Development of a Nation Grade 7 Economics and Geography Unit PDF

Development of a Nation Grade 7 Economics and Geography Unit Unit 1 1  MYP Inquiry Statement: A country's development is interdependent upon national and global political and economic communities. Inquiry Questions:...

Development of a Nation Grade 7 Economics and Geography Unit Unit 1 1  MYP Inquiry Statement: A country's development is interdependent upon national and global political and economic communities. Inquiry Questions: Factual: What is development? Conceptual: Why are some countries more developed than others? (Causality, Perspectives) Debatable: Can the international community help a country develop? (Causality, Perspectives) Global Context: Fairness & Development Key Concept: Global Interaction Related Concept: Causality, Perspectives Differences in Levels of Development Among Countries When discussing a country’s development, it is the economic development of a country, the wealth or money a country has. Some countries are more developed (have more wealth), and some countries are less developed (have less wealth). There are many reasons, physical and human, to explain the differences in levels of development between countries. Factors such as climate and government type are important to a country’s development. Vocabulary to know: Physical Development Factors (positive or negative) Human Development Factors (positive or negative) (also known as Social Development Factors) These factors can be positive (good) or negative (not good). More information is provided on physical and human factors later in this text. 2 Models of Development The map shows developed (wealthy) and developing (less wealthy) countries. Many countries in the Southern Hemisphere are developing while many countries in the Northern Hemisphere are developed. Different nations in the developing world are at different stages of development. There is not one stage or another, the stages are on a continuum – a sliding scale – from least developed to most developed. Class Activity: Directions: Answer the questions below and when writing out the names of the countries make sure to write out the full name, spelling it correctly, and not the abbreviation. For example, USA is incorrect, write out United States of America. 1. Which countries seem to be the developed countries? Write a list of at least 10 countries. (Hint: google a country map to help you name the countries.) 2. Which countries seem to be the developing countries? Write a list of at least 10 countries. (Hint: google a country map to help you name the countries.) 3 Development Diagram The diagram, on the next page, is a Demographic Transistion Model (development structure) and it discusses population. Population of a nation is influenced by development. For example, if a person lives in a less developed nation, that means the person may be lacking proper nutrition and health care. If there is no proper nutrition or health care, then the person will not live long. Their life expectancy will be lowered, dying at an earlier age. Also, children who are born in countries with poor nutrition and poor health care are less likely to live beyond their 5th birthday. Therefore, the mortality rate is high (mortality = death). To counteract this, mothers are more likely to have more children because the chances of their child becoming an adult is much less. This means a developing nation will have a higher birth rate, more children are born. Since children die early, women will see their primary role as to have more children. Therefore, gender equality is reduced, meaning that women are seen as mothers only and not as independent individuals who can become educated, earn their own money and make their own choices. To add to this, since health care is so poor, women are more likely to die during childbirth and again this adds to the lowered life expectancy (higher mortality rate). Another factor of less developed nations is that most people work labor-intensive jobs. This is also known as primary industry, which will be explained later in this text. These labor- intensive jobs lower life expectancy because these are so physically demanding on the body that it ages people early. Also, it is more likely, people will become injured performing these labor-intensive jobs. If they do not have proper medical care, they cannot recover fully, and this lowers a person’s life expectancy. Class Activity: Directions: Examine the diagram, on the next page, and list the factors that cause a country to be developing verse developed? Make a table with at least 5 factors for developing and developed. 