Paper 1 - Global Geographical Issues

• Development

  Improvement in a country's capacity to produce goods and services for its population, usually improving people's standard of living
• Measures of Development


  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita
  • Human Development Index (HDI)
  • Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)
  • Gini coefficient
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita

  GDP divided by the population of a country
• Human Development Index (HDI)

  Measure that combines education, healthcare, income, life expectancy, and others
• Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI)

  Approximate measure of how corrupt the government is in a nation
• Gini coefficient

  Measures how much of the income of a country goes to the richest people
• Developed countries' population pyramids

  • More even because birth rate is lower and average life expectancy is higher
• Developing countries' population pyramids

  • Wide base because birth rates are high
  • Narrower middle because infant mortality rates are high, life expectancy is low and lots of mothers die in childbirth
• Emerging countries' population pyramids

  • Base gets narrower as more women get a good education and contraception becomes more available, birth rate & number of children per family falls
  • Top gets wider as life expectancy rises and quality of healthcare improves
• Developed countries' population pyramids

  • Top gets even wider as the effect of a healthy lifestyle over many decades leads to longer lifespans
  • Quality of life is high, birth rates are low and life expectancy is higher than in emerging countries
• Global Inequality

  Uneven development between countries
• Causes of Global Inequality


  • Environment
  • History
• Physical factors restricting development

  • Unfavourable climates
  • Infertile farmland
  • Vulnerability to natural hazards
  • Landlocked location
  • Steep topography
• Unfavourable climates


  Tropical conditions, too hot or too cold, making it difficult to grow crops and support large populations
• Infertile farmland

  Either due to poor soil or steep relief, leading to low food production and constraining population size
• Land vulnerable to flooding

  Risky as floods can destroy whole seasons' worth of crops, leading to famine
• Lack of natural resources

  Countries without resources like coal, oil or gold cannot sell them to grow their income
• Frequent natural hazards

  Tectonic activity or flooding requiring constant rebuilding rather than development
• Landlocked countries

  Lack access to sea trade routes, hindering exports and development
• Steep topography

  Bad for farming, infrastructure and transport, restricting trade and development
• Historical factors causing uneven development

  • Colonisation
  • Conflict and wars
  • Neo-colonialism
• Colonisation

  Benefits of cheap labour and raw materials flowed to colonial rulers, not colonised nations
• Conflict and wars

  Damage countries' infrastructure, slowing development without aid like Marshall Plan
• Neo-colonialism

  Powerful nations influence post-colonial countries through debt markets and transnational corporations
• Rostow's Modernisation Theory

  Forecasts that each country will go through 5 stages of economic growth as it develops
• Stage 1 - traditional society

  • Most people live on farms and eat the crops that they grow (subsistence farming)
  • Little Trade
• Stage 2 - preconditions for take-off

  • Society begins to develop more quickly
  • Manufacturing sector will begin to grow
  • Basic infrastructure (transport and electricity) is needed
  • Countries may begin to sell manufactured goods to other countries
• Stage 3 - take-off

  • Urbanisation will begin as people move to cities to work in manufacturing
  • The country industrialises
  • Wages rise and wealth increases as the owners of the factories make profits
• Stage 4 - drive to maturity

  • Demand for services in the tertiary sector grows
  • People's standards of living grow and people demand better healthcare and education
• Stage 5 - mass consumption

  • Mass production allows everyone to own consumer products
  • Lots of trade happens with other nations and consumption continues to grow
• Frank's Dependency Theory

  Poor, peripheral countries stay poor because they are dependent on the rich, core countries
• Globalisation


  The increase in trade and communication between countries internationally
• Causes of globalisation


  • The internet
  • Improvements in global transport (things like container shipping)
  • Improvements in communication
• Transnational corporations (TNCs)


  Businesses that sell goods & services globally in lots of different countries
• TNCs operating in India

  • Unilever Hindustan
  • Vodafone India
• How TNCs increase globalisation

  • Create supply chains that go across the countries where they operate
  • Spread skills across the world
  • Spread culture (e.g. McDonald's fast food stores in India spreading American culture)
• How governments increase globalisation

  • Organisations like the European Union and NAFTA encourage globalisation
  • Free trade agreements and removing tariffs encourages trade instead of producing all goods and services domestically
  • Governments offer businesses tax incentives to operate in their country
• Strategies for reducing global inequality

  • NGO-led, bottom-up intermediate technology-led
  • Inter-governmental-funded infrastructure projects
  • TNC-driven growth
• IGO-funded large infrastructure projects

  • Advantages: Can improve a nation's energy, sanitation or transport infrastructure
  • Disadvantages: If interest rate on borrowing is high, governments will spend lots of money repaying the loans; If government is corrupt, only a small % of the money will go to the project
• NGO-led intermediate technologies


  • Advantages: Given directly to the people who need them, may create small economies in the areas that receive the technologies
  • Disadvantages: Hard to scale, large-scale infrastructure cannot be funded this way