Probably the best-known pilgrimage is the
Hajj of Islam, but this isn’t actually the largest in the world. That would be the Hindu
Kumbh Mela. The Camino Santiago is a well-known Christian pilgrimage that ends in
Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Pilgrimage is not just visible through the pilgrims, but in
the entire infrastructure that develops to support the pilgrims.
Types of Religions
We often break religions into one of two basic types: ethnic and universalizing.
Ethnic religions are associated within one group of people. They make little to no effort
at proselytizing (converting others), although that possibility may exist. The largest
ethnic religion is Hinduism. Judaism is another well-known ethnic religion. Through
migration, both of these religions have become dispersed around much of the world, but
they are closely tied to their own ethnic groups.
Universalizing religions seek to convert others. For some religions, it is a
requirement for practitioners to spend part of their lives in missionary work attempting to
convert others.
Another way of dividing religions is into the categories of polytheistic (many gods)
and monotheistic (one god). Although the difference between monotheistic religions and
polytheistic religions seems unbridgeable, there are religions that have managed to
combine elements of polytheism and monotheism into the same religion. For example,
in Voudon (Voodoo), entities that had previously represented African gods are recast as
Catholic saints, who themselves are semi-divine in the Catholic cosmology. Combining
two religions to create a new religion is known as syncretism.
Brief Description of the Major Religions
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth. It dates to sometime in the first century AD since the Western world uses the

26
Christian calendar. Christianity began as an offshoot of Judaism, and includes the
Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament) as well as the New
Testament as its canonized scriptures. It has three main branches: Catholic, Orthodox,
and Protestant
Islam
Islam is a monotheistic religion originating with the teachings of Muhammad (570-632),
an Arab religious and political figure. The word Islam means “submission”, or the total
surrender of oneself to God. An adherent of Islam is known as a Muslim, meaning “one
who submits (to God).”
Buddhism
Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism that dates to the fifth century BCE. It was founded
by Siddhartha Gautama near the modern border between Nepal and India. The three
largest branches of Buddhism are Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana
Hinduism
Hinduism is a religious tradition that originated in the Indian subcontinent (Figure 6.7).
Its origins can be traced to the ancient Vedic civilization (1500 BCE), a product of the
invasion of Indo-European peoples. A conglomerate of diverse beliefs and traditions
that assembled organically over a period of centuries, Hinduism has no single founder.
Due to its concurrent growth with Indian civilization, Hinduism has historically been
tightly bound to the caste system, although the modern Indian state has worked to
ameliorate the more damaging effects of this relationship.
Sikhism
Sikhism is a 15th Century amalgamation of Islam and Hinduism. It is in many ways
emblematic of syncretic religions. Syncretic religions are created by the combination of
two or more religions, with the addition of doctrinal elements to create cohesion
between the disparate pieces. Founded by Nanak Dev Ji (1469 – 1539) Sikhism
reconciles Hinduism and Islam by recasting Hindu gods as aspects of a single god, in a
manner similar to the Catholic Trinity.
Judaism
Judaism is a monotheistic religion originating in the Bronze Age in the eastern
Mediterranean (Figure 6.9). Although it has no single founder, it holds the Torah as its
holy book. In the modern context of Judaism, there are three major forms—Orthodox,
Conservative and Reform—each with their own set of interpretations of correct practice.
Animism, Jainism, Bahai, Shinto and Others
This catch-all category combines together religions that are all quite different. They are
here due to their similar ties to places or ethnicities, not because they share any
doctrinal or historical connections. Before continuing on a discussion of the following

27
religions, it is important to make a point clear. It is possible to practice more than one
religion. Many people in the world practice two or more religions with no sense of
contradiction. In many parts of the world, pre-Christian or pre-Islamic beliefs persist
alongside the newer religions.
Animism is a broad category, found in a variety of environments (Figure 6.10). The
underlying theme is the idea that almost anything in the environment- people,
mountains, rivers, rain, etc. is alive and worthy of recognition as such. Animism is
frequently practiced with other ideologies or philosophies.
Baha’i was founded by Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri (1817-1892) in 1863. Baha’i was an
offshoot of another religion, Babism, that in itself was a derivative of Islam. Although
traditional Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last of the prophets (the seal of the
prophets) many religions have been founded on the idea that there could be other, later
people who also spoke for god. Baha’is believe that new messengers would be sent to
humanity to remind people of their universal relationship to god and one another.
Jainism is another ancient religion that arose in India. It is best known for its concept of
ahimsa, or nonviolence.
Shinto, the ethnic religion of Japan is often practiced in conjunction with Buddhism. It is
polytheistic and dates back centuries. The most important consideration of Shinto is that
the rituals are so ingrained in Japanese national identity that the religion can either be
considered vibrant and relevant, or moribund and ritualistic, depending on the
perspective of the viewer.
Religious Conflict
Human beings have struggled against one another for a variety of reasons. Religious
disagreements can be particularly intense. Sectarian violence involves differences
based on interpretations of religious doctrine or practice. The struggles between the
Catholic and Orthodox churches, or the wars associated with the Protestant
Reformation and Counter Reformation, are examples of this form of conflict. The current
violence seen between Sunni and Shia Muslims is also in this category. Closely
associated with this kind of conflict is religious fundamentalism. Religious
fundamentalism rests on a literal interpretation and strict and intense adherence to the
basic principles of a religion. The conflict arises when religious fundamentalists see their
coreligionists as being insufficiently pious. Extremism is the idea that the end of a
religious goal can be justified by almost any means. Some groups that are convinced
that they have divine blessing have few limits to their behavior, including resorting to
violence.
Another form of religious violence is between completely different religions. Wars
between Muslims and Christians or Hindus and Buddhists have been framed as wars
for the benefit or detriment of particular religions. What is described as religious strife,
however, is often not. Although some religions are fighting over doctrinal differences,

28
most conflict stems from more secular causes- a desire for political power, a struggle for
resources, ethnic rivalries, and economic competition.
The Israel/Palestine conflict is a struggle over territory, resources, and political
recognition. The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar has less to do with religion and more to do
with differences in ethnicity, national origin, and post-colonial identity. Massacres in
Sahelian Africa are better framed as farmers versus herders. The long running violence
between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland is better framed as a violent
dispute between one group who holds allegiance with the Republic of Ireland and the
other who holds allegiance with the United Kingdom.
This is not to say that religious violence does not exist. It does. The most obvious
example of this in recent years has been the emergence of Islamic State. This
organization carries all the worst examples of religious extremism- sectarianism toward
other Muslims (the Shi’a), attempted genocide of religious minorities (Yazidis and
Christians), and brutal repression through the apparatus of the state.

29
 UNIT V. ETHNIC AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
1. ETHNICITY AND RACE
What are Ethnicity and Race?
A common question asked in introductory geography classes is “What is ethnicity and
how is it different than race? The short answer to that question is that ethnicity involves
learned behavior and race is defined by inherited characteristics. This answer is
incomplete. In reality, both race and ethnicity are complex elements embedded in the
societies that house them. The relationship between race, ethnicity and economic class
further complicates the answer.
Other students have asked, “How is this geography? Ethnicity and race have strong
spatial dimensions. Both races and ethnicities have associated places and spatial
interactions. A person’s ability to navigate and use space is contingent upon many
factors- wealth, gender, and race/ethnicity. Anything that sets limits on a person’s
movement is fair game for geographic study. Numerous geographic studies have
centered on the sense of place. Race and ethnicity are part of a place. Signs are written
in languages, houses have styles, people wear clothing (or not!) and all of these things
can indicate ethnicity.
The Bases of Ethnicity
Ethnicity is identification through language, religion, collective history, national origin, or
other cultural characteristics. A cultural characteristic or a set of characteristics is the
constituent element of an ethnicity. Another way of thinking of an ethnicity is as a nation
or a people. In many parts of the world, ethnic differences are the basis or political or
cultural uprisings. For example, in almost every way the Basque people residing on the
western border between France and Spain are exactly like their non-Basque neighbors.
They have similar jobs, eat similar foods, and have the same religion. The one thing that
separates them from their neighbors is that they speak the Basque language. To an
outsider, this may seem like a negligible detail, but it is not. It is the basis of Basque
national identity, which has produced a political separatist movement. At times, this
movement has resorted to violence in their struggle for independence. People have died
over the relative importance of this language. The Basques see themselves as a nation,
and they want a country.
The ethnicities of dominant groups are rarely ever problematized. Majority ethnicities
are considered the default, or the normal, and the smaller groups are in some way or
another marginal. Talking about ethnicity almost always means talking about minorities.
There are three prominent theories of Ethnic Geography: amalgamation, acculturation,
and assimilation. These theories describe the relation between majority and minority
cultures within a society. Amalgamation is the idea that multiethnic societies will
eventually become a combination of the cultural characteristics of their ethnic groups.

30
The best-known manifestation of this idea is the notion of the United States as a
“melting pot” of cultures, with distinctive additions from multiple sources.
Acculturation is the adoption of the cultural characteristics of one group by another. In
some instances, majority cultures adopt minority cultural characteristics (for example
the celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day), but often acculturation is a process that shifts the
culture of a minority toward that of the majority.
Assimilation is the reduction of minority cultural characteristics, sometimes to the point
that the ethnicity ceases to exist. The Welsh in the United States have few, if any,
distinct cultural traits.
One of the enduring ideas of modern political collectives is that we consider everyone
within the boundaries of our country as “our group.” The reality has not lived up to that
concept, however. Many modern countries are wracked by ethnic struggles that have
proven remarkable resistant to ideas of ethnic or racial equality.
Race
The central question around race is simple: “Does race even exist?” Depending on how
the question is framed, the answer can be either yes or no. If race is being used in a
human context in the same way that species is used in an animal context, then race
does not exist. Humans are just too similar as a population. If the question is rephrased
as, “Are there some superficial differences between previously spatially isolated human
groups?” then the answer is yes. There are genetic, heritable differences between
groups of people. However, these differences in phenotype (appearance) say very little
about genotype (genetics). Why is that? The reality is that human beings have been
very mobile in their history. People move and they mix with other groups of people.
There are no hard genetic lines between different racial categories in the environment.
As a consequence of this, racial categories can be considered socially constructed.
How are ethnicity and race different?
People tend to have difficulties with the distinctions. Let’s start with the easiest
racial category in the United States- African American. Most people understand that the
origin of the African American or Black population of the United States is African. That is
the race part. Now, the ethnic part appears to be exactly the same thing, and it almost
is, but only for a particular historical reason. If Africans had been forcibly migrated by
group, for example large numbers of BaKongo or Igbo people were taken from Africa
and brought to Virginia and settled as a group, then we would be talking about these
groups as specific ethnicities in the same way we talk about the Germans or Czechs in
America. The Germans and Czechs came in large groups and often settled together,
and preserved their culture long enough to be recognized as separate ethnicities.
That settlement pattern did not happen with enslaved Africans. They were
brought to the United States, sold off effectively at random, and their individual ethnic
cultures did not survive the acculturation process. They did, however, hold onto some

31
general group characteristics, and they also, as a group, developed their own cultural
characteristics here in the United States. Interestingly, as direct African immigration to
the United States has increased, the complexity of the term African American has
increased, since it now includes an even larger cultural range.
2. POLITICAL GEOGRAPY
When most people think of geography, they think about memorizing the states, state
capitals, and perhaps learning the location of various countries around the world. These
facts deal with the subdiscipline of political geography because they show how politics
is reflected on the surface of the Earth, but political geography is much more than a
“trivial pursuit” of such information. Although having knowledge about the locations of
countries and states is fundamental and an important foundation for the study of political
geography, the subject matter deals with many other topics such as military and
economic alliances, boundaries between countries, terrorism and other civil-military
conflicts, and the geography of the electoral process.
How Political Space is Organized?
The fundamental unit of political space is the state, and this type of state is
different than the states that make up the United States. A state is basically
synonymous to a country and represents a formal region in which the government has
sovereignty or control of its own affairs within its territorial boundaries. The number of
states in the world is currently 196, but this number changes through military conquests
or the devolution, or breakup, of states. For example, the United Kingdom has devolved
over the past 70 years as the Republic of Ireland has broken away from the UK, and a
new referendum may occur in the next few years to decide whether or not Scotland will
become independent. Another prime example of the creation of new states occurred
after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when fifteen states were created in Eastern
Europe. Even a terrorist group, the Islamic State, has tried to establish its own state in
portions of Syria and Iraq, even though their legitimacy is not recognized by the
international community.
States in which the territorial boundaries encompass a group of people with a
shared ethnicity are known as nation-states. These states are generally homogeneous
in terms of the cultural and historical identity of the people, and these groups of people
are referred to as a nation. A few current examples of nation-states are Japan, Finland,
and Egypt. Nation-states are actually in the minority compared to multinational states,
which are states that have more than one nation within their borders. With international
migration being a significant phenomenon worldwide, more states become
multinational. In contrast, some nations exist but do not have their own state, and those
nations that desire to become nation-states are known as stateless nations. In the
United States, a prime example of stateless nations are the many Native American
tribes scattered throughout the countries. Other examples include the Palestinians living
in Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and the Kurds found in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and

32
Iran (Figure 8.1). Both the Kurds and the Palestinians are actively seeking statehood,
but serious obstacles must be overcome because the countries where they live are
reluctant to grant them independent territories.
The solidarity and unity of a state is influenced by both centripetal and centrifugal
forces. Centripetal forces tend to bind a state together, and centrifugal forces act to
break up a state. Examples of centripetal forces include nationalism, economic
prosperity, and strong, ethical security forces. Centrifugal forces include wars,
ineffective or corrupt governments, and market failure. Other factors that can influence
the solidarity of a state include types of boundaries, ethnic differences (which may result
in unity or discord), and the compactness of a state.
The compactness of a state is related to the shape of a state, and a compact
state is one that is ideally circular in shape, where the distance from the center to any
border is roughly equal. In contrast, a fragmented state is one that is discontinuous in
nature and may consist of a number of islands. A few examples of fragmented states
include Indonesia and the Philippines. Indonesia consists of over 17,000 islands, and in
order to increase the solidarity of the state, the government actively encouraged
migration to less populated islands in order to assimilate indigenous populations. In the
Philippines, control of its southern islands such as Mindanao is problematic because of
terrorist groups that are active in those areas.
Terrorism
Although terrorists are characterized as non-military, non-state actors, they have a
tremendous impact on states around the world and involve allied groups in many
countries. Terrorism is the intimidation of a population by violence in order to further
political aims. The first terrorist group with global influence is Al Qaeda, formed in 1988
by Osama bin Laden. Although its influence has waned in the past decade, Al Qaeda
was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and had several affiliates including Boko Haram in
Nigeria and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS/L) in
Iraq and Syria in 2013, terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and Abu Sayyaf have
consequently declared allegiance to ISIS/L. ISIS/L is an extremist Muslim group that
intends to seize as much territory as possible in the Middle East and force their subjects
to adhere to their strict version of Islamic fundamentalism. To facilitate their goal, ISIS/L
conducts an extensive campaign on social media to recruit fighters to come to Syria and
also conduct individual attacks in their home country. Their media campaign has been
successful in recruiting numerous militants to come to Syria and to inspire or instigate
attacks in the United States, France, Belgium, England, Sweden, Turkey, Afghanistan,
Yemen, and Saudi Arabia (Figure 8.3). Furthermore, ISIS/L is conducting regular
military operations in Libya and Egypt.
To combat the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, interesting military alliances
have developed, and the situation is exceptionally complex. The United States
cooperates with numerous NATO allies to train and equip local military forces in Iraq