4 Birth Rate High High Falling Low Death Rate High Falls Rapidly Falls More Low Slowly Reasons for change Many children needed for farming. Improved Family planning. in Birth Rate Many children die at an early age. medical care Good health Religious influences. No family and diet. care. Later planning. Fewer marriages. children needed. Reasons for change Disease, famine. Improvements in medical care, Good in Death Rate Poor medical water supply and sanitation. healthcare. knowledge, so Fewer children die. Relialbe food many children supply. die. 5 Physical Factors Physical Factor: Climate Any extreme climate will hinder development and are considered negative physical factors. Examples of negative climate factors are: being too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry. Many African countries are situated in very hot, arid climates. This makes food production difficult. Many of these African nations, like Burkina Faso for example, are prone to droughts and famine. Some of the poorest, least developed countries are in the Sahel zone of Africa, like Mali and Chad. These countries have severe climatic problems, like drought, which can hamper development. This means they are unable to produce enough food to feed their populations. Money has to be borrowed to provide enough food, instead of it being invested in projects that could develop other areas of the nation’s infrastructure. Infrastructure will be defined under human factors. Any extreme weather will make life difficult. It will generally be difficult to build houses and roads, to farm the land, to attract industry and to earn a living. Class Activity: Directions: We have read how desert areas are difficult to live in. And this would classify deserts as a negative climatic physical factor. With this understanding answer these questions: 1. How does too much water make it difficult for humans to live? 2. How does extremely cold winters make it difficult for humans to live? 3. How does extremely hot areas make it difficult for humans to live? 4. Write a list of 5 positive climatic physical factors. Physical Factor: Natural Disasters Areas likely to be hit by floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes or by drought tend to remain less developed, since these natural disasters are considered negative physical factors. These natural disasters can destroy a nation’s infrastructure, which is costly to replace and/or repair. If these natural disasters happen year after year, then it is extremely expensive and difficult for a country to develop their infrastructure. 6 The map shows some areas, recently affected by natural hazards. Mozambique has suffered serious flooding in recent years. Philippines has been devastated by a typhoon. Pakistan and Haiti have been affected by massive earthquakes. Ethiopia is affected by drought. Other Physical Factors: Areas lacking in mineral resources (i.e. coal, diamonds, oil) or lacking the ability to extract these resources from the ground will remain less developed. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have vast oil reserves to export, and these resources provide the countries with great wealth. Therefore, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are developed nations. Areas with poor soils or poor drainage will remain less developed. Healthy soils and proper drainage are necessary to grow crops to feed the people. Therefore if: soil is not fertile, nothing can grow. For example, soils that contain too much salt, cannot grow plants or keep livestock. In the past, the Netherlands had this issue since nearly a third of the country is below sea level. soil that floods all the time, cannot grow plants or keep livestock. Or soil that is too dry cannot grow plants or keep livestock, such as desert soil. Also, mountains and steep slopes make it difficult to farm, travel and earn a living. This is true of mountainous countries like Afghanistan. Finally, another factor is whether a country is landlocked. Landlocked means the entire nation is surrounded by land. This means the nation does not have any coast. Having a coast allows a country to ship their goods or receive shipment of goods through a seaport. Shipping allows for inexpensive transportation of goods in and out of the country, which allows for trading. Class Activity: Directions: List all the physical factors that can influence the development of a nation and give one example for each. 7 Case study: The Netherlands In the past, the Netherlands flooded all the time because most of the country is below sea level. Flooding is considered a negative physical factor. However, the Netherlands is one of the most developed (and richest) nations in the world. One reason why the Netherlands is such a wealthy nation is because the Dutch focus on developing innovative flooding solutions to ensure the land does not flood. Directions: Read the article (on the next page), The Clever Dutch and How They Manage Water, to answer the question: 1. What infrastructure did the Dutch create to improve the negative physical factor of flooding? Directions: Brainstorm the answers to the question below. This website might also help give ideas: Google Search the key words: holland.com + holland land of water https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/travel-inspiration/traditional/holland-land-of- water.htm 1. Are there other positive physical factors for the Netherlands? 