Geography Matters

Climate Realism: Facing the Facts about Energy

In this episode I discuss the economics of climate change and energy policy with Professor Sir Dieter Helm, who is professor of Economic Policy at Oxford University. He has had a long interest in the economics of energy and energy policy and the links to climate change. He has authored several books on the subject including ‘The Carbon Crunch: how we are getting climate change wrong’ 2012; ‘Burnout: the Endgame for Fossil Fuels’ 2017 ‘Net Zero: how we stop causing climate change’ in 2020 and ‘Climate Realism: facing the facts about Energy’ 2026. I started by asking him about global warming and he stressed that the starting point is the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has risen from about 275 ppm before the Industrial Revolution to 425 ppm today. It has been going up by about 2ppm a year and by 3ppm in the last couple of years and at current rates of increase is on course to double to 500 ppm by 2050. He argues that for all the talk about the transition from fossil fuels, there hasn't been one. They remain over 80% of world energy supply. Hydro, biomass, solar and wind energy all still remain bit players. And with the growth of AI and data centres the drive for more energy and more electricity is only going to increase. He points out that if the world economy grows by, say 3% a year, it will double in size by 2050: and that is likely to mean double our energy requirements. He is not a climate change denier - quite the contrary - but he argues that it is deluded to assume that we can easily transition to net zero. He says that it is pointless to talk about climate optimism or pessimism and that the only sensible position to take is climate realism which looks at the facts. He argues that there has never been a transition from wood to coal to oil to gas. We have just used more of everything and that for all the talk about renewables the big problem is they only form a small part of overall energy use. He is also similarly critical about the term 'net zero' is bandied about. He argues that the only way of Britain reaching net zero is by further de-industrialisation and importing more energy, like oil and gas, from abroad. He makes the point that national targets for net zero are largely pointless if countries are importing their energy and their electric vehicles and the like from abroad where they are made using Chinese coal or Chilean copper. It is global energy use which is crucial and British claims to be a global leader to net zero are simply delusional when other countries like India, China, the USA, Nigeria and Indonesia are burning more coal, gas and oil. Its a bleak analysis but a very important one. Hence the title Climate Realism.

The geography of elections in Britain

I am very pleased in this episode to have Professor Sir John Curtis as my guest. John is widely regarded as one of Britain's leading experts on voting and elections in Britain and we discuss the geography of elections, particularly focusing on Britain. I started by suggesting to John that there are three key aspects to understanding patterns of voting and elections. The first is the geography of the electorate in terms of age, class, sex, ethnicity and religion etc; the second is the geographical structure of electoral areas and the third is the nature of the electoral system itself. John started by noting that the importance of the third of these. Britain, like many other countries, has an electoral system which is structured geographically into number of seats (about 650 in Britain) and candidates stand for election in each seat. But in the Netherlands there is a single national list, with parliamentary seats allocated by the total number of votes with a minimum threshold. Something similar applies in Greece. We then moved on to look at the key factors which influence the pattern of voting in Britain and the ways this has changed over time. John highlights the traditional north south divide in voting in Britain with Labour dominating historically in the old industrial areas of the Midlands and the north and the Conservatives dominating in the more affluent areas of the south. But he notes that this pattern began to break down in Britain around 2010 and subsequently the electoral map has become more complex. Although there is still something of a north south divide in voting for the two major parties, the Conservative party under Boris Johnston made major advances into Labour's so called 'red wall' in the 2019 election. But the Conservatives suffered crushing losses in the 2024 general election. What has happened in Britain since 2016 is that the geography of the Brexit or Leave vote, which was strongest in the so-called 'left behind areas', in the Midlands and the north, and also in many coastal constituencies is now been reflected in the geography of the Reform vote and the Green vote is concentrated in inner city areas with high graduate populations and/or a high muslim population. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a concentrated electoral support in terms of winning seats. This proved important for the Lib Dems in the 2024 general election when they won a substantial number of seats. Geography is an important part of electoral success.