33
and Syria. Iran, in alliance with Iraq, has provided assistance in driving ISIS/L out of
Iraq. Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and Syria, in concert with NATO forces, have
conducted much of the military action, and they hope for an independent state because
of these efforts. Complicating this situation is the objection of the central governments of
Iraq, Syria, and Turkey to an independent Kurdish state. Further clouding the situation is
the alliance between Russia and the Syrian central government. Although these two
countries do fight against ISIS/L, they are also opposed to other Syrian rebel forces,
which the United States supports. The problem of ISIS/L propaganda is being
addressed by numerous governments and social media outlets such as Facebook,
Twitter, and YouTube. More importantly, though, military success on the ground against
ISIS/L forces in Iraq and Syria is decreasing the influx of foreign fighters as well as the
proliferation of internet propaganda.
Boundaries and Boundary Disputes
A boundary is essentially an invisible, vertical plane that separates one state
from another, so it includes both the airspace above the line on the surface and the
ground below. Boundaries can be both physical and anthropogenic, and while it is
difficult to categorize all boundaries, some prominent boundary types exist.
Physical boundaries are natural features on the landscape such as rivers, lakes, and
mountains. The Rio Grande is an important physical boundary on the southern border of
the United States. Like most rivers, the Rio Grande shifts gradually (and sometimes
abruptly) through time. As a result of the fact that the course of a river is not fixed, a
river boundary can be problematic. In fact, because of the gradual shift in the Rio
Grande in the vicinity of El Paso, the United States and Mexico established the
Chamizal Treaty which reestablished the boundary and included a more permanent
relocation of the river channel by engineering (Figure 8.5). Some examples of mountain
ranges as boundaries include the Zagros Mountains between Iraq and Iran, the
Pyrenees between Spain and France, and the Andes Mountains between Chile and
Argentina.
In contrast to physical boundaries, geometric boundaries and ethnic boundaries are not
related to natural features. Instead, in the case of geometric boundaries, they are
straight lines. These straight lines could coincide with latitude or longitude, as is the
case with the northwestern boundary of the United States with Canada along 49o north
latitude. Likewise, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea is separated by another geometric
boundary along the 141st meridian.
For ethnic boundaries, they are drawn based on a cultural trait, such as where people
share a language or religion. The border between India, which is predominantly Hindu,
and Pakistan, which is predominantly Muslim, is one example. Some borders split
ethnic groups that are more closely related to the people on the other side of the border.
For example, in eastern Ukraine, the majority of the population speaks Russian and is
sympathetic to Russians on the other side of the border. As a result, the current conflict

34
between Russia and Ukraine has been problematic for the Ukrainian central
government because of the Russian affiliation with eastern Ukraine. Russian influence
in eastern Ukraine is an example of irredentism, or an effort to expand political influence
of a state on a group of people in a neighboring state.
Gerrymandering
In the United States, boundaries play an important role in the electoral process, but in
this case, district, and precinct boundaries are significant in contrast to the country
boundaries that have been previously discussed. Political parties in power will
sometimes rearrange the boundaries of voting districts in order to ensure victory in
elections, and this practice is called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering strategies can
involve drawing the boundaries so that the majority of voters in a district favor the party
in power. Another method is to segregate the opposition voters into several different
districts.

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 UNIT VI
THE GEOGRAPHY OF DEVELOPMENT
Development and Indicators:
1. Defining Development
Development - The processes related to improving people’s lives through access
to resources, technology, education, wealth, opportunity, and choice.
Which places on earth are the most developed? There is no simple
answer to this question. San Francisco is often voted as the most beautiful city in
the U.S. but the cost of living makes this place unaffordable for all but the
wealthiest of residents. Ancient cities like Jerusalem, Athens, and Baghdad
contain amazing architecture and the roots of western civilization, but streets also
tend to be narrow and housing crowded. China has experienced the fastest
economic growth of any other country in the past 30 years, but it is accompanied
by catastrophic levels of air pollution, poor working conditions, and severe limits
on personal liberty. Within the United States, people in Colorado tend to be the
healthiest while those in Utah have the largest houses and people in Texas are
the most loyal to their home state. There are multiple ways to measure
development, and geographers spend a great deal of time and effort studying,
measuring, and quantifying the differences and commonalities.
A few general truths about development and wealth in our 21st century
world can simplify the complexity:
The world continues to be divided into the Global North and Global South
by the Brandt Line (a visual depiction of the North-South divide between their
economies, based on GDP per capita,[6] proposed by Willy Brandt in the 1980s),
Levels of wealth, well-being, access to technology, and health tend to be higher
in northern countries than in southern ones. The line is problematic because
*it over-generalizes, but it remains a meaningful starting point to
understanding development from a global scale. The majority of people living in
the 21st century have a higher standard of living, earn more money, are
healthier, and live longer than was the case for people 50 years ago.
*In spite of the wealth disparity between those at the bottom and those at
the top remains greater than ever before. According to Credit Suisse’s global
wealth report, the globe’s richest 1% (of people) control more than half of the
world’s wealth, up from 42.5% in 2008.

2. Economic Indicators

a. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country refers to the market value of all
final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. It is often
considered an indicator of a country's standard of living.

36
b. Gross National Income (GNI) is the sum of a nation’s gross domestic product
(GDP) and the net income it receives from overseas. GDP includes all of the
goods and services produced with a country in a given year and is calculated
according to the following formula: Consumption + Investment + Government
Spending + Net exports. So if a government increases spending on the military or
on road construction in a given year that will increase GDP (and GNI). If a
country imports a lot of things but doesn’t export many things, it will decrease
that country’s GDP (and GNI). Finally, if consumers buy a lot of alcohol for New
Year’s Eve, that will also increase GDP (and GNI). GNI also includes income
derived outside of the country by members of the country. For example, Coca
Cola, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, earns profits in 200 different countries
around the world. Those profits outside of the U.S. are not included in GDP, but
they are included in GNI. It’s a little confusing, but this measure provides a
valuable way to compare economic outputs between multiple countries and is the
metric that is most often used in recent years. The total GNI for a country is
divided by the total population of that country to arrive at a per capita figure,
which includes children, the elderly, those imprisoned, etc. So, the figure of
$12,476 does NOT mean that the average adult earns that amount annually as
income, but rather it represents total income and economic output divided by the
total population. Take a look at the cartogram in Figure 9.3, which shows
countries represented, not by their physical size, but by the size of their
respective GNI.

3. Social Indicators

a. Life expectancy
The average number of years a person can expect to live. Life expectancy is
a useful development indicators as it shows the access to healthcare and
whether people have plenty of clean drinking water and nutritious food. Life
expectancy rises as countries develop - for example, in the UK in 1901 life
expectancy at birth was around 45 for men and 49 for women. By 1951 it had
increased to 66 for men and 70 for women. It is now 78.8 years for men and
82.8 years for [Link] is also useful to consider 'healthy life expectancy' -
this is the number of years you can expect to live in good health before your
health declines significantly. In the UK men can expect to have 62.4 years of
good health, with 16.4 years in poor health (21% of their lifetime), whilst
average healthy life expectancy for women is 62.7 - meaning they have an
average of 20.1 years in poor health (24% of their lifetime - and a higher
proportion than men. Major events such as ongoing conflicts can also have
an impact on life expectancy - WWII significantly lowered UK life expectancy,
and across the world conflicts today are having lowering the life expectancy of
citizens in the countries affected, particularly in LICs such as Syria. However,
some developed nations are also currently seeing a slight decrease in life

37
 expectancy, which can be linked to having an ageing population, but also as a
remnant of the Covid pandemic, as is the case in the UK.

b. Birth rate
The number of live babies born per 1000 per year. Birth rate is a useful
development indicator because as a country develop the birth rate decreases
– this is because the death rate drops so fewer babies are born to
compensate for those who do not live because of diseases or starvation. In
HICs women are more likely to become educated and want a career rather
than staying at home – so they tend to marry later and have fewer children.
Traditionally in LICs family size has been large as children are seen as
economically valuable, i.e. they can go out and earn a living, such as working
on farms. As LICs start to see economic growth then there are fewer children
needed to work on the land, so this will affect the birth rate.

c. Infant mortality rate

The number of babies who don’t reach their first birthday, per 1000 live births.
Infant mortality rate is a useful development indicator as it tells us about the
quality of healthcare for mothers – both pre- and post-natal, the availability of
vaccinations programmes for infants, access to a safe and reliable water (as
many infants die from waterborne diseases), and whether there is enough
nutritious food, i.e. are mothers eating enough to produce milk? And once
babies are 6 months old and are eating solids, are they eating enough to
promote healthy growth? Infant mortality rate is also linked to people per
doctor and birth and death rates.

d. Literacy rate

The % of adults who have basic reading and writing [Link] is useful as it
tells us about the value placed on education and whether a government has the
resources to fund an education system properly. The figure is sometimes given
as male and female percentages to highlight the gender inequality in terms of
access to education - there are several countries across the world where girls are
denied a proper education. The most notable example of this is Afghanistan
where the Taliban gained control of the government in 2021 and immediately
banned girls from attending school or further education. Literacy rate is linked to
GNI per capita as a more educated workforce has the potential to earn more and
boost the economy, and the birth rate, as girls who have received a full education
are likely to have children later, and also likely to have fewer of them.

e. Access to safe water

The % of people who can obtain water that is not contaminated. Access
to safe water is a useful development indicator as a safe and reliable water

38
 network requires investment into infrastructure, such as proper drainage and
water pipes. Unsafe water can cause waterborne diseases such as cholera
which can be fatal (particularly for infants), and a lack of water causes
dehydration, which makes people really unwell, so safe water access is
closely linked to the death rate and life expectancy. Access to safe water also
means that people, and in particular women and children, don't have to spend
so much of their day walking miles to collect water, therefore women have
more time to undertake paid employment, potentially increasing their standard
of living, and children have more time to attend school, increasing their
chances of a well-paid job in the future, and an escape from poverty.

f. People per doctor

The number of people there are for each doctor in a [Link] per
doctor is a useful development indicator as it tells us about investment into
healthcare, as well as the level of education (so people can become qualified
doctors). However, even in areas where this figure is high people may still be
receiving healthcare, e.g. in LIC (Low Income Countries) rural areas many
people access healthcare advice through their phones. In addition living in an
HIC (High Income Countries) doesn't guarantee access to healthcare, for
example in the USA people have to pay for healthcare through insurance, so
their access to healthcare services is dependent on what sort of policy they
can afford to pay for, meaning that some people go without. Even in the UK,
the NHS is now so over-stretched that people can wait hours for life-saving
emergency care, and may have to wait months to access treatment for
chronic conditions such as cancers and heart disease.

4. Demographic Indicators
A demographic indicator is a statistical measure that provides information about
the characteristics of a population, often used to understand trends related to
fertility, mortality, migration, and overall population change. These indicators
help analyze how various factors, including gender, age, and economic
conditions, affect population dynamics. They are particularly significant in
evaluating how demographic changes impact social structures, economic
development, and policy-making.

5 Must Know

1. Demographic indicators are crucial for understanding the role of women in societal
changes, such as shifts in labor force participation and access to education.
2. High fertility rates can impact women's health and economic opportunities, influencing
their roles within families and communities.
3. Women’s empowerment is often linked to declining fertility rates as education and
employment opportunities expand for females.

39
4. Access to reproductive health services is a significant demographic indicator that can
affect women's choices regarding family size and timing of childbirth.
5. Changes in demographic indicators related to women can lead to broader societal
shifts, including economic growth and improved health outcomes for future
generations.

 How do demographic indicators specifically related to women influence overall

population trends?

o Demographic indicators related to women, such as fertility rates and maternal health
statistics, directly influence overall population trends by affecting birth rates and family
structures. For example, as women's educational attainment rises, fertility rates
typically decline. This shift can lead to smaller family sizes and an aging population,
prompting changes in policy-making regarding healthcare and social services.

 What implications do changes in women's demographic indicators have on
economic development?
o Changes in women's demographic indicators, like increased labor force participation
and declining fertility rates, have significant implications for economic development. As
more women enter the workforce, economies may experience growth due to a larger
labor pool and increased consumer spending. Additionally, lower fertility rates can
lead to a demographic transition that allows for greater investment in education and
healthcare, further enhancing economic productivity.

 Evaluate the role of reproductive health services as a demographic indicator in
promoting gender equality and its broader societal impacts.

o Reproductive health services serve as a crucial demographic indicator for promoting
gender equality by empowering women to make informed decisions about their bodies
and family planning. Access to these services allows women to pursue education and
careers without the constraints of early or unplanned pregnancies. The broader
societal impacts include improved health outcomes for women and children, reduced
poverty levels, and enhanced economic stability as families can invest more in each
child’s education and well-being.

5. Global Distribution of Development

Global distribution refers to the spatial arrangement and dissemination of resources,
agricultural products, and populations across the world. It encompasses the patterns
of where goods and services are produced, consumed, and traded, reflecting both
environmental and socio-economic factors. Understanding global distribution is
essential for analyzing how agricultural origins and diffusions influence food supply
chains and regional economies.

40
 5 Must Know Facts

1. Global distribution patterns are significantly influenced by geographic factors such as

climate, soil types, and topography, which affect agricultural productivity.
2. Historically, the domestication of plants and animals in specific regions led to localized
agricultural systems that later expanded through trade and migration.
3. The Von Thunen Model illustrates how land use is affected by distance from markets,
with different agricultural activities occurring at various distances based on
transportation costs.
4. Modern global distribution is heavily impacted by globalization, which has led to an
increase in international trade of agricultural products.
5. Technological advancements in transportation and communication have transformed
the way agricultural goods are distributed globally, leading to more complex supply
chains.

 How do geographic factors influence global distribution patterns of agricultural

products?
o Geographic factors such as climate, soil types, and topography play a crucial role in
determining where certain crops and livestock can thrive. For example, regions with
fertile soil and favorable climates are more likely to produce staple crops like wheat or
rice. This affects global distribution by concentrating production in specific areas,
which can lead to trade relationships and dependency between regions that lack
suitable agricultural conditions.
o
 Discuss the implications of the Von Thunen Model on understanding land use in
relation to global distribution.
o The Von Thunen Model provides insight into how land use is organized around a
central market based on transportation costs. As one moves away from the market
center, different types of agriculture emerge depending on the costs associated with
transporting goods. This model illustrates why certain perishable products like dairy
are produced closer to urban centers while grains, which are less perishable and
easier to transport, can be grown further away. The model helps explain the
geographical patterns of global distribution by highlighting economic motivations
behind agricultural practices.
o
 Evaluate how globalization has transformed global distribution of agricultural
products and its effects on local economies.
o Globalization has significantly reshaped the global distribution of agricultural products
by enabling countries to access a wider variety of goods beyond their local production
capabilities. This transformation has led to increased competition for local farmers who
must now compete with imported goods. While consumers benefit from diverse food
options at lower prices, local economies may suffer due to reduced market share for
indigenous producers. Additionally, this shift can lead to environmental concerns as
farming practices adapt to meet global demand rather than local sustainability.

Poverty:

41
1. Definition of Poverty
Poverty can be regarded as an external manifestation of the coupling
maladjustment of human, land and industry elements in specific human-land
areal system. With this definition, poverty geography needs to study the
connotation, types, criteria and thresholds of poverty.
Geography of Poverty (GOP) or poverty geography is a branch of human
geography, which studies the geographical patterns, distribution characteristics,
areal types and evolution mechanism of poverty and the relationship with
geographical environment as well as antipoverty measures.

2. Theories of Poverty
Poverty has multidimensional and spatial attributes. The multifaceted
nature of poverty is further compounded by its spatial distribution (Gauci, 2005),
which has sparked significant interest in poverty geography over the past
decades (Gray and Moseley, 2005; Dasgupta et al., 2005; Barbier, 2010; Bird et
al., 2010). The most famous theory is environmental determinism of poverty from
Jeffrey Sachs, who asserts that geographical environment determines the
economic outcomes of nations.

