Lesson video

Hello, geographers.

My name's Mrs. Griffiths.

And today's lesson's all about the causes of inequalities.

So you'll be aware of the development gap between low income countries and high income countries, and also you've got these newly emerging economies.

But what are the causes of those big gaps? So we're gonna be thinking about physical and human geography today.

Let's get started.

Okay, so our outcome is I can understand a range of causes of global inequality, including physical, historical, economic, and political causes.

That's our outcome for today.

And we have some keywords.

Firstly, we have topography, the shape and height of the land.

Landlocked, being surrounded by land of other countries, having no coast.

Colonialism, the occupation, management, and control of one country by another, often involving exploitation of its people and resources.

International relations, the way in which nations interact with and regard each other in relation to political, economic, economic, sorry, and culture.

And then neocolonialism, the indirect control of one country by another via economic power or cultural influence.

Our lesson breaks down into two chunks.

Firstly, we have does physical geography cause inequality? And secondly, we have what role does human geography play in inequality? Let's start with the physical side.

So a development gap exists between lower income countries, newly emerging economies, and higher income countries.

But what are the causes? We have economic causes.

We have political causes, historical causes, and physical causes relating to physical geography.

And that's what I want to start with today, but you can see where we're gonna go with this lesson.

We've got four different causes to examine.

The physical geography of a country can affect its development in a number of ways.

Now here, we have four clues, four photo clues.

How many physical causes can you identify? So can you identify physical geography causes of inequality from those images? Okay, let me go through that for you then.

So we have climate, that dry patch soil.

Topography, those flooded cars driving along flooded road.

Location, the mountainous environment.

And hazards, an image of house there that has started to crumble in the face of earthquakes.

Let's have a look at each one of those in turn then.

Climate.

Arid or semi arid-climate limits local food production.

Topography.

So if that's the height and the shape of the land, we're talking about, for example, where elevation is going to affect the impact of sea level rise.

Location.

So some places are remote or some countries are landlocked, which reduces trade because trade is more costly.

And hazards, earthquakes, eruptions and tropical storms, risk disaster.

So four different elements or aspects of physical geography that causes inequality.

Check for you here.

Which of the following are physical factors that could limit economic development? And we have arid climate, colonialism, earthquakes, and low line topography.

Pause the video and talk to your partner or have a think about which of those could limit economic development.

And if you said A, C, and D, you're absolutely right.

Another check for you here.

Which of the following physical factors could be an advantage for economic development? And we have fertile soils, mineral rich geology, and natural port, and polar climate.

And if you said fertile soils, A, B, mineral-rich geology, and C, a natural port could all be advantages for economic development, you'd be absolutely right.

I think a polar climate potentially would be holding back economic development if you think about all the energy that would be needed to support human life in that environment.

So topography is the shape and the height of the land.

And Nepal is a low income country in Southeast Asia pictured here.

Topography is one aspect of its physical geography that affects its economic progress, and this is how.

Nepal has a land border with China, but that land border is defined by the Himalayan mountains, which you'll remember includes the highest mountains in the world.

Mountainous terrain means infrastructure linking more remote rural communities is poor.

It's poorly developed because it's so costly to build.

Landslides and earthquakes, risk disaster.

As such, communities are hard to reach, therefore, as a result of the poor communications.

So we can see how we start with a physical aspect, aspect of the physical geography and how it really compounds poverty, particularly in more rural communities.

Here, we have a to topographical map of Nepal where the colour on the map, if we look at the key, relates to the height of the land, and the white is there indicating everything above say 4,000 metres above sea level.

So we can see that the Himalayas picked out along that land border with China.

And Nepal is not only hampered perhaps by mountainous terrain, but it also is landlocked.

Here, we can see it's landlocked between China and India.

What impact does being landlocked have on Nepal do you think? Well, Nepal depends on India for most of its imports, including fuel.

In 2015, a severe earthquake and aftershocks hitting Nepal triggering landslides.

At the time, Nepal's trade with China was increasing a threat to India.

So what happened was an Indian fuel blockade, which actually hampered the international relief effort, which further impoverished the country.

So we can see the interaction there between the physical geography and international relations, or we might say political causes of inequality.

