Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
kind of explanation may work for economies like those of Nigeria or Venezuela,
dominated by oil, but it seems untenable for more complex situations like Brazil
or China, with many resources. Auty (1994) gives another version of this kind of
argument, which he terms the “resource curse” thesis, claiming that size, whether
of physical resources or of population, and thus market size, is a problem for the
developing country. Looking at several East Asian NICS, and also at Brazil,
China, India and Mexico, he finds that the latter countries stayed too long with
autarchic policies of the isi type and delayed their development because of this.
Large reserves of minerals such as oil in Mexico, and iron ore in Brazil, tempted
the governments of these countries to try to bring in huge and expensive heavy
industries. India and China were not resource-blessed, but also tried to achieve
isi autarchy, economic independence, in the belief that their great size of
population justified all industries. They continued with such policies long after
they had been proven uneconomic.
More acceptable to students of the countries concerned may be an explanation
of failure of unconcentrated development, which starts with inward rather than
outward orientation, but explains the inward orientation both through size of
resources/population, and through the social and political processes of the
countries. Heavy industries were indeed wrongly emphasized in Brazil and
India, not simply in the belief that resources existed, or that markets existed, for
the products, but from geopolitical stances in the countries concerned. In
Argentina, as shown earlier, and also in India, China, Brazil and Mexico, it was a
matter of considerable national pride to have a strong iron and steel industry, at
any cost. Military governments also in Latin America saw a strategic need to
implant iron and steel industry to ensure supplies to the domestic military
machine. In most of the countries concerned, industries such as iron and steel
could be portrayed as regional policy (Las Truchas on the Mexican Pacific coast;
backyard steelworks in rural China; iron ore and steel works in Minas Gerais,
Rio and São Paulo states in Brazil). The failure in these countries is the failure to
adopt as a driving element the concentrated industries of the big cities, and
overinvestment, for a variety of reasons, in industries located in the peripheral
regions.
Environmental costs
Less developed countries with a programme of rapid development face one set of
problems, those of environmental conservation and management, in a
particularly acute form. Programmes of economic development in such countries
are likely to start or to amplify existing processes of soil erosion, forest
destruction, and pollution of the water and air, with little control and with dire
consequences for the future of these countries. This is true at the national level
and has been commented on in many countries. What is sometimes not
appreciated is that at the regional level, the effect of no control is still more acute,
as some regions depend entirely on one product or resource.
