Geog254 Development Overview PDF

GEOG 254 Society and Environment 05 Global Development Geographies Part 1: Foundations Development Process of ‘growth’ or ‘improvement’ with changes from one condition to another The extent to which a society is making effective use of its resources – both human and natural Regio...

GEOG 254 Society and Environment 05 Global Development Geographies Part 1: Foundations Development Process of ‘growth’ or ‘improvement’ with changes from one condition to another The extent to which a society is making effective use of its resources – both human and natural Regions are seen as falling along a continuum of development – From economies of agriculture to economies of technology  What is Development? How do we define and measure ‘development’? What are challenges with the ways we define and measure it? What explains why some regions are less developed than others? Can regions be over- developed? Should regions help other regions develop?  Development Process of growth where changes from one condition to another happens The extent to which a society is making effective use of its resources – both human and natural Regions are seen as falling along a continuum of development – From economies of agriculture to economies of technology  Rostow’s “non-communist” model of stages of economic development. Source: Rostow (1960) Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California.  Dharavi, slum located in central Mumbai Source: A. Savin, Wikimedia Commons ONE WORLD/MANY WORLDS Beverly Hills, LA Dharavi, Mumbai Population density Population 33,792 across “Official” population 14.7 km2 (2300 people 600,000 across 2.1 km2 per square km2) (285,714 people per km2) Annual per capita $92,185 $927 income Life expectancy 86.2 years of age 60.0 years of age Average house 2.2 inhabitants (3100 6–8 people (rarely more than size square feet2) 250 feet2)  Defined Groups of Countries More Developed Countries Less Developed Countries (MDC) (LDC) Countries that have Countries at the earlier stage progressed further along the of the development development continuum continuum Challenge is to maintain a Challenge is to find high level of development at connections to the global the new scale of the economy by taking economy characterized by advantage of local diversity globalization in skills and resources Measuring Development Economic measurements Gross National Income (GNI) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Energy consumption per capita Percentage of workforce (still) in agriculture compared to other industries such as technology and finance, for example  Introduced in 1990 Established to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the Human development of a country, Development not economic growth alone Index (HDI) Three dimensions which measure a nation’s health, education, and standard of living Human Development Index (HDI) HDI: Health Dimension Health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth – The more developed a country, the longer its population lives Types of Life Expectancy Indicators Infant mortality rate – Number of infant deaths during a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year – Infant mortality rate = (number of deaths in the first year of life/number of live births) x 1000 Multiplied by 1000 to signify per 1,000 people in the population – In LDCs, babies may die from: 1. Malnutrition 2. Lack of medicine needed to survive from illness 3. Poor medical practices Types of Life Expectancy Indicators Crude birth rate – Number of live births occurring among the population of a given geographical area during a given year – Crude birth rate = (number of live births in a year/population size) x 1000 Multiplied by 1000 to signify per 1,000 people in the population – But both LDCs and MDCs have low crude birth rates due to two reasons: 1. Medical technology diffusion has eliminated or reduced several diseases in LDCs 2. There are higher older populations in MDCs that have higher mortality rates, as well as lower percentages of children, who have low mortality rates once they survive infancy Types of Life Expectancy Indicators Natural increase rate – A measure of how quickly a population is growing or declining – Does not factor in immigration and emigration – Natural increase rate = (Birth rate – death rate) / 1000 Divided by 1000 to signify the number of birth and death rates per 1,000 people in the population – LDCs have higher natural increase rate due to higher crude birth rates – More than 2% in LDCs and less than 1% in MDCs – Many LDCs allocates more to caring for expanding population rather than improving the lives of the current population HDI: Education Dimension Education dimension is measured by two indicators: Mean of years of schooling for children of aged 25 years and more Expected years of schooling for children of school entering age The higher the level of development, the greater the quantity and quality of education. MDCs tend to allocate most of their wealth to social services (e.g., education, healthcare, police, welfare). This, in turn, can produce a more economically productive population.  HDI: Standard of Living Dimension Standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita Gross national income is the total amount of money earned by a nation’s people and businesses, both inside and outside the country’s or region’s borders The HDI uses a logarithm of income to reflect the diminishing importance of income within increasing GNI Stories and Insights: Extreme Poverty & Change Visits to a local family: Olivia & Andre with their 8 children Mozambique, Mogovolas region BBC Documentary ‘Don’t Panic’ by Hans Rosling; Gapminder Foundation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E Video excerpt: 33:00 – 42:30mins MDGs Millennium Development Goals Created: 2000 Target: 2015 MDGs – Diana Liverman’s Assessment (2018) MDGs enjoyed some successes, but also important failures: Progress was uneven between regions, countries, even between social groups (age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability,..). Goal setting and target chasing problematic. Targets for poverty and hunger were arbitrary, and success could not always be attributed to the MDGs. Lack of attention to human rights, gender inequalities, and environment. Conflict of interest in MDG design and governance: UN agencies and funding nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) had vested interests in setting a low bar and putting a positive shine on results. MDGs targeted only the Global South. Methodological nationalism: limiting belief that the nation‐state scale is the most appropriate entry point for development projects. SDGs Sustainable Development Goals Created: 2015 Target: 2030 also known as “Agenda 2030”  SDGs 2030: Are we on course? The GOOD Progress has been particularly rapid with respect to SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). The BAD Slow progress in SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Large gaps in SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 14 (Life Below Water). The UGLY Stalled Goals in SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). COVID-19 has negatively affected SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). SDGs – Distance to Target by Country Sustainability Development Goals Ambition: Beyond income, beyond statistics (leave no one behind), beyond today. Critical checklist: In practice, how can we avoid them being… 1) Meaningless: Everything to everyone, nothing to anyone? 