8 The Clever Dutch and How They Manage Water By Larry Kraft, Wilderness Classroom https://wildernessclassroom.org/clever-dutch-manage-water/ Almost half of The Netherlands is either below sea level or less than one metre above sea level. Three largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) are all in these low-lying regions.To protect the country from floods, the Dutch have built many dikes, barriers, and pumps. Many Ways to Protect Against Floods: The Clever Dutch The Dutch are threatened by flooding from both the sea and from rivers. To keep low- lying land free of water, they use dikes, which are walls that are built to keep water out. Along with the dikes, they use continuously operating pumps. If the pumps stopped, water would eventually seep back into low-lying land. After a serious flood in 1916, they used one massive dike to close off part of the ocean. The Zuiderzee, an inlet of the North Sea, caused many floods. So the Dutch built a 32 kilometers long dike to close off part of it off. When it was completed in 1932, it created the largest freshwater lake in Western Europe, called the Ijsselmeer. Another strategy the Dutch use is called “room for water.” Sometimes, they have to let water take over some land, in order to protect the rest. This could be water from the ocean or from rivers. With rivers, they make “room for the river” by making sure rivers have plenty of bends; since straight rivers can run too fast, eroding dikes quickly, having less time to react to floods. They also create two dikes around key waterways, an inner dike for normal water levels and an outer dike in case water goes over the inner dike in a flood. In addition, a key part of the Dutch’s strategy is a massive series of barriers that close off water channels if water levels rise too high. One example of a barrier is the Maeslantkering. It provides protection against sea level rise of up to 5 meters. The gates are only closed if sea level is expected to rise at least 3 meters. Except for an annual test, the gates have been closed only once since completed in 1997. The Maeslantkering is part of the Delta Project, a huge system of dikes and storm surge barriers created to protect the southwestern part of the Netherlands. The Delta Project was started following a major flood in 1953 that resulted in 1,836 deaths and a lot of property damage, which caused the Dutch to overhaul their water management. 9 Human Factors What is infrastructure? Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a nation and businesses within that nation. The infrastructure consists of buildings for business, homes for people to live in, roads, power supplies, public transportation, sanitation, water, education, medical care, internet connectivity, law enforcement, etc. The more developed a nation is the better the infrastructure, since infrastructure is a high-cost investment. For example, the Netherlands has all the infrastructure facilities mentioned in the paragraph above but also considers these recreational facilities as infrastructure services: parks, sports centers, museums, concert venues, festivals, etc. All of these advanced infrastructure services provide a better and happier standard of living for the people living in the Netherlands. Many nations do not provide these services and prefer to privatize (provided by private companies) these services. Some nations consider these facilities as advanced infrastructure items and may not have the wealth to provide these services. A strong infrastructure is vital to a country's economic development and prosperity. Nations with more money have a more developed infrastructure and that will bring more business (and money) into the country. However, nations with less money will have a less developed infrastructure, so less businesses will go into that country, since it is difficult to run a business with an underdeveloped infrastructure. Infrastructure is a human factor because infrastructure is something that humans create. Human Factor: Population High population growth will generally limit development, since resources such as food, space, and water will have to be spread more thinly. There will not be enough jobs, houses, schools or health clinics to serve the population. Human Factor: Types of Industry and Education Depending on a nation’s development, whether the economy is good or not will depend on the types of industry the nation has. The less developed countries will have more primary industry. The more developed countries will have a mixture of industries. A mixture of industries is necessary for a nation to prosper because in a country there are people who have the cognitive ability and motivation to do higher-skilled jobs and those who can only perform (or want to perform) lower-skilled jobs. It is important for a nation to have all adults of working age (usually 18+ years old) employed. These employed people will pay taxes that will contribute to the development of the infrastructure. 