True or false? Quick check for you.

Topography is the only cause of Nepal's limited development.

Is that true or false? And remember I'm gonna ask you to explain why in a moment.

That is false.

Now, why is that? Well, Nepal's physical location being landlocked limits trade, which in turn limits development.

So it's not just topography.

Further, we've got the idea of natural hazards.

Natural hazards such as earthquakes, damage essential infrastructure affecting economic progress in Nepal.

So topography is not the only cause, it's just one of three different causes we've discussed.

Switching to a different part of the world now.

The African Sahel is a region of hot, semi-arid climate, sandwich between, on the one hand, the Sahara desert in the north of the African continent and a region of savanna which runs just north of.

Well, it's tropical rainforest over the equator, of course, isn't it? So the Sahel is that orange area that sandwiched between those two biomes flagged.

Now, food production in the Sahel is threatened by drought, especially in the Western Sahel.

Famine and malnutrition result limiting the life chances of children under five in the region in particular.

So we can see how physical geography is having a role here in holding back economic development.

But is the physical environment the only factor limiting development in the Sahel? What do you think? Well, no, it's not.

So let me highlight two human processes that are linked to it.

So human induced climate change makes the risk of drought worse.

So the human's activities involving burning fossil fuels and what have you that is changing our climate by the enhanced greenhouse effect is making the risk of drought worse.

Conflict in this region has also created high food prices and displaced millions of people in the region.

So the human geography of this area matters.

The Sahel region runs through five of the 10 least developed countries according to the UN's Human Development Index.

And they're listed there.

So true or false? The semi-arid climate of the Sahel region is the only cause of famine.

Remember, I'm gonna ask you to explain your answer in a second.

So pause the video and discuss that with a partner.

And if you said false, the semi-arid climate is not the only cause.

Can you explain why? The answer we had was that farmers face intermittent drought and crop failure as a result of the climate, but this is not the only cause.

Conflict is a political cause leading to higher food prices and displaced communities that are more vulnerable to the disruption of food supplies.

Well done if you have an answer like that.

Okay, I have a practise task for you here.

Question one, you need an atlas or online resources, so you need to grab that in a second because we've got 10 countries listed here that are ranked lowest in the UN's Human Development Index, most recent one, and these are Somalia, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Mali, Burundi, Yemen, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone.

Question A states label countries in this list that are landlocked.

So that's your task.

I want you to label on the map on a map of Africa those countries that are landlocked only.

Then secondly, I'd like to you to ring any landlocked countries also part of the semi-arid Sahel region.

And I'd also like you to give the map a title.

Okay, so that's my first practise task.

Then I'd like you to explain two ways in which Nepal's physical geography has limited its economic development.

Here's a hint.

I'd like to write a sentence explaining each cause.

And we've got a photo clue there, that rural community in the lower income country of Nepal.

So you need to pause the video, have a go at that practise task.

You've got two questions to answer, haven't you? And then restart it when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, how did you get on with that mapping exercise? Here's our map and what we've done is we've used numbers within the countries that were landlocked.

And then we've got a number key down the side of the map.

So we can see that of the 10, actually there were seven countries that are landlocked.

So of those 10 least developed countries worldwide, seven are landlocked.

Then if we put a ring around them to show which ones are in the Sahel, they've got the double influence of climate, that semi-arid climate and being landlocked.

And those are Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.

Well done if you've got that right.

And then what about title? Our title here was landlocked countries with a low rank in the human development index.

Well done if your answer looked like that.

Secondly, you are asked to explain two ways in which Nepal's physical geography has limited its economic development.

Your answer might sound a bit like this one.

Mountainous terrain means that it's expensive to develop new road infrastructure in some areas.

So rural communities don't have easy access to business services in the cities.

The presence of natural hazards such as earthquakes in Nepal risks disaster as people in remote areas that are cut off by landslides, without aid.

So we've got two different ways in which Nepal's physical geography limits its economic development.

Well done if you have an answer a bit like that.

I'm sure you did.

Okay, so we thought in quite a lot of detail about how physical factors linked to the physical geography of a country cause inequality, but what role does human geography play? While physical geography has an impact on inequality so too does human geography.

