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“To
Have and Have Not: Colonialism and Core-Periphery Relations”
American Geographical Society’s Focus, Fall 1986, pp 14-19
By Anthony R. de Souza
(TEKS – 1A, 2A, 5A, 8A, 11B, 12A-C, 14B-C, 18A, 20A)
The multistate economic system of the modern world was created by European
societies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. As this world system
expanded, it became differentiated into a core of rich countries and
a periphery of poor countries. One distinctive linkage between the core
and the periphery was colonialism.
Colonialism existed from the beginning of the world system and, for
a period, embraced nearly every part of the globe. In 1500, Europeans
controlled 9% of the world’s land surface. By 1800, they ruled
about 35%; by 1878, 67%; and by 1914, 85%. Expansion continued until
about the 1930s, when parts of Arabia, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet,
China, Siam, and Japan were the only significant areas that had never
been under a formal colonial government. After World War II, formal
colonies quickly disappeared, and by the early 1970s they had practically
ceased to exist.
Periods of colonial expansion and contraction can be examined from what
is known as a world-system perspective. In this view, colonialism is
part of the world system: it is a cyclical phenomenon and a structural
linkage between the core and the periphery. Changes in the rate of colonial
activity reflect changes in political and economic configurations at
the center of the world system.
There
have been two waves of colonialism in modern history. The first wave
began in 1415, when the Portuguese seized control of the commercial
naval base of Ceuta on the Strait of Gibraltar, and ended soon after
1800. The second wave began in the late 19th century and ended shortly
after 1945. During the first wave, European power centered on the Americas;
during the second wave, the focus switched to Africa, Asia, and the
Pacific. Colonies of the first wave were mainly settlement colonies
where quasi-European societies were created by immigrants. The second
wave involved colonies of occupation, in which a small number of Europeans
exercised political control. Exceptions to the latter included 19th
century British settler colonies in Australasia and in southern and
East Africa.
In
each wave, a few colonial powers overshadowed the rest. During the first
wave, Spain and Portugal stood apart from the Netherlands, Britain,
and France. In the second wave, when the number of major colonial powers
increased from 5 to 10, Britain and France were far ahead of their contemporaries.
At its peak in 1933, the British Empire covered over 12 million square
miles (24% of the world’s land surface) and contained nearly ¼
of the world’s population (502 million people).
The
first wave of colonialism involved conquest, plunder, slavery, and the
annihilation of indigenous people. For example, the Spaniards virtually
exterminated the Carib population on Hispaniola; in 1492, the total
number of Caribs was 400,00, but by 1548, the figure was down to 500.
The arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico resulted in the destruction of
Aztec civilization and a population decline from 13 million to 2 million
by the end of the 16th century. In Africa, the slave trade greatly reduced
the population in large parts of the Congo basin and in the West African
forest.
During
the second wave, there was less destruction and disruption of local
societies. Conditions varied from colony to colony, however. For example,
the impact of colonialism was generally greater in southern and East
Africa than in West Africa. In southern and East Africa, the British
alienated land in order to build an export-oriented economy. By denying
Africans control over the principal means of production, the European
settler population forced a change in the social organization of indigenous
society and obliged its members to participate in the development of
a new mode of production, in which the settlers and international companies
were the principal beneficiaries.
In
British West Africa, no land was alienated for European settlement,
and there were few plantations and estates. British policy was geared
to economic exploitation rather than political control, instead of acquiring
the means of production as they did in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the British
purchased the output of existing producers. To a far greater degree
than in East Africa, smallholders in West Africa were drawn into export
agriculture that made it necessary for them to make considerable adjustments
in their farming practices, land tenure arrangements, settlement, and
trading patterns.
During
the second wave of colonialism, the imperialist countries saw the underdeveloped
regions as immense supply depots for the cheap production of raw materials
from which their economies could profit. The economies of underdeveloped
countries were often deformed into subsidiaries of the colonial powers:
Jamaica became a sugar plantation, Sri Lanka a tea plantation, Zambia
a copper mine, and Arabia an oil field.
