1.
Human Development Index
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The Human Development Index is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the level is higher. The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, while the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that the IHDI is the actual level of human development, and the HDI can be viewed as an index of potential human development. The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Human Development Reports produced by the Human Development Reports Office of the United Nations Development Programme, nobel laureate Amartya Sen, utilized Haqs work in his own work on human capabilities. The following three indices are used,1, Life Expectancy Index = LE −2085 −20 LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20. Education Index = MYSI + EYSI22.1 Mean Years of Schooling Index = MYS15 Fifteen is the maximum of this indicator for 2025. 2.2 Expected Years of Schooling Index = EYS18 Eighteen is equivalent to achieving a degree in most countries. Income Index = ln − ln ln − ln II is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100. Finally, the HDI is the mean of the previous three normalized indices, HDI = LEI ⋅ EI ⋅ II3. Standard of living, as indicated by the logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. This methodology was used by the UNDP until their 2011 report, the formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. The 2016 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on March 21,2017, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2015 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. The rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data. Countries in the top quartile of HDI with a missing IHDI, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Brunei, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Andorra, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The 2015 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on December 14,2015, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2014 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. Note, The green arrows, red arrows, and blue dashes represent changes in rank, the rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data
2.
Industry
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Industry is the production of goods or related services within an economy. The major source of revenue of a group or company is the indicator of its relevant industry, when a large group has multiple sources of revenue generation, it is considered to be working in different industries. Manufacturing industry became a key sector of production and labour in European and North American countries during the Industrial Revolution, upsetting previous mercantile and this came through many successive rapid advances in technology, such as the production of steel and coal. Following the Industrial Revolution, possibly a third of the economic output are derived that is from manufacturing industries. Many developed countries and many developing/semi-developed countries depend significantly on manufacturing industry, Industries, the countries they reside in, and the economies of those countries are interlinked in a complex web of interdependence. Industries can be classified in a variety of ways, at the top level, industry is often classified according to the three-sector theory into sectors, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Some authors add quaternary or even quinary sectors, over time, the fraction of a societys industry within each sector changes. Below the economic sectors there are other more detailed industry classifications. These classification systems commonly divide industries according to functions and markets. Market-based classification systems such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark are used in finance, the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities is the most complete and systematic industrial classification made by the United Nations Statistics Division. ISIC is a classification of economic activities arranged so that entities can be classified according to the activity they carry out. The Industrial Revolution led to the development of factories for large-scale production, originally the factories were steam-powered, but later transitioned to electricity once an electrical grid was developed. The mechanized assembly line was introduced to parts in a repeatable fashion. This led to significant increases in efficiency, lowering the cost of the end process, later automation was increasingly used to replace human operators. This process has accelerated with the development of the computer and the robot, historically certain manufacturing industries have gone into a decline due to various economic factors, including the development of replacement technology or the loss of competitive advantage. An example of the former is the decline in manufacturing when the automobile was mass-produced. A recent trend has been the migration of prosperous, industrialized nations towards a post-industrial society and this is manifested by an increase in the service sector at the expense of manufacturing, and the development of an information-based economy, the so-called informational revolution. In a post-industrial society, manufacturing is relocated to more favourable locations through a process of off-shoring
3.
GDP per capita
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The world sorted by their gross domestic product per capita at nominal values. Such fluctuations may change a countrys ranking from one year to the next, therefore, these figures should be used with caution. GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a standard of living. Comparisons of national income are also made on the basis of purchasing power parity. PPP largely removes the exchange rate problem but not others, it does not reflect the value of output in international trade. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are more spread than nominal GDP per capita figures. Non-sovereign entities are included in the list because they appear in the sources and these economies are not ranked in the charts here, but are listed in sequence by GDP for comparison. All data are in current United States dollars
4.
Developed country
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Which criteria are to be used and which countries can be classified as being developed are subjects of debate. Developed countries have post-industrial economies, meaning the sector provides more wealth than the industrial sector. They are contrasted with developing countries, which are in the process of industrialization, or undeveloped countries, which are pre-industrial and almost entirely agrarian. As of 2015, advanced economies comprise 60. 8% of global GDP based on values and 42. 9% of global GDP based on purchasing-power parity according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2015, the ten largest advanced economies by GDP in both nominal and PPP terms were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The term industrialized country may be ambiguous, as industrialization is an ongoing process that is hard to define. The first industrialized country was the United Kingdom, followed by Belgium, later it spread further to Germany, United States, France and other Western European countries. According to some such as Jeffrey Sachs, however, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Economic criteria have tended to dominate discussions, one such criterion is income per capita, countries with high gross domestic product per capita would thus be described as developed countries. Another economic criterion is industrialization, countries in which the tertiary and quaternary sectors of industry dominate would thus be described as developed. More recently another measure, the Human Development Index, which combines an economic measure, national income, with other measures, indices for life expectancy and this criterion would define developed countries as those with a very high rating. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, There is no established convention for the designation of developed, the UN HDI is a statistical measure that gauges a countrys level of human development. While there is a correlation between having a high HDI score and a prosperous economy, the UN points out that the HDI accounts for more than income or productivity. Unlike GDP per capita or per capita income, the HDI takes into account how income is turned into education and health opportunities, since 1990, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iceland have had the highest HDI score. The top 47 countries have scores ranging from 0.793 in Barbados to 0.955 in Norway, many countries listed by IMF or CIA as advanced, possess an HDI over 0.788. Many countries possessing an HDI of 0.788 and over are also listed by IMF or CIA as advanced, thus, many advanced economies are characterized by an HDI score of 0.9 or higher. Since April 2016, the IMF classifies Macau as an advanced economy, the latest index was released on 14 December 2015 and covers the period up to 2014. The following are the 49 countries in the top quartile - having an HDI above 0.8, = Increase = No increase or decrease = Decrease The number in parentheses represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in 2014 report
5.
Economic development
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Economic development is the process by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people. The term has been used frequently by economists, politicians, and others in the 20th, the concept, however, has been in existence in the West for centuries. Modernization, Westernization, and especially Industrialization are other people have used while discussing economic development. Economic development has a relationship with the environment and environmental issues. Whereas economic development is a policy intervention endeavor with aims of economic and social well-being of people, economic growth is a phenomenon of market productivity, consequently, as economist Amartya Sen points out, economic growth is one aspect of the process of economic development. The scope of development includes the process and policies by which a nation improves the economic, political. The University of Iowas Center for International Finance and Development states that, Economic development is a term that economists, politicians, the concept, however, has been in existence in the West for centuries. Modernization, Westernisation, and especially Industrialisation are other people have used while discussing economic development. Economic development has a relationship with the environment. Although nobody is certain when the concept originated, some agree that development is closely bound up with the evolution of capitalism. Economic development can also be considered as a theory that documents the state of an economy at a certain time. According to Schumpeter and Backhaus, the changes in equilibrium state to document in economic theory can only be caused by intervening factors coming from the outside. Economic development originated in the period of reconstruction initiated by the United States. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of disease and their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people, greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to production is a wider and more vigorous application of modem scientific. There have been several phases of development theory since 1945
6.
Cuba
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital, other cities include Santiago de Cuba. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of 109,884 square kilometres, prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, as a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batistas ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of human rights abuses. It is one of the worlds last planned economies and its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, according to the Human Development Index, Cuba is described as a country with high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America. It also ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care, the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant, authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Taíno, the Guanajatabey, and the Ciboney people. The ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, the Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D. When Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having a population of 150,000. The name Cuba comes from the native Taíno language and it is derived from either coabana meaning great place, or from cubao meaning where fertile land is abundant. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers, Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa, other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital
7.