Theories of poverty 2.1.1

a. The theory of Individual Deficiencies This theory of poverty asserts that

the individual is responsible for their own poverty situation. Gans, (1995) and
cited by Sameti et al (2012) believe that the individual factors that cause or fuel
poverty include individual attitude, human capital, and welfare participation.
Bradshaw (2006) blame the poor for creating their own problems arguing that
with hard work and better choices the poor could have avoided and solved their
problems. He further explained that poverty is caused by lack of genetic qualities
such as intelligence that are not so easily reversed.

c. The theory of Cultural Belief Systems that Support Sub-Cultures of Poverty This
theory focuses on the belief that poverty is created or caused by the transmission
over generations of a set of beliefs, values, and skills that are socially generated
but individually held (Bradshaw, 2006). Bradshaw (2006) further asserts that
individuals are to blame because they are victims of their dysfunctional
subculture or culture. It should be noted that this theory has its root in the
“Culture of Poverty”. The concepts of culture of poverty and social isolation or
exclusion provide frameworks that explain how poverty is created and maintained
in some neighborhoods or among some groups. The cultural and environmental
factors relate to the influence of people’s residential environment that tends to
shape poverty or success. The theory of culture of poverty coined Journal of
Poverty, Investment and Development [Link] ISSN 2422-846X An
International Peer-reviewed Journal DOI: 10.7176/JPID Vol.48, 2019 57 by

42
 Lewis (1966) is built on the assumption that both the poor and the rich have
different pattern of values, beliefs, and behavioral norms. This theory argues that
the poor are poor because they learn certain psychological behaviors associated
with poverty. Lewis (1966) opined that the poor do not learn to study hard, plan
the future, have protected sex, or to spend money wisely (Samati et al, 2012).
According to Lewis, (1966) and cited by Samati et al. (2012), poverty is
transmitted from generation to generation because children are socialized with
values and goals associated with poverty. The culture of poverty as asserted by
McIntyre (2002) holds that the poor could fight and break away from poverty.
Technically according to Bradshaw (2006), the culture of poverty is a subculture
of poor people in ghettos, poor regions, or social contexts where they develop a
shared set of beliefs, values and norms for behaviour that are separate from but
embedded in the culture of the main society
d.
[Link] theory of Economic, Political, and Social Distortions or
Discrimination To the structural theorists poverty is due to the structure of the
larger socioeconomic order Abdulai and Shirmshiry, (2014). Those who believe
in this theory attribute the source of poverty to economic, political, and social
system which cause people to have limited opportunities and resources with
which to achieve income and well-being (Bradshaw, 2006). The same view is
expressed by Samati et, al.(2012) who believe that larger economic and social
structures is a cause of poverty. They argue that capitalism creates conditions
that promote Journal of Poverty, Investment and Development [Link]
ISSN 2422-846X An International Peer-reviewed Journal DOI: 10.7176/JPID
Vol.48, 2019 58 poverty, and that irrespective of individuals’ effort; (hard work,
skills and competencies); the structure of some economies, for instance the
economy of United States of America ensures that millions of people are poor. In
other words a greater number of literatures suggest that the economic system is
structured in such a way that the poor fall behind regardless of how competent
they may be (Bradshaw, 2006). The theory also asserts that within a market-
based competitive economic system, unequal initial endowments of talents, skills
and capital which determine productivity of an individual cause poverty Davis and
Sanchez-Martinez (2014).

[Link] theory of Geographical Disparities This is poverty caused by

geographical disparities. Attempts to theorise poverty along the line of
geographical disparities led to the emergence of geography of poverty (Abdulai
and Shamshiry,(2014). According to Journal of Poverty, Investment and
Development [Link] ISSN 2422-846X An International Peer-reviewed
Journal DOI: 10.7176/JPID Vol.48, 2019 59 Bradshaw(2006), this cause of
poverty represents rural poverty, ghetto poverty, urban disinvestment, southern
poverty, third –world poverty, and others that exist separate from other theories.
This theory of poverty calls attention to the fact that people, institutions, and

43
 cultures in certain areas lack the objective resources needed to generate well-
being and income, and that they lack the power to claim redistribution.

[Link] theory of Cumulative and Cyclical Interdependencies According to

Abdulai and Shamshiry, (2014) this theory of poverty is also called the Cyclical
Theory of Poverty. This kind of poverty occurs when individuals or households
are suddenly unable to provide for their necessities due to unforeseen
circumstances, like natural disasters. The cyclical explanation clearly looks at
individual situations and community resources as mutually dependent, with
faltering economy, for example, creating individuals who lack resources to
participate in the economy, which makes economic survival even harder for the
community since people pay fewer taxes (Bradshaw, 2006). He continues to
explain that inadequate employment leads to inadequate income causing
inadequate spending, consumption, and savings. This presupposes that
individuals cannot invest in training, businesses or start their own businesses;
which further means that there will be no expansion, market will dwindle, people
will disinvest, leading to lack of opportunities in the community.

3. Causes of Poverty

#1- Warfare
In times of war, a country’s productivity drops and so does its GDP. The political and
social turmoil and overall instability discourages foreign and national business owners to
invest in the country. In addition to this, access to basic services such as health,
education and even drinking water is severed; thus robbing the locals of any semblance
of quality of life. Délice Williams at The Borgen Project has this to say:

“It is a telling sign that the poorest countries in the world have all experienced civil war
and serious political upheaval at some point in the 20th century, and many of them
have weak governments that cannot or do not protect people against violence.”

#2- Backward agriculture

In developed countries, the modernization of agriculture has allowed the creation of a
smaller, more efficient agricultural sector; thus giving way for the economy to transition
into an industrial and service one. This leads to both rural and urban workers getting
better wages; since the latter will need to make more money to afford the higher food
prices. In developing countries, however, the agricultural sector still makes up a big
portion of the economy. Consequently, the price of agricultural goods is remains low to
appeal to the people living in cities. This puts farmers below the poverty line and in time,
can upend the stability of the country.

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#3- Natural disasters
Underdeveloped and developing countries are systematically less prepared than
developed ones to face the consequences of a natural disaster (e.g. hurricanes,
earthquakes, droughts and floodings); therefore, they take longer to recover from these
events, often finding it impossible. Furthermore, the limited resources these countries
possess prevent them from developing plans in the face of a crisis. Finally, the same
lack of resources makes it impossible for them to repair the damages.

#4- Centralization of power and corruption

As a society develops and gets bigger, the need for more political representatives in all
levels arises. Centralization comes when political leaders fail to delegate power at
regional and local levels; thus having a small group of people often ruling over places
they are not familiar with. This results in neglect of vital duties and corruption, when
leaders take money meant to ameliorate the quality of life of their citizens and use it for
personal matters.

#5- Discrimination and social inequality

According to the United Nations Social Policy and Development Division, “Inequalities
in income distribution and access to productive resources, basic social services,
opportunities, markets and information have been on the rise worldwide, often causing
and exacerbating poverty.” These inequalities stem from the belief that some people are
worth less than others, based on their religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
This prejudice leads to a two-tier society where people facing discrimination do not
possess the same opportunities the privileged have; as a consequence, the former
often live below the poverty line.

#6- Environmental degradation

In developing countries, the poor majorly rely on natural resources for subsistence.
Whether it be for agriculture as a source of income or to meet basic necessities
(drinking water and shelter); the depletion of water sources and the contamination of the
remaining, as well as deforestation, threaten the wellness of those who depend on them
for survival.

4. Solutions and Programs

Eradicating poverty and narrowing urban-rural gap have always been the
common goal of all mankind and are also the primary task of the United Nations’
sustainable development goals by 2030. Poverty geography pays attention not
only to regional poverty but also to individual poverty. Scientific poverty reduction
and regional sustainable development need the support from relevant findings of
poverty geography. In the future, poverty geographers need to focus on the
following key fields.

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 Population solutions drive success for all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to achieve

decent lives for all on a healthy planet by 2030. But most of them are likely to be
missed. This is partly because they fail to address human population growth.
Positive, empowering population solutions are key to meeting the SDGs. Read
on to learn about the links between population and each of the 17 goals.

GOAL 1: NO POVERTY
High fertility rates can trap countries in poverty. The World Bank has warned that
extreme poverty will not decrease in 2021 due to population growth eclipsing economic
growth in the poorest nations. Large family size and poverty often go hand-in-hand.
People living in deprived areas are usually not empowered to choose the number of
children they have and in some cases feel the need to have many so they can be
provided for in their old age. When people are poor and have many children, they
cannot invest enough in each child which often leads to kids not being able to attend
school and girls getting married off as child brides. Women are also less able to gain
financial independence when they have many children to look after at home. Ensuring
everyone is empowered to choose small families is key to eradicating poverty.

GOAL 2: ZERO HUNGER

Feeding the world without destroying more nature will become increasingly difficult and
eventually impossible under sustained population growth. According to the World
Resources Institute, the calorie requirements of a population of 10 billion are 56%
higher than current total crop production. Agriculture is already a leading cause of
environmental degradation and further conversion of land for farming purposes will have
devastating consequences for biodiversity and our climate. A landmark 2019 report by
the EAT-Lancet Commission states “Healthy diets from sustainable food systems are
possible for up to 10 billion people but become increasingly unlikely past this population
threshold.” Our population is projected to exceed 10 billion in the second half of the
century. When population growth exceeds development progress, past achievements
are quickly undone – the number of people suffering from hunger has increased
again over the past three years. Experts have warned that vulnerable areas like the
Sahel face catastrophe unless action is taken to reduce fertility rates.

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 GOAL 3: GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Insufficient funding for healthcare systems can cause them to buckle under the pressure
of growing populations. Lack of access to quality reproductive healthcare including
modern contraception and medically safe abortion leads to high unwanted pregnancy
rates and preventable maternal deaths. Worldwide, still almost half of all
pregnancies are unintended and more than 800 women die from pregnancy-related
complications every day. Because of population growth, the absolute number of women
with an unmet need for contraception is still increasing. Very high population densities
facilitate disease transmission and hurt public health, especially in areas where health
services are already overburdened. Investing in quality health care for all, including
easy access to family planning, helps slow population growth and improves lives.

GOAL 4: QUALITY EDUCATION

Greater investment in quality education is key to alleviating poverty and ending

population growth. Due to gender inequality, girls are disproportionately affected by lack
of access to education — still one in four girls does not attend secondary school and in
sub-Saharan Africa, the number of girls out of secondary school has increased by 7
million since 2007 due to the region’s population growth. Generally, the more years a
woman spends in education, the smaller her family size. When women are able to
delay childbirth and have fewer children, this also empowers them to pursue
educational opportunities, such as advanced degrees, which would be difficult or
impossible with many dependents.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of girls out of secondary school has increased by 7
million due to the region’s population growth.

GOAL 5: GENDER EQUALITY

Empowering women and girls to take control of their bodies and lives is crucial for
solving our biggest social and environmental crises. Gender inequality is one of the
main drivers of high fertility rates. Not a single country has yet achieved full equality,
and the worst gender-based injustices and crimes continue to be common and
widespread. According to the UN, ending gender-based violence, harmful practices
(including child marriage and FGM), preventable maternal deaths, and unmet family
planning needs is affordable and within reach, but still suffers from a severe funding

47
shortage. In the meantime, the number of women and girls subjected to harmful
practices is increasing due to slow progress and population growth.

The proportion of women and girls subjected to FGM is decreasing overall, but the
number of women and girls subjected to it is growing because of population growth.
That number could grow from 4.1 million in 2020 to 4.6 million a year by 2030, since the
cohort of girls in many high-prevalence countries is growing.”

UNFPA, 2020

GOAL 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION

The combination of climate change and population growth is fuelling a global water
crisis. As our numbers grow, aquifers get overdrawn, pollution increases, and the
capacity to safely dispose of wastewater is increasingly compromised. Currently, a
staggering 2.2 billion people around the world do not have safe drinking water and 4.2
billion lack safe sanitation services. In the UK, overexploitation and drought could lead
to severe water shortages by mid-century. The UK population is expected to reach 73
million by 2041, with the fastest growth occurring in areas that are already the most
water-stressed. Experts estimate that by 2050, 5 billion people – more than half the
global population – will live in water stressed regions.

GOAL 7: AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY

The number of people using dirty fuels is still increasing due to population growth and
slow progress in rolling out renewable energy. Global energy demand is expected
to increase by 50% over the next 30 years as a result of population growth and
economic development. High-income countries must lead the way in transitioning to
clean fuels and support low-income countries to do the same. Ending population growth
will make a global switch to affordable and clean energy a lot more achievable.

The absolute number of people relying on polluting fuels and technologies for
cooking has actually increased, reaching an estimated 3 billion people.“

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 GOAL 8: DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

A high number of young dependents makes economic prosperity almost impossible and
is also a recipe for social unrest.

The high population is exerting a lot of pressure on our economy. As a country we have
made tremendous gains over the years but the impact is not reflected on our economy
because the gains have been dissipated by population growth.”

Goodall Gondwe, minister of Finance, Malawi, 2017

In high-income nations, the pursuit of economic growth is in direct conflict with other
SDGs, in particular in regard to environmental impact. Infinite economic and population
growth can never be sustainable on a finite planet. As a global community, we must
strive towards a healthy environment and well-being for all, not endless growth.

GOAL 9: INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

The larger the population, the harder it is to provide access to modern infrastructure and
technologies to everyone, and the more nature we will destroy in the process.
Conversion of land to human infrastructure is a key driver of biodiversity loss,
and construction is a major source of greenhouse gases. The expansion of roads in
South Asia, for example, is increasingly threatening the survival of tigers. Only 5,500
remain in the wild today and 40% of tiger habitat has been lost over the last 15 years
alone. In the UK, the controversial HS2 rail network is thought to threaten more than 30
ancient woodlands.

GOAL 10: REDUCED INEQUALITIES

Vast disparities exist between the rich world and the Global South, and within countries
themselves. A more just global system, in which resources are distributed more
equitably, is essential. Whilst we must limit the number of new consumers everywhere,
choosing a small family is particularly impactful among the wealthiest of us.

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 GOAL 11: SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES

More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas today. By 2050, this
proportion is expected to rise to 68%. Rapid urban population growth can outstrip the
pace at which infrastructure such as clean water, sanitation, health, jobs and education
can be offered. According to WWF, one of the main causes of habitat loss is land for
human habitation with urban areas doubling since 1992. Access to green spaces is
important for physical and mental health, but natural and semi-natural areas are
increasingly falling victim to housing demands. In the UK, population growth is expected
to lead to a 7.6% decline in the amount of green space available per person by 2040.

The number of people living in slums has grown: from an estimated 792 million in 2000,
to over 1 billion in 2016.“

GOAL 12: RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

According to the UN, material footprint per capita in high-income countries is 60%
higher than in upper-middle-income countries and more than 13 times the level of low-
income countries. Responsible consumption and production of food and goods must go
hand-in-hand with measures to end our population growth. The very high number of
people escaping poverty is the main reason that average resource use per person in
2050 is projected to be 71% higher than today. We are already using resources 1.75
times faster than they can regenerate – unless things change, we will require three
Earths to supply our needs by 2050.

GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION

Unsustainable consumption patterns in high-income countries are largely responsible

for the climate crisis but every additional person on our planet adds more emissions. A
comprehensive review of available climate solutions by Project Drawdown found
that slowing population growth through the combination of educating girls and providing
family planning would be one of the most powerful ways to reduce atmospheric CO2 by
2050. The 2019 Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, endorsed by more than
11,000 scientists, called for ending and ultimately reversing human population growth,
among other transformative actions, to avert the worst effects of climate change.

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 GOAL 14: LIFE BELOW WATER

Pollution (plastic and runoff), overfishing, coral bleaching, and coastal ecosystem
destruction are all exacerbated by population growth. Two-thirds of marine
areas have been damaged by human activity and a third of sharks and rays and a third
of reef corals are threatened with extinction. Tackling the loss of life under water has
to include a commitment to reducing population growth and runaway consumption.
Family planning, women’s education and empowerment together can also enable more
women to participate in marine resources management; enhance food security and
mitigate the impacts of climate change.

GOAL 15: LIFE ON LAND

Human population growth is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss. According to
WWF, we have lost 60% of all vertebrate wildlife populations since 1970. During that
time, our population has more than doubled. A landmark 2019 UN assessment explicitly
noted that human population growth is an indirect driver of biodiversity loss and
stated: “changes to the direct drivers of nature deterioration cannot be achieved
without transformative change that simultaneously addresses the indirect drivers.” To
be truly effective in the long-term, conservation efforts must incorporate population
solutions.

GOAL 16: PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS

In the absence of prosperity and strong institutions, population growth contributes to

conflicts related to scarce resources. Educating and empowering women and
communities, including ensuring access to voluntary family planning services, can help
support peace and stability goals by increasing the foundation for stability. And where
families can choose the number and timing of their children, women may have more
opportunity to take part in civil society and peacebuilding.

GOAL 17: PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS

Cross-sectoral partnerships that recognise the crucial links between social and
environmental issues are key to a better future. COVID-19 has presented
unprecedented challenges, reversing decades of development and causing a deep
global recession. Never has there been a more critical time for strengthening
partnerships and securing the next ten years of collaboration for sustainable

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development. The international community must foster recognition of the urgent need to
end human population growth as soon as is ethically possible, and promote greater
investment in empowering solutions.

