Barriers and Costs of Development

• International organizations use indices of devlopemnt to help poor nations.
• UN Human Development Index
  • long and helathy life
  • knowledge
  • standard of living
  • stats
    • GDPpc
    • literacy
    • school enrollment
    • life expectancy at birth
• UN Millenium Declaration
  • eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  • universal primary education
  • gender equality
  • reduce child mortality
  • maternal health
  • HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc…
  • environmental sustainability
  • global partnership for development

Barriers to Economic Development §

Social Conditions §

• health
  • high birth rate
  • high infant mortality
  • low life expectancy
  • young population -> dependency ratio
  • no sewage
  • no health care
• education
  • not free
  • gendered
    • girls marry
    • trafficking
  • high illiteracy

Foreign Debt §

• decolonization -> foreign banks and World Bank and IMF lend new states money for development
  • structural adjustment loans: money in exchange for economic reform
• debt is impossible to pay back due to project failure/not enough tax revenue
• neoliberalism: laissez-faire economics, governmen intervention is inefficient and undesirable
  • economic control from states -> private sectors.
  • economic globalization
  • expansion of corporate control
  • Argentina got fricked in 2001 by neoliberalism + debt

Disease §

• very damaging to developing countries because of amplified effect in poor conditions and to workforce
• vectored diseases: spread by one host to another host or vector
  • warm, humid periphery/semiperiphery
  • malaria: infectious disease of mosquito
    • 150k children in periphery per month
    • tsunami has 300k children at once
    • most are < 5 yo
    • kill mosquitoes to eradicate
    • Sri Lanka DDT
      • carcinogen in nature
    • India failed to fully eradicate

Political Instability §

• not in UN Millenium Goals
• wealth gap
  • Kenya: 10% controls 40% of wealth -> 2007-2008 turmoil
• core can establish democracy, others can’t without wealth
  • Taliban in Afghanistan
  • political corruption in Zimbabwe after bad harvest
    • Mugabe kills competitors
    • Superpower boycott aid -> commoners suffer

Cost of Economic Development §

• industrial production -> air and water pollution
• agriculture -> pesticides and herbicides
• tourism -> taxing on infrastructure

Industrialization §

• export processing zones: special zones w/ favorable tax, regulatory, and trade arrangements for foreign firms
  • in 60 countries by 2000s
  • near ports
  • Mexican maquiladoras
    • northern Mexico
    • sent to US free of tariffs
    • 80% of goods to US
    • 1980s: wage differences -> high usage
    • 3000 today, 1M workers, 45% of Mexican exports
    • bad for environment
    • young men and women
    • horrible conditions
    • NAFTA
      • Tijuana
      • Ciudad Juarez
  • Chinese special economic zones

Agriculture §

• periphery produces for foreign markets
• no benefit for locals due to
  • bad organization
  • too expensive
  • fragmented land ownership
  • inefficient tools
  • low-protein crops
  • debt
• poor farmers ->
  • soil erosion
  • desertification
    • Africa

      • 50% is arid

      • semiarid land -> farm/ranch -> intense use -> desertification

Tourism §

• wealth and employment but
  • facilities owned by foreign companies
  • local jobs are low-paying and insecure
• narrow in scope and time
  • overreliance -> vulnerable when change occurs (COVID)
  • rich tourist attractions, poor local citizens
• bad for culture and environment
  • demonstration effect hurts local culture
• big investments
  • imports of materials and equipment strain supply
  • funds -> foreign entertainment, not local housing