New Geographies of the Globalized World

Marcin Wojciech Solarz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138676411
• eBook ISBN: 9781317197195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Globalization has, essentially, come to an end. It is, already, a victorious revolution. It has profoundly restructured the relationships between people and the world, often recreating them in a new geographical image.

This book discovers and describes these relationships of new geographies, providing a comprehensive spatial guide to the globalized world of the 21st century. It considers a number of timely and important themes and insights for the present and future world, exploring topics such as population trends and migration; development, the urban; transportation; religion; our endangered planet; wars, conflicts and terrorism, and disease. As such it offers a cross-cutting synthesis of the modern world. It will be of interest to students and researches in humanities and social sciences, including geographers, economists, political scientists and IR specialists.

1 Geographies of world population

Demographic trends in the contemporary world

Barbara Jaczewska, Tomasz Wites, Marcin Wojciech Solarz, Maciej Jędrusik and Małgorzata Wojtaszczyk

A measure of the speed of demographic change is the time it takes for a population to double. It is estimated that during the New Stone Age (7000 BCE) about 10 million people lived on Earth. A further 2,500 years were to pass before the world’s population reached 20 million. It doubled again (from 20 to 40 million) 2,000 years later, and once more (from 40 to 80 million) after another 1,500 years. By the first century AD, some 250 million people lived on Earth. From the end of the fifteenth century population, numbers began to rise at a greater pace, but this was tempered by the death rate, which remained high. It was only in later centuries, with the advancement of medicine, that demographic change gained significant momentum. Just 330 years were needed for the world’s population to double (from 500 million c.1490 to 1 billion c.1800).

Milestones in the demographic development of the world’s population can be precisely, albeit rather arbitrarily, identified. Thus, humanity reached 1 billion in 1804, the year in which Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself ‘Emperor of the French’. The threshold of the second billion was crossed in 1927, the year of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, and the third in 1960, which was proclaimed the ‘Year of Africa’. Humanity reached its fourth billion in 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned from office, and its fifth in 1987, when Ronald Reagan in his Brandenburg Gate speech called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Six billion was exceeded in 1999, when the first countries of the former Eastern bloc were accepted into NATO, and the 7-billion threshold was crossed in the year of the tidal wave of the ‘Arab Spring’, the death of Osama bin Laden and the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (2011). No fewer than six of these seven milestones have been passed in the lifetimes of people still (as of May 2017) present among us, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Alan Greenspan and George H.W. Bush (Solarz and Wojtaszczyk 2015: 802–803).

Drawing the attention of world public opinion to the importance of these dynamic population processes and the problems they cause is one of the tasks of the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In 1989, this body proclaimed 11 July as World Population Day, which refers back to 11 July 1987, the approximate date when the world’s population passed the 5 billion mark. The difficulties involved in precise population measurement were highlighted by the slogan of World Population Day in 2010 – ‘Everyone Counts’. The then Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon used the opportunity to call on decision-makers worldwide to do their part to ensure that every person on Earth ‘counts and is counted’ (UNPF 2016). The day is celebrated under a different slogan each year, and in 2016, it was ‘Investing in Teenage Girls’.

Each of the more than 7 billion inhabitants of the Earth has certain features which make them similar to other people, or cause them to differ, and therefore despite each person’s distinctive uniqueness, we belong to many groups based on shared biological (e.g. skin colour), cultural (e.g. descent, language, religion) and economic (e.g. degree of wealth) characteristics. At the same time, these distinguishing features lay the groundwork for social strife.

The present multi-billion and still rapidly growing world population is not something to which we are accustomed as a species in an evolutionary sense, but as individuals, we are able to conceptualize it. If we compare the unimaginably long evolutionary history of the human race to twelve hours, then modern humans appeared just twenty minutes ago, and we have been experiencing the global population explosion for less than 1.5 seconds (Konarzewski 2005: 9–10; Solarz 2014: 7). Almost everyone alive today was born into a world inhabited by at least 2 billion people. No less than 92 per cent of the world’s population was born in the atomic era (UNDP 2015: 237). The land potential of the oecumene is some 90 million km² (the Earth’s land surface excluding deserts and ice-covered areas), so 10,000 years ago (about one minute ago) population density was about 0.05 persons per km². At the dawn of the industrial age, less than two seconds ago, this had risen to 7.8 persons per km². In 2016, world population density was more than 82 persons per km². The change just described can be likened to someone moving in a matter of a minute from Svalbard to Egypt (Worldometers 2017). In sum, this situation has far-reaching consequences at every level – biological, psychological, political, economic and cultural – and poses for us as a species a huge challenge which we must face immediately, even though we are not yet ready for the task either morally or materially. It is only in a demographic context that all global questions – relating to the world economy, quality of life, environment and climate – become global problems.