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 UNIT VII
AGRICULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is a science, a business, and an art. Spatially, agriculture is the
world’s most widely distributed industry. It occupies more area than all other
industries combined, changing the surface of the Earth more than any other.
Farming, with its multiple methods, has significantly transformed the landscape
(small or large fields, terraces, polders, livestock grazing), being an important
reflection of the two-way relationship between people and their environments. The
world’s agricultural societies today are very diverse and complex, with agricultural
practices ranging from the most rudimentary, such as using the ox-pulled plow, to
the most complex, such as using machines, tractors, satellite navigation, and
genetic engineering methods. Customarily, scholars divide agricultural societies
into categories such as subsistence, intermediate, and developed, words that
express the same ideas as primitive, traditional, and modern, respectively. For the
purpose of simplification, farming practices described in this chapter are classified
into two categories, subsistence and commercial, with fundamental differences
between their practice in developed and developing countries.
A. Origins of Agriculture
The traditional story about agriculture goes something like this: initially, people
were hunter-gatherers who lived short lives because they had to scrounge for food from
what nature provided. At some point, someone in the tribe made the discovery that
people could plant crops. This led to better food supplies, less work, and more leisure
time to develop higher civilization. Geographers now know that this traditional story gets
it backward in many ways. Hunting and gathering is a comfortable way of life, while
agriculture is often an adaptation of necessity with significant negative ramifications.

To start, we need to define “agriculture.” The traditional story proposes that there is a
significant leap forward – sometimes called the “agricultural revolution” or “Neolithic
revolution” – when societies invent agriculture. However, it is more accurate to see
agriculture as one stage on a continuum of intensification. Intensification refers to the
amount of production per unit of land that is extracted for human use. Raising the level
of intensification practiced by society requires increased manipulation of natural
processes by humans. We can imagine a scale of intensification running from a
wilderness where the only human activity is hikers picking a few berries to eat on their
way, to a modern industrial farm that mass-produces corn.

Hunter-gatherers do not merely wander the landscape, picking up whatever food and
other resources they happen across. Hunter-gatherer societies have the sophisticated
knowledge of the plants and animals found in their territory, and when and how they can
be harvested. While they are somewhat at the mercy of the earth’s cycles and
the bioclimatic zone in which they live, hunter-gatherers do not just wait for nature to

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provide them with resources. Instead, they are astute observers of weather and the
seasonal migration patterns of animals and growth patterns of plants, and they may
deliberately manipulate the environment to encourage the production of the plants and
animals they want.

Australian Aborigines practiced such a high level of intensification using fire that they
were able to manipulate animals to gather in one place for easier kill or capture. Other
hunter-gatherer societies had quite high levels of intensification as well. For example,
the Native Americans of the Northwest Coast, such as the Tlingit and Haida, sustained
high population levels usually characteristic of agricultural societies because they had
found ways to extract vast amounts of resources from their environment.

Agriculture is defined as the cultivation of crops and efforts to breed better

strains. Cultivate means “to care for,” and a crop is any plant cultivated by people. If
society continues to increase its level of intensification, eventually it will find itself
practicing types of production that we would recognize as agriculture. This is what
occurred in different regions dating from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent and
perhaps 8000 BC in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Melanesia. There are various
debates within the scientific community between human geographers, sociologists, and
anthropologists as to why agriculture arose throughout these various locations,
called hearths, around the world. Despite the debate, in each hearth area, the transition
from a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian-based
one, included not just the cultivation and domestication of plants, but also the
domestication of animals.

We can make some general assumptions that the cultivation of plants and
domestication of animals was because of environmental or cultural push factors. It was
likely a combination of both, since a variety of agricultural hearths were grown around
the world and under different circumstances. From a climate science perspective, the
likely catalyst of agriculture was that around 10,000 years ago, the earth was shifting
away from the Pleistocene Ice Age and into a warming period called an interglacial
period.

Still, the question lingers: why would a society intensify to the point of developing
agriculture? Agriculture increases the output of food per unit of land. Farmers can get
more food and other resources, and hence support more people, out of a given chunk of
land than hunter-gatherers can. Agriculture is thus associated with a boom in
population. However, if a population declines, a society may de-intensify to hunting and
gathering.

Take, for example, the native people of the Amazon basin. When they were first
encountered by European explorers, the explorers assumed that, since agriculture was
a better system of production, any society without agriculture must never have learned
of it. However, the pre-Columbian Amazon was home to massive agricultural
civilizations. Vast numbers of these people, perhaps 90 percent, were killed by
European diseases, which spread faster than the explorers. With so many people gone,
the surviving Amazonians decided they might as well return to hunting and gathering

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since they no longer needed the high intensification of agriculture to support their
population.

B. Agriculture in Less Developed Countries

Subsistence agriculture replaced hunting and gathering in many parts of
the globe. The term subsistence, when it relates to farming, refers to growing food
only to sustain the farmers themselves and their families, consuming most of what
they produce, without entering into the cash economy of the country. The farm size
is small, 2-5 acres (1-2 hectares), but the agriculture is less mechanized;
therefore, the percentage of workers engaged directly in farming is very high,
reaching 50 percent or more in some developing countries. Climate regions play
an important role in determining agricultural regions. Farming activities range from
shifting cultivation to pastoralism, both extensive forms that still prevail over large
regions, to intensive subsistence.
Shifting cultivation, also known as slash-and-burn agriculture, is a form of
subsistence agriculture that involves a kind of natural rotation system. Shifting
cultivation is a way of life for 150-200 million people, globally distributed in the
tropical areas, especially in the rainforests of South America, Central and West
Africa, and Southeast Asia. The practices involve removing dense vegetation,
burning the debris, clearing the area, known as swidden, and preparing it for
cultivation. Shifting cultivation can successfully support only low population
densities and, as a result of rapid depletion of soil fertility, the fields are actively
cultivated usually for three years. As a result, the infertile land has to be
abandoned and another site has to be identified, starting again the process of
clearing and planting.
The slash-and-burn technique thus requires extensive acreage for new lots,
as well as a great deal of human labor, involving at the same time a frequent
gender division of labor. The kinds of crops grown can be different from region to
region, dominated by tubers, sweet potatoes especially, and grains such as rice
and corn. The practice of mixing different seeds in the same swidden in the warm
and humid tropics is favorable for harvesting two or even three times per year. Yet,
the slash-and-burn practice has some negative impacts on the environment, being
seen as ecologically destructive especially for areas with vulnerable and
endangered species.
Pastoralism. Involving the breeding and herding of animals, pastoralism is
another extensive form of subsistence agriculture. It is adapted to cold and/or dry
climates of savannas (grasslands), deserts, steppes, high plateaus, and Arctic
zones where planting crops is impracticable. Specifically, the practice is
characteristic in Africa [north, central (Sahel) and south], the Middle East, central
and southwest Asia, the Mediterranean basin, and Scandinavia. The species of
animals vary with the region of the world including especially sheep, goats, cattle,
55
reindeer, and camels. Pastoralism is a successful strategy to support a population
on less productive land, and adapts well to the environment.

Three categories of pastoralism can be individualized: sedentary,

nomadic, and transhumance.
Sedentary pastoralism refers to those farmers who live in their villages and
their herd animals in nearby pastures. A number of men usually are hired by the
villagers in order to take care of their animals. Equally important is the practice in
which the hired men gather the animals (cattle especially) in the morning, feed
them during the day in the nearby pasture, and then return them to the village
early in the evening. This is the typical pattern for many traditional European
pastoralists.
Nomadic pastoralism is a traditional form of subsistence agriculture in
which the pastoralists travel with their herds over long distances and with no fixed
pattern. This is a continuous movement of groups of herds and people such as the
Bedouins of Saudi Arabia, the Bakhtiaris of Iran, the Berbers of North Africa, the
Maasai of East Africa, the Zulus of South Africa, the Mongols of Central Asia, and
other groups. The settlement landscape of pastoral nomads reflects their need for
mobility and flexibility. Usually, they live in a type of tent (known as yurt in Central
Asia) and move their herds to any available pasture. Although there are
approximately 10-15 million nomadic pastoralists in the world, they occupy about
20 percent of Earth’s land area. Today, their life is in decline, the victim of more
constricting political borders, competing land uses, selective overgrazing, and
government resettlement programs.
Transhumance is a seasonal vertical movement by herding the livestock
(cows, sheep, goats, and horses) to cooler, greener high-country pastures in the
summer and then returning them to lowland settings for fall and winter grazing.
Herders have a permanent home, typically in the valleys. Generally, the
herds travel with a certain number of people necessary to tend them, while the
main population stays at the base. This is a traditional practice in the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea basins such as southern European countries,
the Carpathian Mountains, and the Caucasus countries. In addition, near highland
zones such as the Atlas Mountains (northwest Africa) and the Anatolian Plateau
(Turkey), as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East countries, and Central
Asia, the pastoralists have to practice another type of transhumance, such as the
movement of animals between wet-season and dry-season pasture.
Intensive subsistence agriculture, characteristic of densely populated
regions especially in southern, southeastern, and eastern Asia, involves the
effective and efficient use of small parcels of land in order to maximize crop yield

56
per acre. The practice requires intensive human labor, with most of the work being
done by hand and/or with animals. The landscape of intensive subsistence
agriculture is significantly transformed, including hillside terraces and raised fields,
adding the irrigation systems and fertilizers. As a result, intensive subsistence
agriculture is able to support large rural populations. Rice is the dominant crop in
the humid areas of southern, southeastern, and eastern Asia. In the drier areas,
other crops are cultivated such as grains (wheat, corn, barley, millet, sorghum, and
oats), as well as peanuts, soybeans, tubers, and vegetables. In both situations, the
land is intensively used, and the milder climate of those regions allows double
cropping (the fields are planted and harvested two times per year).
In recent decades, as the result of the introduction of higher-yielding grain
varieties such as wheat, corn, and rice, known as Green Revolution, tens of
millions of subsistence farmers have been lifted above the survival level. The
spread of these new varieties throughout the farmlands of South, Southeast, and
East Asia, and Mexico greatly improved the supply of food in these areas. Equally
important was the use of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and new machines.
Today, China and India are self-sufficient in basic foods, while Thailand and
Vietnam are two of the top rice exporters in the world. Although hunger and famine
still persist in some regions of the world, especially in Africa, many people accept
that they would be much worse without using these innovations.

C. Agriculture in More Developed Countries

Commercial agriculture, generally practiced in core countries outside the
tropics, is developed primarily to generate products for sale to food processing
companies. An exception is plantation farming, a form of commercial agriculture
which persists in developing countries side by side with subsistence. Unlike the
small subsistence farms (1-2 hectares/2-5 acres), the average of the commercial
farm size is over 150 hectares/370 acres (178 ha/193 acres U.S.) and, being
mechanized, many of them are family owned and operated. Mechanization also
determines the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, with many developed
countries being even below two percent of the total employment, such as Israel,
the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden (Figure 10.6). Moreover, as the result of industrialization and urbanization,
many developed countries continue to lose significant areas of agricultural land.
North America, for example, had 28.3 percent agricultural land out of the total land
area in 1961 and 26 percent in 2014. The European Union decreased its
agricultural land from 54.7 percent to 43.8 percent for the same period, during
which some countries recorded outstanding decreases, such as Ireland from 81.9
to 64.8 percent, the United Kingdom from 81.8 to 71.2 percent, and Denmark from
74.6 to 62.2 percent to mention only a few. In addition to the high level of
mechanization, in order to increase their productivity, commercial farmers use

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scientific advances in research and technology such as the Global Positioning
System (autonomous precision seed-planting robot, intelligent systems for animal
monitoring, savings in field vegetable-growing through the use of a GPS automatic
steering system), and satellite imagery (finding efficient routes for selective
harvesting based on remote sensing management).
Climate regions also play an important role in determining agricultural
regions. In developed countries, these regions can be individualized as six types of
commercial agriculture: mixed crop and livestock, grain farming, dairy farming,
livestock ranching, commercial gardening and fruit farming, and Mediterranean
agriculture
Mixed crop and livestock farming extends over much of the eastern
United States, central and western Europe, western Russia, Japan, and smaller
areas in South America (Brazil and Uruguay) and South Africa. The rich soils,
typically involving crop rotation, produce high yields primarily of corn and wheat,
adding also soybeans, sugar beets, sunflower, potatoes, fruit orchards, and forage
crops for livestock. In practice, there is a wide variation in mixed systems. At a
higher level, a region can consist of individual specialized farms (corn, for
example) and service systems that together act as a mixed system. Other forms of
mixed farming include cultivation of different crops on the same field or several
varieties of the same crop with different life cycles, using space more efficiently
and spreading risks more uniformly. The same farm may grow cereal crops or
orchards, for example, and keep cattle, sheep, pigs, or poultry.
Commercial grain farming is an extensive and mechanized form of
agriculture. This is a development in the continental lands of the mid-latitudes
(mostly between 30° and 55° North and South latitudes), in regions that are too dry
for mixed crop and livestock farming. The major world regions of commercial grain
farming are located in Eurasia (from Kiev, in Ukraine, along southern Russia, to
Omsk in western Siberia and Kazakhstan) and North America (the Great Plains).
In the southern hemisphere, Argentina, in South America, has a large region of
commercial grain farming, and Australia has two such areas, one in the southwest
and another in the southeast. Commercial grain farming is highly specialized and,
generally, one single crop is grown. The most important crop grown is wheat
(winter and spring), used to make flour. The wheat farms are very large, ranging
from 240 to 16,000 hectares (593-40000 acres). The average size of a farm in the
U.S. is about 1000 acres (405 hectares). In these areas land is cheap, making it
possible for a farmer to own very large holdings.
Dairy farming is a branch of agriculture designed for long-term production
of milk, processed either on a farm or at a dairy plant, for sale. It is practiced near
large urban areas in both developed and developing countries. The location of this
type of farm is dictated by the highly perishable milk. The ring surrounding a city
where fresh milk is economically viable, supplied without spoiling, is about a 100-

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mile radius. In the 1980s and 1990s, robotic milking systems were developed and
introduced in some developing countries, principally in the EU (Figure 10.15).
There is an important variation in the pattern of dairy production worldwide. Many
countries that are large producers consume most of this internally, while others, in
particular New Zealand, export a large percentage of their production, some from
the organic farms.
Ranching is the commercial grazing of livestock on large tracts of land. It is
an efficient way to raise livestock to provide meat, dairy products, and raw
materials for fabrics. Contemporary ranching has become part of the meat-
processing industry. Primarily, ranching is practiced on semiarid or arid land where
the vegetation is too sparse and the soil too poor to support crops, being a vital
part of economies and rural development around the world. In Australia, like in the
Americas, ranching is a way of life. In the United States, near Greeley, Colorado,
there is the world’s largest cattle feedlot, with over 120,000 head, a subsidiary of
the food giant ConAgra (Figure 10.18). The largest beef-producing company in the
world is the Brazilian multinational corporation JBS-Friboi. Argentina and Uruguay
are the world’s top per capita consumers of beef. China is the leading producer of
pig meat while the United States leads in the production of chicken and beef.
Commercial Gardening and Fruit Farming. A market garden is a
relatively small-scale business, growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers. The farms
are small, from under one acre to a few acres (.5-1.5 hectares). The diversity of
crops is sometimes cultivated in greenhouses, distinguishing it from other types of
farming. Commercial gardening and fruit farming is quite diverse, requiring more
manual labor and gardening techniques. In the United States, commercial
gardening and fruit farming is the predominant type of agriculture in the Southeast,
the region with a warm and humid climate and a long growing season. In addition
to the traditional vegetables and fruits (tomatoes, lettuce, onions, peaches, apples,
cherries), a new kind of commercial gardening has developed in the Northeast.
This is a non-traditional market garden, growing crops that, although limited, are
increasingly demanded by consumers, such as asparagus, mushrooms, peppers,
and strawberries. Market gardening has become an alternative business,
significantly profitable and sustainable especially with the recent popularity of
organic and local food.
The term ‘Mediterranean agriculture’ applies to the agriculture done in
those regions which have a Mediterranean type of climate, hot and dry summers
and moist and mild winters. Five major regions in the world have a Mediterranean
type of agriculture, such as the lands that border the Mediterranean Sea (South
Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East), California, central Chile, South Africa’s
Cape, and in parts of southwestern and southern Australia (Figure 10.20). Farming
is intensive, highly specialized and varied in the kinds of crops raised. The hilly
Mediterranean lands, also known as ‘orchard lands of the world,’ are dominated by