Bhutan
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Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in Asia and the smallest state located entirely within the Himalaya mountain range. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it is bordered by China in the north, Bhutan lacks a border with nearby Nepal due to the Indian state of Sikkim and with Bangladesh due to the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. Bhutan is geopolitically in South Asia and is the second least populous nation after the Maldives. Thimphu is its capital and largest city, while Phuntsholing is its financial center, the independence of Bhutan has endured for centuries and the territory was never colonized in its history. Situated on the ancient Silk Road between Tibet, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, the Bhutanese state developed a national identity based on Buddhism. Headed by a leader known as the Zhabdrung Rinpoche, the territory was composed of many fiefdoms. Following a civil war in the 19th century, the House of Wangchuck reunited the country, Bhutan fostered a strategic partnership with India during the rise of Chinese communism and has a disputed border with the Peoples Republic of China. The King of Bhutan is known as the Dragon King, Bhutan is also notable for pioneering the concept of gross national happiness. The countrys landscape ranges from subtropical plains in the south to the sub-alpine Himalayan mountains in the north. The highest mountain in Bhutan is the Gangkhar Puensum, which is also a candidate for the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. There is also diverse wildlife in Bhutan, in South Asia, Bhutan ranks first in economic freedom, ease of doing business and peace, second in per capita income and is the least corrupt country, as of 2016. However, Bhutan continues to be a least developed country, hydroelectricity accounts for the major share of its exports. The government is a parliamentary democracy, Bhutan maintains diplomatic relations with 52 countries and the European Union, but does not have formal ties with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. It is a member of the United Nations, SAARC, BIMSTEC, the Royal Bhutan Army maintains extensive military relations with the Indian Armed Forces. The precise etymology of Bhutan is unknown, although it is likely to derive from the Tibetan endonym Bod used for Tibet. Traditionally, it is taken to be a transcription of the Sanskrit Bhoṭa-anta end of Tibet, since the 17th century the official name of Bhutan has been Druk yul and Bhutan only appears in English-language official correspondence. Names similar to Bhutan — including Bohtan, Buhtan, Bottanthis, Bottan, jean-Baptiste Taverniers 1676 Six Voyages is the first to record the name Boutan. However, in case, these seem to have been describing not modern Bhutan
8.
Gross National Happiness
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Gross National Happiness is a development philosophy as well as an index which is used to measure the collective happiness in a nation. ”The term ‘Gross National Happiness’ was inadvertently coined in 1979 during an interview in Bombay Airport when His Majesty said “We do not believe in Gross National Product. Gross National Happiness is more important. ”The term “gross national happiness” was famously coined by the king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. GNH is distinguishable by for example valuing collective happiness as the goal of governance, the GNH concept has evolved through the contribution of international and local scholars and researchers to become an initiative beyond the borders of Bhutan. The proposal served as a blueprint for the later well-being development frameworks, in 2006, the International Institute of Management published a policy white paper calling for the implementation of GNH philosophy in the US. Two Canadians, Michael and Martha Pennock, played a role in developing the Bhutanese GNH survey. They developed an international version of the survey which has been used in their home region of Victoria BC as well as in Brazil. Similar to the GNH index, OPHI promotes collection and analysis of data on multiple indicators based on three domains, health, education, and living standards, GNH was later articulated as nine domains, which provides a further level of conceptual analysis for policy making. These are, psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. In 2011 UN General Assembly Resolution 65/309, titled Happiness, towards a holistic approach to development. ”The former king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, was a friend of King Jigme Singye Wangchuck and conceived the similar philosophy of “Sufficiency Economy. ”In 2016. In 2016, the government of Dubai established the Ministry of Happiness, the implementation of a GNH policy can be challenging as it requires considerable institutional support. In 2010, the first nation-wide GNH survey was conducted with a size of 8,510 Bhutanese aged 15. The second nation-wide survey was conducted in 2015 and had a size of 8,871. After all three rounds of surveys, follow-up interviews and additional data gathering was conducted in order to review, the GNH survey covers all twenty districts and results are reported for varying demographic factors such as gender, age, abode, and occupation. The survey therefore provides a rich dataset to compare the happiness between different groups of citizens, and how this has changed over time. From an economic perspective, critics state that because GNH depends on a series of judgments about well-being. Economics professor Deirdre McCloskey criticizes such measurements as unscientific, saying that Recording the percentage of people who say they are happy will tell you. How people use words, making the analogy that society could not base physics on asking people whether today was hot, nice and this emphasizes the need for cross-country comparative indices such as the MPI. Nadia Mustafa, What About Gross National Happiness
9.
Newly industrialized country
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The category of newly industrialized country is a socioeconomic classification applied to several countries around the world by political scientists and economists. NICs are countries whose economies have not yet reached a developed countrys status but have, in a macroeconomic sense, another characterization of NICs is that of countries undergoing rapid economic growth. Incipient or ongoing industrialization is an important indicator of an NIC, NICs usually share some other common features, including, Strong political leaders. A switch from agricultural to industrial economies, especially in the manufacturing sector, an increasingly open-market economy of developed nations, allowing free trade with other countries in the world. Large national corporations operating in several continents, Strong capital investment from foreign countries. Political leadership in their area of influence, rapid growth of urban centers and population. There is a distinction between these countries and the countries now considered NICs. All four economies are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and Advanced economies by the International Monetary Fund, all of them, like Western European countries, have a Human Development Index considered very high by the UN. The table below presents the list of countries consistently considered NICs by different authors, turkey and South Africa are classified as developed countries by the CIA. Turkey was a member of the OECD in 1961 and Mexico joined in 1994. The G8+5 group is composed of the original G8 members in addition to China, India, Mexico, South Africa, note, Green-colored cells indicate higher value or best performance in index, while yellow-colored cells indicate the opposite. For China and India, the population of these two countries means that per capita income will remain low even if either economy surpasses that of the United States in overall GDP. When GDP per capita is calculated according to purchasing power parity, GDP per capita typically is an indicator for living standards in a given country as well. This group is expected to expand to G14 by adding Egypt alongside the five forementioned countries, authors set lists of countries accordingly to different methods of economic analysis. Sometimes a work ascribes NIC status to a country that other authors dont consider NIC and this is the case of countries such as Argentina, Chile, Egypt, Sri Lanka and Russia. NICs usually benefit from low wage costs, which translates into lower input prices for suppliers. This comparative advantage is often criticized by advocates of the trade movement. Critics of NICs argue economic freedom is not always associated with freedom in countries such as China, pointing out that Internet censorship
10.
Emerging markets
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An emerging market is a country that has some characteristics of a developed market, but does not meet standards to be a developed market. This includes countries that may become developed markets in the future or were in the past, the term frontier market is used for developing countries with slower economies than emerging. The economies of China and India are considered to be the largest, according to The Economist, many people find the term outdated, but no new term has gained traction. Emerging market hedge fund capital reached a new level in the first quarter of 2011 of $121 billion. The four largest emerging and developing economies by either nominal or PPP-adjusted GDP are the BRIC countries, the next five largest markets are South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Iran is also considered an emerging market, in the 1970s, less developed countries was the common term for markets that were less developed than the developed countries such as the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. These markets were supposed to provide potential for profit. This term was thought by some to be politically incorrect so the emerging market label was created, emphasizing the fluid nature of the category, political scientist Ian Bremmer defines an emerging market as a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the markets. The research on emerging markets is diffused within management literature, more critical scholars have also studied key emerging markets like Mexico and Turkey. Julien Vercueil recently proposed a definition of the emerging economies. Catching-up growth, during at least the last decade, it has experienced an economic growth that has narrowed the income gap with advanced economies. Hence, emerging economies appears to be a by-product of the current globalization, at the beginning of the 2010s, more than 50 countries, representing 60% of the worlds population and 45% of its GDP, matched these criteria. The term rapidly developing economies is being used to denote emerging markets such as The United Arab Emirates, Chile and these countries do not share any common agenda, but some experts believe that they are enjoying an increasing role in the world economy and on political platforms. It is difficult to make an exact list of emerging markets, the best guides tend to be investment information sources like EMIS and these sources are well-informed, but the nature of investment information sources leads to two potential problems. One is an element of historicity, markets may be maintained in an index for continuity, possible examples of this are South Korea and Taiwan. In an Opalesque. TV video, hedge fund manager Jonathan Binder discusses the current, Binder says that in the future investors will not necessarily think of the traditional classifications of G10 versus emerging markets. Instead, people should look at the world as countries that are fiscally responsible, whether that country is in Europe or in South America should make no difference, making the traditional blocs of categorization irrelevant. Guégan et al. also discuss the relevance of the emerging country comparing the credit worthiness of so-called emerging countries to so-called developed countries
11.
