Although Barbados achieved independence in 1966, the island elected to remain a constitutional monarchy with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II as its titular head. Only recently, 55 years later, did Barbados choose to become an independent republic (while remaining part of the Commonwealth). This map from Statista shows countries that used to be part of the British Empire: www.statista.com/chart/26297/countries-gained-independence-from-the-uk/
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Although the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 might be the newest threat to public health in southern Africa, it is far from the most serious. Even before the pandemic, roughly one-third of the ~25 million people with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa were not receiving anti-retroviral therapy. A recent study mapped out distance to the nearest health care facility, finding that more than one-third of HIV patients live more than a 60-minute walk to the nearest healthcare facility. medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-access-hiv.html
Stronger-than-usual trade winds are shifting water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, creating a La Niña effect that is expected to influence weather patterns through the winter and into the spring. Because La Niña impacts vary with the location, check out the maps in this article to see what might be in store for you: www.wsj.com/articles/la-nina-is-coming-to-shape-winter-forecasts-what-to-know-11636666122
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has declared that the Egyptian government should begin working from Egypt's new administrative capital about 30 miles east of Cairo for a six-month trial period beginning Dec. 1. The yet-to-be-named city is supposed to relieve congestion in Cairo and is being designed as Egypt's high-tech showcase. www.acud.eg/images/picture1.jpg
Fighting broke out in Ethiopia almost exactly one year ago (Nov. 3, 2020). Earlier this week, the Ethiopian government issued a state of emergency as rebels from the Tigray Defense Forces (shown in light green on this map) advance south toward the capital of Addis Ababa (where the paths shown in red intersect). upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Ethiopian_Civil_War_%282020-present%29.svg/525px-Ethiopian_Civil_War_%282020-present%29.svg.png
This New York Times article highlights an important aspect of cultural geography in central Africa: the role of cows, as wealth, as status, and as an important nutritional source. In Rwanda, milk is the drink of choice in bars, hot or cold, fresh or fermented. www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/africa/rwanda-milk-bars.html
Think you know Africa? Take this quiz from Britannica to find out: www.britannica.com/quiz/geography-of-africa-quiz Be sure to click on "results" afterwards for more information about each answer. (There is one major typo, and one question seems to not match up with the answers.)
Earlier this week, two freight trains operated by the Russian aluminum giant Rusal collided in the west African country of Guinea. The trains were carrying bauxite, the ore that is the primary source of aluminum. Guinea has the world's largest bauxite reserves; a recent coup in Guinea had already sent aluminum prices to their highest level in a decade. This map shows the world's largest known bauxite deposits: www.researchgate.net/profile/Weidong-Sun-5/publication/251702332/figure/fig3/AS:267643634581526@1440822623455/Distribution-of-the-superlarge-bauxite-deposits-in-the-world-After-Bogatyrev-etal.png
Whales began as land mammals (their closest living genetic relatives are hippos) and in the Middle Eocene completed their transition to the ocean. One of the world's premier sites for fossils of Eocene proto-whales is in what is today the Sahara Desert, specifically the Wadi al-Hitan ("Valley of the Whales") area near Faiyum in Egypt's Western Desert, southwest of Cairo. In August, an Egyptian team of paleontologists announced the discovery of a new species of proto-whale that lived in Egyptian waters 43 million years ago. www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/08/did-whales-originate-egyptian-waters
This geo-graphic looks at who was granted asylum in the U.S. in FY2019, by country of origin, and how that mix has been changing. www.statista.com/chart/25619/asylum-grants-in-the-us-by-nationality
Recent extreme weather, including both drought and frost, has damaged the current coffee crop in Brazil, which is both the world's largest coffee producer and the world's largest coffee exporter. Because coffee plants only thrive within a fairly narrow geographic band -- determined in large part by temperature, precipitation, and elevation -- scientists are on the hunt for ways to continue to grow coffee as temperatures climb. The dominant species of coffee (Coffee arabica) prefers average temperatures of 18-22◦C. Other species -- and there are apparently more than 120 other species of coffee -- have long been thought to have a worse taste or lower yield. Going back over records from nearly 200 years ago, though, a British botanist has tracked down a species of coffee, native to Sierra Leone, that tastes good and does well at temperatures as high as 26◦, giving growers hope for a new species or a crossbreeding option. www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/04/22/how-to-save-coffee-from-global-warming