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 citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, and grapefruits), olives (primary for cooking oil), figs,
dates, and grapes (primarily for wine), which are mainly for export. These and
other commodities flow to distant markets, Mediterranean products tending to be
popular and commanding high prices. Yet, the warm and sunny Mediterranean
climate also allows a wide range of other food crops, such as cereals (wheat,
especially) and vegetables, cultivated especially for domestic consumption.
e. Agriculture in Developing Countries
Plantation Farming. Plantations are large landholdings in developing
regions designed to produce crops for export. Usually, they specialize in the
production of one particular crop for market laid out to produce coffee, cocoa,
bananas, or sugar in South and Central America; cocoa, tea, rice, or rubber in
West and East Africa; tea in South Asia; rubber in Southeast Asia, and/or other
specialized and luxury crops such as palm oil, peanuts, cotton, and tobacco.
Plantations are located in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America and, although they are located in the developing countries, many
are owned and operated by European or North American individuals or
corporations. Even those taken by governments of the newly independent
countries continued to be operated by foreigners in order to receive income from
foreign sources. These plantations survived during decolonization, continuing to
serve the rich markets of the world. Unlike coffee, sugar, rice, cotton and other
traditional crops, exported from large plantations, other crops can be required by
the international market such as flowers and specific fruits and vegetables. These
represent the nontraditional agricultural exports, which have become increasingly
important in some countries or regions such as Argentina, Colombia, Chile,
Mexico, and Central America, to mention a few. One important reason for
sustaining nontraditional exports is that they complement the traditional exports,
generating foreign exchange and employment. Thus, plantation agriculture,
designed to produce crops for export, is critical to the economies of many
developing countries.
D. The Green Revolution
The Green Revolution originated in Mexico in the 1940s and was a result of
several factors, including:
 Norman Borlaug
An American agricultural scientist who developed new wheat varieties that were
disease-resistant and high-yielding.
 Henry A. Wallace
A U.S. Vice President-elect who visited Mexico in 1940 and had previously founded
Pioneer Hi-Bred International, a company that revolutionized seed corn hybridization.
 Mechanized agricultural technologies
New technologies that were combined with Borlaug's wheat varieties to increase
wheat production.
 The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

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 An international research institution formed in 1963 with funding from the Rockefeller
Foundation, Ford Foundation, and other government agencies.

The Green Revolution's success in Mexico led to the spread of its technologies to other
countries, such as India and Pakistan, in the 1950s and 1960s. The Green Revolution
helped to significantly reduce poverty and starvation in these countries.
The Green Revolution had both positive and negative impacts:
 Positive
The Green Revolution doubled the world's grain supply without increasing the amount
of farmland. It also helped to save large areas of forest and other environmentally
fragile lands that would otherwise have been used for farming.
 Negative
The Green Revolution led to the loss of biodiversity on farms as farmers became
dependent on a few major cereal varieties. It also led to the loss of access to land for
many sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

The Green Revolution was a period of agricultural advancements in the 1940s–

1960s that increased food production, especially of wheat and rice, in developing
countries. The Green Revolution had many impacts on human geography, including:
 Benefits
The Green Revolution increased yields, created jobs, and made countries self-
sufficient. It also helped to reduce hunger and malnutrition.
 Environmental impacts
The Green Revolution increased land degradation, reduced the water table, and
contributed to climate change. It also led to the loss of biodiversity and water and soil
pollution.
 Social challenges
The Green Revolution increased socioeconomic inequalities. Poor farmers were often
unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides required to produce high yields, and they
often had lower yields than with older strains.
 Geographic disparities

The benefits of the Green Revolution were not experienced equally by every
country. For example, in 1998, 82% of the area planted to modern varieties was in
Asian countries, but only 27% was in Africa.
The Green Revolution was marked by the development of high-yielding seed varieties,
the use of advanced tools and technology, and the adoption of new fertilizers and
pesticides
Since the 19th century, manipulation and management of biological organisms
have been a key to the development of agriculture. In addition to Green Revolution,
agriculture has also undergone a Biorevolution, involving agricultural biotechnology
(agritech), an area of agricultural science involving the use of scientific tools and genetic
engineering techniques to modify living organisms (or part of organisms) of plants and
animals with the potential of outstripping the productivity increases of the Green

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Revolution and, at the same time, reducing agricultural production costs. Within the
agricultural biotechnology process, desired traits are exported from a particular species
of crop or animal to the different species obtaining transgenic crops, which possess
desirable characteristics in terms of flavor, color of flowers, growth rate, size of
harvested products, and resistance to diseases and pests (BT corn, for example, can
produce its own pesticides).
By removing the genetic material from one organism and inserting it into the permanent
genetic code of another, the biotech industry has created an astounding number of
organisms that are not produced by nature. It has been estimated that upwards of 75
percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves – from soda to soup, crackers to
condiments – contain genetically engineered ingredients. So far, little is known about
the impacts of genetically modified (GM) foods on human health and the environment.
Consequently, it is difficult to sort the benefits from the costs of their increasing
incorporation into global food production. The United States is the leader not only for the
number of the genetically engineered (GE) food crops but also for the largest areas
planted with commercialized biotech crops. Many countries, in Europe, for example,
consider that the genetic modification has not been proved safe, the reason for which
they require all food to be labeled and refuse to import GM food. Yet, in the United
States, genetic modification is permitted, taking into consideration that there is no
evidence yet supporting that it is dangerous. Many people instead consider that they
have the right to decide what they eat and, consequently, in their opinion, labeling of
GM products must be mandatory. Protests against Genetically Modified Organism
(GMO) regulatory structures have been very effective in many counties including the
United States.

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 UNIT VIII
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
A. Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and
handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These
technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally
transformed society. This process began in Britain in the 18th century and from there
spread to other parts of the world. Although used earlier by French writers, the
term Industrial Revolution was first popularized by the English economic
historian Arnold Toynbee (1852–83) to describe Britain’s economic development from
1760 to 1840. Since Toynbee’s time the term has been more broadly applied as a
process of economic transformation than as a period of time in a particular setting. This
explains why some areas, such as China and India, did not begin their first industrial
revolutions until the 20th century, while others, such as the United States and
western Europe, began undergoing “second” industrial revolutions by the late 19th
century.
* INDUSTRIALIZATION IN LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

Industrial activities in less developed countries (LDCs) can have both positive and
negative effects on the economy, society, and environment:

Effect Explanation

Positive Industrialization can improve education, life expectancy, income, and

quality of life. It can also create a technostructure of highly trained workers
using up-to-date techniques.

Negative Industrialization can cause environmental degradation, social inequality,

and cultural disruption. High manufacturing costs can put LDCs at a
disadvantage in competing with more developed nations.

Investmen Investment is critical for economic and social development in

t LDCs. Foreign investment can help countries move up the value chain,
scale up production and employment, and participate in global value
chains.

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 LDCs are often dependent on a limited number of sectors, such as agriculture, mining,
logging, and fishing. Development theory holds that manufacturing is the engine of
economic growth and key for a country's development.

To ensure inclusive economic growth in LDCs, governments need to be committed,

policies need to be coherent, and institutions need to be effective. Investments also
need to be linked to national development priorities.

*Industrial activities in more developed countries include:

 Research and development (R&D): The main driver of technological change in

developed countries.

 Manufacturing: A global engine of economic growth, but has been declining due to
trade tensions and tariffs.

 High-technology industries: Have demonstrated robust growth rates.

 Service and high technology economies: Western countries in Europe and North
America have increasingly turned to these economies.

Other characteristics of industrial activities in developed countries include:

 Stable economies
Developed countries have stable economies that encompass all four sectors of the
economy.
 Infrastructure
Developed countries have a lot of infrastructure in place, such as transport routes,
roads, raw materials, and energy sources.
 Higher standard of living
Developed countries have a higher standard of living, which is reflected in their labor
costs, rules and regulations, and taxes.

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 B. Diffusion of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution occurred only in Britain for about 50 years, but it eventually
spread to other countries in Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan. British
entrepreneurs and government officials forbade the export of machinery, manufacturing
techniques, and skilled workers to other countries but the technologies spread by luring
British experts with lucrative offers, and even smuggling secrets into other countries. By
the mid-19th century industrialization had spread to France, Germany, Belgium, and
the United States.

The earliest center of industrial production in continental Europe was Belgium, where
coal, iron, textile, glass, and armaments production flourished. By 1830 French firms
had employed many skilled British workers to help establish the textile industry, and
railroad lines began to appear across western Europe. Germany was a little later in
developing industry, mainly because no centralized government existed there yet, and a
great deal of political unrest made industrialization difficult. However, after the 1840s
German coal and iron production skyrocketed, and by the 1850s an extensive rail
network was under construction. After German political unification in 1871, the new
empire rivaled England in terms of industrial production.

Industrialization began in the United States by the 1820s, delayed until the country had
enough laborers and money to invest in business. Both came from Europe, where
overpopulation and political revolutions sent immigrants to the United States to seek
their fortunes. The American Civil War (1861-1865) delayed further immigration until the
1870s, but it spurred the need for industrial war products, all the way from soldiers'
uniforms to guns to railroads for troop transport. Once the war was over, cross-country
railroads were built which allowed more people to claim parts of vast
inland America and to reach the west coast. The United States had abundant natural
resources &endash; land, water, coal and iron ore &endash; and after the great wave of
immigration from Europe and Asia in the late 19th century &endash; it also had the
labor.

During the late 1800s, industrialization spread to Russia and Japan, in both cases by
government initiatives. In Russia the tsarist government encouraged the construction of
railroads to link places within the vast reaches of the empire. The most impressive one
was the Trans-Siberian line constructed between 1891 and 1904, linking Moscow to
Vladivostock on the Pacific Ocean. The railroads also gave Russians access to the
empire's many coal and iron deposits, and by 1900 Russia ranked fourth in the world in
steel production. The Japanese government also pushed industrialization, hiring
thousands of foreign experts to instruct Japanese workers and mangers in the late
1800s. Railroads were constructed, mines were opened, a banking system was
organized, and industries were started that produced ships, armaments, silk, cotton,
chemicals, and glass. By 1900 Japan was the most industrialized land in Asia, and was
set to become a 20th century power.

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CHANGES IN PATTERNS OF WORLD TRADE

Industrialization greatly increased the economic, military, and political strength of the
societies that embraced it. By and large, the countries that benefited from
industrialization were the ones that had the necessary components of land, labor and
capital, and often government support. However, even though many other countries
tried to industrialize, few had much success. For example, India tried to develop jute
and steel industries, but the entrepreneurs failed because they had no government
support and little investment capital. An international division of labor resulted: people in
industrialized countries produced manufactured products, and people in less
industrialized countries produced the raw materials necessary for that production.
Industrial England, for example, needed cotton, so turned to India, Egypt, and the
American south to produce it for them. In many cases this division of labor led to
colonization of the non-industrialized areas. As industrialization increased, more iron
and coal were needed, as well as other fibers for the textile industry, and the British
Empire grew rapidly in order to meet these demands.

Many countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and southeast Asia
became highly dependent on one cash crop - such as sugar, cotton, and rubber - giving
them the nickname of "Banana Republics." Such economies were very vulnerable to
any change in the international market. Foreign investors owned and controlled the
plantations that produced these crops, and most of the profits went to them. Very little of
the profits actually improved the living conditions for people that lived in those areas,
and since they had little money to spend, a market economy could not develop.

Despite the inequalities, the division of labor between people in countries that produced
raw materials and those that produced manufactured goods increased the total volume
of world trade. In turn, this increased volume led to better technology, which reinforced
and fed the trade. Sea travel became much more efficient, with journeys that had once
taken months or years reduced to days or weeks. By 1914 two great canals shortened
sea journeys by thousands of miles. The Suez Canal built by the British and French in
the 1850s linked the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, making it no longer necessary
to go around the tip of Africa to get from Europe to Asia by sea. The Panama Canal,
completed in 1913, did a similar thing in the western hemisphere, cutting a swath
through Central America that encouraged trade and transportation between
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

C. The Global Industrial Market

Central place theory
is an urban geographical theory that seeks to explain the number, size and
range of market services in a commercial system or human settlements in a residential
system.[1] It was introduced in 1933 to explain the spatial distribution of cities across the
landscape.[2] The theory was first analyzed by German geographer Walter Christaller,

66
who asserted that settlements simply functioned as 'central places' providing economic
services to surrounding areas. Christaller explained that a large number of small
settlements will be situated relatively close to one another for efficiency, and because
people don't want to travel far for everyday needs, like getting bread from a bakery. But
people would travel further for more expensive and infrequent purchases or specialized
goods and services which would be located in larger settlements that are farther apart.
Hegemony and Economic Ascendency
At times industrialization has propelled countries to great economic heights. Britain, The
United States and Japan all rode an industrial wave to international prominence. In
those countries and others, a (largely mythical) golden age centers around a time when
low-skilled workers could earn a sufficient wage to secure economic security. This is
more-or-less what the “American Dream” was. Deindustrialization has changed the
economic trajectories of these countries and the people living in these countries.
However, it must be noted that post-industrial countries that have not seen rapid
increases in poverty. Wages have been largely stagnant for decades, but they have not
generally gone down. The largest difference has to do with relative prosperity for
industrial and post-industrial countries. Countries such as Japan, the UK or the US are
no longer far wealthier than their neighbors. In the same way that flooding a market with
a particular product reduces the value of that product, flooding the world with industrial
capacity lowers the relative value of that activity. Developing countries function as
appendages to the larger economies in the world. The poor serve the needs of the
wealthy. Unindustrialized countries buy goods from developed countries, or they license
or copy technology and make the products themselves.
Space and Production
In the context of a globalized market, a factory built in one market may not built in
another. This is not to say that producing goods is a zero-sum game, but there are limits
to the amount of any good that can be sold. It’s a valid question to ask why
transnational corporations (TNCs) have bought into China at rates far greater than in
Cuba, Russia, or other Communist or formerly Communist (to varying degrees)
countries? There is only so much spare capacity for production in the world. If one giant
country (China) is taking all the extra capacity, then there will be none left for others.
FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is simply easier in China, since there is more bang for
the buck. This is largely a function of population. The population of China is roughly two
times the population of Sub Saharan Africa. And China has a single political/economic
running class, as opposed to 55 different sets of often fractious (troublesome) political
classes. If the industrialization of Africa happens at all, it will occur after China and its
immediate neighbors who have been drawn into its larger economic functioning have
largely finished their own industrializing. An example of this proximate effect is seen in
the shift of some industries from China to Vietnam and Indonesia.

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China’s industrialization had to do with promoting itself as a huge cheap labor pool, and
as a gigantic market for goods. It successfully leveraged (enhanced) both of these
characteristics to attract foreign investment, and to gain foreign technology from the
companies that have invested in producing goods there. Industrialization overall seems
to have slowed. The speed at which China industrialized has not been matched by other
countries following China. One current idea is that the world is in a race between
industrial expansion and rapid over capacity of production. In other words, the reason
that industrialization isn’t expanding as rapidly as before is that we are already making
enough goods to satisfy demand. Remember that goods require demand. Unsold goods
don’t produce any income. If the factories in the world are already producing enough, or
even too much, then new factories are much less likely to be built. Technological
advances and the massive industrialization of China might have ended the expansion of
industry.
It also appears that the highest levels of manufacturing income are well in the past.
According to economist Dani Rodrik, the highest per capita incomes from manufacturing
occurred between 1965 and 1975, and has fallen dramatically since then. This is even
considering inflation. Many countries industrializing now only see modest improvements
in income. This is related to supply and demand. When there are fewer factories, they
make comparatively more money. When factories are everywhere, they are competing
with everyone.
Trade
Even more than expansion of industrial production, the world has seen an expansion of
trade. Global trade has produced an intricate (complicated) web of exchanges as
products are now designed in one country, parts are produced in 10 others, assembled
in yet another country, and then marketed to the world. Consider something as complex
as an automobile. The parts of a car can be sourced from any of dozens of countries,
but they all have to be brought to one spot for assembly. Such coordination would have
been impossible in the past.
Individuals can buy directly from another country on the internet, but most international
trade is business-to-business. TNCs (Transnational Corporations) are able to conduct
an internal form of international trade in goods that can be moved and produced in a
way that is most advantageous for the company. Tax breaks, easy credit and banking
privacy laws exist to siphon investment from one place to another.
Because of global trade, improvements in communication and transportation have
enabled some companies to enact just in time delivery, in which the parts need for a
product only arrive right before they are needed. The advantage of this is that a
company has less money trapped in components in a storage facility, and it becomes
easier to adjust production. Once again, such coordination at a global scale was not
possible even in the relatively recent past.