Climate change, flooding and water management

In this episode my guest is Hannah Cloke, Regius professor of Meteorology and climate science at the University of Reading. Her title is rather special as she is one of the few professors in Britain appointed by the King or Queen. Her specialty is hydrology and flooding and she now appears regularly on TV whenever there isa major flooding issue. I started by noting the very hot summer of 2026 and Hannah noted that the global climate is now very clearly warming up quite rapidly. One consequence of this is that warmer air is able to hold much more moisture and this has been an important contributory cause of both heavy rainfall and flooding in both Britain and continental Europe. The floods in Valencia in 2025 and the major flooding in Germany in 2021 are clear examples, as are the floods in Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Severn. Beyond Europe we are seeing both more and stronger hurricanes and typhoons as warm seas and air encourage stronger storms. In addition there are now big issues with both melting ice and rising sea levels and the melting of Himalayan and Alpine glaciers. The disastrous floods in Nepal caused by glacial collapse in September 2026 highlight this as do the floods in Switzerland caused by the collapse of part of the Birch glacier on the village of Blatten. But shrinking glaciers also mean the possibility of a longer term shortage of water. This is very important in the Himalayas and the Tibean plateau which are the source of many very important rivers in South and South East Asia: the Bramaputra, the Ganges, Indus, Mekong. Irrawaddy and the Yangtze. The lives of billions of people depend on the water from these rivers. Hannah finishes by stressing that we need to be much more careful in our use of water. It is a scarce resource and it could become much scarcer, floods or not.

Global trade and global supply chains

In this episode I am delighted to have with me Ed Conway to discuss his new book 'Trade World'. Ed is the economics editor of Sky News and in 2023 he published his first booked 'Material World' which looked at some of the key raw materials - salt, copper, iron, oil etc on which our modern world depends. In his new book he looks at the origins, the structure and organisation of the international trade system which our modern world depends on. Many of the products we consume today are not produced in our own countries but imported from overseas. we get many of our fruit and vegetables from southern Europe and our clothes from half way around the world. The T shirt I am wearing is from Nicaragua, but it could have come from Vietnam or Bangladesh or Turkey. Ed looks in his book at the history of supply chains, going back to Greek and Roman Times and the complex web of trade across the Mediterranean and the developments during the Dutch and British empires. He focuses on three key examples in his book, bread, clothing and cars. We should not be surprised by cars, as many of us are used to cars from Germany, Italy, France, Korea and Japan, but now they are also coming from China and Malaysia. Bread is more of a surprise but ,much of the wheat used in its manufacture now comes from North america. But, as he notes we are facing a big change at present. The current era of globalization which got under way in the post war era with the off shoring of production, particularly to SE Asia, is now under threat. People used to argue that we were seeing the 'end of geography'. We could get anything we wanted from anywhere. But Ed suggests we may now be seeing the Return of Geography' with countries and companies re-shoring production and looking at the risks of being dependent on key goods produced abroad. This is why the British government have just intervened to ensure the continuation of steel production in Britain. Can a modern country risk being completely dependent on steel produced overseas? What if the tap is turned off at a time of conflict? Increasingly, countries are thinking about the need to maintain the production of key items within national borders.

Geography Strikes Back?

In this podcast Klaus Dodds and I go back to a topic we discussed in the first series - how, when and where does geography matter. We start by arguing that everything that happens in the world happens in both time and space. In that sense geography is everywhere. But we argue that the role and importance of geography varies over time and across societies. In the Age of Discovery sailors from Western countries were exploring and opening up hitherto unknown parts of the world. Then in the mid- late C19th, geography was increasingly important for Western colonial powers as new parts of the world were incorporated into the growing international system. This period was associated with a set of some western views about the links between climate and economic and social development which tended to argue that western countries had developed rapidly because of their climatic and other advantages. From mid C20th onwards these views were questioned and economic and social development was increasingly seen to be linked to a wider set of economic and political factors. We discuss th difference between North and South Korea after the end of the Korean war in 1953, of East and West Germany and the rise of both the semi-conductor industry in Taiwan from the 1970s and the rapid economic growth of Singapore: an island with very few physical advantages. We conclude by looking at what has happened in recent years, and Klaus suggests that while in the 1990s some people argued that geographical location would become less important, in the last few years climate change, wars and political instability are pointing to the resurgent importance of place

