State of the World

[drplokta]

So, disregarding the dodgy anecdotal evidence, how are the developing countries and the world's poor actually doing from globalisation? Karl Schroeder (an excellent SF author whose novels Ventus and Permanence you should all read) has posted some figures from the UN. And the answer is, they're doing very well indeed.

From 1982 to 2002:

• World infant mortality per 1000 live births dropped from 86.7 to 52.4
  
• Calories of food per capita in poor countries went from 2382 to 2740
  
• Percentage of households with access to safe water supplies went from 60.7% to 80.9% -- more households now have safe water than the total number of households in 1982, I should imagine
  
• Literacy rate in poor and middle income countries went from 64.7% to 78%
  
• World life expectancy went from 56.8 years to 63.8 years, despite the impact of AIDS

Apparently, the world is not going to hell in a handbasket, but rather in the other direction.

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting article in New Scientist this week with regard to rain forests. It appears that prior to 150 years ago, Ascension Island was pretty well bare. (Being an extremely long way from anywhere, this is unsurprising.)

Then some plants were introduced.

There is now a full scale rain forest on the mountain, rather against all the theories that say rain forests have to evolve over hundreds of millennia.

The result implies that rain forests can be reinstated (given the political will).

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

given the political will

Precisely. But political will requires politicians to think long-term, and very few of them do. I see not the slightest political will to -- for example -- stop turning the Amazonian forests into cattle pasture.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure this is entirely the case...

The soil nutrients on Ascension will not have been used much. In a rain forest most of the nutrients are in the forest, not the soil. Chop down the trees and cart them away for wood, and you have an impoverished soil which can't regrow.

What Ascension shows is that rain forests can fill land that is ready for them, but land in clearcut rain forest won't be ready.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

What soil nutrients? This was bare mountain side that became rain forest.

That's part of the point - the lack of nutrients isn't the barrier they thought it was.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Can you point me to a proper reference for this?

I find it hard to believe that a full rain forest can grow ex nihilo. I also find it hard to believe that there was a 'bare' mountainside with no nutrients whatsoever. I suspect that at the very least there will be quite literally a shitload of guano, and since this is rich in nitrates, one of the key nutrients missing from established rain forest soil, this could explain a lot of the sudden growth.