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Deindustrialization
Historically industrialized countries were the wealthy countries of the world.
Industrialization, however, is now two centuries old. In the last decades of the twentieth
century, deindustrialization began in earnest in the United Kingdom, the United States,
and many other places. Factories left and the old jobs left with them. Classical
economics holds that such jobs had become less valuable, and that moving them
offshore was a good deal for everyone. Offshored goods were cheaper for consumers,
and the lost jobs were replaced by better jobs. The problem with this idea is that it
separates the condition of being a consumer from the condition of being a worker. Most
people in any economy are workers. They can only consume as long as they have an
income, and that is tied to their ability to work. Many workers whose jobs went
elsewhere found that their new jobs paid less than their old jobs.
What Happens After Deindustrialization?
The simple answer to the above question is this. The service economy happens! As
manufacturing provides fewer jobs, service industries tend to create new jobs. This is a
very delicate balance, however. If you are a 50-year old coal miner whose job has been
eliminated by automation, it is very difficult for you to simply change jobs and enter the
‘service sector’. This transition is very damaging to those without the right skills, training,
education, or geographic location. Many parts of the American Midwest, for example,
have become known as the “rust belt” as industrial facilities closed, decayed, and
literally rusted to the horror of those residents who once had good jobs there. The city of
Detroit, for example, lost nearly half of its urban population from 1970-2010. Meanwhile
the state of Illinois loses one resident every 15 minutes as job growth has weakened in
the post-industrial age. However, job growth and productivity in the service economy
have strengthened and provide more job opportunities today than the industrial era ever
did in the U.S.

There are 3 sectors to every economy:

 Primary (agriculture, fishing, and mining)
 Secondary (manufacturing and construction)
 Tertiary (service related jobs)
The vast majority of economic growth in the post-industrialized world comes in the
tertiary sector. This doesn’t mean that all tertiary jobs pay well. Just ask any fast-food
worker if the service sector is making them rich! However, service sector jobs are very
dynamic and offer tangible opportunities to millions of people around the world to earn a
living providing services to somebody else. We can further break down the service
sector into 1) public (the post office, public utilities, working for the government) 2)
business (businesses providing services to other businesses) consumer (anything that
provides a service to a private consumer e.g. hotels, restaurants, barber shops,

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mechanics, financial services). Traditionally, service sector jobs worked very much like
manufacturing jobs in that employees worked regular hours, earned benefits from the
employer, gained raises through increased performance, and went to work somewhere
outside of their home. Many service jobs in the 21st century, however, have been
categorized as the gig economy, in which workers serve as contractors (rather than
employees), have no regular work schedules, don’t earn benefits, and often work in
isolation from other workers rather than as a part of a team. Examples of ‘jobs’ in the gig
economy include private tutor, Uber/Lyft driver, AirBNB host, blogger, and YouTuber.
Work, in this economy, is not necessarily bound by particular places and spaces in the
way that it did in manufacturing. Imagine a steel worker calling in to tell his/her boss that
they’re just going to work from home today! Even public schools have adapted to this
model in the following manner. As schools cancel class due to weather, the new norm is
to hold class online, whereby students do independent work submitted to the teacher
even though nobody is at school. As such, some workers are freed up from the
traditional constraints of time and place and can choose to live anywhere as long as
they maintain access to a computer and the Internet. Services like fiverr. com facilitate a
marketplace for freelance writers compose essays for others or for graphic artists to sell
their design ideas directly to customers without every meeting one another.
The global marketplace continues to be defined as a place where the traditional
relationships between employer and employee are changing dramatically. A word of
caution is necessary here, however. As many choose to celebrate the freedom that
accompanies flexible work schedules, there is also a darker side in that the traditional
‘contract’ and social cohesive element between workers and owners is very much at
risk. One defining factor of the 20th century was the development of civil society that
fought for and won a host of protective measures for workers, who otherwise could face
abusive work conditions. Child labor laws, minimum wage, environmental safety
measures, overtime pay, and guards against discrimination were all based upon an
employer-employee relationship that seems increasingly threatened by the gig
economy. Uber drivers can work themselves to exhaustion since they are not
employees. AirBNB (hosts can skirt environmental safety precautions since they do not
face the same safety inspections required at hotels. These are just a few examples, but
they are very worth consideration. Regardless of the positives and negatives, the new
service economy is having a transformative effect upon all facets of society. Although,
the authors of this textbook are all geography professors with PhD’s from a variety of
universities, perhaps the next version of this textbook will simply draw upon the gig
economy to seek the lowest cost authors who are willing to write about all things
geographical. Will you be able to tell the difference? (We hope so!!!)

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 UNIT IX
The Geography of Resources and Environmental Impacts
The Life of Our Resources
Global population increase means a greater demand for resources. Job opportunities in
fossil fuel mining and drilling are a significant pull factor for migration in many countries
where fossil fuel extraction is an important part of the economy. Cultures, and their
associated political and economic systems and settlements, affect and are affected by
the availability of resources and how resources are used in a country. For example, the
availability of coal in the United Kingdom helped bring about the industrial revolution in
that country. Furthermore, as developing countries modernize, their energy needs for
transportation and electricity grow, and there is a continued increase in the demand for
such energy sources as fossil fuels.
The carrying capacity of an environment is the maximum population size of a
biological species that can be sustained by that specific environment, given the
food, habitat, water, and other resources available. The carrying capacity is defined as
the environment's maximal load, which in population ecology corresponds to the
population equilibrium, when the number of deaths in a population equals the number of
births (as well as immigration and emigration). Carrying capacity of the environment
implies that the resources extraction is not above the rate of regeneration of the
resources and the wastes generated are within the assimilating capacity of the
environment. Carrying capacity is applied to the maximum population an environment
can support in ecology, agriculture and fisheries. The term carrying capacity has been
applied to a few different processes in the past before finally being applied to population
limits in the 1950s.[1] The notion of carrying capacity for humans is covered by the notion
of sustainable population.

The life of our resources depends on how we use and conserve them:

Renewable resources
These resources can be replenished during our lifetime, such as water, plants, and
wind. However, overuse can deplete them. For example, if we cut down trees for
lumber, we need to replace them with new seedlings.

Nonrenewable resources
These resources are not replenished quickly or at all by the Earth, such as fossil fuels
and minerals. For example, fossil fuels take millions of years to form.

Conservation
Conservation is using natural resources wisely and not contributing to
pollution. Conservation can include small-scale clean-up projects or building fences to
prevent dune (mound) erosion.

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 Inclusive decision making

Inclusive decision making is key for sustainable resource governance. This includes
including Indigenous Peoples and local communities in resource governance.

Consumer impact

Consumers can make a positive difference by being mindful of their consumption of

goods and services.

The Spatial Distribution of Resources

The spatial distribution of resources is the geographic arrangement of resources on

Earth, or where resources are located. The distribution of resources is uneven across
the globe due to a variety of factors, including:

 Natural conditions
Different natural conditions, such as temperature, precipitation, and altitude, affect the
distribution of resources. For example, low latitudes receive more precipitation and
sun energy, while higher latitudes receive less.
 Tectonic activity
Areas with strong tectonic activity have the most abundant metallic minerals.
 Deposition
Fossil fuels are found in sedimentary rocks, which are formed by deposition.
 Geographic location
A region's geographic location and past geologic processes determine the distribution
of natural resources.
The distribution of resources can affect a place's economic development, political
relationships, and culture. For example, the Great Plains region of the United States is
known for its fertile soil, which is why agriculture is the region's main industry.
An unequal distribution of community resources can be an indicator of social
exclusion. The spatial distribution of resources can also be a root cause of conflicts.
The Consumption of Resources
Resource consumption refers to the use of natural resources, such as water, energy,
and raw materials, by individuals, communities, and nations for various activities. It
plays a crucial role in shaping economic development, social structures, and
environmental sustainability, as the demand for resources can lead to depletion,
pollution, and ecological imbalances.

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1. Resource consumption varies greatly across different regions and is often tied to
economic development levels; wealthier nations tend to consume more resources per
capita than poorer ones.
2. The growing global population is leading to increased demand for resources,
exacerbating issues related to scarcity and environmental degradation.
3. Resource consumption has significant environmental implications, including
deforestation, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity, and climate change due to
greenhouse gas emissions.
4. Efforts to manage resource consumption focus on promoting renewable energy
sources, reducing waste, and encouraging recycling to create a more sustainable
future.
5. The concept of circular economy aims to minimize resource consumption by reusing
and recycling materials rather than following a traditional linear model of production
and disposal.

 How does resource consumption differ between developed and developing

nations, and what factors contribute to these differences?

o Resource consumption is typically higher in developed nations due to greater
industrialization, higher living standards, and access to advanced technology. In
contrast, developing nations may have lower per capita consumption but are often
reliant on natural resources for economic growth. Factors such as income levels,
technological advancements, population density, and governmental policies all
influence these differences in resource usage.
o
 Evaluate the environmental impacts of resource consumption and discuss
strategies that can be implemented to mitigate these effects.

o Resource consumption significantly affects the environment through deforestation,
pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. To mitigate these impacts, strategies such
as promoting renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, enforcing stricter
regulations on waste management, and encouraging sustainable agricultural practices
can be implemented. Additionally, raising public awareness about responsible
consumption can play a crucial role in reducing overall demand for resources.
o
 Assess the long-term implications of unchecked resource consumption on
global sustainability and propose potential solutions for future challenges.

o Unchecked resource consumption poses severe long-term implications for global
sustainability, including depletion of vital resources, increased conflict over scarce
supplies, and irreversible environmental damage. To address these challenges,
potential solutions include transitioning towards a circular economy that emphasizes
recycling and waste reduction, investing in innovative technologies that improve
resource efficiency, and promoting international cooperation to ensure equitable
distribution and sustainable management of resources.
o

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o These strategies can help pave the way for a more resilient future

Alternative Energy Resources

Fossil fuel resources are finite, so efforts to seek other types of energy resources are
ongoing in many countries around the world. Because fossil fuels are not limitless,
some researchers are concerned that supply will eventually exceed demand,
particularly as developing countries increase economically and technologically.
Moreover, as we will see in a later section on pollution, the emissions from the burning
of fossil fuels are a serious concern for the global atmosphere, and clean energy is seen
as a better alternative to coal, oil, and natural gas.
The shift away from fossils fuels involves a number of different types of renewable
energy and alternative energy sources. Renewable resources are those that are in
infinite supply. Major types of renewable energy include solar, wind, hydroelectric
power, biofuels, and geothermal energy. Although the risks are considered to be
significant, an alternative energy source is nuclear power, but nuclear power is not
renewable as it depends on the supply of uranium. Significant efforts worldwide to
harness these energy sources can be seen in many regions of the world.
For example, in Europe, a concerted effort to fund renewable energy projects has been
underway since the 1990s. In 2016, wind energy overtook coal as the second largest
form of power production (after natural gas) in Europe, and 80 percent of new energy
projects were from renewable energy sources. France, Ireland, Lithuania, the
Netherlands, and Finland all set records for windfarm installation, while Germany
continues to lead in wind power. Norway and Sweden are the leading countries overall
in terms of renewable energy consumption in Europe, as more than half of their energy
consumption is from renewables.
In Asia, while China continues to build many coal-powered plants, it is investing
hundreds of billions of dollars on renewable energy, more money than the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Japan, combined. This development is important as
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and this pollution may
contribute to global warming. Moreover, China is already the world leader in wind power
and plans to build the largest solar farm on the planet. India’s goal is to produce over 50
percent of its power from renewable energy by 2027. All of these efforts require a
considerable amount of capital investment to help cover the costs of the energy
transformation.
In the Middle East, even the world leader in oil production, Saudi Arabia, is looking
toward renewable energy as they are expected to be a net importer of oil by 2038 as
their domestic supplies dwindle. The Middle East is an excellent location for solar power
because of the number of cloud-free days in a year.
In the United States, only about 12 percent of energy production is from renewables,
and much of that production is from hydroelectric power. However, America has some
of the largest wind and solar farms in the world. Texas leads in wind power production,
and California has the most solar energy generating capacity. Efforts to promote electric
car use have also been promoted in California, as the state government has set a goal

74
of having 1.5 million electric cars on the road by 2025. Although using a battery to
power a car instead of fossil fuels is generally environmentally friendly, electricity
generated primarily from fossil fuels is still used to charge the vehicles.
One of the more controversial types of renewable energy is biofuels. Biofuels produce
energy from living matter, and much of the biofuel used in the world is from a variety of
crops such as corn, cassava, sweet potato, sugar cane, and sorghum. The United
States and Brazil lead the world in biofuel production, followed by China. In the United
States, most gasoline has a certain percentage of ethanol, derived from corn. The major
controversy with biofuels stems from the fact that many of the plants used for biofuels
could also be used to feed people, so whether or not using scarce land to produce fuel
as opposed to food is a good idea is hotly debated. However, other biofuel sources exist
besides agricultural crops, and these biofuels include bio-methane and even bacteria
such as E. coli. In the United States, India, and Germany, methane derived from cow
manure and decaying plant matter is used to power electric plants. In Gwinnett County,
Georgia, methane extracted during the wastewater treatment process is used to provide
electric power for the wastewater treatment process.

Global Resources and Pollution

Global Resources

The scientific community has never before been more aligned or more resolute on the
need for urgent global transformation towards the sustainable use of resources. This
2024 edition of the Global Resources Outlook sheds light on how resources are
essential to the effective implementation of the Agenda 2030 and multilateral
environmental agreements to tackle the triple planetary crisis (climate change, land
degradation, biodiversity loss). The report brings together the best available data,
modelling and assessments to analyze trends, impacts and distributional effects of
resource use. It builds on more than 15 years of work by the International Resource
Panel, including scientific assessments and inputs from countries, a vast network of
stakeholders in the field and regional experts.

The report illustrates how, since the 2019 edition of this report, rising trends in global
resource use have continued or accelerated. The report also shows how demand for
resources is expected to continue increasing in the coming decades. This means that,
without urgent and concerted action, by 2060 resource extraction could rise by 60%
from 2020 levels – driving increasing damage and risks.

However, this fate is not sealed. The report also describes the potential to turn negative
trends around and put humanity on a trajectory towards sustainability.

For that, bold policy action is critical to phase out unsustainable activities, speed up
responsible and innovative ways of meeting human needs and create conditions
conducive to social acceptance and equity within the necessary transitions. This
includes urgent action to embed resources in the delivery of multilateral environmental
agreements, define sustainable resource use paths and roll out appropriate financial,

75
trade and economic incentives. The pathway towards sustainability is increasingly steep
and narrow, and the window of opportunity is closing. The science is clear: The key
question is no longer whether a transformation towards global sustainable resource
consumption and production is necessary, but how to make it happen now. Addressing
this reality, based on evolving concepts of a just transition, is an essential part of any
credible and justifiable way forward.

Air Pollution
While the technology exists to burn fossil fuels so that the emissions are not particularly
significant in terms of air pollution, air quality reduction because of the combustion of
fossil fuels is still considerable and is a cause for concern at the international level.
Another pollutant that has received worldwide attention is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
and their impact on the ozone layer. Water pollution and the disposal problem of solid
wastes are also important environmental concerns.