Tanzania
provides an example of how the colonial mind organized space to serve
its own imperatives. Between 1933 and 1967, the colonial space economy
rooted itself ever more firmly, as early locational decisions which
shaped the system were subsequently reinforced. The result was a concentrated
and polarized pattern of development. Throughout the period, the primate
city of Dar es Salaam increased its dominance. As the capital and hub
of regional trade routes, Dar es Salaam was linked to a network of provincial
towns. Regional towns that functioned as administrative headquarters,
transportation nodes, or centers surrounded by zones of export agriculture
grew steadily: Tanga benefited from the sisal industry, Mwanza from
the cotton-growing area to the south of Lake Victoria, and Moshi from
the nearby coffee farms on the well-watered slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Growth also occurred along transport corridors linking extractive regions
to port cities. Beyond the towns, major transport routes, and export
enclaves, levels of infrastructural development decreased sharply. Overall,
such development was greater in northern than in southern Tanzania because
the British neglected the southern part of the country and its productive
potential. In fact, parts of the south were isolated from Dar es Salaam
and the rest of the country by a lack of roads or by high water during
the rainy season.
Why
did colonialism expand at one time and contract at another? World-system
theory suggests that the key to understanding waves of colonialism is
the changing structure of the core: periods of instability and stability
in the core coincide with periods of colonial expansion and contraction
in the periphery. During periods of instability, when there is competition
for preeminence among rival core countries, colonialism contracts. A
hegemonic power can control the world without formal colonies, which
are expensive encumbrances.
Hegemony
exists when one core power enjoys supremacy in production, commerce,
and finance, and occupies a position of political leadership. The hegemonic
power controls and owns the largest share of the world’s production
apparatus. It is the leading trading and investment country, its currency
is the universal medium of exchange, and its primate city is the financial
center of the world. Because of political and military superiority,
the dominant country maintains order in the world-system and imposes
solutions to international conflicts. Consequently, hegemonic situations
are characterized by periods of peace as well as by universal ideologies
such as freedom to trade and freedom to invest.
During
a core power’s rise to hegemony, core-periphery relations become
more informally structured. Economic linkages between center and periphery
increasingly focus on the hegemonic power. This reorientation results
in decolonization. The hegemonic power relies on economic mechanisms
to extract the surplus value of the periphery. Lopsided development
between the core and the periphery flourishes, and terms of trade deteriorate
for the colonized periphery. During a power’s fall from hegemony,
rival core states, who can focus on capital accumulation without the
burden of maintaining the political and military apparatus of the supremacy,
catch up and challenge the country that dominates the world system.
Competition
exists when power in the core of the world system is dispersed among
several countries. With pluralization, competing centers control and
own a larger share of the world’s production apparatus. They increase
their share of world trade, enclose national economic areas behind tariff
and non-tariff barriers, and use their national currencies in a growing
volume of transactions. With a hegemonic power dominating the world
system, political tensions increase and can develop into armed conflicts.
With
competition, core-periphery relationships become more formally organized.
Competing core countries rely on the mechanism of colonialism to extract
surplus from the periphery. Economic linkages between the colonized
and the colonizers become more multilateral, and economic transactions
become more frequent.
World-system
theory maintains that periodic fluctuations from a single, hegemonic
power to a group of competing countries are essential to the survival
of the world system. The system would either break into separate empires
if competition at the core were to persist or mutate into world empire
if hegemony were to last. Moreover, this cyclic realignment is not limited
to colonialism but is manifested in all the ways the world system binds
itself together. For example, trade is more formally structured during
periods of core stability.
During
the 500-year history of the world system, there have been 3 periods
of formal core-periphery relations (1415-1815, 1871-1945, 1973-present)
and 2 of the informal relations (1816-1870, 1946-1972). Western Europe
began the first formal period with a “slight edge” on the
rest of the “civilized” world. Its open social structure
facilitated the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the growth
of centralized monarchies. Because there were several competing countries,
the core of the world system was unstable. This was a time of almost
constant conflict. There were 19 major wars during this period, beginning
with the Italian Wars and ending with the Napoleonic Wars. There were
religious wars, commercial rivalries, balance-of-power conflicts, and
revolutionary wars.
It
was also an age of exploration and colonization. The territorial empires
of the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French were unevenly
developed. The colonial powers occupied the America but ventured only
to the perimeters of Africa and Asia. This was due in part to European
motives and in part to the continent’s resources. Although Africa
was as defenseless as the Americas at that time, it was not as attractive
to Europeans. In general, Europeans were content with the African slaves,
gold, and ivory that required only the maintenance of coastal bases
there. Asia was not technically feasible for Europeans to acquire: it
had powerful political organizations, professional armies, and guns.