Oceans

Oceans are very important. They cover 71% of the worlds's surface and, as well as their importance for fishing, trade and transport they play a major role in climatic and environmental stability. They absorb a very high proportion of the C02 we produce and without their absorbtion capacity the world would be heating up much faster. They also transport the heat received from solar radiation from the equatorial belts towards the poles by a series of major currents. This is critical, otherwise there would be a global heat imbalance with equatorial regions heating up and the polar regions getting colder. Britain is a major beneficiary of this process via the Gulf Stream which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico, along the east coast of the USA, then across the Atlantic to the British Isles. This is why the Scilly Isles and Cornwall have Palm trees and other sub-tropical plants. But the Gulf Stream is part of a much bigger system known as the Atlantic conveyor system whereby the warm waters begin to cool and sink as they reach the North Atlantic and Iceland and are transported back at depth towards the equator. There are similar systems in the Pacific and in the Southern Hemisphere including the Humbolt current off Peru which is important for fishing. The Pacific also experiences an alternation of tropical warming and cooling every few years called El Nino and El Nina which causes major changes in weather systems across South america, South Africa, and Australia. In addition to these important climatic elements, warming of the oceans and the atmosphere means that much greater qualities of moisture are being absorbed into the atmosphere and generating more frequent and stronger tropical storms and hurricanes, the tail ends of which are hitting Britain and western Europe causing heavy rainfall and flooding. In addition to all this, seas and oceans support an estimated 60-70 million fishermen and women and the 200 million tons of fish caught annually provides the major source of protein for 2-3 billion people. Last but not least we discuss transport. Some 90% of world trade by weight, though only 70% by value goes by sea - oil and gas, ironore,wheat, soya, timber, cars and container ships. Only the lightest and most valuable cargoes go by air. And when major trade routes are blocked as the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormus, then the global economy feels the pinch. The oceans are important.

Trump, Maps and Geography

Regional Inequality

Regional inequality is an important issue in almost every country. There are almost always more prosperous or more developed regions and less prosperous and less developed regions. The reason is simple. Although it is theoretically possible to have such things as education and health care distributed relatively equally over space, it is impossible for economic resources to be equally or evenly distributed. Some areas have iron or coal or oil, others have hydro power and some areas on the coast can develop as ports, resources and geographical advantages are not equally distributed. Some areas, and China is a good example, are arid or semi-desert and thousands of miles from the coast and from transport routes. Economic development in such areas is difficult if not impossible. As a result, in almost every country, some areas are more economically developed than others, and as a result they tend to have a higher standard of living and better social facilities. It is impossible to provide the same standard of educational or health care in a sparsely populated region, hundreds or thousands of kilometres from anywhere, as it is in a big city. But geographical unevenness apart, the history of economic development leaves a massive legacy. In Britain, some of the poorest areas use to be in parts of the South East before the Industrial Revolution. But then, from 1820s onwards, the development of the major industrial areas of the Black country, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle etc changed the economic geography of Britain and saw the rise of new industrial cities. But, after a century of growing prosperity, the depression of the 1930s and then the de-industrialisation of the 1960s, 70s and 80s saw another transformation creating long lasting problems of 'left behind areas'. Similar processes happened in France, Germany, Belgium, China and the USA.. And today development of Silicon Valley and the high tech clusters of the USA or China overlays a new dimension. Some areas are almost inevitably less developed or poorer than others and many countries have developed regional policy to try to reduce the inequalities and even things up. But it is difficult to transform old industrial areas and it can take many decades to do so and with varying degrees of success. Regional inequality is a persistent problem in almost all countries. It is almost impossible for things to be distributed equally over space.

Strategic minerals - why are they so important?

