Download PPT Pages 112-123 - geo

ISSUES OF DEVELOPMENT
What follows tend to apply to most LEDCs,
but not to all.
Access to Food
• Enough grain is produced to feed everyone
more than 3000 calories a day.
• MEDCs dump food rather than sell it for a
price that is too low.
• There have never been so many people
suffering from starvation or malnutrition than
now.
Why?
It is not being distributed effectively.
Reasons
• The producer sells to the person that
will pay the highest price.
• Food aid
Although food production per capita is
increasing in most parts of the world,
it is declining in Africa.
Why?
• Growing population
Characteristics of farming
• The impact of agricultural reforms has
not been felt
Characteristics of farming
• Subsistence farming (no specialization)
• Traditional farming methods (broadcasting
seeds, wooden ploughs and animal power)
• Poor storage facilities (insect pests)
• Small divided landholdings
• Absentee landlords
• Agribusiness companies encourage
commercial crops
• Smaller number of people engaged in
agriculture
Some countries have been
more successful
(Green Revolution)
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H.Y.V.s
Irrigation schemes
Chemical pesticides and fertilizers
Mechanisation
Access to Shelter
Shortage of accommodation is one of the
most common characteristics of cities in
LEDCs due to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Less taxation
Larger proportion of income spent on food
Few large profits available for private developers
Massive rural-urban migration (shanty towns)
Access to Health and
Education
Increased health risk
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More travel opportunities
Overcrowding and poverty
Poor water quality
Lack of toilets
Malaria (cannot afford draining swamps,
rice fields)
• Bilharzia
Industrialisation
• Labour-intensive, not capital-intensive
• Import substitution
• Export processing zones (EPZs) - offering
tax holidays, low interest loans, cheap labour,
exemption from normal import taxes and
duties and assistance). India, Puerto Rico.
• Special Economic Zones (SEFs). China
• Tourism
Debt
•
Debt-trap (sometimes more than aid)
• Terms of trade has turned on the
LEDCS (slower rise in price on raw
materials than manufactured goods)
Ecologically Sustainable
Development
Several phases of the study of
development since World War II.
Structural change phase
(the 1940s to the 1960s)
Rostow
• The pathway to development was seen
as the route followed by Western
Europe and North America during the
Industrial Revolution.
• Five stages:
- traditional society - economic “take-off”
- maturity - high mass consumption
Dependency approach
(1970s)
• Seeks to explain global patterns of
development
• China, Vietnam, Tanzania and Cuba followed
different strategies.
• Core-periphery model (unequal distribution of
power - colonization, transnational companies
encourage unprofitable raw materials)
• Growth poles (where economic and political
power is concentrated)
Neo-liberal counter-revolution
(the 1980s)
• Free market economics
• Industries in LEDCs should compete
effectively or close down.
• Competed to attract foreign investment
to introduce modern technology to
upgrade inefficient industries.
Sustainable development
(the 1990s)
The Brundtland Report
• “development which meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs”
• So development that increases pollution,
reduces the resource base, reduces
biodiversity or changes the global
environment is unacceptable because it
cannot be sustained in the long-term.
Identifies barriers to development
1. Heavy reliance on fossil fuels
(acid rain, global warming,
deforestation, health problems, TNCs
more powerful than nation-states).
2. Population growth
(Development is only possible if
population grows in a way that is in
harmony with the changing productive
capacity of the world´s ecosystems).
3. Lack of a strong institutional framework
to oversee the process of development,
in other words of ecological and
environmental decision-making).
(Governments often argue that concern
for the environment is a luxury enjoyed
by those who are already wealthy).