Least Developed Countries
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The concept of LDCs originated in the late 1960s and the first group of LDCs was listed by the UN in its resolution 2768 of 18 November 1971. A country is classified among the Least Developed Countries if it meets three criteria, Poverty – adjustable criterion based on GNI per capita averaged over three years. As of 2015 a country must have GNI per capita less than US $1,035 to be included on the list, human resource weakness and Economic vulnerability LDC criteria are reviewed every three years by the Committee for Development Policy of the UN Economic and Social Council. Countries may graduate out of the LDC classification when indicators exceed these criteria, the classification applies to 48 countries. Since the LDC category was initiated, only four countries have graduated to developing country status, the first country to graduate from LDC status was Botswana in 1994. The second country was Cape Verde in 2007, maldives graduated to developing country status on 1 January 2011, while Samoa graduated in 2014. It is anticipated that Equatorial Guinea and Vanuatu will be the countries to be promoted from LDC status. At the UNs fourth conference on LDCs held in May 2011, Least developed countries can be distinguished from developing countries, less developed countries, lesser developed countries, or other terms for countries in the so-called Third World. Although many contemporary scholars argue that Third World is outdated, irrelevant or inaccurate, the term less economically developed country is also used today. Countries with populations over 75 million are excluded, there have been four United Nations conferences on LDCs, held every ten years. The first two were in Paris, in 1981 and 1991, the third was in Brussels in 2001, the Fourth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries was held in Istanbul, Turkey, 9–13 May 2011. It was attended by Ban Ki-Moon, the head of the UN, the conference endorsed the goal of raising half the existing Least developed countries out of the LDC category by 2022. The importance of society and its contributions has also been recognised in the UNGA Resolution 63/227. Post LDC III, civil society actors have been engaged and involved in the UN Decision making processes concerning LDCs. They have also involved in the implementation and follow-up, monitoring and review of the progress made by LDCs. For LDC IV, the UN-OHRLLS has entrusted LDC Watch, a network of LDC Civil Society Organizations. LDC Watch has organised civil society consultations at various levels, UN-OHRLLS has mandated LDC Watch as the lead Civil Society Organization to coordinate the Civil Society track towards the LDC-IV conference. The Forum will open two days before the conference begins and will continue till the end of the conference
12.
Drinking water
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Drinking water, also known as potable water or improved drinking water, is water that is safe to drink or to use for food preparation, without risk of health problems. Globally, in 2015, 91% of people had access to suitable for drinking. Nearly 4.2 billion had access to tap water while another 2.4 billion had access to wells or public taps,1.8 billion people still use an unsafe drinking water source which may be contaminated by feces. This can result in infectious diarrhea such as cholera and typhoid among others, the amount of drinking water required is variable. It depends on activity, age, health issues. It is estimated that the average American drinks about one litre of water a day with 95% drinking less than three litres per day, for those working in a hot climate, up to 16 liters a day may be required. Water makes up about 60% of weight in men and 55% of weight in women, infants are about 70% to 80% water while the elderly are around 45%. Typically in developed countries, tap water meets drinking water quality standards, other typical uses include washing, toilets, and irrigation. Greywater may also be used for toilets or irrigation and its use for irrigation however may be associated with risks. Water may also be due to levels of toxins or suspended solids. Reduction of waterborne diseases and development of water resources is a major public health goal in developing countries. Bottled water is sold for consumption in most parts of the world. The word potable came into English from the Late Latin potabilis, the amount of drinking water required is variable. It depends on activity, age, health, and environmental conditions. It is estimated that the average American drinks about one litre of water a day with 95% drinking less than three litres per day, for those working in a hot climate, up to 16 litres per day may be required. Some health authorities have suggested that at least eight glasses of eight fl oz each are required by an adult per day, the British Dietetic Association recommends 1.8 litres. However, various reviews of the evidence performed in 2002 and 2008 could not find any scientific evidence recommending eight glasses of water per day. An individuals thirst provides a guide for how much water they require rather than a specific
13.
Sanitation
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These hazards may be physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause problems include human and animal excreta, solid wastes, domestic wastewater, industrial wastes. Hygienic means of prevention may involve engineering solutions, simple technologies, or even simply by behavior changes in personal hygiene practices, providing sanitation to people requires a systems approach, rather than only focusing on the toilet or wastewater treatment plant itself. The experience of the user, excreta and wastewater collection methods, transportation or conveyance of waste, treatment, the main objective of a sanitation system is to protect and promote human health by providing a clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease. The World Health Organization defines the term sanitation as follows, Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the disposal of human urine. The word sanitation also refers to the maintenance of conditions, through services such as garbage collection. There are some variations on the definition of sanitation in use. For example, for many organisations, hygiene promotion is seen as an part of sanitation. Despite the fact that sanitation includes wastewater treatment, the two terms are often use side by side as sanitation and wastewater management, Sanitation should be regarded with a systems approach in mind which includes collection/containment, conveyance/transport, treatment, disposal or reuse. Effective sanitation systems provide barriers between excreta and humans in such a way as to break the transmission cycle. This aspect is visualised with the F-diagram where all routes of fecal-oral disease transmission begin with the letter F, feces, fingers, flies, fields, fluids. Container-based sanitation is usually provided as a service involving provision of types of portable toilets. In most cases, CBS is based on the use of urine-diverting dry toilets, the term dry sanitation is somewhat misleading as sanitation includes hand-washing and can never be dry. A more precise term would be dry excreta management, when people speak of dry sanitation they usually mean sanitation systems with dry toilets with urine diversion, in particular the urine-diverting dry toilet. Put in other words, Ecosan systems safely recycle excreta resources to crop production in such a way that the use of resources is minimised. Ecosan is also called resource-oriented sanitation, environmental sanitation encompasses the control of environmental factors that are connected to disease transmission. Subsets of this category are solid waste management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial waste treatment and noise, improved sanitation and unimproved sanitation refers to the management of human feces at the household level. This terminology is the used to describe the target of the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation, by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply
14.
Hygiene
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Hygiene is a set of practices performed for the preservation of health. According to the World Health Organization, Hygiene refers to conditions and practices help to maintain health. Some regular hygienic practices may be considered good habits by a society while the neglect of hygiene can be considered disgusting, in ancient Greek religion, Hygeia was the personification of health, cleanliness and hygiene. Hygiene is a related to cleanliness, health and medicine. In medicine and in home and everyday life settings, hygiene practices are employed as preventative measures to reduce the incidence, the terms cleanliness and hygiene are often used interchangeably, which can cause confusion. In general, hygiene mostly means practices that prevent spread of disease-causing organisms, since cleaning processes remove infectious microbes as well as dirt and soil, they are often the means to achieve hygiene. Other uses of the term appear in phrases including, body hygiene, personal hygiene, sleep hygiene, mental hygiene, dental hygiene, Hygiene is also the name of a branch of science that deals with the promotion and preservation of health, also called hygienic. Hygiene practices vary widely, and what is considered acceptable in one culture might not be acceptable in another, medical hygiene pertains to the hygiene practices related to the administration of medicine, and medical care, that prevents or minimizes disease and the spreading of disease. Medical hygiene practices include, Isolation or quarantine of persons or materials to prevent spread of infection. Sterilization of instruments used in surgical procedures, use of protective clothing and barriers, such as masks, gowns, caps, eyewear and gloves. Proper bandaging and dressing of injuries, Some procedures were refined in response to late-20th century disease outbreaks, notably AIDS and Ebola. Hygiene in home and everyday life settings plays an important part in preventing spread of infectious diseases. It includes procedures used in a variety of situations such as hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, food and water hygiene, general home hygiene, care of domestic animals. At present, these components of hygiene tend to be regarded as separate issues, preventing the spread of infectious diseases means breaking the chain of infection transmission. The simple principle is that, if the chain of infection is broken, targeted hygiene is based on identifying the routes of spread of pathogens in the home, and applying hygiene procedures at critical points at appropriate times to break the chain of infection. The main sources of infection in the home are people, foods and water, germs are constantly shed from these sources via mucous membranes, faeces, vomit, skin scales, etc. Thus, when circumstances combine, people become exposed, either directly or via food or water, the main highways for spread of germs in the home are the hands, hand and food contact surfaces, and cleaning cloths and utensils. Germs can also spread via clothing and household linens, such as towels, safe disposal of human waste is a fundamental need, poor sanitation is a primary cause of diarrhea disease in low income communities
15.
