Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
course, but it was brought back by remedial measures, including an opening of
the economy to competition and the promotion of exports to solve the debt crises
of the 1980s.
One aspect not tackled with respect to the other NICS may be raised here. This
is the problem of ecology and conservation. Because this is a big country, the
possibilities for resource degradation are larger. There are also special features,
notably the very heavy rainfall, averaging 2650 mm per annum in Java,
combined with steep slopes and often loose volcanic soils (Hardjono 1994).
Some of the soil erosion problem relates to deforestation, linked to the major
forest products industry. In the Lesser Sunda Islands (E. Nusa Tenggara), 59 per
cent of the forest land is degraded, and 30 per cent of other classes of land. Some
forest destruction is due to shifting farmers, expanding their cultivation into
higher lands for food crops, and farmers invading old plantations (crops such as
tea gave good soil protection) to plant vegetables. Problems of nature
conservation, as in the large Latin American countries, remain as secondary
interests among societies where these issues have not been debated and where
democratic opinion has not been fully aired.
Macro-scale geographic effects
Development impulses operate at many scales. The largest is the global scale,
but below this, and above the national scale, there are some that can be described
as macroregional. East Asia provides an example of this kind of phenomenon,
where one country operates as the leader, and from it there are linkages to a
number of neighbours. For Asia's Pacific Rim, the leader, since the Second
World War, has been Japan. This country's economic growth rate still exceeds
that of western Europe or the USA, but it is slowing. From the period 1970-78 to
the period 1985- 94, the growth rate has been more than halved, from 7.8 per
cent to 3.2 per cent, and it will probably continue to decline as Japan becomes a
mature post-industrial society. These figures should be compared with those for
the NICS in
Table 8.1
, showing a rapid increase through the 1980s.
For Japan the growth pains of rapid expansion occurred in the 1950s and
1960s, when the most rapid economic growth took place. Huge rural-urban
migration occurred and interregional differences in income were at their highest
levels. Since then, social concerns have broadened out to include regional
development, pushing new industries away from the main cities, with an increase
in the supply and quality of housing, and the improvement of physical
infrastructure such as roads, sewers and city parks, on all of which measures
Japan lies well below Western countries (Abe 1996).
But around Japan, other countries of the Pacific Rim have captured the growth
syndrome in similar fashion. The most outstanding are the East Asian Tigers
(Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea), all of which have
experienced, over the 1985-94 period, rates of per capita GDP growth
comparable to Japan in the 1970s. Behind them in the train of development lie a