10 People pay taxes based on their income. The taxes are a percentage of that income. Therefore, the more developed a nation’s industry is the more money people will make because they are working higher-skilled jobs, and the nation will collect more taxes to develop a better infrastructure. Primary Industry (Human Factor): Primary industry involves acquiring raw materials. For example, metals and coal have to be mined, oil drilled from the ground, rubber tapped from trees, crops and livestock farmed, and fish caught. These are low-skilled, labor-intensive jobs. Since these are low-skilled, there is no need for higher education. This means countries that are less developed will mostly have primary industry jobs. It is likely the education of these people is also low. If a child is lucky, the child may have a basic primary education, but the likelihood of a child going onto secondary education is limited, since these children might begin to work in the primary industry at a young age. The children work because the potential to earn a lot of money is very limited. Therefore, they need to work otherwise their family will not have enough money to afford their basic needs of food, water and shelter. Secondary Industry (Human Factor): Secondary industries are those that take the raw materials produced by the primary sector and processes the raw materials into manufactured goods and products. Examples of secondary industries include heavy manufacturing and light manufacturing: food processing, oil refining, weaving cloth, compontents for products (such as wires, plastic lids, casings), etc. It also involves assembling the product, i.e. houses, bridges, roads, clothing, automobiles, mobile phones, etc. These jobs will need more skills and the education is usually vocational training. Therefore, individuals will need a training program to ensure they can do the job correctly. Most businesses will provide this training. In countries that are becoming more developed, usually the parents work in secondary industry jobs and might only have a primary education. While the parents work, their children attend both primary and secondary schools with the hope the children will continue onto university and have the ability to work jobs in the tertiary and quaternary industries. 11 Tertiary and Quaternary Industry (Human Factor): The tertiary sector is also called the service sector and involves the selling of services and skills. They can also involve selling goods and products from primary and secondary industries. Examples of tertiary employment include health service, transportation, education, entertainment, tourism, finance, sales and retail. The quaternary sector consists of those industries providing information services, such as computing, ICT (information and communication technologies), consultancy (offering advice to businesses) and R&D (research and development, particularly in scientific fields). Both tertiary and quaternary industries are high-skilled jobs. Therefore, for people to perform these jobs, they must have a university education. Countries which have many tertiary and quaternary industries, usually have an excellent education system, where children are expected to attend both primary and secondary school. Usually tertiary education is optional; but in the Netherlands, it is expected that children will continue onto vocational education and/or university. Most Dutch students do not leave school until about 23 years old, since they are encouraged to stay in education after secondary school. Class Activity: Directions: Answer these questions. 1. What is infrastructure? 2. How does education influence the industry type? 3. How is the development of the infrastructure a dilemma for less developed nations? Think in terms of having the money to develop the infrastructure. 12 Case Study: Netherlands Agriculture The Netherlands is the second largest agriculture (food) exporter in the world. The Netherlands is a small nation, approximately 45 thousand square kilometers. Therefore, it is quite odd that the Netherlands would be the second largest food exporter in the world, since agriculture (both plants and livestock) takes up a lot of land. However, with technology, the Netherlands has taken agriculture from a primary industry to a tertiary and quaternary industry. The USA is first in agricultural exports, whereas the Netherlands is second. Source from: Big Think, Trying Europe on for Size, 2020 https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/compare-true-size-of- countries?rebelltitem=8#rebelltitem8 Class Activity: On the next pages, we will learn how the Dutch have taken agriculture from a primary industry to a tertiary and quaternary industry. Directions: Read the National Geographic article on the next pages and answer the questions. 1. What technology did the Dutch develop? 2. How are the Dutch sharing their technology with the world? 3. Explain which part of Dutch agriculture is tertiary and which part is quaternary. 13 National Geographic: This Tiny Country Feeds the World By Frank Viviano, September 2017 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-agriculture-sustainable- farming In a potato field near the Netherlands’ border with Belgium, Dutch farmer Jacob van den Borne is seated in the cabin of an immense harvester before an instrument panel worthy of the starship Enterprise. From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones—a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air—that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato. Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20. That large output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry, “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent. One more reason to marvel: The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s needing almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it? Seen from the air, the Netherlands resembles no other major food producer—a fragmented patchwork of intensely cultivated fields, most of them tiny by agribusiness standards, punctuated by bustling cities and suburbs. In the country’s principal farming regions, there’s almost no potato patch, no greenhouse, no hog barn that’s out of sight of skyscrapers, manufacturing plants, or urban sprawl. More than half the nation’s land area is used for agriculture and horticulture Banks of what appear to be gargantuan mirrors stretch across the countryside, glinting when the sun shines and glowing with eerie interior light when night falls. They are Holland’s extraordinary greenhouse complexes, some of them covering 175 acres. These climate-controlled farms enable a country located a scant thousand miles from the Arctic Circle to be a global leader in exports of a fair-weather fruit: the tomato. The Dutch are also the 14 world’s top exporter of potatoes and onions and the second largest exporter of vegetables overall in terms of value. More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands. Research and Development: Wageningen University & Research – Food Valley The brain trust behind these astounding numbers is centered at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), located 50 miles southeast of Amsterdam. Widely regarded as the world’s top agricultural research institution, WUR is where Food Valley exists. Food Valley is a large cluster of agricultural technology start-ups and experimental farms. Ernst van den Ende is managing director of WUR’s Plant Sciences Group and he is a world authority on plant pathology. WUR is vital at meeting the world’s food production challenge for 2050. Since, the Earth will be home to as many as 10 billion people, which is an increase population of about 30%. If massive increases in agricultural yield are not achieved, matched by massive decreases in the use of water and fossil fuels, a billion or more people may face starvation. Hunger could be the 21st century’s most urgent problem, and the visionaries working, in WUR, believe they have found innovative solutions. The ability to stave off catastrophic famine is within reach, van den Ende insists. His optimism rests on feedback from more than a thousand WUR projects in more than 140 countries and on its formal pacts with governments and universities on six continents to share advances and implement them. 15 A conversation with van den Ende discussed the various future issues and what the possible solutions are. African drought? “Water isn’t the fundamental problem. It’s poor soil,” he says. “The absence of nutrients can be offset by cultivating plants that act in symbiosis with certain bacteria to produce their own fertilizer.” The soaring cost of grain to feed animals? “Feed them grasshoppers instead,” he says. One hectare of land yields one metric ton of soy protein, a common livestock feed, a year. The same amount of land can produce 150 tons of insect protein. The conversation continues on to the use of LED lighting to permit 24-hour cultivation in precisely climate-controlled greenhouses. With demand for chicken increasing, Dutch firms are developing technology to maximize poultry production while ensuring humane conditions. This high-tech broiler house holds up to 150,000 birds, from hatching to harvesting. Tomatoes in the Netherlands At every turn in the Netherlands, the future of sustainable agriculture is taking shape— not in the boardrooms of big corporations but on thousands of modest family farms. You see it vividly in the terrestrial paradise of Ted Duijvestijn and his brothers Peter, Ronald, and Remco. The Duijvestijns have constructed a self-contained food system in which a near-perfect balance prevails between human ingenuity and nature’s potential. At the Duijvestijns’ 36-acre greenhouse complex near the old city of Delft, visitors stroll among ranks of deep green tomato vines, 20 feet tall. Rooted not in soil but in fibers spun from basalt and chalk, the plants are heavy with tomatoes—15 varieties in all—to suit the taste of the most demanding palate. In 2015 an international jury of horticultural experts named the Duijvestijns the world’s most innovative tomato growers. Since relocating and restructuring their 70-year-old farm in 2004, the Duijvestijns have declared resource independence on every front. The farm produces almost all of its own energy and fertilizer and even some of the packaging materials necessary for the crop’s distribution and sale. The growing environment is kept at optimal temperatures year- round by heat generated from geothermal aquifers that simmer under at least half of the Netherlands. 