Pollution
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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956
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Air pollution
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Air pollution occurs when harmful substances including particulates and biological molecules are introduced into Earths atmosphere. It may cause diseases, allergies or death in humans, it may cause harm to other living organisms such as animals and food crops. Human activity and natural processes can both generate air pollution, indoor air pollution and poor urban air quality are listed as two of the worlds worst toxic pollution problems in the 2008 Blacksmith Institute Worlds Worst Polluted Places report. According to the 2014 WHO report, air pollution in 2012 caused the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide, an air pollutant is a substance in the air that can have adverse effects on humans and the ecosystem. The substance can be particles, liquid droplets, or gases. A pollutant can be of natural origin or man-made, pollutants are classified as primary or secondary. Primary pollutants are usually produced from a process, such as ash from a volcanic eruption, other examples include carbon monoxide gas from motor vehicle exhaust, or the sulfur dioxide released from factories. Secondary pollutants are not emitted directly, rather, they form in the air when primary pollutants react or interact. Ground level ozone is a prominent example of a secondary pollutant, some pollutants may be both primary and secondary, they are both emitted directly and formed from other primary pollutants. Substances emitted into the atmosphere by human activity include, Carbon dioxide - Debate continues over whether carbon dioxide should be classified as an atmospheric pollutant, because of its role as a greenhouse gas it has been described as the leading pollutant and the worst climate pollution. Against this it is argued that carbon dioxide is a component of the atmosphere, essential for plant life. This question of terminology has practical effects, for example as determining whether the U. S. Clean Air Act is deemed to regulate CO2 emissions, CO2 increase in earths atmosphere has been accelerating. Sulfur oxides - particularly sulfur dioxide, a compound with the formula SO2. SO2 is produced by volcanoes and in industrial processes. Coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, and their combustion generates sulfur dioxide, further oxidation of SO2, usually in the presence of a catalyst such as NO2, forms H2SO4, and thus acid rain. This is one of the causes for concern over the impact of the use of these fuels as power sources. Nitrogen oxides - Nitrogen oxides, particularly nitrogen dioxide, are expelled from high temperature combustion and they can be seen as a brown haze dome above or a plume downwind of cities. Nitrogen dioxide is a compound with the formula NO2
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Indoor air pollution in developing nations
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Indoor air pollution in developing nations is a significant form of indoor air pollution that is little known to those in the developed world. Three billion people in developing nations across the globe rely on biomass, in the form of wood, charcoal, dung, and crop residue, as their domestic cooking fuel. Because much of the cooking is carried out indoors in environments that lack proper ventilation, millions of people, globally,4.3 million deaths were attributed to exposure to IAP in developing countries in 2012, almost all in low and middle income countries. The South East Asian and Western Pacific regions bear most of the burden with 1.69 and 1.62 million deaths, respectively. Almost 600,000 deaths occur in Africa,200,000 in the Eastern Mediterranean region,99,000 in Europe and 81,000 in the Americas, the remaining 19,000 deaths occur in high income countries. Even though the rate of dependence on biomass fuel is declining and this is due to the poor combustion efficiency of the combustion devices and the elevated nature of the emissions. In addition, they are released directly into living areas. In a typical solid fuel stove, about 6–20% of the fuel is converted into toxic emissions. The exact quantity and relative composition is determined by such as the fuel type and moisture content, stove type. Indoor PM2.5 exposure levels have been reported to be in the range of hundreds to thousands of micrograms per cubic meter. Similarly, CO exposure levels have been measured to be as high as hundreds to greater than 1000 milligrams per cubic meter. Rural Kenya has been the site of various applied research projects to determine the intensity of emissions that occur from use of biomass fuels, particularly wood, dung. Smoke is the result of the combustion of solid fuel which women and children are exposed to up to seven hours each day in closed environments. These emissions vary from day to day, season to season, exposure in poor homes far exceeds accepted safety levels by as much as one hundred times over. Because many Kenyan women utilize a three-stone fire, the worst offender, one kilogram of burning wood produces tiny particles of soot which can clog, the smoke also contains various poisonous gases such as aldehydes, benzene, and carbon monoxide. Exposure to IAP from combustion of solid fuels has been implicated, with varying degrees of evidence, acute lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are the leading causes of disease and death from exposure to smoke. Cataracts and blindness, lung cancer, tuberculosis, premature births and this time could be spent in more productive ways such as attending school or income production. The use of biomass coupled with inefficient cooking apparatus leads to a web of social and environmental concerns which directly links to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, for example, some improved stove designs in Kenya significantly reduced particulate emissions but produced higher CO2 and SO2 emissions
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Water pollution
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Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies. This form of environmental degradation occurs when pollutants are directly or indirectly discharged into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds, Water pollution affects the entire biosphere – plants and organisms living in these bodies of water. In almost all cases the effect is damaging not only to individual species and population, Water pollution is a major global problem which requires ongoing evaluation and revision of water resource policy at all levels. It has been suggested that pollution is the leading worldwide cause of deaths and diseases. An estimated 580 people in India die of water related illness every day. About 90 percent of the water in the cities of China is polluted, as of 2007, half a billion Chinese had no access to safe drinking water. In addition to the problems of water pollution in developing countries. The head of Chinas national development agency said in 2007 that one quarter the length of Chinas seven main rivers were so poisoned the water harmed the skin. Natural phenomena such as volcanoes, algae blooms, storms, and earthquakes also cause changes in water quality. Although interrelated, surface water and groundwater have often studied and managed as separate resources. Surface water seeps through the soil and becomes groundwater, conversely, groundwater can also feed surface water sources. Sources of surface water pollution are generally grouped into two based on their origin. Point source water pollution refers to contaminants that enter a waterway from a single, identifiable source, examples of sources in this category include discharges from a sewage treatment plant, a factory, or a city storm drain. The U. S. Clean Water Act defines point source for regulatory enforcement purposes, the CWA definition of point source was amended in 1987 to include municipal storm sewer systems, as well as industrial storm water, such as from construction sites. Nonpoint source pollution refers to contamination that does not originate from a single discrete source. NPS pollution is often the cumulative effect of small amounts of contaminants gathered from a large area, a common example is the leaching out of nitrogen compounds from fertilized agricultural lands. Nutrient runoff in storm water from sheet flow over a field or a forest are also cited as examples of NPS pollution. Contaminated storm water washed off of parking lots, roads and highways, however, because this runoff is typically channeled into storm drain systems and discharged through pipes to local surface waters, it becomes a point source
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Neglected tropical diseases
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Neglected tropical diseases are a diverse group of tropical infections which are especially common in low-income populations in developing regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They are caused by a variety of such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa. These diseases are contrasted with the big three diseases, which receive greater treatment and research funding. In sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of diseases as a group is comparable to malaria. NTD co-infection can also make HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis more deadly, in some cases, the treatments are relatively inexpensive. For example, the treatment for schistosomiasis is US$0.20 per child per year, nevertheless, control of neglected diseases is estimated to require funding of between US$2 billion to US$3 billion over the next five to seven years. Some pharmaceutical companies have committed to donating all the drug therapies required, however, preventative measures are often more accessible in the developed world, but not universally available in poorer areas. Within developed countries, neglected tropical diseases affect the very poorest in society, in the United States, there are up to 1.46 million families in poverty, with 2.8 million children living on less than two dollars a day. In countries such as these, the burdens of neglected diseases are often overshadowed by other public health issues. However, many of the same issues put populations at risk in developed as developing nations, for example, from poverty stem problems such as lack of adequate housing, thus exposing individuals to the vectors of these diseases. Seventeen neglected tropical diseases are prioritized by WHO, though other organizations define NTDs differently and these diseases are common in 149 countries, affecting more than 1.4 billion people and costing developing economies billions of dollars every year. They resulted in 142,000 deaths in 2013—down from 204,000 deaths in 1990, of these 17, two were targeted for eradication, and four for elimination. There is some debate among the WHO, CDC, and infectious disease experts over which diseases are classified as neglected tropical diseases and these diseases result from four different classes of causative pathogens, protozoa, bacteria, helminths or metazoan worms, and viruses. The World Health Organization recognizes the seventeen diseases below as neglected tropical diseases, Buruli ulcer is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans. It is related to the family of organisms that cause tuberculosis and leprosy, but Mycobacterium ulcerans produces a toxin, mycolactone, the prevalence of Buruli ulcer is unknown. The risk of mortality is low, although secondary infections can be lethal, morbidity takes the form of deformity, disability, and skin lesions, which can be prevented through early treatment and treated with antibiotics and surgery. It is found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Chagas disease is also known as American trypanosomiasis. There are approximately 15 million people infected with Chagas disease, the chance of morbidity is higher for immuno-compromised individuals, children, and elderly, but very low if treated early
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Poverty