Colonial
trade in this era was politically controlled. The mercantile regulation
of trade began with the Spanish and Portuguese empires but eventually
became common to all core countries with colonial possessions. Regulations
included the exclusion of foreign ships from colonial ports of the core
country, and limitations on the manufacture of certain products in the
colonies.
The
structure of the core changed after the Napoleonic Wars. Britain emerged
as the hegemonic power, thereby creating a stable core. Competition
and conflicts among core powers declined and colonialism contracted.
The mercantile regulation of trade gave way to an era of free trade
in the 1820s. For a short period (1850-1870), Britain controlled the
world economy almost on its own. As the predominant power, Britain established
monopolist relations with most of the periphery and prevented other
core countries from interfering with its operations.
British hegemony, however, was short-lived, eroding with the onset of
the world economic crisis in the 1870s. Germany, Japan, and the U.S.
became major powers. The resulting instability that returned to the
core was reflected in two world wars and in a new wave of colonization
in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Imperial expansion was especially
rapid in Africa after 1880. The “mad scramble” for colonies
brought 96% of Africa’s territory and perhaps 92% of its people
into colonial status by 1914. From the last quarter of the 19th century
onward, trade between the core and the periphery was more formally regulated.
Tariffs rose and economic blocs based on preferences proliferated. Multinational
corporations became dominant features of world business.
By
the end of World War II, Western Europe, Japan, and the U.S.S.R. lay
in ruins. Only the U.S. emerged from the war as a tower of economic
and political strength. Core stability returned when the U.S. moved
into the vacuum left by its competitors. Colonial holdings disappeared,
and the formal regulation of trade ended in 1947 with the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade, which set out to liberalize trade along lines
more favorable to the U.S. Although the core powers remained at peace,
U.S. hegemony was contested by the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War.
The
relative decline of U.S. power became evident in 1973. The year began
with the American withdrawal from Vietnam and the collapse of the U.S.-dominated
monetary system of fixed foreign exchange rates, and it ended with the
quadrupling of oil prices by the Middle East-led oil cartel. American
political and economic hegemony was challenged by the recovery or emergence
of other capitalist countries, notably members of the European Economic
Community (EEC) [now the EU] and Japan. As before, American military
hegemony was challenged by the U.S.S.R. Even Third World countries,
who had gained access to the international organizations that were created
after World War II to reflect American interests, began to attack the
U.S. and realize some of their political objectives. For example, Third
World countries have had some success in altering the principles, norms,
rules, and decision-making procedures of multinational corporations
and international financial institutions.
The
core of the world system is moving once again from domination by a hegemonic
power to competition and rivalry among several states. The Third World
is being divided into spheres of influence—arms dependence, political
influence, and client states—instead of colonies. The emergence
of protectionist policies also signals more formal core-periphery relationships,
as does the 1975 Lomé Convention, a North-South agreement between
the EEC and 46 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific (ACP
countries). This agreement instituted a commodity price support system
that provides a framework for continuing a colonial-type relationship
and for discriminating against non-ACP countries. The EEC is the primary
trading partner for ACP countries, absorbing more than ½ of their
exports and providing nearly ½ of the imports.
Waves
of core domination over peripheral areas have become more indirect,
less disruptive, shorter, and more extensive. Nowadays, almost every
country is incorporated in some way into the world system and its complex
division of labor. Because the world system is more tightly integrated
than every before, it is tempting to suggest that the present wave of
political regulation by the core over the periphery will be shorter
and milder than in the past, and that future waves will be even more
so. A more realistic prospect is that periodic world crises will continue
to occur and will require political regulations to maintain the existing
international order. Core countries may even find the prospects for
regime maintenance more difficult because of the growth of the collective
bargaining power of the Third World.
“The
Geography of Poverty and Wealth” by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Andrew D.
Mellinger, and John L. Gallup, Scientific American, March 2001, pp.71-74.
Why are some countries stupendously rich and others horrendously poor?
Social theorists have been captivated by this question since the late
18th century, when Scottish economist Adam Smith addressed the issue
in his magisterial work The Wealth of Nations. Smith argued that the
best prescription for prosperity is a free-market economy in which the
government allows businesses substantial freedom to pursue profits.
