geography summer work AS

The earth’s audit
Question 1
The global environmental outlook report the UN produced could be seen as doom mongering too many people including me. This is due to the amount of facts produced of how us as a species is destroying the planet we live on due to our destructive methods of living.
The report gives us many raw figures that certainly don’t cast a good light on the state of the world at this current time. One of the hardest facts to swallow is that 10 million plus children die every year; this is especially worrying considering that global income has risen by a massive 40%! This clearly means that the money is not currently being used wisely as they cannot help bring this figure down.
The flip side of this could be that global populations, especially of developing nations, is rising rapidly and this will drastically change the number of children dying and the global average income. This means that although the situation may not be as bad as the report puts it, it will make people more aware and caring to these issues and will likely cause people to donate to charities meaning there will be improving conditions globally.
Also the report says that around 70,000 km2 of forest is lost every year for various reasons. This is also a very ‘doom mongering’ figure and considering the increasing population of the world this figure is likely to get bigger and bigger. So I would argue that this figure is a warning by the UN that world is being severely affect by human kind and we must try to reduce our impact on the earth. The reason for them doing this is that people are likely to be greener and try to reduce their contribution to the loss of these forests.
Perhaps the figure that gives this report the debatable name ‘doom mongering’ is that of how sustainable are food supplies are for the increasing population. 120 million hectares are needed to feed the population of developing nations (such as Brazil, India and china) by 2030! Although developing nations account for the vast majority of population growth in the world that figure does not include developed nations so the amount of farm land needed overall is huge. This figure is extremely worrying especially when considering the previous fact that 70,000 km2 of forest is lost a year. This is because the new farm land needed will likely be made by reducing forests too arable land. This will increase the loses of forest land even more than it currently is, For this reason I would put this figure as the most worrying of them and defiantly doom mongering.
However if we carefully analyse this figure we can see that it is certainly not as doom mongering as it is when we first look at it. One reason is because the predictions of developing countries populations could be wrong. They may invest heavily in methods of cutting population growth through ways such as freely available contraception, family planning education and even a policy as extreme as china one child policy. This would drastically reduce the need for more farm land and could also lessen infant mortality rates and increase average income. Also even if this doesn’t happen birth rates are going to inevitably drop as countries develop. As children will no longer be needed to bring a wage for the family, women will have careers and will have children later and also family planning education would become more widespread.
Time and money would need to be invested in a way to improve land usage to help our food output cope with the amount of people on the earth. This is because most developing countries populations will raise despite the measures taken to reduce them therefore inevitably more food will be needed to feed this increase of population.
The last of the doom mongering statements from the report is that 90% of languages could be lost by 2100. This is an enormous percentage of languages and would significantly affect the world especially with all the culture and heritage lost. However this is the least concerning of the statements mentioned in my eye because it’s no environmental and people’s livelihoods will not be affected at all as much as deforestations and low food supplies. It could even do well as countries cooperation would increase if they spoke the same language people could migrate to a country in hopes of a better job and life easily as they would know the language. For these reason I would say this statement is actually helping give the report a more positive tone.
Question 2 The More economically developed world (MEDW) is partly to blame for the problems mentioned as they have much control over the LEDC. The main way they are responsible is that they hold the vast majority of debt in places like Africa. They charge interest on this debt and this means that the LEDW can’t pay it back so must borrow more money to pay it back, this is the cycle of debt and destroys the LEDW economy and affects its citizen’s livelihoods.
Undoubtedly if the debt on these nations was released they would develop faster and the countries would start to resemble the MEDW varying on their situations. The money saved from not paying debts could be used in the LEDWs to help them to develop and tackle some of the problems they face stuff as global deforestation and also political repression which is very prevalent in many countries.
Many of the problems are not directly due to the MEDW however. Weak and corrupt governments mean that the money the countries are loaned are not spent in the right way. This money could be spent on education and infrastructure of a country to boost development and bring an increase of money. For this reason the MEDW is not entirely responsible for the stated problems as even if they cut the debt a corrupt government will stop develop rapidly and maybe even regress it as what’s happened in Zimbabwe. Here Robert Mugabe came to power and printed endless amounts of money so the country is now in hyperinflation and this has severely affected people’s lives.
Unemployment is huge warning for social unsustainability. In the LEDW up to 1.2 billion people is unemployment. This represents a huge proportion of people there and the effects this has on the people who live there is huge. If people do not have jobs they therefore do not get a wage so they pay little tax to the government meaning both they are the government are poorer. This lack of money means that when it comes to paying for the country’s military or education they will not be able to afford it and must borrow money. This puts them in the endless circle of debt again.
This problem can be blamed on the MEDW. This is because the money they are owed by the LEDW could be cut and help the country’s by creating jobs and an education system which they could afford. Because this debt has not been cut the LEDW countries cannot afford this and as a result they suffer high unemployment and an illiterate population of 850 million people. For this reason the MEDW can be blamed for the problems of the LEDW to a certain extent. The last factor that would mean the MEDW is not too blame would be that religion is a factor that holds many people back in countries in the LEDW. The mostly western MEDW generally are very religiously tolerant and more secular so they can’t be blamed for this. Therefore it is the LEDW fault for the unsuitably shown when it comes to religion.