16  The only irrigation source is rainwater, says Ted, who manages the cultivation program. Each kilogram of tomatoes from his fiber-rooted plants requires less than four gallons of water, compared with 16 gallons for plants in open fields. Once each year the entire crop is regrown from seeds, and the old vines are processed to make packaging crates. The few pests that manage to enter the Duijvestijn greenhouses are greeted by a ravenous army of defenders such as the fierce Phytoseiulus persimilis, a predatory mite that shows no interest in tomatoes but gorges itself on hundreds of destructive spider mites. A few days before I visited the Duijvestijns’ operation, Ted had attended a meeting of farmers and researchers at Wageningen. “This is how we come up with innovative ways to move ahead, to keep improving,” he told me. “People from all over Holland get together to discuss different perspectives and common goals. No one knows all the answers on their own.” Research and Development: Koppert Biological Systems The search for answers to a life-or-death question gave rise to one of the Netherlands’ most innovative companies. Half a century ago, Jan Koppert was growing cucumbers on his land and using toxic chemical sprays to fend off pests. When a physician declared him allergic to pesticides, Koppert set out to learn all he could about the natural enemies of insects and arachnids. Today Koppert Biological Systems is the global pacesetter in biological pest and disease control, with 1,330 employees and 26 international subsidiaries marketing its products in 96 countries. Koppert’s firm can provide you with cotton bags of ladybug larvae that mature into voracious consumers of aphids. Or how about a bottle containing 2,000 of those predatory mites that hunt down spider mites on plants and suck them dry? Or a box of 500 million nematodes that mount deadly assaults on fly larvae that prey on commercial mushrooms? Koppert’s legions make love as well as war, in the guise of enthusiastic bumblebees. No form of artificial pollination matches the efficiency of bees buzzing from flower to flower, gathering nectar to nourish their queen and helping to fertilize the ovaries of plants along the way. Each Koppert hive accounts for daily visits to half a million flowers. Farmers using the bees typically report 20 to 30 percent increases in yields and fruit weight, for less than half the cost of artificial pollination. 17 Seed Technology The Netherlands' agricultural technology is cutting-edge when it comes to seeds. Chief among them is the development of genetically modified organisms to produce larger and more pest-resistant crops. Dutch firms are among the world leaders in the seed business, with close to $1.7 billion worth of exports in 2016. The sales catalog of Rijk Zwaan, another Dutch breeder, offers high-yield seeds in more than 25 broad groups of vegetables, many that defend themselves naturally against major pests. Heleen Bos is responsible for the company’s organic accounts and international development projects. She might be expected to dwell on the fact that a single high-tech Rijk Zwaan greenhouse tomato seed, priced below $0.50, has been known to produce a mind-boggling 150 pounds of tomatoes. Instead she talks about the hundreds of millions of people, most of them women and children, who lack sufficient food. Like many of the entrepreneurs at Food Valley firms, Bos has worked in the fields and cities of the world’s poorest nations. With lengthy postings to Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Bangladesh over the past 30 years, she knows that hunger and devastating famine are not abstract threats. “Of course, we can’t immediately implement the kind of ultrahigh-tech agriculture over there that you see in the Netherlands,” she says. “But we are well into introducing medium-tech solutions that can make a huge difference.” She cites the many relatively inexpensive plastic greenhouses that have tripled some crop yields compared with those of open fields, where crops are more subject to pests and drought. 18 Human Factor: Political Political systems can affect development. For instance, some countries are ruled by dictators, which was the case in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe ruled. Africa has more dictators than any other continent. Mugabe was a highly corrupt leader who destroyed the infrastructure and livelihoods of the Zimbabwean people. Other African countries, such as Liberia, Sudan and Somalia have been plagued by civil war and this has impeded development. Many of the civil wars in Africa have been caused by dictators, such as the conflict in Ethiopia, Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conflicts have a direct impact on Africa’s agricultural production. Another example of an under developed nation, due to political factors, is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). North Korea is anything but democratic and its people are straving and have a very difficult life. This is because North Korea has a dictatorship and we will learn more about North Korea in our government unit. Human Factor: Cultural Gender Inequality The World Bank has found women are still only provided 75 percent of the legal rights that men are given. As a result, they are less able to get jobs, start businesses and make economic decisions; this has economic consequences that extend beyond their families and communities. When a nation does not allow gender equality, this will make the country less developed. But when women have the same rights as men, that will mean about 100% of the adult population will be working and paying taxes to the government to develop the