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Poverty is general scarcity or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. It is a concept, which includes social, economic. Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the lack of necessary to meet basic needs such as food, clothing. Absolute poverty is meant to be about the independent of location. After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made producing goods increasingly less expensive, of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, to provide enough yield to feed the population. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedoms, Poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. The World Bank forecasts that 702.1 million people, down from 1.75 billion in 1990, of these, about 347.1 million people lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and 231.3 million lived in South Asia. According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty fell from 37. 1% to 9. 6%. Nevertheless, given the current economic model, built on GDP, extreme poverty is a global challenge, it is observed in all parts of the world, including developed economies. UNICEF estimates half the children live in poverty. It has been argued by some academics that the policies promoted by global financial institutions such as the IMF. Another estimate places the true scale of poverty much higher than the World Bank, with an estimated 4.3 billion people living with less than $5 a day and unable to meet basic needs adequately. In 2012 it is estimated that, given a poverty line of $1.25 a day 1.2 billion people lived in poverty, the word poverty comes from old French poverté, from Latin paupertās from pauper. The English word poverty via Anglo-Norman povert, there are several definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation it is placed in, and the views of the person giving the definition. Income Poverty, a familys income fails to meet a federally established threshold that differs across countries, United Nations, Fundamentally, poverty is the inability of having choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of capacity to participate effectively in society. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and it means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation. World Bank, Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions and it includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity
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Education
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Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has an effect on the way one thinks, feels. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy, in most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age. Etymologically, the education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō from ēducō which is related to the homonym ēdūcō from ē-. Education began in prehistory, as trained the young in the knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation, story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be learned through imitation. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom, plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, there, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE476, after the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centres of advanced education, some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europes modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous, founded in 1088, the University of Bologne is considered the first, and the oldest continually operating university. The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts, the Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age, formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. Most school systems are designed around a set of values or ideals that govern all educational choices in that system, such choices include curriculum, organizational models, design of the physical learning spaces, student-teacher interactions, methods of assessment, class size, educational activities, and more
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Corruption
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Corruption is a form of dishonest or unethical conduct by a person entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire personal benefit. Corruption may include many activities including bribery and embezzlement, though it may also involve practices that are legal in many countries, government, or political, corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain. Stephen D. Morris, a professor of politics, writes that corruption is the use of public power to benefit a private interest. The effect of corruption in infrastructure is to increase costs and construction time, lower the quality, Corruption can occur on different scales. Petty corruption occurs at a scale and takes place at the implementation end of public services when public officials meet the public. For example, in small places such as registration offices, police stations and many other private. Grand corruption is defined as occurring at the highest levels of government in a way that requires significant subversion of the political, legal. Such corruption is found in countries with authoritarian or dictatorial governments. Systemic corruption is corruption which is due to the weaknesses of an organization or process. It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system, factors which encourage systemic corruption include conflicting incentives, discretionary powers, monopolistic powers, lack of transparency, low pay, and a culture of impunity. Specific acts of corruption include bribery, extortion, and embezzlement in a system where corruption becomes the rule rather than the exception, some scholars argue that there is a negative duty of western governments to protect against systematic corruption of underdeveloped governments. Corruption can occur in any sectors, whether they be public or private industry or even NGOs, therefore, the owners investors or sponsors profits are largely decisive. Recent research by the World Bank suggests that who makes policy decisions can be critical in determining the level of corruption because of the incentives different policy-makers face. Political corruption is the abuse of power, office, or resources by elected government officials for personal gain, by extortion. It can also take the form of office holders maintaining themselves in office by purchasing votes by enacting laws which use taxpayers money, evidence suggests that corruption can have political consequences- with citizens being asked for bribes becoming less likely to identify with their country or region. One common form of corruption is soliciting and/or accepting bribes in exchange for not reporting organized drug or prostitution rings or other illegal activities. Another example is police officers flouting the police code of conduct in order to secure convictions of suspects—for example, more rarely, police officers may deliberately and systematically participate in organized crime themselves. In most major cities, there are internal affairs sections to investigate suspected police corruption or misconduct, similar entities include the British Independent Police Complaints Commission
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Sustainable Development Goals
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The Sustainable Development Goals, officially known as Transforming our world, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a set of 17 Global Goals with 169 targets between them. The Resolution is a broader intergovernmental agreement that acts as the Post 2015 Development Agenda, the SDGs build on the Principles agreed upon under Resolution A/RES/66/288, popularly known as The Future We Want. The SDGs were in large measure informed by the often quoted assertion by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that we don’t have plan B because there is no planet B. On 19 July 2014, the UN General Assemblys Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals forwarded a proposal for the SDGs to the Assembly, the proposal contained 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues. These included ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests. On 5 December 2014, the UN General Assembly accepted the Secretary-Generals Synthesis Report which stated that the agenda for the post-2015 SDG process would be based on the OWG proposals, the Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post 2015 Development Agenda began in January 2015 and ended in August 2015. Following the negotiations, a document was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit September 25–27,2015 in New York. The title of the agenda is Transforming our world, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in 1992 the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio. The first agenda for Environment and Development, also known as Agenda 21, was developed and adopted in Rio, in preparation for the Rio+20 Conference, Indonesia held a July 2011 government retreat in Solo, Indonesia. At this event, Colombia proposed the idea of the SDGs, in the run-up to Rio+20 there was much discussion about the idea of SDGs. At the Rio+20 Conference, a resolution, known as The Future We Want was reached by member states, among the key themes agreed on were poverty eradication, energy, water and sanitation, health, and human settlement. The goals should address and incorporate in a way all three dimensions of sustainable development and their interlinkages. The development of these goals should not divert focus or effort from the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, paragraph 249 states that the process needs to be coordinated and coherent with the processes to consider the post-2015 development agenda. Taken together, paragraph 246 and 249 paved the way for the Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000 and the agreement in the Future We Want outcome document. Because the MDGs were to be achieved by 2015, a process was needed. The Report was the first attempt to achieve the requirements under paragraph 246 and 249 of the Future We Want document, other processes included the UN Secretary Generals High Level Panel on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, whose report was submitted to the Secretary General in 2013. On 25 September 2015, the 194 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled Transforming our world, known as Project Everyone, the independent campaign introduced the term Global Goals and was supported by corporate institutions and other International Organizations. Because this decision was made without the approval of the member states, in addition, several sections of civil society and governments felt the UNDG ignored sustainability, even though it was the most important aspect of the agreement
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Effects of global warming
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The effects of global warming are the environmental and social changes caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a consensus that climate change is occurring. Many impacts of change have already been observed, including glacier retreat, changes in the timing of seasonal events. Future effects of change will vary depending on climate change policies. The two main policies to address climate change are reducing human greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change, near-term climate change policies could significantly affect long-term climate change impacts. Stringent mitigation policies might be able to limit warming to around 2 °C or below. Without mitigation, increased demand and extensive use of fossil fuels might lead to global warming of around 4 °C. Higher magnitudes of warming would be more difficult to adapt to. In this article, climate change means a change in climate that persists over a period of time. The World Meteorological Organization defines this time period as 30 years, examples of climate change include increases in global surface temperature, changes in rainfall patterns, and changes in the frequency of extreme weather events. Changes in climate may be due to causes, e. g. changes in the suns output, or due to human activities. Also, the term anthropogenic forcing refers to the influence exerted on a habitat or chemical environment by humans and this article breaks down some of the impacts of climate change according to different levels of future global warming. This way of describing impacts has, for instance, been used in the IPCC Assessment Reports on climate change, the instrumental temperature record shows global warming of around 0.6 °C during the 20th century. The future level of warming is uncertain, but a wide range of estimates have been made. The IPCCs SRES scenarios have been used to make projections of future climate change. The SRES scenarios are baseline scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit GHG emissions, emissions projections of the SRES scenarios are broadly comparable in range to the baseline emissions scenarios that have been developed by the scientific community. In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, changes in global mean temperature were projected using the six SRES marker emissions scenarios. Emissions projections for the six SRES marker scenarios are representative of the set of forty SRES scenarios
