Developed vs Developing Nations - GEOG 129 Human Geography: Resources, Development and Society - Winter 2024

Developed vs Developing Countries

Developed countries, also known as advanced economies, are characterized as having a mature and sophisticated economy, usually measured by gross domestic product (GDP) and/or income classification. Their citizens have access to healthcare, enjoy food security, drink clean disinfected water, and can access higher education.

Developing countries, also known as emerging economies, are countries whose standard of living, income, economic and industrial development remain more or less below average as compared to a developed country. Their healthcare is often underdeveloped, their food security can be precarious at times, clean drinking water is not always available, and accessing higher education can be difficult.

Least-developed countries also known as lesser-developed countries or less economically developed countries" (LEDC) often lack access to healthcare, regularly suffer from food insecurity, suffer from lack of access to clean drinking water, and very few citizens can undertake higher education.

Should we continue to use the term “developing world”?

Global Development a Historical Perspective

Atlas of Global Development by World Bank Staff
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9780821397589
Publication Date: 2013
The fourth edition of the Atlas of Global Development is a comprehensive guide to the most critical issues facing our changing world today. A visual guide to global development indicators, from poverty, population growth, and food production to climate change, foreign direct investment, and international trade The latest, authoritative statistics al issues. Easy-to-read graphical presentation with every topic presented by colourful world maps, tables, graphs, and photographs Topics that are shaping our world key develop from the World Banks World Development Indicators database.

Indicators and Statistical Data

World Bank - Development Indicators
The World Development Indicators is a compilation of relevant, high-quality, and internationally comparable statistics about global development and the fight against poverty. The database contains 1,400 time series indicators for 217 economies and more than 40 country groups, with data for many indicators going back more than 50 years.
Human Development Index (HDI)
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living.
Our World in Data - The Human Development Index and related indices: what they are and what we can learn from them
There are several prominent measures that try to capture these changes:

The Human Development Index (HDI)
The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI)
The Gender Development Index (GDI)
The Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI)
Statista
With a team of over 450 statisticians, database experts, analysts, and editors, Statista provides users with an innovative and intuitive tool for researching quantitative data, statistics and related information.
Fragile States Index
In a highly interconnected world, pressures on one fragile state can have serious repercussions not only for that state and its people, but also for its neighbors and other states halfway across the globe. Since the end of the Cold War, a number of states have erupted into mass violence stemming from internal conflict. Some of these crises emerge from ethnic tensions; some are civil wars; others take on the form of revolutions; and many result in complex humanitarian emergencies.
OEDC Fragility Website
States of Fragility 2022 arrives during an ‘age of crises’, where multiple, concurring crises are disproportionately affecting the 60 fragile contexts identified in this year’s report. Chief among these crises are COVID-19, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and climate change, with the root causes of multidimensional fragility playing a central role in shaping their scale and severity. The report outlines the state of fragility in 2022, reviews current responses to it, and presents options to guide better policies for better lives in fragile contexts. At the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it is more critical than ever for development partners to focus on the furthest behind: the 1.9 billion people in fragile contexts that account for 24% of the world’s population but 73% of the world’s extreme poor.

Books and Articles

Tashfeen, Z. (2018). The WTO and Its Failure to Create a Level Playing Field between Developed and Developing Nations. RSIL Law Review, 2018, 105–115.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay round in 1995. Whilst GATT only dealt with trade in goods, the WTO went further to encompass trade in services through the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); intellectual property rights through the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Recently, the Doha and Bali rounds have also included development and trade facilitation to the ambit of the WTO. The World Trade Organization had set out some laudable objectives it sought to achieve: to make trade free and fair through negotiations; to ensure predictability through transparency; and to help developing countries increase their capacities to benefit from a liberalized trade regime. Based on these objectives, the organization had immense potential. However, as will be seen in the course of this article, the World Trade Organization has time and again failed to provide a level playing field between the developed and developing nations, by enacting rules that benefit the rich over the poor countries. In other words it has "become little more than a smokescreen for the pursuit of private interests and the subordination of developing countries to the dictates of rich countries".
Uzoigwe, Godfrey N. 2019. “Neocolonialism Is Dead: Long Live Neocolonialism.” Journal of Global South Studies 36 (1): 59–87. doi:10.1353/gss.2019.0004.
During the 1950s, in what is today called the Global South—to some, a misnomer—a new concept, neocolonialism, was added to the lexicon of political thought. By the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, it had become a controversial political phenomenon. Predictably, most politicians and scholars in the West rejected the concept. By the close of the twentieth century, neocolonialism no longer occupied center stage in nationalist and scholarly discourses about the problems developing nations faced. Perspectives on this inevitable historical phenomenon came to mirror opponents' ideas on imperialism and colonialism. Those who regarded them as a bad thing were alarmed at their continued existence through the back door after independence and vociferously denounced them as predatory and nefarious, but those who regarded them as essentially a good thing equally stoutly denied the existence of neocolonialism, regarding the intentions of the industrialized West in the new nations as essentially Christian, benevolent, and beneficial. Because of the renewed scholarly interest in the subject since the 1980s, especially the widening perspectives on the concept, this article revisits the phenomenon of neocolonialism and discusses its enduring manifestations, concluding that because of its very nature, neocolonialism has all along been alive and well. The political leaders of both the developed nations and the Global South are urged, therefore, to confront the phenomenon, not as superior and inferior or [End Page 59] as colonizer and colonized but as partners in the pursuit of global peace, security, and prosperity. The conclusions are drawn from a study of a complex array of relevant sources from the 1950s to contemporary times.