Strategic minerals are minerals which countries deem to be particularly important for various reasons - it could be for energy needs, for exports or for defense or high tech industry. What makes a mineral strategic can change over time. Arguably, coal was an important strategic mineral during the industrial revolution and during the steamship era. Before it was replaced by oil, navies had to have coal bunkering facilities to fuel their warships. Today, however, although coal is still very important in countries like India and China where it fuels large numbers of coal fired power stations, it is far less important in most European countries because of the shift towards oil and gas and nuclear energy. But in the modern world, with the threat of climate change, and the shift towards an increasingly electrified and digital economy, the minerals which are increasingly important are copper, lithium, cobalt and various rare earths, used for mobile phones, power cables, electric car batteries and the like. And the important issue is that, like oil and gas, they are not equally geographically distributed. Korea and Japan for example have very little in the way of oil and gas. Copper, which used to be mined in the Mediterranean, is now of immense importance because of its high electrical conductivity. Deposits are concentrated in the central African copper belt which straddles Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo and particularly in Chile and Rio Tinto Zinc also has a mine in Mongolia. The developed worth is now increasingly dependent on copper. Lithium is found in various places but the world's largest deposits are found in the intermontane basins of what is called the Lithium triangle spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Cobalt deposits are again concentrated in the Democratic republic of Congo, and are characterized by informal, artisanal, and often illegal mining. The rare earth minerals are found in various countries but 80% of the processing is concentrated in China. So, in all of these examples, geography is extremely important in terms of both the distribution of resources, access and ease of extraction. The geography of strategic minerals is likely to become more important in the future.

The geography of AI

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasingly hot issue in the last year or two. There are major debates about its potential impact on the labour market, on society and on human beings themselves. In this episode, our focus on more restricted, looking solely at the geographical distribution and concentration of AI, and its implications for power supply, for cooling and space. We look at two key elements of AI, the increasing number of large data centres and cloud storage facilities. Both of these involve large sheds, filled with racks of servers, computers and memory or processing chips. They take a huge amount of power and require a lot of cooling. They are overwhelming concentrated in the USA, in Western Europe and in China. The number of data centres in the less developed world is far fewer, which is largely a reflection of the level of economic development and data generation in such countries. We discuss the extent to which it is possible to use the terms AI or digital colonialism, and whether these are appropriate terms for what is perhaps just a reflection of different levels of economic development. In the next episode we will discuss some of the growing raw material needs for AI and electrification including, copper, lithium and rare earth minerals.

America first: Hemispheric dominance?

In this episode we follow up on the implications of the American capture of President Maduro of Venezuela and President Trump's anouncements about the nature and future of American foreign policy. We apologise if it seems we are paying undue attention to this but it is very important and is radically reshaping the world we live in. President Trump has also announced (again) that the USA needs Greenland for national security, that he will run Venezuela and its oil sales and that he aims to control the western hemisphere: that it the half of the globe which stretches from the mid Pacific to the Greenwich meridian in London and includes both north and south America, Canada, Greenland and the Caribbean. This represents both a pull back from previous American foreign policy which saw itself as a global 'hegemon' running what is termed the rules based international order, to a much more explicit 'America first' focusing primarily on the western hemisphere. This has implications for Europe which president Trump now seems to see as not very important, and for the role of major global powers - notably America, China and Russia. We discuss to what extent, if at all, it is possible to draw parallels with George Orwell's novel 1984 (published in 1948) which envisaged a world divided into three competing power blocs - Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia - all constantly at war with one another. We hope this distopian vision remains just that but it is clear is that President Trump is both responding too and reshaping global political geographies.

The geopolitics of oil and gas....and that V........... country

This episode looks at the geography and geopolitics of oil and gas - its distribution, its production and consumption. Energy, and particularly oil and gas, are crucial to making the modern world go round and they have been for well over 100 years. Big US oil companies emerged in the 1920s and BP became a major player in Persia (now Iran). Together they account for just over half of world energy use. But the distribution of oil and gas resources is very uneven, as is production and consumption. The USA account for 20% of global oil consumption, followed by China at 15% and then a long tail of other countries with 5% and under. But in terms of production the US accounts for 22%, followed by Saudi Arabia 11% and Russia at 11%. So, the US is roughly in balance in production and consumption but this is relatively new, after the discovery of shale oil in Texas and elsewhere. No less than 44% of world oil and gas is produced by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, which is why the Middle East has long been of major geopolitical importance, particularly for the USA. The North Sea oil and gas discoveries have been very important for both Britain and Norway since the 1960s ,although the North Sea fields are now very mature and production has fallen. Energy costs also soared in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine and oil and gas exports were embargoed. But one of the most interesting aspects of oil and gas is the geographical distribution of proven resources and the fact that Venezuela has the worlds largest oil resources at 300 billion barrels, followed by Saudi Arabia at 267 billion, Iran at 209, and Iraq at 145 billion. Venezuela used to be a major producer until Chavez and then subsequently Maduro took control and nationalized the oil industry. Oil production then slumped. As you will hear at the end, we recorded the episode the evening of Friday 2nd January and woke on Saturday 3rd to find out that President Trump had mounted a military operation to capture president Maduro and put American oil companies in place. Coincidence or what?