Over the past two centuries, Smith’s hypothesis has been vindicated
by the striking success of capitalist economies in North America, western
Europe and East Asia and by the dismal failure of socialist planning
in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Smith,
however, made a second notable hypothesis: that the physical geography
of a region can influence its economic performance. He contended that
the economies of coastal regions, with their easy access to sea trade,
usually outperform the economies of inland areas. Although most economists
today follow Smith in linking prosperity with free markets, they have
tended to neglect the role of geography. They implicitly assume that
all parts of the world have the same prospects for economic growth and
long-term development and that differences in performance are the result
of differences in institutions. Our findings, based on newly available
data and research methods, suggest otherwise. We have found strong evidence
that geography plays an important role in shaping the distribution of
world income and economic growth.
Coastal
regions and those near navigable waterways are indeed far richer and
more densely settled than interior regions, just as Smith predicted.
Moreover, an area’s climate can also affect its economic development.
Nations in tropical climate zones generally face higher rates of infectious
disease and lower agricultural productivity (especially for staple foods)
than do nations in temperate zones. Similar burdens apply to the desert
zones. The very poorest regions in the world are those saddled with
both handicaps: distance from sea trade and a tropical or desert ecology.
A
skeptical reader with a basic understanding of geography might comment
at this point, “Fine, but isn’t all of this familiar?”
We have three responses. First, we go far beyond the basics by systematically
quantifying the contributions of geography, economic policy and other
factors in determining a nation’s performance. We have combined
research tools used by geographers—including new software that
can create detailed maps of global population density—with the
techniques and equations of macroeconomics. Second, the basic lessons
of geography are worth repeating, because most economists have ignored
them. In the past decade the vast majority of papers on economic development
have neglected even the most obvious geographical realities. Third,
if our findings are true, the policy implications are significant. Aid
programs for developing countries will have to be revamped to specifically
address the problems imposed by geography. In particular, we have tried
to formulate new strategies that would help nations in tropical zones
raise their agricultural productivity and reduce the prevalence of diseases
such as malaria.
“The
Geographical Divide” The best single indicator of prosperity
is gross national product (GNP) per capita—the total value of
a country’s economic output, divided by its population. A map
showing the world distribution of GNP per capita immediately reveals
the vast gap between rich and poor nations. Notice that the great majority
of the poorest countries lie in the geographical tropics—the area
between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. In contrast,
most of the richest countries lie in the temperate zones.
A
more precise picture of this geographical divide can be obtained by
defining tropical regions by climate rather than by latitude. The map
Climate Zones divides the world into five broad climate zones based
on a classification scheme developed by German climatologist Wladimir
P. Köppen and Rudolph Geiger. The five zones are tropical-subtropical
(hereafter referred to as tropical), desert-steppe (desert), temperate-snow
(temperate), highland and polar. The zones are defined by measurements
of temperature and precipitation. We excluded the polar zone from our
analysis because it is largely uninhabited.
Among
the 28 economies categorized as high income by the World Bank (with
populations of at least one million), only Hong Kong, Singapore, and
part of Taiwan are in the tropical zone, representing a mere 2% of the
combined population of the high-income regions. Almost all the temperate-zone
countries have either high-income economies (as in the cases of North
America, western Europe, Korea, and Japan) or middle-income economies
burdened by socialist policies in the past (as in the cases of eastern
Europe, the former Soviet Union and China). In addition there is strong
temperate-tropical divide within countries that straddle both types
of climates. Most of Brazil, for example, lies within the tropical zone,
but the richest part of the nation—the southernmost states—is
in the temperate zone.
The
importance of access to sea trade is also evident in the world map of
GNP per capita. Regions far from the sea, such as the landlocked countries
of South America, Africa, and Asia, tend to be considerably poorer than
their coastal counterparts. The differences between coastal and interior
areas show up even more strongly in a world map delineating GNP density—that
is, the amount of economic output per square kilometer. Geographic information
system software is used to divide the world’s land area into five-minute-by-five-minute
sections (about 100 square kilometers at the equator). One can estimate
the GNP density for each section by multiplying its population density
and its GNP per capita. Researchers must use national averages of GNP
per capita when regional estimated are not available.
To
make sense of the data, we have classified the world’s regions
in broad categories defined by climate and proximity to the sea. We
call a region “near” if it lies within 100 kilometers of
a seacoast or a sea-navigable waterway (a river, lake, or canal) and
“far” otherwise. Regions in each of the four climate zones
we analyzed can be either near or far, resulting in a total of eight
categories.