Globalization and the Race to the Bottom in Developing Countries by Nita Rudra
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9780521886987
Publication Date: 2008
The advance of economic globalization has led many academics, policy-makers, and activists to warn that it leads to a 'race to the bottom'. In a world increasingly free of restrictions on trade and capital flows, developing nations that cut public services are risking detrimental effects to the populace. Conventional wisdom suggests that it is the poorer members of these societies who stand to lose the most from these pressures on welfare protections, but this new study argues for a more complex conceptualization of the subject. Nita Rudra demonstrates how and why domestic institutions in developing nations have historically ignored the social needs of the poor; globalization neither takes away nor advances what never existed in the first place. It has been the lower- and upper-middle classes who have benefited the most from welfare systems and, consequently, it is they who are most vulnerable to globalization's race to the bottom.
Canada and the Challenges of International Development and Globalization by Mahmoud Masaeli (Editor); Lauchlan T. Munro (Editor)
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9780776626369
Publication Date: 2018-08-28
What are Canada's various links with international development and globalization? They extend beyond foreign aid to diplomacy, trade, finance, aid, immigration, military intervention (both peacekeeping and combat roles), membership in a variety of international organizations, relations with indigenous peoples, and people-to-people links. This multi-disciplinary and multi-author textbook, designed for first- or second-year students, introduces the main concepts, theories, and perspectives that have shaped Canada's interactions with developing countries in a globalizing world. It starts by considering Canada as a case study in international development and globalization. It examines Canada's diplomatic, economic, military, social, immigration and aid policies, how they have changed over time and how they have interacted with each other and with Canada's treatment of Indigenous peoples. The book presents economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the process of globalization and the ways they affect Canada; examines the public institutions, private sector and civil society organizations in Canada; and explores the moral imperatives behind Canadian international policy. Finally, it examines current issues, including Canada's promotion of human rights, democracy, good governance, support to the private sector, and relations with fragile and conflict-affected states and the emerging economies. Finalist - PROSE Award, Textbook/Social Sciences January 2019 This book is published in English. - Comment se d ploient les interventions du Canada en mati re de d veloppement international et de mondialisation ? Bien au-del de l'aide l' tranger, celles-ci touchent la diplomatie, le commerce, les finances, l'aide, l'immigration, les interventions militaires, l'adh sion des organisations internationales et des liens entre personnes. Con u pour les tudiants de premi re et de deuxi me ann e du premier cycle, ce manuel multidisciplinaire est une initiation aux principaux concepts, id es, th ories et approches qui forment le contexte historique et les fondations m mes des interactions du Canada avec les pays en d veloppement l' re de la mondialisation. Il aborde la question de la diplomatie canadienne et de son volution, examine les politiques canadiennes en mati re d'immigration, d'aide, de politique, d' conomie, militaires et sociales. Il pr sente les dimensions conomiques, politiques et culturelles du processus de mondialisation et les fa ons dont elles touchent le Canada, les institutions et politiques en lien avec le d veloppement, les organismes du secteur priv et la soci t civile au Canada et les imp ratifs moraux qui sous-tendent la politique internationale canadienne. Enfin, il examine les droits humains, la d mocratie, la bonne intendance, le soutien au secteur priv , les relations avec des tats fragilis s et les liens avec les conomies en mergence. Finaliste - PROSE Award, Textbook/Social Sciences Janvier 2019 Ce livre est publi en anglais.