Resource Consumption Flashcards
Define Middle Class
The middle class the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business people and their families. They are the biggest group within a population. They aren’t extreme poverty or extreme wealth. They are people working within the services sector. They are a middle income group of people.
How does the rise of the middle class affect resource consumption?
With more people in the middle class this means they have more disposable income meaning there will be an increase in resource consumption.
What is an economic impact of the growth of the middle class?
More people are earning more money so the global wealth increases. As LIC’s develop, a larger portion of their population are earning more money and so the wealth within that country steadily increases. This continues which overall increases the global wealth.
Mini Case Study of a country with a Rising Middle Class
Vietnam has averaged a 6% economic growth per year since 1990. This has led to it developing from one of the worlds poorest countries to a middle-income country.
One of the main reasons for its success has been its proximity to China, which has given it a competitive advantage. The wages in China have risen and firms have relocated to low-cost Vietnam. In addition, Vietnam has a young population with the average age being 30 in comparison to China’s 36.
The Vietnamese government has also used a series of 5 year plans to guide its development. It has invested in education, spending 6.3% of its GDP on education which is around 2% more than most LICs and MICs. In addition, Vietnam is a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnerships (TTP), a 12-country trade bloc that includes the USA and Japan. It also has a free trade agreement with Korea and is negotiating one with the EU.
There isn’t a specific reason for the emergence as an MIC but it has created a number of features that makes it a good country to invest in.
Country Profile:
• Population - 92.5 million
• Average annual growth rate 2009-2014: 5.9%
Structure of employment:
• Agriculture - 46.8%
• Industry - 21.2%
• Services - 32.0%
20% of Vietnam’s exports go to the USA
30% of Vietnam’s imports come from China
How does the rise of the middle class affect the employment structure and trade?
Employment structure
The employment structure is changing showing an increase in the services sector which is more common within an MIC in comparison to agriculture being the main sector in an LIC. The industry sector also increases as a country develops to become an MIC.
Trade
Trade exports increase costing a variety of billions of dollars, depending on the good they are exporting. Generally, trade begins to increase which not only increases the amount of money coming into the country as well as improving links between countries and goods can be exchanged at ease
What is an Ecological footprint?
An ecological is the hypothetical area of land required by a society, a group or an individual to fulfil all their resource needs and assimilate all their wastes.
What can Ecological Footprints help do?
Ecological footprints can act as a model for monitoring environmental impacts. They can highlight sustainable and unsustainable lifestyles (ie populations with a larger footprint than their land area are living beyond sustainable limits.
what is Earth Overshoot Day?
They day in the year when humanity has used up all the resources that it takes the planet to regenerate. It helps to demonstrate the relationship between the number of people and how many resources are being used.
How can a country increase its ecological footprint?
- Relying heavily on fossil fuels
- increasing its use fo technology and therefore energy
- high levels of imported resources
- large per capita production of carbon waste
- large per capita consumption of food
- having a meat-rich diet
How can a country reduce its ecological footprint?
- Reducing the amount of resources it uses
- recycling resources
- reusing resources
- improving the efficiency of resource use
- reducing the amount of pollution produced
- improving technology to increase carrying capacity
- importing more resources from other countries
- reducing the population to reduce the resource use
- using technology to increase the carrying capacity (ie GM crops to increase yield on the same area of land)
Factors used in a full ecological footprint calculation
- bioproductive (currently used) land –> land used for food and materials such as farmland, gardens, pasture and managed forest
- bioproductive sea –> the sea area used for human consumption
- energy land –> an equivalent amount of land that would be required to support renewable energy instead of non-renewable energy.
- built land –> land used for development such as roads and buildings
- biodiversity land –> land required to support all non-human species
- non-productive land –> land such as deserts, subtracted from the total land available.
Factors influencing the amount of land a population needs to support itself
- the land or water required to provide aquatic and atmospheric resources
- land or water needed to assimilate wastes other than carbon dioxide
- land used to produce materials imported into the country to subsidise arable land and increase yields
- replacement of productive land lost through urbanisation
Ecological Footprints in HICs and LICs
Trends
LICs tend to have smaller ecological footprints because of their much smaller rate of resource consumption. People in LICs spend less on consumption however as LICs develop, their ecological footprint size increases.
In HICs, people have more disposable income which means that consumption and demand for energy resources are high. HICs’ resource use is often wasteful as they produce more waste and pollution as by-products of production.
Patterns and Trends in water availability and consumption
- Water is unevenly distributed over the world and over 780 million people don’t have access to clean water
- 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in water-scare environments and climate change increases this water stress
- HICs are maintaining or increasing their consumption of resources such as water
- Industrial use of water increases with GNI, around 10% from LICs to about 60% for HICs.
Trends that are increasing the pressure to manage water more efficiently
- population growth (set to reach 9 billion my 2050)
- the growing middle class
- the growth of tourism and recreation (ie water parks etc)
- urbanisation
- climate change