A new study, from a team of human geographers, analyzed satellite imagery of 913 major flooding events around the world from 2000 to 2018 and then compared population estimates in these same locations and discovered the population in flood-prone areas has grown by up to 86 million people, 10x faster than previously thought. Much of the population growth in floodplains has been part of the rural-to-urban migration in the Global South. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/04/tens-millions-people-have-been-moving-into-flood-zones-satellite-imagery-shows/
As we are already seeing, changes in the climate do not have the same impact across all regions. This geo-graphic from Statista summarizes the changes in key elements of physical geography -- precipitation patterns and temperature -- forecast in this week's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by region. www.statista.com/chart/25511/scientific-consensus-climate-change-patterns-world-regions
And therein lies the rub: just days after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its bleak report on global warming, the Biden White House asks the OPEC+ group to pump more oil to bring down gasoline prices, which are at or near a seven-year high. OPEC+ refers to the official members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, shown in dark blue on this map, and other major petroleum producers who often coordinate with OPEC but are not members of OPEC, shown in light blue on this map. www.insightsonindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Break_through.png
Just days ago, with the Tokyo Olympics underway, the site of the original Olympic games, Olympia, Greece, was evacuated due to wildfires. Intense wildfires are also raging across multiple locations in Turkey, Italy, and elsewhere around the Mediterranean. In fact, over the last two weeks all of the countries shown in red on this map have experienced serious wildfires, many of which are still burning.
Threatening Europe with refugees appears to be a new favorite ploy in international relations. Turkey has been using this tactic for more than five years, primarily focused on keeping Syrian refugees in Turkey in exchange for money and various other EU considerations. In May, Morocco allowed illegal migrants, primarily from Sub-Saharan Africa, to "escape" into adjacent Spanish territory to show displeasure with Spain's decision to provide medical treatment for a leader of Western Sahara's Polisario Front. Now Egypt is suggesting Europe may be faced with a flood of refugees (including "youth joining terrorist groups") if European countries do not side with Egypt in its dispute with Ethiopia over the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on a section of the Blue Nile in northwestern Ethiopia. www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/egypt-warns-europe-against-illegal-immigration-amid-nile-dam-impasse
Although domestic tourism might be rebounding, the slow pace of vaccination in much of the world is expected to continue to depress international tourism. In fact, a recent UN report expects 2021 to be nearly as bad as 2020 in this regard, with estimates that global tourism will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or later. This geo-graphic shows the 10 countries that are expected to take the biggest hits to their economies in 2021 because of the lack of tourism. www.statista.com/chart/25202/gdp-losses-by-country-due-to-a-pandemic-related-reduction-in-tourism
Since the beginning of the civil war in neighboring Syria 10 years ago, Lebanon has hosted the largest number of externally displaced people on a per-capita basis. At one point, as many as one in four people in Lebanon were Syrian refugees. In 2020, the island of Aruba (technically part of the Netherlands) supplanted Lebanon as the host of the greatest per-capita number of externally displaced people, most of whom have fled nearby Venezuela. This geo-graphic, based on UN data, shows the eight countries hosting the most externally displaced people on a per-capita basis: www.statista.com/chart/3576/the-countries-with-the-most-refugees-per-capita
Demographically, at least, Africa is the continent of the future. Will the money follow? This map shows where venture capital (VC) investment is flowing into Africa. (Interestingly, many startups that raise money in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and top VC market, are not incorporated in Nigeria. The same is not true for Kenya, the 2nd biggest VC market in Africa.) www.statista.com/chart/24911/vc-investment-by-country-in-africa
Under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Debt Service Suspension Initiative, 73 of the world's poorest countries have been eligible to suspend payments on external debt through Dec. 2021 in order to "concentrate their resources on fighting the pandemic and safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of millions of the most vulnerable people." This interactive map from HowMuch.net allows users to see which countries (in pink) have taken advantage of the DSSI program and, perhaps more interesting, which other countries hold that debt (in blue after clicking on a pink country). howmuch.net/articles/the-state-of-external-debt
Spain has two autonomous exclaves in North Africa: Melilla (on Morocco's northeastern coast) and Ceuta (on the Moroccan coast near Gibraltar). Ceuta was in the news this week when as many as 8,000 would-be migrants to the European Union, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa, decided to swim from Morocco to Ceuta or climb the fence separating the two territories. Although Morocco normally polices the border to prevent that from happening, Moroccan officials apparently chose to express their displeasure with Spain's decision to admit the leader of Western Sahara's Polisario Front to a Spanish hospital by ... not. Most of the would-be migrants have since been sent back to Morocco.
ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/6D4E/production/_102028972_ceutamelilla9760618.png Joining Gorongosa National Park to the north, Mozambique has a new national park near its border with Zimbabwe, created in the Chimanimani Mountains where, just a few decades ago, wildlife poaching was a significant source of funding and food for the armed factions that fought in Mozambique's civil wars. www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/travel/mozambique-national-park.html
Students in my "Hands-On Geography" and "Geography: Live Online!" classes learn about the relationship between tectonic plates and various geographic features. This map, based on the movement and rifting of the African Plate, shows what Africa, southern Europe, and western Asia are anticipated to look like in 10 million years. www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/n44s8b/africa_10_million_years_later_based_on_current/
A recent study published in Nature Geoscience finds that 64% of arable land worldwide -- including much of the world's most productive, intensively farmed land -- is at risk of poisoning by pesticides. The problem is most severe in China, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This map shows the areas at greatest risk (the darker the color, the greater the projected risk). scitechdaily.com/64-of-farmland-at-risk-of-pesticide-pollution-revealed-in-global-map-of-agricultural-land-across-168-countries/
A recent assessment by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund finds that the combination of debt, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, and climate change may push a growing number of countries to the brink -- and, with them, the global economy if action is not taken.
"Take Belize, Fiji and Mozambique. Vastly different countries, they are among dozens of nations at the crossroads of two mounting global crises that are drawing the attention of international financial institutions: climate change and debt. ... One of the countries at the crossroads of the climate and debt crises is Belize, a middle-income country on the Caribbean coast of Central America. Its foreign debt had been steadily rising for the last few years. It was also feeling some of the most acute effects of climate change: sea level rise, bleached corals, coastal erosion. The pandemic dried up tourism, a mainstay of its economy. Then, after two hurricanes, Eta and Iota, hit neighboring Guatemala, floods swept away farms and roads downstream in Belize. Today, the debt that Belize owes its foreign creditors is equal to 85 percent of its entire national economy. The private credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its creditworthiness, making it tougher to get loans on the private market. The International Monetary Fund calls its debt levels 'unsustainable.' ... Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are important lenders, but so are rich countries, as well as private banks and bondholders. The global financial system would face a huge problem if countries faced with shrinking economies defaulted on their debts. ... "And then there’s Mozambique. The sixth-poorest country in the world. It was already sinking under huge debts, including secret loans that the government had not disclosed, when, in 2019, came back-to-back cyclones. They killed 1,000 people and left physical damages costing more than $870 million. Mozambique took on more loans to cope. Then came the pandemic. The I.M.F. says the country is in debt distress. Six countries on the continent are in debt distress, and many more have seen their credit ratings downgraded by private ratings agencies. In March, finance ministers from across Africa said that many of their countries had spent a sizable chunk of their budgets already to deal with extreme weather events like droughts and floods, and some countries were spending a tenth of their budgets on climate adaptation efforts. 'Our fiscal buffers are now truly depleted,' they wrote. In developing countries, the share of government revenues that go into paying foreign debts nearly tripled to 17.4 percent between 2011 and 2020, an analysis by Eurodad, a debt relief advocacy group found." www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/climate/debt-climate-change.html |
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