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Climate change
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Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time. Climate change may refer to a change in weather conditions. Climate change is caused by such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics. Certain human activities have also identified as significant causes of recent climate change. Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations, more recent data are provided by the instrumental record. The most general definition of change is a change in the statistical properties of the climate system when considered over long periods of time. Accordingly, fluctuations over periods shorter than a few decades, such as El Niño, the term climate change is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change. Anthropogenic climate change is caused by activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earths natural processes. In this sense, especially in the context of environmental policy, within scientific journals, global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas levels affect. A related term is climatic change, in 1966, the World Meteorological Organization proposed the term climatic change to encompass all forms of climatic variability on time-scales longer than 10 years, regardless of cause. Change was a given and climatic was used as an adjective to describe this kind of change, when it was realized that human activities had a potential to drastically alter the climate, the term climate change replaced climatic change as the dominant term to reflect an anthropogenic cause. Climate change was incorporated in the title of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate change, used as a noun, became an issue rather than the technical description of changing weather. On the broadest scale, the rate at which energy is received from the Sun and this energy is distributed around the globe by winds, ocean currents, and other mechanisms to affect the climates of different regions. Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or forcing mechanisms, there are a variety of climate change feedbacks that can either amplify or diminish the initial forcing. Some parts of the system, such as the oceans and ice caps, respond more slowly in reaction to climate forcings. There are also key factors which when exceeded can produce rapid change. Forcing mechanisms can be internal or external. Internal forcing mechanisms are natural processes within the system itself
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Development aid
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Development aid is financial aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries. It is distinguished from humanitarian aid by focusing on alleviating poverty in the long term, Most development aid comes from the Western industrialised countries but some poorer countries also contribute aid. The proportion is currently about 70% bilateral 30% multilateral, about 80-85% of developmental aid comes from government sources as official development assistance. The remaining 15-20% comes from organisations such as non-governmental organisations, foundations. In addition, remittances received from migrants working or living in diaspora form a significant amount of international transfer, some governments also include military assistance in the notion foreign aid, although many NGOs tend to disapprove of this. Official development assistance is a measure of government-contributed aid, compiled by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation, the DAC consists of 34 of the largest aid-donating countries. The concept of development aid goes back to the era at the turn of the twentieth century. The traditional government policy had tended to favor laissez-faire style economics, with the market for capital. The first challenge first by Britain was the crisis that occurred after World War I. Prior to the passage of the 1929 Colonial Development Act, the doctrine that governed Britain with their territories was that of financial self-sufficiency, what this simply meant was that the colonies were responsible for themselves. Britain was not going to use the money belongs to the metropole to pay for things in the colonies. The colonies did not only have to pay for infrastructural development, the colonies generated the revenues to pay for these through different forms of taxations. The standard taxation was the import and export taxes, goods going out of the colonies were taxed and those coming in were also taxed. Apart from these taxes, the colonizers introduced two forms of taxes, hut tax and labor tax. The hut tax is akin to a property tax today, every grown up adult male had their own hut. Each of these had to pay a tax, labor tax was the work that the people had to do without any remunerations or with meager stipends. As the economic crisis widened and had significant impact on the colonies, revenues generated from taxes continued to decline, while this was going on, Britain experienced major unemployment rates. Parliament began to discuss ways in which they could deal with Britains unemployment rates, the 1929 Act, though meager in the resources it made available for development, was a significant Act because it opened the door for Britain to make future investments in the colonies
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Aid
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In international relations, aid is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. Humanitarian and altruistic purposes are at least partly responsible for the giving of aid, Aid may be given by individuals, private organizations, or governments. Standards delimiting exactly the types of transfers considered aid vary from country to country, for example, the United States government discontinued the reporting of military aid as part of its foreign aid figures in 1958. The most widely used measure of aid is Official Development Assistance, Foreign aid has increased since 1950s and 1960s. The notion that foreign aid increases economic performance and generates economic growth is based on Chenery, lancaster also states that for much of the period of her study foreign aid was used for four main purposes, diplomatic, developmental, humanitarian relief and commercial. Most official development assistance comes from the 28 members of the Development Assistance Committee, a further $15.9 billion came from the European Commission and non-DAC countries gave an additional $9.4 billion. Although development aid rose in 2013 to the highest level ever recorded, as of 2013, Official development assistance contributed by the top 10 DAC countries is as follows. European Union countries together gave $70.73 billion and EU Institutions gave a further $15.93 billion. The type of aid given may be classified according to various factors, including its intended purpose, the terms or conditions under which it is given, its source, Official aid may be classified by types according to its intended purpose. Military aid is material or logistical assistance given to strengthen the capabilities of an ally country. Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, Aid can also be classified according to the terms agreed upon by the donor and receiving countries. In this classification, aid can be a gift, a grant, Aid can also be classified according to its source. While government aid is called foreign aid, aid that originates in institutions of a religious nature is often termed faith-based foreign aid. Aid from various sources can reach recipients through bilateral or multilateral delivery systems, bilateral refers to government to government transfers. Multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank or UNICEF, pool aid from one or more sources, Aid may be also classified based on urgency into emergency aid and development aid. The term often carries a connotation, but this is not always the case. It is often distinguished from development aid by being focused on relieving suffering caused by natural disaster or conflict, Development aid is aid given to support development in general which can be economic development or social development in developing countries. It is distinguished from humanitarian aid as being aimed at alleviating poverty in the long term, Humanitarian aid is distinguished from humanitarian intervention, which involves armed forces protecting civilians from violent oppression or genocide by state-supported actors
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International development
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For other forms of development, see Development. International development or global development is a concept concerning the level of development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications such as developed country, developing country, There are, however, many schools of thought and conventions regarding which are the exact features constituting development of a country. Historically it has been synonymous with economic development. Recently it is often used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development as well as other concepts like competitiveness. International development is different from simple development in that it is composed of institutions. These institutions focus on alleviating poverty and improving living conditions in previously colonised, the start of the Cold War and the desire of the United States and its allies to prevent the Third World from drifting towards communism. International Development in its meaning is geared towards colonies that gained independence. The governance of the independent states should be constructed so that the inhabitants enjoy freedom from poverty, hunger. It has been argued that this era was launched on January 20,1949 and this agenda was given conceptual support during the 1950s in the form of modernization theory espoused by Walt Rostow and other American economists. By the late 1960s, dependency theory arose analysing the relationship between the West and the Third World. In response various parts of the UN system led a counter movement and they were led initially by the International Labour Organization, influenced by Paul Streeten, then by UNICEF. By the 1990s, there were writers for whom development theory had reached an impasse. The Cold War had ended, capitalism had become the dominant mode of social organization, nevertheless, a large portion of the worlds population were still living in poverty, their governments were crippled by debt and concerns about the environmental impact of globalization were rising. The critics have suggested that this integration has always been part of the agenda of development. This approach is embraced by organizations such as the Gamelan Council seeking to empower entrepreneurs, while some critics have been debating the end of development others have predicted a development revival as part of the War on Terrorism. There are a number of overarching theories about how desirable change in society is best achieved, a truly sustainable development project is one which will be able to carry on indefinitely with no further international involvement or support, whether it be financial or otherwise. International development projects may consist of a single, transformative project to address a problem or a series of projects targeted at several aspects of society
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Kofi Annan