The urbanization of the world's population.

The world is undergoing a process of rapid urbanization - the movement of population from rural to urban areas. This is very important because it means that an increasing share of the world's population now live in cities The UN estimated in 2007 that half (50%) the world population now lives in cities and maybe 70%+ by the end of this century. This is a dramatic change from the world of our ancestors which was still overwhelmingly rural. The urban population was still only 30% of the world total in 1950. In China the process has been extremely rapid going from about 15% urban in 1950 to 65%+ in 2025. 75 years ago 85% of China's population lived in rural areas. But although urbanization has speeded up rapidly in recent decades it started a long time ago. It really took off in Britain about 1800 at the start of the industrial revolution During the c19th the population of London rose from 1 million in 1801 to 6.5 million in 1901 and the population of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and other industrial cities rapidly exploded. A similar process took place in the USA in the late c19th and early C20th as cities like New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit rapidly expanded. In Europe cities like Paris and Berlin also grew rapidly. But today the rapid urban growth is in the developing world, the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia where giant mega cities are emerging of over 20 million people cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Delhi, Mexico City and Cairo. Dhaka and Sao Paulo. It is estimated that by 2035 Africa will have 6 cities of over 10 million people with another 17 cities of over 5 million and 100 cities of over 1 million. Africa is the world most rapidly urbanizing region with cities like Dar es Salaam, Kinshasa, Luanda and Addis Ababa among the most rapidly growing. The problem is that while many rural migrants are attracted to the cities by a prospect of jobs, higher income and education, the reality is often very limited. In many rapidly growing there are major problems over the supply of drinking water, sewage and accommodation, and transport systems are often poor or non existent, with residents living 2 hours journey outside the city bycrowded minibus. The continuing urbanization of the world's population offers possibilities and many problems

America First: America's New National Security Strategy and its implications

At the end of November 2025 the US government published America's New National Security Strategy. This punchy, hard hitting, document did not mince its words. The basis of America's new security strategy is very clear:America first. To keep the USA at the forefront of the global economy , technology and defense. It was also clear that the current administration thinks that previous post war American foreign and strategic policy has been misguided and misplaced. It states that America's role is not to be the global proponent of democracy and peace worldwide. Rather, it has to put America's interests first and foremost. There is also a distinct geography to this policy. It is one of hemispheric dominance: the dominance of the western hemisphere stretching west for 180 degrees from the Greenwich Meridian. America sees its sphere of influence being primarily North and South America, stretching up to Greenland but also across the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The primary antagonist is clearly China, Europe is criticized for being weak kneed and Russia is scarcely mentioned except as a potential strategic partner. The Middle East is seen as being now largely sorted out and the rest of the world scarcely gets a mention. American foreign and defence policy under President Trump is reshaping the globe. Here is a link to the document. Its worth a read. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

Is Geography Destiny?