infrastructure. Without a healthy, educated and resilient population where women and men have equal opportunities, countries will not be able to compete effectively in the global economy of the future. As mentioned before, nations with mostly primary industry encourage children to work in fields rather than to continue in education. This will also increase the birth rate of children, whereas women (and the society they live in) see their main role as having children. If women’s main role is seen as having children, then why would they need an education? And would it not be better if they start to have children as early as possible? The barriers for women are considerable: too many girls, for example, marry or have children before the age of 18, when they are not physically and emotionally ready to become wives and mothers. Ensuring that girls stay in school is one of the best ways to ensure girls are grown adults before they become mothers. Young girls who marry and have children and who want to continue their education are often prevented from returning to school. Women and girls also face higher risks of gender-based violence in their homes, at work, and in public spaces. Violence against women and girls in some countries is so high that it discourages families from sending their girls to school and women from working. 19 In some nations, school is available but due to the violence and the lack of legal protection for women, access to that education is often unsafe or not inclusive because roads to secondary schools are dangerous for young girls. Women may also have difficulty accessing safe and inclusive health services; such as in South Sudan, one of the most dangerous places for women to give birth, where 86 percent of deliveries occur at home and nearly 10 percent of children do not survive to age five. Human Factor: Importance of Education Access to education can improve the economic outcomes of citizens and determine the prospects of future generations, especially in developing countries. Many consider access to education a basic human right, yet education is out of reach for some children and teens in underdeveloped and impoverished countries. The following are the top 10 benefits of education. 10 Benefits of Education 1. Secondary education can cut poverty in half. 2. Closing the education gender gap reduces child marriage. 3. Education reduces violence. 4. Education lets children reach their fullest potential. 5. Education protects children from trafficking. 6. Education helps the environment. 7. Education reduces child labor. 8. Education is improving world health. 9. Universal access of education boosts the economy. 10. Inclusive education is giving disabled children a chance. Class Activity: Directions: Answer the following questions. 1. What are the differences between human development factors and physical development factors? 2. Take two of the 10 benefits of education and explain how these benefits can be a positive human factor for the development of a nation. 20 Can the international community help a country develop? The United Nations (UN) started in 1945. It is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations. Many nations are signed up to the UN and support its practices. The UN provides many different services, such as Human Rights, economic and humanitarian aid, etc. For more information visit UN.org. The UN understands that development issues occur within nations. Therefore, the UN developed the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals were developed to help make countries become more equal for all its citizens. Equal countries make for the happiest nations, because the country will then have an infrastructure to ensure human needs of safety, homes, food, medical care, transportation, communication, employment, education, entertainment, etc., are met. Visit the website: https://sdgs.un.org/goals 21 Bibliography: BBC, BBC Bitesize, GCSE, Characteristics of industry, 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zx3vtyc/revision/1 BBC, BBC Bitesize, GCSE, A Nation’s Development Factors, 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zt666sg/revision/1 Cheng, M., Investopedia, Infrastructure, 1 September 2020 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/infrastructure.asp Dixon, A., Worldbank, Gender equality: Unleashing the real wealth of nations, 07 March 2019 https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/gender-equality-unleashing-real-wealth-nations IZA World of Labor, The role of education in developing countries, 2021 https://wol.iza.org/key-topics/education-in-developing-countries Roser, M., Human Development Index (HDI), Our World Data, 2014, https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index United Nations: Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2021) Sustainable Development: The 17 Goals. https://sdgs.un.org/goals Viviano, F., This Tiny Country Feeds the World, National Geographic, September 2017 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-agriculture-sustainable- farming White, H., Borgen Project, 10 Benefits of Education in Developing Countries 17 January 2020 https://borgenproject.org/10-benefits-of-education/ 22