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Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize and he is the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela. Born in Kumasi, Annan went on to study economics at Macalester College, international relations from the Graduate Institute Geneva, Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organizations Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996 and he was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as Secretary-General by Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2007. As the Secretary-General, Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy, worked to combat HIV, especially in Africa and he has been criticized for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Programme. After leaving the UN, he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development, in 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UNs lack of progress with regard to conflict resolution, in September 2016, Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis. Kofi Annan was born in the Kofandros section of Kumasi in the Gold Coast on 8 April 1938 and his twin sister Efua Atta, who died in 1991, shared the middle name Atta, which in the Akan means twin. Annan and his sister were born one of the countrys Ashanti and Fante aristocratic families. In the Akan names tradition, some children are named according to the day of the week on which they were born, Kofi in Akan is the name that corresponds with Friday. Annan has said his surname rhymes with cannon in English, from 1954 to 1957, Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim school, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Annan has said that the school taught him that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere, in 1957, the year Annan graduated from Mfantsipim, the Gold Coast gained independence from Britain and began using the name Ghana. In 1958, Annan began studying economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology of Ghana. He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to complete his studies in economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. Annan then completed a diplôme détudes approfondies DEA degree in International Relations at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961–62. After some years of experience, he studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management in the Sloan Fellows program. Annan is fluent in English, French, Akan, some Kru languages, in 1962, Kofi Annan started working as a Budget Officer for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations. From 1974 to 1976, he worked as the Director of Tourism in Ghana, in 1980 he became the head of personnel for the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva
30.
United Nations
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The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict, at its founding, the UN had 51 member states, there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, the UNs mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in actions in Korea and the Congo. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military, the UN has six principal organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council. UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, the UNs most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese António Guterres since 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UNs work, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UNs effectiveness have been mixed, some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France, four Policemen was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries, the term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, by 1 March 1945,21 additional states had signed. Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto, the foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. During the war, the United Nations became the term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis, at the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, the General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General
31.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
32.
Canada
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Canada is a country in the northern half of North America. Canadas border with the United States is the worlds longest binational land border, the majority of the country has a cold or severely cold winter climate, but southerly areas are warm in summer. Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its territory being dominated by forest and tundra. It is highly urbanized with 82 per cent of the 35.15 million people concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, One third of the population lives in the three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Its capital is Ottawa, and other urban areas include Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg. Various aboriginal peoples had inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Pursuant to the British North America Act, on July 1,1867, the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and this began an accretion of provinces and territories to the mostly self-governing Dominion to the present ten provinces and three territories forming modern Canada. With the Constitution Act 1982, Canada took over authority, removing the last remaining ties of legal dependence on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. The country is officially bilingual at the federal level and it is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the eleventh largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources, Canadas long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. Canada is a country and has the tenth highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the ninth highest ranking in the Human Development Index. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, Canada is an influential nation in the world, primarily due to its inclusive values, years of prosperity and stability, stable economy, and efficient military. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the origins of Canada. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona, from the 16th to the early 18th century Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named The Canadas, until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the name for the new country at the London Conference. The transition away from the use of Dominion was formally reflected in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act, later that year, the name of national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day
33.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
34.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
35.
New Zealand
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New Zealand /njuːˈziːlənd/ is an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu—and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, the countrys varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealands capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland, sometime between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that later were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, in 1840, representatives of Britain and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands. In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire, today, the majority of New Zealands population of 4.7 million is of European descent, the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealands culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, New Zealand is a developed country and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life. Since the 1980s, New Zealand has transformed from an agrarian, Queen Elizabeth II is the countrys head of state and is represented by a governor-general. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes, the Realm of New Zealand also includes Tokelau, the Cook Islands and Niue, and the Ross Dependency, which is New Zealands territorial claim in Antarctica. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pacific Islands Forum, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and called it Staten Landt, in 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand, Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand. It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the country before the arrival of Europeans. Māori had several names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North, Middle and South, in 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. The New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised and this set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island or Te Waipounamu
36.
Western Europe
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Western Europe, or West Europe, is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Below, some different geographic and geopolitical definitions of the term are outlined, prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. This cultural and linguistic division was reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The division between these two was enhanced during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived, in East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the Far West. The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In his writings, Ricci referred to himself as Matteo of the Far West, the term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Post-war Europe would be divided into two spheres, the West, influenced by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Although some countries were neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political. This division largely defined the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe, the world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had part of the Soviet Union regained full independence. Although the term Western Europe was more prominent during the Cold War, it remains much in use, in 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference, when the Western European Union was established and it was declared defunct in 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries, six member countries, five observer countries. The CIA divides Western Europe into two smaller subregions, regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe, some Western and Northern European countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of EFTA, though cooperating to varying degree with the European Union
37.
Southern African Customs Union
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The Southern African Customs Union is a customs union among five countries of Southern Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. Its headquarters is in the Namibian capital Windhoek, SACU is the oldest existing customs union in the world. It was established in 1910 pursuant to a Customs Union Agreement between the then Union of South Africa and the High Commission Territories of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, the updated union officially entered into force on 1 March 1970. After Namibias independence from South Africa in 1990, it joined SACU as its fifth member, as of 2007, the Executive Secretary of the SACU was Tswelopele C. The union meets annually to discuss matters related to the Agreement and its aim is to maintain the free interchange of goods between member countries. It provides for a common external tariff and a common excise tariff to this common customs area, all customs and excise collected in the common customs area are paid into South Africa’s National Revenue Fund. The revenue is shared among members according to a formula as described in the agreement. South Africa is the custodian of this pool, only the BLNS Member States shares are calculated with South Africa receiving the residual. SACU revenue constitutes a substantial share of the revenue of the BLNS countries. With this in mind, the Ministers of Trade and Industry of the five states met in Pretoria on 11 November 1994 to discuss the renegotiation of the 1969 agreement. The Ministers appointed a Customs Union Task Team which was mandated to make recommendations to the Ministers, CUTT has met on numerous occasions in the Members States and good progress has been made in the renegotiation process. It would be the supreme SACU decision-making body and would meet quarterly, the decisions taken by this council would only be by consensus. Commission Administrative body composed of Senior Officials, three Technical Liaison Committees and an established Agricultural Liaison Committee, tribunal An independent body of experts. It would report directly to the Council of Ministers, the tribunal would be responsible for tariff-setting and the Anti-dumping Mechanism. Secretariat Responsible for day-to-day operations of the pool and it would be funded from the revenue pool. Its location would be determined by Senior Officials who were directed to meet after one month to develop proposals for the implementation of the revised SACU Institutional Structure. It was agreed that these components would be distributed as follows, The customs component should be allocated according to each country’s share of total intra-SACU trade, the excise component, net of the development component, should be allocated on the basis of GDP. The development component should be fixed at 15% of the total excise pool, while SACU entered into a free trade deal with the four-nation European Free Trade Association on 1 July 2006, its negotiations with the United States for a free trade agreement have stalled
38.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
39.