In this episode we discuss some aspects of how and why geography matters. If we go back a hundred years or so there was an intellectual argument about the extent to which geography determined the future of a country or a region. Those who argued that it did were 'geographical determinists'. A recent example of this is the fascinating 2022 book by Ian Morris entitled 'Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World, a 10,000 Year History'. Put simply, Morris argues that Britain's position as an island on the NW corner of Europe has played a defining role in shaping Britain's history: particularly its rise as a maritime power. More generally, geographical determinists argued that key aspects of physical geography: latitude, location, temperature, climate, soils, relief etc played a keys role in determining the economic development and history of different parts of the world. Europe developed early because a temperate climate and fertile soils permitted agricultural development etc. Clearly, physical geography does play an important role in shaping the development of different countries and regions. Antarctica has not, and is unlikely to ever, developed as a centre of agricultural production. Similarly with the Sahara, the Atacama and Nabian deserts. You will all be able to think of similar examples. But there is an important difference between geography determining the development of a country or region and geography influencing, constraining or encouraging development . Klaus and I both argue that geography influences rather than determines (except in very extreme cases). But, that said, it can have very major influences in some cases. In terms of resource development (copper, iron ore, rare earths, oil and gas etc), the development can only take place if the resources are there in the first place. They cannot be conjured up out of thin air. But equally just because a resource is there does not mean that it will be or can be developed. We will pick up this argument in some subsequent episodes

Unfrozen: the fight for the future of the Arctic

This episode has a slightly different format. I discuss with Klaus Dodds, my co-host, and Mia Bennett of the University of Washington, their new book 'Unfrozen: the fight for the future of the Arctic'. It starts by asking both Mia and Klaus how they got interested in the Arctic and how it is defined. As they note, the Arctic is often defined as those areas north of 66 degrees of latitude (the Arctic circle), where the sun never sets in mid summer and never rises in the depth of winter. Some definitions go down to 60 degrees. The Arctic territory forms part of 8 countries: Russia is the largest with about 50 percent, followed by Canada, then Denmark (Greenland) and the USA, but it also includes Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Together these countries are permanent members of the Arctic council. The Arctic is inhabited by about 4 million people, mostly in Russia, of whom about a million are indigenous peoples, the others are involved in mining, resource exploitation, military, research etc. But other countries, notably India and China have also become interested in the Arctic, and China now has 5 icebreakers and is interested in the potential of the Arctic route for goods transport. What is clear is that the Arctic is under threat in a number of ways, notably from global warming and parts of the Arctic are warming at 3-4 times or more of the global average. This is causing major changes in vegetation, settlement and forms of living from reduction in ice cover. It also has big implications beyond the Arctic in terms of warming waters. The reduction in ice has important geo-political implications with different countries seeing new possibilities. Klaus and Mia suggest there are three major intertwined issues for the Arctic - that it is becoming increasingly climatically and ecologically endangered, that it faces increasing pressure for resource exploitation and it may become the site for more strategic conflict. The arctic is no longer just a remote place for polar bears and explorers. It is increasingly linked into the modern world in many different ways.

Growing countries and Shrinking countries and population problems

Global population changes are complex but it can be argued that many countries, but not all, fall into one of two groups, each with very different problems. First, there are the relatively poor, low income, developing countries with high birth rates and rapidly growing populations.Most sub Saharan African countries fall into this group. Second, there are richer, developed, countries with low birth rates and a generally slow growing, static or even falling population. Many European countries fall into this category and they face problems of shrinking labour force, an ageing population and growing welfare bills for pensions and health care. Not surprisingly there is a growing global trend for people to try to migrate from the first group to the second. Countries in the first group include Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and many other sub-Saharan countries. In many of the these countries over 50% of the population is aged 18 or under. By contrast, in Japan, the country with the oldest population in the world, some 30% of people are now aged 65 or over and many parts of rural Japan are now shrinking villages of the elderly. The birth rate in Japan is now far below replacement rate (2.1 children per woman) and the countries population is continuing to fall. Many European countries are not too far behind. Italy has 22% of its population over 65 and Finland, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, France all have over 20%. But one of the least well known but most remarkable countries is China. It currently has a population of 1.3 bn but this has now peaked and is starting to fall. And, as consequence of Mao's one child policy and the subsequent rapid economic growth, very few families have more than one child and China's population is forecast to almost half by the end of the century on current trends. The problem now facing many affluent developed western countries is the falling proportion of economically active people and a growing, ageing, dependant population of retired people. This poses problems both for the cost of care and the supply of care workers and for expenditure on pensions. Not surprisingly, many young people are trying to migrate from the first group of countries to the second, though both Japan and China have relatively little inward migration from overseas.