The
breakdown reveals some striking patterns. Global production is highly
concentrated in the coastal regions of temperate climate zones. Regions
in the “temperate-near” category constitute a mere 8.4%
of the world’s inhabited land area, but they hold 22.8% of the
world’s population and produce 52.9% of the world’s GNP.
Per capita income in these regions is 2.3 times greater than the global
average, and population density is 2.7 times greater. In contrast, the
“tropical-far” category is the poorest, with a per capita
GNP only about 1/3 of the world average.
“Interpreting the Patterns” In our research we have examined
three major ways in which geography affects economic development. First,
as Adam Smith noted, economies differ in their ease of transporting
goods, people and ideas. Because sea trade is less costly than land-
or air-based trade, economies near coastlines have a great advantage
over hinterland economies. The per-kilometer costs of overland trade
within Africa, for example, are often an order of magnitude greater
than the costs of sea trade to an African port. Here are some figures
we found recently: the cost of shipping a six-meter-long container from
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania—an air
distance of 7,300 kilometers—was about $1,400. But transporting
the same container overland from Dar-es-Salaam to Kidali, Rwanda—a
distance of 1,280 kilometers by road—cost about $2,500 or nearly
twice as much.
Second,
geography affects the prevalence of disease. Many kinds of infectious
diseases are endemic to the tropical and subtropical zones. This tends
to be true of disease in which the pathogen spends part of its life
cycle outside the human host: for instance, malaria (carried by mosquitoes)
and helminthic infections (caused by parasitic worms). Although epidemics
of malaria have occurred sporadically as far north as Boston in the
past century, the disease has never gained a lasting foothold in the
temperate zones, because the cold winters naturally control the mosquito-based
transmission of the disease. (Winter could be considered the world’s
most effective public health intervention.) It is much more difficult
to control malaria in tropical regions, where transmission takes place
year-round and affects a large part of the population.
According
to the World Health Organization, 300 million to 500 million new cases
of malaria occur every year, almost entirely concentrated in the tropics.
The disease is so common in these areas that no one really knows how
many people it kills annually—at least one million and perhaps
as many as 2.3 million. Widespread illness and early deaths obviously
hold back a nation’s economic performance by significantly reducing
worker productivity. But there are also long-term effects that may be
amplified over time through various social feedbacks.
For
example, a high incidence of disease can alter the age structure of
a country’s population. Societies with high levels of child mortality
tend to have high levels of fertility: mothers bear many children to
guarantee that at least some will survive to adulthood. Young children
will, therefore, constitute a large proportion of that country’s
population. With so many children, poor families cannot invest much
in each child’s education. High fertility also constrains the
role of women in society, because child rearing takes up so much of
their adult lives.
Third, geography affects agricultural productivity. Of the major food
grains—wheat, maize, and rice—wheat grows mainly in temperate
climates, and maize and rice crops are generally more productive in
temperate and subtropical climates than in tropical zones. On average,
a hectare of land in the tropics yields 2.3 metric tons of maize, whereas
a hectare in the temperate zone yields 6.4 tons. Farming in tropical
rain-forest environments is hampered by the fragility of the soil: high
temperatures mineralize the organic materials, and the intense rainfall
leaches them [the nutrients] out of the soil. In tropical environments
that have wet and dry seasons—such as the African savanna—farmers
must contend with the rapid loss of soil moisture resulting from high
temperatures, the great variability of precipitation, and the every
present risk of drought. Moreover, tropical environments are plagued
with diverse infestation of pests and parasites that can devastate both
crops and livestock.
Many
of the efforts to improve food output in tropical regions—attempted
first by the colonial powers and then in recent decades by donor agencies—have
ended in failure. Typically the agricultural experts blithely tried
to transfer temperate-zone farming practices to the tropics, only to
watch livestock and crops succumb to pests, disease, and climate barriers.
What makes the problem even more complex is that food productivity in
tropical regions is also influenced by geologic and topographic conditions
that vary greatly from place to place. The island of Java, for example,
can support highly productive farms because the volcanic soil there
suffers less nutrient depletion than the non-volcanic soil of the neighboring
islands of Indonesia.
Moderate advantages or disadvantages in geography can lead to big differences
in long-term economic performance. For example, favorable agricultural
or health conditions may boost per capita income in temperate-zone nations
and hence increase the size of the economies. This growth encourages
inventors in those nations to create products and services to sell into
the larger and richer markets. The resulting inventions further raise
economic output, spurring yet more inventive activity. The moderate
geographical advantage is thus amplified through innovation.