And if we look at the three other legs we have on our diagram here, we've got to look at economic causes, we need to have a look at political causes, and I've touched a little bit on that with our last example.

But let's think about historical causes of inequality first, historical causes of that development gap.

There are historical causes of inequality that still shape the pattern of global inequalities today.

And here, we've got a map, which appears to be lots of European nations and then the African continents.

So what sort of map are we looking at here? That's right, this is a map showing the extent of colonialism in Africa by 1913.

So a specific date linked to it.

Following the Berlin Conference in 1884, so a bit of history for us here, European countries competed to take control of land within the African continent.

It was divided and remapped.

And here, we're talking about military might overcoming legal rights.

So the sort of illegal capture of the African continent and the lands of African peoples who were already living there, of course, being taken from them.

80% of Africa was free in 1884.

Within 30 years, 90% was controlled by European nations.

Borders were drawn often by people with no experience in the field.

Why might this have produced straight line borders? Have a think about that one.

Well, we have an answer here that says quick and easy to draw on a map of the continent.

Yeah, straight lines are quick and easy to draw.

So it suited an international competition for land.

Was that what happened? Borders created by European colonialists meant that nomadic pastoral farmers were not able to migrate.

So if we think about farmers that have herds of cattle and they're moving them around to graze, perhaps following the rains, they were no longer able to migrate when they faced with a new border that had been created with no thought to how people were using this space.

Existing communities claims to land and resources were overridden or disrupted.

I hinted at that already.

So this was a huge impact on people and the kind of economic progress of the countries involved.

Today, countries with unnatural borders, so borders created by colonialists with no reference to physical geography or where people lived and have divided communities, have actually caused huge economic problems. They have the greatest economic problems worldwide.

Check for you then.

The reason that the African continent has straight international borders is because Europeans knew, dot, dot, dot.

How would you go about finishing that sentence? Have a look at my options, have a think about it, and then restart when you have the answer.

And if you said well, A is right, but also C is right, well done.

So the reason the African continent had straight international borders is because Europeans knew little about its physical geography and ethnic groups, true.

And competition meant they were under pressure to map it quickly, also true.

Africa does not have very straight rivers which form natural boundaries.

Impacts of colonialism on the African continent include, dot, dot, dot.

Have a look at those sentence ends, which ones would be correct? And if you said, well, there are two right answers there.

So those impacts include nomadic pastoral farmers were not able to migrate according to their lifestyle.

B, right.

And then C, existing communities lost their claim to land and resources.

C is also right.

Well done.

So let's have a look at the British Empire now.

Pink on this map represents part of the British empire, as we said in 1913.

Can you see the broken and somewhat wiggly line of British colonies that once ran from Cape Town, South Africa and the south there, that's a green dot, to Port Said, Cairo in the north, also a green dot on my map? Well, this is a cartoon of a man called Cecil Rhodes who was a British colonialist, and this cartoon's called the Rhodes Colossus because he proposed a railway that was going to link Britain's colonies in 1892, right the way from Cape Town to Port Said.

In reality, it never happened.

The UK only invested in rail links that would help them export valuable raw materials.

The needs of local people were neglected.

So that railway never happened.

And I want to focus in on a particular part of the British Empire, which at the time was known as northern right Rhodesia but today is an independent country called Zambia.

We've touched on the historical causes of inequality and it's low level of income and economic development.

What are its other causes? Well, Zambia's physical geography has affected its development, and here we can see it's landlocked, but international politics also has an effect.

How does this play out? Well, as we've said, Zambia is landlocked.

Here we can see on the map, it's sandwiched between all these other African countries without a coastline.

And the fact it's landlocked means that its trade depends on access to other people's ports.

So accessing the coast by its neighbours.

Trade depends on maintaining good international relations.

And so the two things are inextricably linked.

If we have a a little focus in on what that means for a particular industry, Zambia is very dependent on its export of copper.

And so its copper belt region is really important.

Here, we can see it's located close to its northern border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Its main copper exports go south or east to foreign ports.

Now, why is that? Well, Zambia has been independent since 1964, but still relies, as I said, on copper exports as it did under colonial rule.

