Worldwide Land Use Patterns: 1700-1990
NASA has produced a fascinating series of maps of the world illustrating changing land-use patterns from 1700 through 1990. NASA’s main reason for creating this series of maps is to advance a hypothesis about land use and global warming, but a quick look at the maps themselves reveals another interesting observation:
Land Use - 1700
Land Use - 1900
Land Use - 1990
Among environmentalists, it is a shibboleth that preservation of existing environments and ecosystems is a priori a good thing. But on this map the parts of the world that changed the least from 1700-1990 are among the poorest regions of the world.
Just take one long look at Africa — almost no land use change in 300 years, and nothing but vast tracts of unending poverty.
Source:
Landcover Changes May Rival Greenhouse Gases As Cause Of Climate Change. NASA, October 1, 2002.
The Worldwide Land Use Patterns: 1700-1990 by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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July 15th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Ever though that there may be other reasons for poverty than the preservation of natural resources?
Sure, cut down a tree and use it as acre could help.
But it will defintely not solve the problems of corruption, trade restrictions etc.
The correlation made here is more than only one-dimensional,
Best,
Miriam