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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Covering an area of 255,804 km², the SFRY was bordered with Italy to the west, Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east and Albania and Greece to the south. In addition, it included two autonomous provinces within Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina, the SFRY traces back to 29 June 1943 when the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia was formed during World War II. On 29 November 1945, the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed after the deposal of King Peter II thus ending the monarchy. Following the death of Tito on 4 May 1980, rising ethnic nationalism in the late 1980s led to dissidence among the multiple ethnicities within the constituent republics. This led to the federation collapsing along the borders, followed by the final downfall and breakup of the federation on 27 April 1992. The term former Yugoslavia is now commonly used retrospectively, the name Yugoslavia, an Anglicised transcription of Jugoslavija, is a composite word made-up of jug and slavija. The Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian word jug means south, while slavija denotes a land of the Slavs, thus, a translation of Jugoslavija would be South-Slavia or Land of the South Slavs. The term is intended to denote the lands occupied by the six South Slavic nations, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Slovenes, the full official name of the federation varied significantly between 1945 and 1992. Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 under the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, the name deliberately left the republic-or-kingdom question open. In 1963, amid pervasive liberal constitutional reforms, the name Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was introduced, the state is most commonly referred to by the latter name, which it held for the longest period of all. The most common abbreviation is SFRY, though SFR Yugoslavia was also used in an official capacity, particularly by the media. On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany, by 17 April 1941, Yugoslav resistance was soon established in two forms, the Royal Yugoslav Army and the Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisan supreme commander was Josip Broz Tito, and under his command the movement soon began establishing liberated territories which attracted the attentions of the occupying forces. The coalition of parties, factions, and prominent individuals behind the movement was the Peoples Liberation Front. The Front formed a political body, the Anti-Fascist Council for the Peoples Liberation of Yugoslavia. The AVNOJ, which met for the first time in Partisan-liberated Bihać on 26 November 1942, during 1943, the Yugoslav Partisans began attracting serious attention from the Germans. In two major operations of Fall Weiss and Fall Schwartz, the Axis attempted to stamp-out the Yugoslav resistance once, on both occasions, despite heavy casualties, the Group succeeded in evading the trap and retreating to safety. The Partisans emerged stronger than before and now occupied a significant portion of Yugoslavia
40.
Central Europe
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Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
41.
Commonwealth of Independent States
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The Commonwealth of Independent States, also called the Russian Commonwealth, is a regional organization formed during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Nine out of the 15 former Soviet Republics are member states, Georgia withdrew its membership in 2008, while the Baltic states chose not to participate. The CIS has few supranational powers but aims to be more than a purely symbolic organization, nominally possessing coordinating powers in the realms of trade, finance, lawmaking and it has also promoted cooperation on cross-border crime prevention. Furthermore, eight of the nine CIS member states participate in the CIS Free Trade Area, three organizations are under the overview of the CIS, namely the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Union State. While the first and the second are military and economic alliances, in March 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, proposed a federation by holding a referendum to preserve the Union as the Union of Sovereign States. The new treaty signing never happened as the Communist Party hardliners staged a coup in August that year. Following the events of August, the republics had declared their independence fearing another coup, at the same time they announced that the new alliance would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, and to other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the members were sovereign and independent nations, Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993. At this point,12 of the 15 former Soviet Republics participated in the CIS, the three Baltic states did not, reflecting their governments view that the post-1940 Soviet occupation of their territory was illegitimate. In May 2009, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine joined the Eastern Partnership, there are nine full member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Creation Agreement remained the main constituent document of the CIS until January 1993, the charter formalised the concept of membership, a member country is defined as a country that ratifies the CIS Charter. Turkmenistan has not ratified the charter and changed its CIS standing to associate member as of 26 August 2005 in order to be consistent with its UN-recognised international neutrality status, thus it does not regard itself as a member of the CIS. In 1993 Ukraine became an Associate Member of CIS, following the 2014 parliamentary election, a new bill to denounce the CIS agreement was introduced. In September 2015 the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Ukraine will continue taking part in CIS on a selective basis, since that month Ukraine has had no representatives in the CIS Executive Committee building. Since its inception, one of the goals of the CIS has been to provide a forum for discussing issues related to the social. To achieve this goal member states have agreed to promote and protect human rights, even before the 1995 human rights treaty, the Charter of the CIS that was adopted in 1991 created, in article 33, a Human Rights Commission sitting in Minsk, Belarus. This was confirmed by decision of the Council of Heads of States of the CIS in 1993, in 1995, the CIS adopted a human rights treaty that includes civil and political as well as social and economic human rights. This treaty entered force in 1998
42.
International Monetary Fund
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The International Monetary Fund is an international organization headquartered in Washington, D. C. It now plays a role in the management of balance of payments difficulties. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a system from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had SDR477 billion, the rationale for this is that private international capital markets function imperfectly and many countries have limited access to financial markets. The IMF provides alternate sources of financing and this assistance was meant to prevent the spread of international economic crises. The IMF was also intended to help mend the pieces of the economy after the Great Depression. As well, to provide investments for economic growth and projects such as infrastructure. The IMFs role was altered by the floating exchange rates post-1971. It shifted to examining the economic policies of countries with IMF loan agreements to determine if a shortage of capital was due to economic fluctuations or economic policy, the IMF also researched what types of government policy would ensure economic recovery. Rather than maintaining a position of oversight of only exchange rates and their role became a lot more active because the IMF now manages economic policy rather than just exchange rates. In addition, the IMF negotiates conditions on lending and loans under their policy of conditionality, nonconcessional loans, which include interest rates, are provided mainly through Stand-By Arrangements, the Flexible Credit Line, the Precautionary and Liquidity Line, and the Extended Fund Facility. The IMF provides emergency assistance via the Rapid Financing Instrument to members facing urgent balance-of-payments needs, the IMF is mandated to oversee the international monetary and financial system and monitor the economic and financial policies of its member countries. This activity is known as surveillance and facilitates international cooperation, the responsibilities changed from those of guardian to those of overseer of members’ policies. In 1995 the International Monetary Fund began work on data dissemination standards with the view of guiding IMF member countries to disseminate their economic and financial data to the public. The executive board approved the SDDS and GDDS in 1996 and 1997 respectively, the system is aimed primarily at statisticians and aims to improve many aspects of statistical systems in a country. It is also part of the World Bank Millennium Development Goals, some countries initially used the GDDS, but later upgraded to SDDS. The IMF does require collateral from countries for loans but also requires the government seeking assistance to correct its macroeconomic imbalances in the form of policy reform, if the conditions are not met, the funds are withheld. The concept of conditionality was introduced in a 1952 Executive Board decision, conditionality is associated with economic theory as well as an enforcement mechanism for repayment
43.
Central and Eastern Europe
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It is in use after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989–90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept, the transition countries in Europe are thus classified today into two political-economic entities, CEE and CIS. According to the World Bank, the transition is over for the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 and it can be also understood as all countries of the Eastern Bloc. The definition of this varies, depending on the source. Central Europe Central and Eastern European Online Library East-Central Europe Eastern Europe Regions of Europe Baltic states Visegrád Group
44.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
45.
Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
46.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
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