But in the 1970s, so up to the 1970s, that meant exporting those exports via railroad to the south via Zimbabwe and South Africa, which had been designed by the British.

So literally, the inheritance of colonialism.

But interestingly, in the 1970s, a railway was funded by Zambia, Tanzania, and China to avoid those apartheid ruled nations.

So Zambia had to cooperate with Tanzania and China to fund that railway line to maintain its export of its most valuable goods.

So we can see how politics comes into play here alongside the physical geography.

So we talked about physical geography, we've talked about politics.

What about economic causes? There are economic causes of inequality.

In low income countries, most of the populations employed in primary industries, mining, farming, and fishing.

And these produce raw materials like iron ore and wheat commodities which are traded cheaply within the global economy.

However, oversupply of such commodities, for example, as a result of erratic weather, can reduce their global price.

And with much smaller economies, low income countries cannot influence the trade rules of high income countries like the USA or any like China.

So we've got a series there of linked economic causes of inequality there.

What about Zambia? Well, I mentioned copper to you, didn't I? And here, we've got a visualisation of Zambia's exports for 2022 by value where the different exports are drawn to scale as boxes to represent them.

What do you notice? What is it mostly selling? Okay, so we can see that raw copper is really important to Zambia, creating 44.

5% of the value.

We also have refined copper, which means copper that's been processed to an extent making up almost another 20%.

And gold also very valuable to Zambia as an export.

Now, copper actually makes up more than 60% of the value of Zambia's exports, as we can see between the raw and the slightly processed material.

So we've got what we've got there.

What the UN term it has is overdependence on a single export.

Meaning its economy is particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in price.

And we have a graph there showing the change in the price of copper per tonne over time.

Now, if the price of copper falls, the overall value of Zambia's export decreases significantly, which means it has less money to pay for imports, which is going to be damaging to economic development clearly.

Price fluctuation can result in a trade surplus or a trade deficit.

Okay.

So the value of exports, if it's larger than the value of inputs, that might lead to a trade surplus, which would be good for the government.

However, as mentioned, if the value of imports is greater than the value of exports, as we've just seen as perhaps the price of copper falls, then the government finds it and the country finds itself in a situation of trade deficit.

What's happened in Zambia, as we've seen years of trade deficit led to the Zambia gov borrowing money and landing the country in a lot of debt.

That becomes a problem over time because debt really limits development.

Zambia's lenders demanded interest on the debt, meaning it has less money for public services.

And that has a knock on impact on the people that live in the country, clearly.

True or false.

Quick check for you here.

The problem with an economy that depends on a single commodity is that the global price can fluctuate.

Is that true or false, and why? That's right it's true.

What was your explanation of why? We had commodities fall in price of the supplies greater than the demand within the global market.

Low income countries that export just a handful of different commodities risk losing money if their global price falls.

I'm sure you had an answer like that.

Well done.

True or false? If the value of imports, so that's good's coming into the country, is greater than the value of exports, then a country has a trade surplus, is that true or false, and why? That's false.

What was your explanation about why? So value of imports, if that's greater than the value exports, that is in fact a trade deficit, not a trade surplus.

And that deficit is a problem over time as it can lead to government borrowing an increase in the debt.

Many low income countries are seriously in debt.

Well done if you've got that one right.

Now, we talked about what Zambia exports, but what about where do those exports go.

Here, we have a different visualisation and it shows us the countries that Zambia trades with.

And again, it's drawn to scale.

What can you tell about which countries are its key trade partners? Well, if you said to me Switzerland, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are where the exports go, you'd be absolutely right.

China is clearly one of Zambia's most important trade partners.

In recent decades, China has invested in Zambia's mineral industry to ensure that Chinese factories can continue to manufacture goods for export because they're really dependent on Zambia's copper.

And further, China's gone further than that.

China has lent Zambia money.

So they've invested in businesses, but they also lent the government money to improve its infrastructure, including its road network and building sports stadia.

China's economic and political influence in Zambia, as we can see now, is pretty huge and it's seen by other nations as this term neocolonialism.

Why is that? What do you think? Why is that term used? Well, we've seen Zambia really relies on exporting copper and then China is one of its major trade partners.

