1.3 Population-resource relationships Flashcards
What is development
Development refers to an improvement in quality of life, a ranging concept including wealth and other aspects of life and so is hard to effectively measure. A general definition would be an ‘increase in total value of goods and services produced by a country leading to improvement in welfare, quality of life and wellbeing.’
It includes things such as wellbeing, wealth, environment, freedom, job security, food security, education, leisure and happiness however these all come hand in hand with the use of resources and development. It is worth noting these must also account for the purchasing power parity, the amount that can be bought with your currency under a universal currency.
What causes development?
Infrastructure: food supply, machinery, electricity, roads, incomes, education
Physical geography: landlocks, small island/area, resources
Policies: open markets grow fast, good governance and spending also help
Demographic changes
What is HDI?
The human development index is a composite index used to indicate development levels of a country, considering life expectancy at birth, expected and mean years of school, as well as GDP/capita adjusted for PPP. They are all then converted into an index with a maximum value of 1.
Why is there a link between development and population change?
Health/life expectancy: Life expectancy increases as IMR falls, if people know children are more likely to survive they won’t have as many, leading to more old people to care for.
Banning child labour when a develops and enforcing education makes children less of an economic asset, so birth rate falls
Governments may adopt pro natalist policies to encourage population growth
Social expectations may take a long time to change e.g. religion and culture.
Better nutrition: public health, sanitation, medical advances, housing and conditions, maternity conditions are all factors in reducing death rates.
Increased PPP and living standards - as incomes rise children seen more as a lability than asset so larger families are rare.
Improvements in educational provision: longer children are in education the later they go to work and so strain family finances. People more educated are more likely to understand family planning and use less education. More educated women mean more focus on career and so wait longer to start a family
What are population resource relationships?
Increase in population creates a strain on environment, food and demand for services as it begins to go over the carrying capacity. The consumption triangle theory suggests that resources are needed to support economic development and population growth.
Population growth stimulates development, which leads to more resources - however both rising leads to increased demand for resources
What is food security? Why is there inequalities?
Security: all people have access to sufficient, safe nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.
This should be easy in theory however inequalities are caused and there is severe wastage in HICs and lack in LICs, causing food insecurities as they do not know if they will have a consistent supply of food and nutrients.
Over 800m people live with food insecurity due to rising prices, droughts, conflict and poverty
What are the 3 components of food security?
Food availability - having enough food
Food access - resources to access the food
Food use - appropriate use based on knowledge of nutrition, water and sanitation
What are the causes of food insecurity?
Soil exhaustion - monoculture, exhaustion, desertification
Droughts, flood destruction, natural disasters
Pests destroy 10% of global food supply
Disease - fungal and human diseases reduce yields
Low capital investment - yields stay low, poor stay poor, lack transport links
Wars and conflict
Rapid population growth
Inflation of prices
Global warming
Poverty
What does food production depend on?
Availability - farming, trading and storage
Access - wealth, prices, market access, subsidies
Usage - nutrition and carrying capacity
Health - water quality, hygiene and sanitation, access to healthcare.
Production depends on the physical environment e.g. climate, water, availability and human capital which is unevenly spread across the world. LICs have rising population and demand strains - the grain once fed to people are often going to animals in HICs even though poorest still need.
The development of western culture diets has also caused unnatural production of foods with more meats and dairies - feeding cattle with grain rather than LICs
Why are there inequalities in food distribution?
Hunger hotspots along the intertropical convergence zone due to high pressure and dry conditions, including South Africa, East Africa, Asia and Latin America. Over 50% of the world’s population live in low income areas with food deficits and 850m people suffer from hunger.
Human factors: accessibility of markets, land ownership, market and trade, unfair competition, TNCs exploiting, aid agencies
Physical factors: soil nutrients, climate, length of growing season, relief, aspect (slope angle), altitude, hazards, climate change ‘shocks’.
In the future, population continues to rise and so demand for food will double. Crops will still be used for biofuels, agriculture must compete with urban development as well as climate change and so new technological advancements will be required
What are the consequences of food shortages?
Undernourishment and malnutrition: has huge effects on health, ability of workforce, leads to further shortages. Also weaker to disease and so deaths may rise
Famine in extreme cases leads to death, usually due to major crop failures
Vicious cycle: poor people undernourished, cant work hard, food production declines, less food grown, stays undernourished and poor
Aid dependency: many farmers depend on aid and do not sell their food, ruining the agricultural economy which may be sent into decline, especially if the aid is cut off
What is carrying capacity?
The carrying capacity is the maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities are available. It can be graphed using the relationship between consumption and time. As population reaches the carrying capacity, there is an overshoot creating a strain on resources which then degrades the carrying capacity.
What is the optimum population?
This suggest a point of peak outcome where the population is exactly at the carrying capacity, and so no resources are wasted and all demand is met. Below this is underpopulation and so there are excess resources - high GDP/person but lots of wastage. Above is overpopulation where it has more individuals than resources and so has low living standards.
What is Malthus’ theory?
There is a surplus population greater than the food supply, leading to an eventual decline in population when resources are exceeded. This is called the point of crisis as lives are lost as food usage is exceeded, and so it starts to fall until reaching the optimum population again.
His theory is still believed due to famine in Africa indicating the possibility that on a global scale there is overpopulation.
1/4 of people in SS Africa are malnourished
What is Boserup’s theory?
Population growth has a positive impact as when resources become scarce, we invent our ways out of the problem to progress - ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. This suggests that population growth stimulates technological developments - however this ignores the environmental impacts of having to grow repeatedly.
1/3 of food is wasted - most of those hungry in developing countries. Only 55% of crops feed people - world farmers produce enough to feed 1.5x the population.