One of the major issues internationally is the suspected anthropogenic, or human-

caused, warming of the Earth’s atmosphere because of carbon dioxide in fossil fuel
emissions. The issue is complex because “climate change”, as global warming has
been dubbed, is affected by both natural and anthropogenic processes. A number of
scientists are concerned with warming temperatures in the lower atmosphere because
this warming could contribute to rising sea levels, an increase in the frequency of storms
and drought, a greater number of heat injuries, and the spread of tropical pests into
higher latitudes. Many climatic factors operate to affect global temperatures, so carbon
dioxide produced by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is not the only important
element that dictates temperatures worldwide. Ocean currents, shifts in large warm and
cold pools of the Oceans such as El Ǹino/La Ǹina, changes in sunspot activity,
photosynthesis from global plant life, the extent of global sea ice, the type and extent of
global cloud cover, the natural cycling of carbon, and volcanic activity are but a few of
the climate controls of global temperatures.
Despite the complexity of the Earth’s climate system, many scientists attribute the slight
warming (degrees C) of the average temperature of the Earth since the Industrial
Revolution to increased levels of carbon dioxide, a natural component of the Earth’s
atmosphere. Scientists have been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide in Hawaii
since the 1960s, and the trend has been upward for virtually every year on record. The
increase in carbon dioxide levels has been linked by many scientists to the burning of
fossil fuels. So, how does this increase in carbon dioxide relate to warming
temperatures around the globe?

Scientists suspect that a natural phenomenon called the greenhouse effect is related to
this warming. The greenhouse effect is the trapping of longwave radiation (heat) by

76
certain greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere, as these greenhouse gases absorb
and reradiate the heat from the Earth, essentially forming a blanket in the Earth’s lower
atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be over 35o C cooler, and
life on Earth would likely not exist. Global warming is thought to be related to the
greenhouse effect because carbon dioxide is one of the many greenhouse gases that
traps heat from the Earth, and by humans increasing the concentration of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is enhanced, leading to increased
warming above and beyond the “natural” effect .

International efforts to curb emissions of anthropogenic carbon began in earnest with

the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. This agreement, signed and ratified by many countries
around the world, sought to establish goals whereby countries would reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. never ratified the treaty, particularly because India
and China, two of the world’s biggest producers of carbon dioxide, were not required to
reduce their emissions. However, the U.S. and other countries have continued their
dialogue about lowering emissions, and the recent Paris Climate Summit is 2016,
signed by 194 countries (5), is the newest plan for global cooperation in carbon dioxide
reductions and with a goal to keep global average temperatures at less than 2o C above
preindustrial levels.
Another example of international cooperation to decrease atmospheric pollutants
involves the ozone layer. The ozone layer is in the stratosphere or upper atmosphere
from 10–50 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. This important layer of ozone gas
protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation that can be harmful to skin by
causing sunburn and skin cancer. Scientists believe that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
used in refrigeration equipment and aerosols, have damaged the ozone layer and
caused it to become dangerously thin over some parts of the globe. This thinning of the
ozone layer has been named an “ozone hole,” and is most pronounced around the
South Pole during the Antarctic spring.
In response to these scientific findings, in 1987, 105 countries signed an international
agreement known as the Montreal Protocol. The participating countries agreed to
reduce the consumption and production of CFCs and to cease producing CFCs by the
year 2000. The Montreal Protocol process continues as countries work to find ever-
better substitutes for CFCs. Although CFCs will linger in the upper atmosphere for many
years, scientists have already seen some evidence of recovery in the ozone layer.
Water Pollution
While air pollution of the atmospheric global “commons” is an international issue,
pollution of water and land areas is likewise problematic. The supply of clean, fresh
water for drinking and other uses such as irrigation is under stress as population
pressure continues to increase demand. Many regions with water deficits experience
periodic droughts that strain available supplies. Unfortunately, both ground and surface

77
waters are being polluted both in the United States and abroad. Pollutants such as
industrial chemicals, runoff from roadways, and untreated sewage place a heavy toll on
water supplies.

Not only is unclean water unsafe to drink and in some cases unfit for irrigation
purposes, but pollution can also have a deleterious effect on aquatic life. Large
industrial spills, discharge from paper mills, and other types of pollutants can render a
lake or stream devoid of life for considerably long periods. Another type of pollutant that
is of considerable concern in the United States and abroad is commercial fertilizers
used in large-scale agriculture. Although it would seem that fertilizers would encourage
plant growth and help aquatic ecosystems thrive, the opposite is, in fact, true in many
cases. Rainfall washes commercial fertilizers into surface lakes and streams, and these
fertilizers increase the growth of algae. Through a process called eutrophication, the
abundant algal blooms die, and in the process of decomposition of the dead plant
material, large amounts of oxygen are consumed. The lack of oxygen can result in
extensive fish kills. One stark example of the harmful effects of eutrophication can be
seen in the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River carries a significant load of
commercial fertilizers, and where the river discharges into the Gulf, “dead zones” form
at certain times of the year. The bottom and near-bottom portions of the Gulf can
become almost devoid of marine life over several thousand square miles. As a result,
the Gulf of Mexico has the second largest “dead zone” of depleted oxygen area in the
entire world, with the largest being in the Baltic Sea.
Solid Waste
As countries struggle to maintain clean water sources, a related problem with pollution
occurs with solid waste and its disposal. Solid waste that is buried beneath the ground
can, overtime, begin to pollute the groundwater below it. Water percolating downward
through the rubbish can pick up harmful pollutants and deposit them in subsurface
water sources. These groundwater reservoirs feed surface streams and are also tapped
for well water. In the state of Florida, for example, the pollution of groundwater
reservoirs, known as aquifers, is a significant issue because the state relies heavily on
groundwater for its water supply.
Three primary solutions to the problem of solid wastes is disposal in landfills,
incineration of the trash, or recycling. In the United States, solid waste collectors pick up
trash in cities and neighborhoods and transports the waste to landfills where it is buried
daily to decrease the pervasive odor and protect it from marauding pests. This is the
most common method of dealing with solid waste in the United States, but
unfortunately, as urban sprawl expands towards areas where landfills were on the
periphery of populated areas, the matter of residents having to live close to landfills is
problematic. Moreover, landfills require extensive areas of land, and in some states with
heavy population concentrations such as New York City, government officials have

78
resorted to shipping their refuse into adjacent states such as Pennsylvania where space
for landfills is more available.
Another less common alternative to landfills is incineration, a process made famous in
Disney’s Toy Story 2. At incineration facilities, trash is dumped into an enormous pile,
and a claw-like machine picks up the trash and continually feeds the fire of the
incinerator. The advantage of incineration is the vast reduction in the amount of trash
that must be disposed of in landfills, and these facilities also generate electricity from
the combustion of the burning trash. Fortunately, because of advanced technology in
the smokestack systems, the emissions from modern incinerators are not particularly
harmful in the atmosphere. Because of its enormous output of daily solid waste, New
York City takes advantage of incineration through a facility on the Hudson River just
north of the city.
Solid Waste
As countries struggle to maintain clean water sources, a related problem with pollution
occurs with solid waste and its disposal. Solid waste that is buried beneath the ground
can, overtime, begin to pollute the groundwater below it. Water percolating downward
through the rubbish can pick up harmful pollutants and deposit them in subsurface
water sources. These groundwater reservoirs feed surface streams and are also tapped
for well water. In the state of Florida, for example, the pollution of groundwater
reservoirs, known as aquifers, is a significant issue because the state relies heavily on
groundwater for its water supply.
Three primary solutions to the problem of solid wastes is disposal in landfills,
incineration of the trash, or recycling. In the United States, solid waste collectors pick up
trash in cities and neighborhoods and transports the waste to landfills where it is buried
daily to decrease the pervasive odor and protect it from marauding pests. This is the
most common method of dealing with solid waste in the United States, but
unfortunately, as urban sprawl expands towards areas where landfills were on the
periphery of populated areas, the matter of residents having to live close to landfills is
problematic. Moreover, landfills require extensive areas of land, and in some states with
heavy population concentrations such as New York City, government officials have
resorted to shipping their refuse into adjacent states such as Pennsylvania where space
for landfills is more available.
Another less common alternative to landfills is incineration, a process made famous in
Disney’s Toy Story . At incineration facilities, trash is dumped into an enormous pile,
and a claw-like machine picks up the trash and continually feeds the fire of the
incinerator. The advantage of incineration is the vast reduction in the amou2nt of trash
that must be disposed of in landfills, and these facilities also generate electricity from
the combustion of the burning trash. Fortunately, because of advanced technology in
the smokestack systems, the emissions from modern incinerators are not particularly
harmful in the atmosphere. Because of its enormous output of daily solid waste, New

79
York City takes advantage of incineration through a facility on the Hudson River just
north of the city.
The last method to deal with solid waste, recycling, is the most sustainable. Recycling
involves the conversion of waste or other unwanted material into something that is
reusable. Common wastes that are recycled include paper products, metals, plastics,
and glass. In the United States, efforts to improve the percent of waste material that is
recycled instead of disposed of in trash disposal units are many. For example,
Recyclemania, started in 2001, is a nation-wide competition amongst colleges and
universities to promote student knowledge and participation in recycling. Georgia
Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, GA, is one of the many competitors in Recyclemania
every spring. Despite efforts such as these, the United States only recycles about 30
percent of solid waste, even though approximately 75 percent of the waste is recyclable.
In contrast, Germany recycles about 65 percent of its municipal waste and leads the
world, followed closely by South Korea at 59 percent. Germany’s recycling emphasis
reflects the generally strong emphasis on recycling in most European countries, thanks
to rather strict recycling laws.
Activity:
Choose a country and research for a zoning Map of its natural resources based
on the current status. Write a brief analysis on the quantity and availability of the natural
resources in your chosen country.
Rubric:
The Map is clearly presented: 20pts.
The explanation is clearly stated: 20pts.

UNIT X
Drug Abuse Education

E. Integration of Drug Education

in the Curriculum

DepEd bolsters Preventive Drug Education Program through curriculum and instruction

PASIG CITY, July 24, 2018 – To continuously intensify its existing efforts to provide
Filipino learners with safe, nurturing, and drug-free environment, the Department of
Education (DepEd) issued its Preventive Drug Education Program (PDEP) Policy for
Curriculum and Instruction through DepEd Order (DO) No. 30 dated July 12, 2018.

The enhanced policy puts a premium on the creation of curricular platforms that shall
ensure the integration of essential messages across all learning areas, and strengthen

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key competencies in the K to 12 Basic Education Program. It was also anchored on
earlier issuance including DepEd Memorandum No. 200, s. 2016 (Strengthening the
National Drug Education Program in Schools); DO No. 37, s. 2017 (Department of
Education Drug-Free Workplace Policy); and DO No. 40, s. 2017 (Guidelines for the
Conduct of Random Drug Testing for Public and Private Secondary Schools).

Mainstreaming PDEP
With the policy in place, PDEP shall be mainstreamed in all programs and projects of
the Curriculum and Instruction, covering curriculum standards, curriculum delivery,
learning resources, and assessment. While the policy’s guiding principles stated that
learning outcomes shall be anchored on areas such as Health Education
and Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao (EsP) to ensure progression and continuity, it was
also emphasized that preventive drug education concepts shall also be integrated with
other learning areas.

Strategies for curriculum standards include the development of PDEP framework;

curricular mapping; use of research and evidence-based practice; and ensuring
minimum standards in curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular undertakings to
supplement the academic curriculum.

Meanwhile, curriculum delivery involves the provision of developmentally-appropriate,

culture-sensitive, and evidence-based program; use of interactive methods and
structured sessions; provision of well-designed daily lesson plans; implementation of
alternative delivery modes and flexible learning options; and conduct of regular
education and information activities.

Field offices shall also be given technical assistance in the development,

contextualization, localization, and indigenization of learning resources which shall be
developmentally- and age-appropriate. For assessment, core messages and key
concepts shall be included in the test development process.

Holistic, preventive approach

Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones has emphasized, on many occasions, that
the Department is responding to the directives of the President to strengthen and enrich
further curricular reforms on anti-illegal drugs which is part of her 10-point agenda for
DepEd. The Department has always been focused on the preventive approach as part
of its broader, more holistic drug education program.

Developed in consultation with key stakeholders including experts, administrators,

teachers, education leaders, and youth representatives, the enhanced policy also aims
to forge stronger partnership with various stakeholders in promoting PDEP.

“Drug prevention is a collective responsibility. DepEd is not the only agency involved in
the campaign against illegal drugs. You have media itself, you have church institutions,
you have civil society organizations,” Briones mentioned.

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 The policy shall apply to DepEd officials and employees at all levels, as well as to
learners in basic education. Private schools may adopt the policy, and are encouraged
to formulate their own program consistent with the DepEd issuance.

F. Types of Drug Abuse

All individuals who struggle with substance use disorder share in several similarities in
terms of their experiences, however, they are also different in many ways. Specifically,
the signs, symptoms, and effects of one’s substance use disorder will be dependent on
how much he or she is using, how often he or she uses, and if he or she is using
alongside other addictive substances. There are many different classes of drugs, all of
which can pose danger to those who choose to abuse substances within those classes.
The continued abuse of any addictive substances can lead to problems such as
unemployment, family turmoil, physical complications, and psychiatric problems. The
sooner that an individual ends his or her drug abuse, the more likely he or she is to
have a chance at a full recovery. All drugs are not created equal. In fact, some drugs
have the potential to be deadlier than others based on how they are developed, what
they contain, and how potent they are. Some of the most common types of drug abuse
include the following:

STIMULANT ABUSE

Stimulants are substances that cause physical and psychological functions to speed up.
Individuals that abuse stimulants tend to experience a major boost in energy, euphoria,
and a powerful sense of grandiosity. And while some stimulant substances can be
effective for individuals battling certain mental health issues, several stimulants offer no
medical or psychiatric benefit. The most commonly abused stimulants include:

 Amphetamines
 Meth
 Adderall
 Vyvanse
 Concerta
 Dexedrine
 Ritalin
 Cocaine
 Crack

COCAINE ABUSE

Cocaine is a street drug that has been and continues to be extremely popular
throughout the United States. This substance, which is a derivative of the coca plant,
comes in white powder form and is usually snorted. Someone abusing cocaine will
experience an energetic, euphoric high for about 20 minutes before it wears off. As a
result, most cocaine users abuse this substance back-to-back to maintain that high.

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Unfortunately, using cocaine this frequently quickly leads to dependence and potential
overdose.

ADDERALL ABUSE

By far the most popular prescription stimulant, Adderall is used for the treatment of
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. When taken as prescribed, Adderall
can increase focus and attention. However, when it is abused, Adderall triggers a boost
of energy and hyperfocus, which can last hours. Abusing this prescription drug
excessively can lead to cardiac complications up to and including heart attack.

METH ABUSE

Known on the streets as “trash” or “garbage”, meth is an extremely toxic stimulant that
has a pseudoephedrine base, which is the primary ingredient that triggers stimulant
effects. Meth also contains deadly elements such as paint thinner, hydrochloric acid,
and battery fluid, to name a few. Individuals abusing meth will experience intense
euphoric highs and equally as depressed lows. The up and down process of going from
euphoric to depressed can be extreme and lead to severe psychological problems that
have the potential to be permanent.

OPIOID ABUSE

More than 11 million people in the United States have abused opioids. Today, the opioid
epidemic rages on and more and more people are becoming dependent on their opioid
or opioids of choice. Opioids can be naturally occurring (such as heroin and codeine) or
synthetic (such as fentanyl and OxyContin) but are all equally as addictive. Continual
opioid abuse can result in vital organ damage or failure, respiratory problems, and
overdose. In fact, drug abuse involving opioids is one of the leading causes of
preventable death in the United States. The medication Suboxone helps combat
physical withdrawal symptoms in the short-term or for a maintenance period spanning
many months.

HEROIN ABUSE

Today, heroin is the kingpin of opioids, with nearly one million people in the U.S.
abusing it. When heroin is abused, individuals obtain a pleasurable high that reduces or
eliminates their physical and/or psychological distress. Countless heroin users were
once prescription painkiller users, however, found that heroin was easier to obtain and
more affordable. Heroin is usually smoked or injected. Those who inject this opioid can
suffer from collapsed veins and an increased risk for contracting bloodborne diseases
like HIV and hepatitis.