I've just told you all about how China actually has lent Zambia lots of money, so Zambia owes China billions of dollars now.

And China's human rights record has been questioned.

Zambia's workers have been exploited for working long hours and beyond that, health and safety rules have been ignored leading to accidents in Zambian mines.

So we can see that really big economic and political influence that China has over Zambia, not really benefiting Zambia and its people.

So if I was to say to you, final check, which of the following are causes of a gap between the economic development of the UK and Zambia? Which of those are causes? Well, if you said all four, you'd be absolutely right.

Well done.

Now, let's have a look at a practise task.

I've got a different visualisation here for you, which is in fact the UK.

So it's the UK's exports by value.

The UK sells most exports by value to the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, and China.

And we've got the statistics there to show what percentage of exports by value go to those countries.

But the questions are as follows, what is the UK's largest export by value? And secondly, describe three differences between Zambia's exports and the UK's exports, so you're going to need to compare the two.

I have a second task for you.

Uneven development has historical, political, and economic causes.

Explain the impact of one of these on a country you have studied.

Okay, so I suggest you pause the video now and have a go at those two tasks.

Remember with that second one, you just need to pick which one you're going to have a go at, historical, political, or economic causes.

You could talk about Nepal, but I'm suggesting you might focus on Zambia.

Okay, how do we get on then? Our first question, what is the UK's largest export by value? So we have machinery, mechanical appliances and parts is the correct answer.

I'm sure you had that.

But when you went to describe three differences between Zambia's exports and the UK's exports, I wonder what you chose.

This is what we chose.

So we have 60% of the value of Zambia's exports are based on copper, whereas only a small proportion, less than half a percent of the UK's exports are copper.

Zambia relies on a few primary products, whereas the UK has a much more diverse range of exports.

The largest type of exports, machines, makes up only 21.

5% of the total, for example.

So machines are also a manufactured product.

So we've got a whole range of different differences here, haven't we? China is the UK's fourth largest export destination, but second for Zambia.

So maybe you made similar comparisons or you picked up on some different things, but they're quite different in terms of their exports.

Okay.

Then question two.

There's a bit of a more challenging task, wasn't it? 'Cause we had to talk about what the impact was of one of these kind of human geography causes of inequality.

And here, we've picked historical causes.

Zambia is an LIC in Southern Africa that was once a colony of the British empire.

One impact of colonialism was that Zambia's economic development was limited as British companies exported raw materials to support British industry, and profits went overseas.

Moreover, while some infrastructure was designed and overseen by the British during colonial rule, railways were only built to support exports, so those British exports.

Infrastructure to meet local people's needs was neglected.

So colonialism is a key historical cause of inequality.

So if you answer this question based on historical causes, perhaps you had something similar if you were going to answer linking to Zambia.

I like the way you've used the word colonialism there.

And we have a different answer here, which is all about economic causes.

So maybe you took up the economic mantle here and had a go at this one.

Zambia is an LIC in Southern Africa, that depends on few primary sector exports.

Copper makes up more than 60% of the value its exports.

Meaning if the world price falls, this has a big impact on its economy, limiting spending on public services.

Zambia has borrowed money to invest in things like roads and now must try to pay the debt back.

It borrowed billions from China, which is also where a lot of its primary exports go.

So China has a lot of economic power over Zambia, seen as neocolonialism.

Meaning not all local decisions taken benefit Zambians.

There's quite a lot in that answer, isn't there, in terms of talking about overdependence on a few exports and the way we've got debt issues and bringing in that key term neocolonialism.

So well done if your answer looked a bit like that.

Let's sum up then what have we covered today.

We've covered quite a lot looking at these courses of global inequalities or the development gap.

The physical geography of a country can affect its development in a number of ways.

Arid and semi-arid climates, for example, limit food production, and infrastructure may be poorly developed in mountainous regions.

However, physical factors interact with a country's human geography because there are historical as well as economic and political causes of inequality too.

Colonialism, neocolonialism, and reliance on the exports of a few primary products are key causes of the limited economic development of low income countries.

Phew, we had a lot to do in that lesson, didn't we? Well done to you if you work really well all the way through the lesson, I'm sure you did.

I will see you very soon.