Geography Test - 25

The correct answer is the Carbon footprint.

The total amount of green-house gases produced, to, directly and indirectly, support human activities, is referred to as Carbon Footprint.

Demographic Transition Theory

• It predicts the shift in the population (birth and death rate) of an area.
• This theory also studies the relationship between economic development and population growth.

Demographic cycle

• According to the Demographic Transition Theory, the third stage is marked by low fertility low mortality.
• High fertility and high mortality is the first stage in a demographic cycle.
• At the beginning of the second stage, fertility remains high and increases population.
• Then fertility starts to decline and leads to a low mortality rate.
• This is the high fertility low mortality stage.
• The third stage is where fertility and mortality decreases.
• The last stage is the low fertility and low mortality stage, where both fertility and mortality even declines at a considerable rate.

Following are the economic factors that influence population distribution:

(1) Minerals: Areas with mineral deposits attract industries. Mining and industrial activities generate employment. So, skilled and semi–skilled workers move to these areas and make them densely populated. Katanga Zambia copper belt in Africa is one such good example.

(2) Urbanisation: Cities offer better employment opportunities, educational and medical facilities, better means of transport and communication.

(3) Industrialisation: Industrial belts provide job opportunities and attract large numbers of people.

Countries with higher human development are those where a lot of investment in the social sector has taken place. Altogether, a higher investment in people and good governance has set this group of countries apart from the others. The degree of social diversity in these countries is not very high. Many of the countries with a high human development score are located in Europe and represent the industrialised western world.

India is surrounded by sea from three sides and is bestowed with a long coastline. Water provides a smooth surface for very cheap transport, provided there is no turbulence. India has a long tradition of sea faring and developed many ports with place name suffixed with pattan meaning port. An interesting fact about ports in India is that its west coast has more ports than its east coast. Though ports have been in use since ancient times, the emergence of ports as gateways of international trade became important after the coming of the European traders and colonisation of the country by the British. This led to variation in the size and quality of ports. There are some ports which have very vast area of influence and some have limited area of influence. At present, India has 13 major ports and 205 notified minor and intermediate ports. In case of the major ports, the central government decides the policy and plays regulatory functions. The minor ports are there whose policy and functions are regulated by state governments. The major ports handle larger share of the total traffic.

India faced serious food shortage during 1950s and 1960s. The major item of import at that time was foodgrain, capital goods, machinery and equipment. The balance of payment was adverse as imports were more than exports, in spite of all the efforts of import substitution. After 1970s, foodgrain import was discontinued due to the success of Green revolution, but the energy crisis of 1973 pushed the prices of petroleum, and import budget was also pushed up. Foodgrain import was replaced by fertilisers and petroleum.

Post-modernism is a theoretical approach to human geography. This approach was born as a critique approach against the modernism. In this approach, the grand generalisations and the applicability of universal theories to explain the human conditions were questioned. The importance of understanding each local context in its own right was emphasised.

Proportion of literate population of a country is an indicator of its socio-economic development, as it reveals the standard of living, social status of females, availability of educational facilities and policies of the government. Level of economic development is both a cause and a consequence of literacy. In India – literacy rate denotes the percentage of population above 7 years of age, who is able to read, write and have the ability to do arithmetic calculations with understanding.

The people begin to understand their environment and the forces of nature with the passage of time. With social and cultural development, humans develop better and more efficient technology. They move from a state of necessity to a state of freedom. They create possibilities with the resources obtained from the environment. The human activities create cultural landscape. The imprints of human activities are created everywhere; health resorts on highlands, huge urban sprawls, ports on the coasts, oceanic routes on the oceanic surface and satellites in the space. The earlier scholars termed this as possibilism. Nature provides opportunities and human beings make use of these and slowly nature gets humanised and starts bearing the imprints of human endeavour.

The French established cocoa and coffee plantations in west Africa. The British set up large tea gardens in India and Sri Lanka, rubber plantations in Malaysia and sugarcane and banana plantations in West Indies. Spanish and Americans invested heavily in coconut and sugarcane plantations in the Philippines.