Global challenges also gain meaning in the context of population.¹ One of the most important elements in contemporary discourse about the world is reflection on development. Progress is made by people and its goal is the improvement of human existence. An interesting interpretation of world population change in a million year perspective is offered by Michael Kremer (1993), working from the basic premise that population growth is directly proportional to available demographic resources. He argues that a larger population stimulates technological change to a greater degree than a smaller one does, and more extensive areas with a larger initial population achieve a higher level of technology and greater population density than other places do.

Julian Simon (1996) from the University of Maryland, traces humanity’s progress over a much shorter period: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period of rapid population growth, unprecedented in history. A key factor in global development according to Simon is our human capacity to create new ideas and expand our body of knowledge. Based on a detailed analysis of indicators such as mortality, illiteracy, agricultural production per capita and pollution, he concludes that the more people who can be trained to assist in solving the Earth’s economic and environmental problems, the sooner we will witness dynamic economic development and the richer the legacy that we will leave to future generations will be.

Population distribution within the boundaries of the oecumene (7.4 billion in 2016) is uneven. The territories constituting oecumene, suboecumene and anoecumene are subject to numerous changes. The boundaries between inhabited and uninhabited areas are difficult to define with precision. Within the oecumene, there are often areas which as a result of administrative decisions are inhabited only periodically or are completely uninhabited (e.g. areas under legal protection such as nature reserves and military bases).

The transformation of anoecumene into suboecumene or oecumene occurs in areas at varying levels of economic development. The large population growth currently observable in Africa has contributed to a change in population concentration and land development. Areas of anoecumene in the equatorial zone have become suboecumene as fragments of rainforest have been converted into farmland. The conversion of uninhabited terrain into periodically or continuously inhabited land also occurs in the mountain regions of economically highly developed countries. Some current suboecumene areas until recently were anoecumene (e.g. high-altitude resorts with both permanent and seasonal inhabitants, which were established due to the development of tourism in the twentieth century).

Oecumene and suboecumene become anoecumene much less frequently. There are several reasons why this is so, in particular the finite space of inhabited areas and the constantly increasing population of the Earth. Regions experiencing depopulation exemplify the shift from oecumene to suboecumene or anoecumene.

Changes in population: continents and countries

Beginning our analysis of population change on a continental scale, it is worth noting that between 1800 and 2000 the population of Europe increased only fourfold, while that of Africa, the site of the oldest hominid remains, saw a ninefold increase and North America’s population grew fiftyfold. The least populous continent in the early twenty-first century (just 0.5 per cent of total global population) remains Oceania (Australia and the Pacific islands) (Worldometers 2017), whereas Asia has the world’s largest population, thanks to its environmental conditions which are more favourable than in Africa.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Asia is home to some 60 per cent of total world population, followed by Africa, though the latter has the world’s fastest rate of population growth. Next in terms of population size is Europe, which for many centuries was in second place (after Asia). At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe was home to as many as 25 per cent of the world’s inhabitants, but 100 years later, this proportion has fallen to less than 12 per cent. According to demographic forecasts, in 2025, Europe is expected to combine a low birth rate with clearly positive net migration and it will be inhabited by only 6 per cent of the planet’s population. This sharp decline in the Old Continent’s share in world population is not due to falling numbers in Europe, but instead by the rapid population growth on other continents.

When we analyse population change on a country scale, we should remember that in addition to natural and migration movements, administrative decisions can also play a role in the rise and fall of population numbers (as in the case of the reduction or enlargement of a country’s territory). As recently as 1950, among the ten most populous countries in the world, there were four countries wholly or partly situated in Europe – the Soviet Union (the majority of whose population was concentrated west of the Urals), the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy. In 2016, however, only one European country can be found in the world’s top ten in terms of population: Russia (most of whose citizens are located in its European part). This merely confirms the fact that contemporary rapid population increases are mainly occurring in non-European countries.