2) Inconsistent: Suffer from a core ‘sustainability paradox’? 3) Non-binding: Lacking mechanisms of enforcement? 4) Unrealistic: Assume a scale of resource that is lacking in many countries? 5) Obfuscation: Lacking attention to politics and structural change?  BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED In the late eighteenth century, classical economists fashioned a powerful and consequential claim: liberalized market economies would: (i) increase the wealth of nations and transform the quality of human life, lifting the world’s poor out of poverty; and (ii) correct over time diverging levels of economic prosperity and geographical inequalities in wealth and income at all geographical scales.  Blaut JM (1993) The Colonizer’s Model of the World US geographer Jim Blaut was one of the earliest Western scholars to claim that development theory and practice was fundamentally a Eurocentric project.  There can be no enduring solution to uneven geographical development unless there is a framework of Development Theory and Practice ‘in support of human life itself ’. Capitalist critique: …which needs a human development framework that builds up people holistically for their well- being, and not solely as ‘productive’ human capital.  Development Alternatives and Alternatives to Development  Alternatives to Development Arturo Escobar Colombian-American Anthropologist “Development was, and continues to be for the most part, a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach.....the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression.” Source Wikimedia Source Wikimedia Martha Nussbaum 1980s: Capabilities Approach Rights Based Approach Amartya Sen Political Participation Economic Well-Being Social Opportunities Source Wikimedia 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics Information Access for his research on welfare economics, social choice theory and poverty Personal Security “Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development.” (Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom) Development Alternatives In public domain  POST DEVELOPMENT Salus populi suprema lex esto “The health (welfare, good, salvation, felicity) of the people should be the supreme law" Global North Global South The Wellbeing Movement Indigenous knowledge and wisdom (Beyond the GDP Imperative) traditions  Alternatives to Development Arturo Escobar Colombian-American Epistemicide: The systematic Anthropologist destruction of any indigenous knowledge “Development was, and continues to be for the most part, a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach.....the discourse and strategy of development produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and Source Wikimedia oppression.”  Gross National Happiness (GNH) Since 1970s: developed by Bhutan’s Fourth King Jigme Singye Wangchuck https://www.mfa.gov.bt/rbedelhi/bhutan-at-glance/gross-national-happiness/ Four major pillars: - fair and sustainable socio-economic development - conservation and promotion of a vibrant culture - environmental protection; and - good governance as the key to implement the other three Nine thematic domains: psychological well-being; living standard; health; culture; education; community vitality; good governance; balanced time use and ecological integration. For these, Bhutan has developed 38 sub-indexes, 72 indicators and 151 variables that are used to define and analyze the happiness of the Bhutanese people. The Heartlands of Buen Vivir (‘Living well’) Ecuador Peru Bolivia Dimensions Equity Social cohesion Sustainability Empowerment TeleSUR English: ‘Good Living’ (Sumak Kawsay) Livelihood in an indigenous worldview (7mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFcHhsItEk Capabilities … mapped for absolute $ amounts of development assistance… … and in relative proportions of national economies International Development Aid The international movement of money, services, or goods from governments or international institutions for the (fiscal, economic, military, or humanitarian) benefit of the receiving country or its citizens.  Albert Einstein once said: “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Is development theory and practice (at least at times) living at the edge of sanity? A Look at the Western Tradition of Development Theory and Practice  Capital’s (not countries’) Empire? Capital’s empire adopts an analogous distributed leadership structure to the Roman Empire with: the United States’ nuclear supremacy exercising the monarchical function, the economic power of transnational corporations and the G7 performing the aristocratic function, and; the internet providing the democratic pillar Source Wikimedia Rule through Bomb, Money and Ether. Sub-national HDI 2018 Uneven Geographical Development in the European Union Uneven Geographical Development in the United States  Uneven Geographical Development in Gauteng Province (Johannesburg) South Africa By Kevin Gabbert - User: (WT-shared) Kevin James at wts wikivoyage - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22942733 Mushongera, D., Zikhali, P. & Ngwenya, P. A Multidimensional Poverty Index for Gauteng Province, South Africa: Evidence from Quality of Life Survey Data. Soc Indic Res 130, 277–303 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1176-2 Map of Multiple Deprivation in London 2019 From UCL Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC)  Soja EW (2013) Seeking Spatial Justice What Makes Justice Spatial? What Makes Spaces Just? Sheppard E (2016) Limits to Globalization: Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development A geographical perspective has two principal aspects: Taking seriously how capitalism creates uneven geographical development and how uneven geographical development impacts the trajectory of capitalism. https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=ZxgpX39C2sk