The Geography of global population change 1

Global population change is important and it has a distinct geography. But first its important to note some general changes. Global population has increased dramatically over the last 200 years. In 1800 the global population was estimated to be about 1 million. There were high birth rates, no modern medicines or health care, and high death rates. Most people died relatively young if they survived infancy and childhood. Global population then began to increase quite slowly to about 2 billion by 1925, exactly 100 years ago. Since then, it is increased very rapidly with the developments in living standards, medicines and health care. It reached 3 billion in 1960 and 8.4 billion today. In the last 60 years global population has grown by about one billion every 12-15 years, largely as a result of the reduction in mortality. People in the less developed world are less likely to die in childhood and people in the developed world are now living much longer. But, and this is an important but, people in the developed world are also having far fewer children. And global population growth is projected to slow and peak at about 10 billion by the end of this century. But first its important to make two points about the relative population size of different countries. The population of the UK in 2025 is about 70m, almost the same as France. By comparison population of the USA (the third most populous country) is 350 million – exactly 5 times as big, and the population of China and India (the two most populous countries in the world) are roughly 1.4 billion –20 times as big. But the global distribution of population is not static. If we look at the population by continent today, Asia has over 5 bn people. Africa has 1.6bn, North and South America together about 1 billion, Europe 0.75 bn. But if we go back 200 years, the shares were very different. Asia still had most people but Europe was second, and Africa and the Americas had very few people. The transformation has been the shrinkage of Europe’s global population share, the growth of Asia and the Americas and and, since the 1950s, themassive increase in Africa’s share. Probably most listeners know the India and China are the two biggest countries in the world, by a very large margin. But maybe its a surprise to discover that USA is third. But then it gets more complex. The next biggest countries are all in the developing world, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil – between 200-300m. But then a big group of developing countries between 100-200m: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mexico. Egypt, Phillipines, DR Congo, Vietnam along with two developed countries: Russia and Japan. The majority of rapidly growing countries are in Africa but at the other end, many developed countries are losing population. All this has major geopolitical implications

Geopolitics: what is it, and why is it important?

Geopolitics has a long history but it can be defined as how, where, when and why geographical factors, physical, economic and social influence the influence of political power, the shape of international relations and the strategic decision making of states and other entities, including both private companies and other non state actors. Where and when to invest is increasingly important globally and companies often want to ensure that investments are in relatively safe/politically stable areas. Geopolitics also involves decisions and conflicts over resources - gas, oil, copper, and recently rare earth minerals. The term geopolitics was first used in 1900 by Rudolf Kjellenn a Swedish political scientist but in 1904 Halford Mackinder, a British geographer, university professor and MP wrote an influential paper called 'The Geographical pivot of history' which argued that certain key areas of the world had been historically and politically important for many centuries. Although his choice of area can be queried 120 years later, his general thesis remains influential. Today, geopolitics is as important as ever and it is possible to look at many different parts of the world where there are conflicts between states over borders, oceans and territory. The podcast briefly discusses some of these, including the south China Sea, the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, American and Chinese spheres of influence and the conflicts in the middle east involving Israel, Gaza,Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and the Gulf states. Geopolitics is of growing importance.

The geopolitics of food and fishing

Geopolitics is, as its name suggests, where geography and politics intersect. The geopolitics of food focuses on how food production, trade, and consumption are influenced by and influence political relationships between nations. Traditionally, geopolitics tended to focus on questions of strategic conflicts between states. but in the modern world issues of food security and sustainability have increasingly moved to the fore. This is highlighted by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which had quite major impacts on food supply and prices as the Ukraine has often been seen as one of the major breadbaskets of Europe, producing and exporting large volumes of grain along with sunflower oil and other products, much of which was exported from Odessa and other black sea ports. The Russians initially attempted to block these exports. But, there have been many other conflicts involving food. We look at the Cod Wars between Britain and Iceland from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s and the short but sharp conflict between Canada and Spain over Spanish fishing in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland off Nova Scotia. More recently fishing rights and quotas have been a considerable source of friction between Britain and the EU. But generally food production and security of supply are becoming major issues and there are some countries, particularly the Gulf States, which produce very little of their own food. They are almost entirely dependent on imports of food, and thus at major risk of food insecurity in the future.