Only five countries (or just 2.6 per cent of the world’s total number of countries) – China, India, USA, Indonesia and Brazil – have more than 200 million inhabitants (2016), but their populations taken together represent 47 per cent of the global total. Only thirteen countries (6.6 per cent) have more than 100 million inhabitants, but they account for more than 60 per cent of the planet’s population. Not counting Russia, seven of these are located in Asia, three in the Americas and two in Africa. In Asia, the race is on for the country with the highest population there and also globally. In 1950, the population of China was 544 million and that of India was 371 million, whereas although China still held first place in 2010, demographic forecasts indicate the likelihood that in 2022 India will take the lead.

An extremely important characteristic of the world’s population since the second half of the twentieth century is a clear difference in the demographic processes taking place in more economically developed countries compared to their less developed counterparts. As recently as the mid-twentieth century, the latter accounted for 67 per cent of global population, whereas by 1980, this figure had risen to 75 per cent and in 2015, it was 85 per cent (Worldometers 2017).

Demographic forecasts

By way of introduction to the subject of this section, it is worth considering a representative opinion concerning the validity of preparing and attaching weight to population projections. Secomski notes that the publication of demographic forecasts, and the interest which they widely attract, has led to the formulation of new principles of population policy (1978: 16–18). The majority of forecasts concerning the development of the world’s population have not stood the test of time. This does not mean, however, that they have had no impact on shaping the world in social, economic, political and even moral terms. Notwithstanding the widespread reliance on demographic projections in development plans and programmes, Secomski argues that we should not overestimate their role (1978: 18).

Before key aspects of demographic forecasts relating to the modern world are presented here, we will reflect, albeit briefly, on past projections whose accuracy we are now able to verify. This will give the reader some perspective from which to assess the value of today’s forecasts. In 1798, the economist Thomas R. Malthus published an important work titled An Essay on the Principle of Population, which forecast a sharp rise in population and predicted that the effects of uncontrolled demographic expansion would be dire. Although others had issued such warnings much earlier, Malthus was the first to formulate a comprehensive theory (‘the Iron Law of Population’), based on the assumption that population growth progresses geometrically, whereas food resources grow arithmetically. From this, the English scholar drew the conclusion that there was no room at the ‘table of nature’ (Malthus 1798: 4–5) for an ever-increasing number of people.

Although Malthus’ theory contained certain flaws, it had a profound impact on public opinion at the time of publication, and continues to exert influence despite the passage of more than 200 years. Many contemporary analyses of demographic trends draw on Malthusian theory, which has its origins in a debate between its author and his father. The latter was an advocate of the theory propounded by William Godwin, according to which poverty in the world is the consequence of defective social institutions, and so could be effectively limited if there were a more equitable distribution of national income. Malthus junior did not share this view, rather, he believed that the source of poverty was excessive population growth (1798: 55–67). The theses of Malthus were later contested by the American economist H.C. Carey, who argued that population adapts to conditions, and as a result, effective overpopulation does not occur (1867: 10). When the population increases, an association factor becomes operative, manifesting itself in a better division of labour being possible, leading to a disproportionate increase in productivity, and thus overpopulation is prevented. The larger a population is, the greater the diversity of talents and the more effective the division of labour.

An example of a scholarly publication based on demographic forecasts and models deduced from them is The Limits to Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers and Behrens 1972). The analysis it contains, carried out for the Club of Rome, weighs the future of humanity in light of the increase in the number of the Earth’s inhabitants and the claimed dwindling of natural resources. The forecasts set out in the book proved correct but only to a limited degree, and the majority of them, concerning the production of food, were contradicted by estimates and projections later prepared by other institutions, including the International Food Policy Research Institute (Penning de Vries, Van Keulen, Rabbinage and Luyten 1995).

Taking into account various population change scenarios, the United Nations estimates that in 2050 between 7.7 and 10.6 milli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Geographies of world population: demographic trends in the contemporary world
• 2 Geographies of development in the twenty-first century
• 3 Many worlds, one planet: ambiguous geographies of the contemporary international community
• 4 Twenty-first- century cities: from global challenges to local responses
• 5 Geographies of transportation in the twenty-first century
• 6 Geographies of religions: the religious factor in contemporary world politics – analytical frameworks
• 7 Endangered Earth: pollution, resources, global change
• 8 Arcs of crises, zones of peace? The geography of wars, conflicts and terrorism in the twenty-first century
• 9 Geographies of twenty-first- century disease: epidemiological versus demographic transition
• Index