PRESCRIPTION PAINKILLERS

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OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and fentanyl are some of the most commonly abused
prescription painkillers. When taken as prescribed, each one of these painkillers can
pose a significant medical benefit, however when abused, they can be deadly.
Prescription painkiller users tend to partake in behaviors such as doctor shopping,
stealing prescription drugs from loved ones’ homes, and obtaining pills on the street.
These medications can be smoked, snorted, swallowed, or injected. Since these opioids
are semi-synthetic, it is impossible to know what exact substances are in these drugs,
making them extremely risky to continue to abuse.

SEDATIVE ABUSE

Sedatives such as benzodiazepines are primarily used to treat anxiety disorders such
as panic attacks, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Benzodiazepines are
highly effective in reducing anxiety and can also aid in helping individuals who suffer
from sleep problems or seizures. However, they are very popular substances of abuse
due to the feelings of detachment and relaxation that they produce.

XANAX, ATIVAN, AND VALIUM

Xanax, Ativan, and Valium are benzodiazepines that work to calm the mind and body.
When an individual consumes one or more of these benzodiazepines, he or she will
become almost instantly relaxed. Unfortunately, when benzodiazepines like these are
abused, individuals are at risk for experiencing excessive sleepiness, drowsiness, and
respiratory depression. When an individual becomes physically and psychologically
dependent on one of these prescription drugs and attempts to stop using suddenly, he
or she can suffer from deadly withdrawal symptoms, including grand mal seizures.

HALLUCINOGENS

Hallucinogens have long been part of club culture as substances that can enhance
one’s experiences. While there are countless physical dangers of abusing
hallucinations, one of the most pressing areas of concern is that someone who is under
the influence of a hallucinogen can behave in a manner that is possibly dangerous or
even deadly.

ECSTASY ABUSE

When ecstasy is abused, individuals experience delusions and hallucinations that can
be both visual and auditory. Those who are under the influence explain being on
ecstasy as being in a state of complete euphoria. But when this drug is abused, several
negative effects can occur, including dehydration that can be life-threatening.

THE SOLUTION

Any and all types of drug abuse should be taken seriously. Allowing a substance use
disorder to continue only leads to negative outcomes. At JourneyPure, we provide those

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struggling with the support and comprehensive treatment they need to end their use and
begin a life of recovery. Learn more about our inpatient
rehabs in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida.

G. Causes and Effects

Causes. Substance use disorder, often referred to as substance abuse, is a severe
health issue affecting millions of people worldwide. This disorder is characterized by an
individual’s inability to control or abstain from using one or more substances, leading to
serious health, social, and economic repercussions. The most commonly abused
substances in the United States include alcohol, prescription medications, cocaine,
heroin, and marijuana. The causes of substance abuse are varied and complex, but the
prevalence of this growing public health crisis cannot be denied.

The Arbor Behavioral Healthcare understands the causes of substance abuse and how
to treat substance abuse disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions that often
accompany substance use. Our Georgetown, Texas, substance abuse center is ready
to help residents of the Austin metropolitan area break the cycle of addiction.
Call 844.751.2588 today to learn about our programs and services.

5 Causes of Substance Abuse

Understanding the causes of substance abuse is crucial in devising effective treatment
strategies. Here are five common causes:

1. Genetics – Research suggests that an individual’s genetic makeup can increase

their vulnerability to substance abuse. Certain genes may make some people
more prone to addiction than others.

2. Environment – Factors such as peer pressure, family dynamics, socioeconomic

status, and exposure to drugs can contribute to substance abuse. For instance,
individuals who grow up in homes where drug use is normalized are more likely to
develop substance use disorders.

3. Mental health disorders – Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety,

and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can lead to substance abuse as
individuals may use drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism.

4. Early use – Studies show that individuals who start using drugs at an early age
are more likely to develop substance use disorders later in life.

5. Lack of family involvement – A lack of strong familial bonds or support can lead to
substance abuse. Individuals with strong family ties are less likely to turn to drugs
or alcohol.
More than one of these can occur in combination, thus increasing the risk factors
leading to substance use disorder and the need for substance abuse treatment.

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Effects. Effects of Drug Abuse
Addiction has a way of enticing us into its arms. People become addicted for a myriad of
reasons, but they all begin with a desire to change the way we feel. Whether we are
trying to escape boredom, fear or pain, the drug promises a momentary respite from the
feelings we don’t want to have. In this article, Promises Brazos Valley will explore 10
effects of drug abuse to help bring consequences into focus and uncover reasons for
hope and access to substance abuse help.
Most of us are wise enough to know it will come at a price, but because drugs affect
perception, our reason becomes compromised as we begin to use them. This is the
sticky trap of addiction. Addiction is a disease of the mind. Drugs hijack the brain’s
reward mechanism and use it to reinforce negative behaviors. Therefore, we can’t rely
on our minds and will alone for a solution. All the knowledge in the world isn’t enough by
itself to fix addiction; it requires action and willingness. But understanding these 10
effects of drug abuse can be helpful in several ways.
Knowing these 10 effects of drug abuse can help you:
 Recognize the possible signs of drug abuse in a loved one.
 Help you stop escalating drug abuse before you lose all control.
 Begin to formulate a plan to help yourself or someone else.
 Empower you to repair the damage addiction can cause.
Here are 10 effects of drug abuse we have identified and a brief explanation for each.
Our intention is that you will have a better understanding of the pitfalls and signs of a
substance use disorder and a reason for hope and a direction to move in for help.

Isolation
Addiction quickly becomes a lifestyle. An addicted person dedicates more and more of
their attention to getting drugs, finding ways to use and concealing their use from
others. All of these behaviors separate us from anyone not participating in our addiction,
enabling it or at least in denial or willing to look the other way. One of the first goals in
getting substance abuse help is to break through that wall of isolation. Knowing they
don’t have to fight the battle alone comes as a relief to almost anyone caught up in the
throes of active addiction.
If you find yourself tangled up in addiction, challenge yourself to break that isolation. Tell
the truth about what’s happening to someone you can trust. If you see someone you
care about isolating and suspect they may need substance abuse help, give them a
sign that you’re a safe place. You are willing to listen without judgment and help if you
can.

Stagnation
Getting stuck in our emotional development is another of the 10 effects of drug abuse.
Drug use dulls the senses. In trying to escape uncomfortable things, we also miss many
growth opportunities. The mechanisms that help us learn from mistakes also fail to work
properly when under the influence. You will sometimes hear people in 12-step
fellowships say that their emotional growth seemed to stop at the age when they began
using, and there is certainly some truth to that. One of the greatest blessings of
recovery is the growth we begin to experience as the fog clears.

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Damaged Relationships
Relationships with family, friends and romantic partners can be challenging even in the
best of times and when we’re completely sober. Introducing drugs and alcohol into the
equation can only make things worse. We’re more apt to fight and argue when we are
irritable and not feeling right. The obliteration of our senses can make us less
empathetic and aware of the needs of others. The choices we make while using and the
lies we may tell can also cause deep psychic wounds to the people we love. One of the
greatest gifts of recovery is that we get an opportunity to repair this damage. There are
no guarantees, but recovery is about hope, and some miraculous things are bound to
happen if you stick to it with determination.

Financial Distress
Let’s face it. A drug habit can get expensive fast. If alcohol is your substance of choice,
it’s easy to run up a hefty bar tab quickly. Illegal drugs come with the built-in black-
market tax associated with any illicit goods. On top of that, drinking and using tend to
lower our inhibitions. Impulse purchases and financial irresponsibility are common
before someone receives the substance abuse help they need. Money trouble leads to
stress and anxiety. Combined with the relentless desire to get high and stay high, it’s a
formula for more bad decisions and risk-taking. Money trouble is almost always among
the 10 effects of drug abuse that people experience when addiction takes hold.

Health Problems
One of these 10 effects of drug abuse people are most familiar with is the impact on
physical health. Alcohol is hard on the vital organs, especially the liver and stomach.
Stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine can cause permanent heart damage and
stroke. Opioids, including heroin and prescription opioids, create long-term imbalances
in neurons and hormonal systems and damage the brain’s vital white matter.
There is simply no way to abuse drugs for long without physical consequences. No
number of vitamins or amount of healthy eating or exercise will offset it. With time and
patience, we recover in both mind and body, but we should never minimize the serious
impact addiction can have on human health.

Depression and Anxiety

Using drugs or alcohol frequently brings about depression and anxiety. There are two
main reasons for this. First, the biochemical effects of drugs of abuse themselves often
trigger depression and anxiety either when using the drug or as its effects begin to
subside and withdrawal sets in. Secondly, the choices that drug abuse entails also lead
to depression and anxiety. No one can live a dishonest, duplicitous life for long without
becoming depressed and fearful. We aren’t built to live that way. The good news is we
don’t have to! Help is available; all we need to do is ask.

Provoking Existing Mental Health Conditions

Many people are aware that depression and anxiety are among the 10 effects of drug
abuse. But did you know that using drugs also frequently triggers existing mental health
disorders? Someone with a predisposition to psychotic episodes may have never

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experienced one until they begin abusing drugs. If you have a mental health issue,
diagnosed or otherwise, drug abuse can only worsen the symptoms.

A Criminal Record
Buying and using drugs greatly increases your odds of ending up with a permanent
criminal record. Ask anyone with a history of felonies, and they will tell you that has a
profound effect on your future. If you are lucky enough to get sober with a felony
criminal record, you may still pay the price of using for the rest of your life. There is
always a way forward, regardless of the consequences we face in addiction. As long as
you’re alive, there is hope. Remember that every day that we continue on the path of
addiction, we risk our present and our future. Don’t forget the rule of holes. When you
find yourself in one, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Lost Dreams
Lost dreams are possibly the most tragic and often overlooked of the 10 effects of drug
abuse. If you are around other people who use drugs, you know all about it. How many
of those people talk about their big dreams and ambitions? About what they are going to
do “one day”? How many of them ever do any of it? Drug abuse steals our dreams and
stifles our potential. It snuffs out your candlelight. That may sound like a sentimental
cliché, but anyone who has spent any time in addiction will know it rings true if they are
capable of being honest with themselves. You don’t have to let drugs steal any more
from you, though. All it takes is enough willingness to ask for help.

Death
Finally, there is the grim reality of death. Whether we like it or not, drug abuse increases
our chances of dying, whether it’s the risk of a fatal overdose, a car accident, or being
shot and killed trying to score, using increases your risk of imminent death. Period.
There is no sense in trying to sugarcoat it. Buying and using drugs nearly always means
taking unnecessary risks. It also means being around other people who take risks. No
matter how safe and sensible you think you are in your drug use, you can’t control what
others do around you. You may just get caught in the crossfire, figuratively or literally.

H. Measures to Prevent and

Control Drug Abuse

While there is no one way or guaranteed way to prevent someone from abusing drugs
and alcohol, there are things that everyone can do to prevent substance abuse.

Here are the top five ways to prevent substance abuse:

1. Understand how substance abuse develops. Substance abuse starts by:

 Using addictive drugs (illicit or prescribed) for recreational purposes

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  Seeking out intoxication every time you use
 Abusing prescription medication

2. Avoid Temptation and Peer Pressure. Develop healthy friendships and relationships
by avoiding friends or family members who pressure you to use substances. It’s often
said “we become most like those we surround ourselves by,” meaning if you surround
yourself with people who abuse drugs and alcohol you are more likely to as well. Peer
pressure is a major part of life for teens and adults. If you are looking to stay drug free
develop a good way to just say no, prepare a good excuse or plan ahead of time to
keep from giving into peer pressure.

3. Seek help for mental illness. Mental illness and substance abuse often go hand in
hand. If you are dealing with a mental illness such as anxiety, depression or post-
traumatic stress disorder you should seek professional help from a licensed therapist or
counselor. A professional will provide you with healthy coping skills to alleviate your
symptoms without turning to drugs and alcohol.

4. Examine the risk factors. Look at your family history of mental illness and addiction,
several studies have shown that this disease tends to run in the family, but can be
prevented. The more you are aware of your biological, environmental and physical risk
factors the more likely you are to overcome them.

5. Keep a well-balanced life. People often turn to drugs and alcohol when something in
their life is missing or not working. Practicing stress management skills can help you
overcome these life stressors and will help you live a balanced and healthy life.

Develop goals and dreams for your future. These will help you focus on what you want
and help you realize that drugs and alcohol will simply get in the way and hinder you
from achieving your goals.

Share these tips for avoiding and preventing substance abuse with your friends and
family and help promote a healthier lifestyle free from addiction.

Strategies

The drug issue is undoubtedly a public health challenge that must be prioritized
because it creates complex health and social problems.
In addressing the drug menace, a myriad of strategies needs to be put in place and
operationalized. The government’s intensified campaign to curb illegal drugs will only
succeed if it is carried out on various fronts.
Recognizing the need to set forth a comprehensive and balanced approach to drug
demand and drug supply reduction, the Philippine Anti-Illegal Drugs Strategy (PADS)
has been developed as a blueprint of the government’s strategies and programs in
addressing the country’s drug use problem. It is aligned with the President’s priorities

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and is anchored on the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022 sub-goal of ensuring
security, public order and safety which indicates that the national anti-illegal drugs
strategy includes suppressing the flow of illegal drugs supply through sustained law
enforcement operations and reducing consumer demand for drugs and other
substances through drug rehabilitation and massive preventive education and
awareness programs.

The Anti-Drug Strategy

Drug supply reduction efforts involving aggressive law enforcement and prosecution
with strong adherence to the rule of law and observance of human rights, coupled with
comprehensive demand reduction initiatives and supported by strong international ties.

Components of the Anti-Drug Strategy

Drug Supply Reduction
Take away drugs from the public through market denial operations and prevention of
diversion from the licit to illicit market; and reduce the proliferation of illegal drugs
through sustainable alternative development programs.

Law Enforcement
The aim is protect communities and ensure compliance with the Comprehensive
Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 or RA 9165.
Another important government initiative is the provision of financial and technical
support for the implementation of economically-viable and sustainable alternative
development projects. This strengthens the involvement of LGUs, community members,
and other concerned agencies in alternative development project implementation. With
the aim of reducing and eliminating the illicit cultivation of marijuana, the DDB reaches
out by initiating project interventions and encouraging cultivators to engage in
alternative livelihood.
The definition of the alternative development program has been expanded to benefit not
only former marijuana cultivators but also recovering drug dependents in urban areas.
Another major part of DDB’s plan is to strengthen the reporting mechanism to facilitate
the monitoring and evaluation of these alternative development programs supported by
the Board through the years.
Regulatory Compliance
The Board continually update list of drugs for regulation and monitor drug abuse trends
to determine the possible inclusion of new drugs and substances.
Judicial and Legislative Measures
Measures consist of regular reprisal of the judiciary on recent Board regulations and the
Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 or RA 9165. The Board also seek to
foster and improve cooperation among pillars of the criminal justice system such as the
judiciary, prosecution and law enforcement.
Drug Demand Reduction
Take people away from the lure of drug abuse through policy formulation, preventive
education, research, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration; provision of alternative

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development programs and forging cooperation with regional and international agencies
and counterparts.
Policy Formulation
The Board issued several Board Regulations to respond to the current national drug
abuse situation and directives of President Rodrigo Duterte. (See more on Issuances)
Preventive Education and Capacity-building
The Philippines is adopting the International Standards on Drug Use Prevention which
stipulates that prevention initiatives should target the various developmental stages and
settings.
The DDB has a range of educational programs and services designed to cater to the
needs of every sector of society. It has programs that engage the youth, address the
needs of parents, and provide employers, educators, health professionals,
policymakers, and other sectors with information on the prevention and control of drug
use. (See more information on Preventive Education programs)
Treatment, Rehabilitation and Reintegration
As an important facet of drug demand reduction, trends in treatment and rehabilitation
as well as issues and concerns that families and recovering drug dependents face
during the process are continually monitored. These are integrated into existing health
and social agencies to ensure continuum of care. More importantly, services are built on
community resources. (See more information on Treatment and Rehabilitation)
Research
Through its Policy Studies, Research and Statistics Division (PSRSD), the DDB
conducts research and studies to gather data and analyze trends in drug abuse and
trafficking in the country. (See more information on Research and Statistics)

Activity:

Instruction: Interview at least 5 students from the School of Education about the
following and make your own reaction paper based on their responses:

a. Causes of Drug Abuse

b. Effects of Drug Abuse

Rubric:
Grammar: 10 pts.
Content: 30 pts.
Credibility: 40
Experience: 20

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