In
contrast, the low food output per farm worker in tropical regions tends
to diminish the size of cities, which depend on the agricultural hinterland
for their sustenance. With a smaller proportion of the population in
urban areas, the rate of technological advance is usually slower. The
tropical regions therefore remain more rural than the temperate regions,
with most of their economic activity concentrated in low-technology
agriculture rather than in high-technology manufacturing and services.
We
must stress, however, that geographical factors are only part of the
story. Social and economic institutions are critical to long-term economic
performance. It is particularly instructive to compare the post-World
War II performance of free-market and socialist economies in neighboring
countries that share the same geographical characteristics: North and
South Korea, East and West Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria,
and Estonia and Finland. In each case we find that free-market institutions
vastly outperformed socialist ones.
The
main implication of our findings is that policymakers should pay more
attention to the developmental barriers associated with geography—specifically,
poor health, low agricultural productivity and high transportation costs.
For example, tropical economies should strive to diversify production
into manufacturing and service sectors that are not hindered by climate
conditions. The successful countries of tropical southeast Asia, most
notably Malaysia, have achieved stunning advances in the past 30 years,
in part by addressing public health problems and in part by moving their
economies away from climate-dependence commodity exports (rubber, palm
oil, and so on) to electronics, semi-conductors, and other industrial
sectors. They were helped by the high concentration of their populations
in coastal areas near international sea lanes and by the relatively
tractable conditions for the control of malaria and other tropical diseases.
Sub-Saharan Africa is not so fortunate: most of its population is located
far from the coasts, and its ecological conditions are harsher on human
health and agriculture.
The
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two international
agencies that are most influential in advising developing countries,
currently place more emphasis on institutional reforms—for instance,
overhauling a nation’s civil service or its tax administration—than
on the technologies needed to fight tropical diseases and low agricultural
productivity. One formidable obstacle is that pharmaceutical companies
have no market incentive to address the health problems of the world’s
poor. Therefore, wealthier nations should adopt policies to increase
the companies’ motivation to work on vaccines for tropical diseases.
In one of our own initiatives, we called the governments of wealthy
nations to foster greater research and development by pledging to buy
vaccines for malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis from the pharmaceutical
companies at a reasonable price. Similarly, biotechnology and agricultural
research companies need more incentive to study how to improve farm
output in tropical regions.
The
poorest countries in the world surely lack the resources to revive their
geographical burdens on their own. Sub-Saharan African countries have
per capita income levels of around $1 a day. Even when such countries
invest as much as 3 or 4 percent of their GNP in public health—a
large proportion of national income for a very poor country—the
result is only about $10 to $15 per year per person. This is certainly
not enough to control endemic malaria, much less to fight other rampant
diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and helminthic infections.
A serious effort at global development will require not just better
economic policies in the poor countries but far more financial support
from rich countries to help overcome the special problems imposed by
geography. A preliminary estimate suggests that even a modest increase
in donor financing of about $25 billion per year—only 0.1 percent
of the total GNP of the wealthy nations, or about $28 per person—could
make a tremendous difference in reducing disease and increasing food
productivity in the world’s poorest countries.
| The
Wealth of Regions |
| Climate Zones |
% of World Total |
Near* |
Far* |
| Tropical |
|
|
|
| Land Area |
19.9% |
5.5% |
14.4% |
| Population |
40.3% |
21.8% |
18.5% |
| GNP |
17.4% |
10.5% |
6.9% |
| Desert |
|
|
|
| Land Area |
29.6% |
3.0% |
26.6% |
| Population |
18.0% |
4.4% |
13.6% |
| GNP |
17.4% |
3.2% |
6.8% |
| Temperate |
|
|
|
| Land Area |
39.2% |
8.4% |
30.9% |
| Population |
34.9% |
22.8% |
12.1% |
| GNP |
67.2% |
14.3% |
14.3% |
| Highland |
|
|
|
| Land Area |
7.3% |
0.4% |
6.9% |
| Population |
6.8% |
0.9% |
5.9% |
| GNP |
5.3% |
0.9% |
4.4% |
| |
|
|
|
Source:
Andrew D. Mellinger
*”Near” means within 100 kilometers of the seacoast
or a sea-navigable waterway; “Far” means otherwise.
|