The World in 2016
The world is ever changing. This year, we live on a planet of 7.4 billion people who contribute products and services worth approximately US$80 trillion in nominal terms. However, population and wealth as measured in GDP activity are not distributed equally across the world which remains one of the challenges of our time. The following two cartograms illustrate this by highlighting where people are and where in contrast GDP wealth is made – the unequal distributions in our world today are quite obvious:
Nuclear Europe
30 years ago on this day the nuclear accident of Chernobyl brought the risks of nuclear energy production closer to the European population. Alongside the United States, Europe has the most dense network of nuclear power plants in relation to its population, as the below map shows. Of the producers of nuclear power in Europe, France (17.1%) and Russia (7.0%) are the largest when comparing it to the global share (France comes second after the USA). The United Kingdom’s production accounts for 2.9%. In contrast, France generates the largest share of its domestic electricity generation from nuclear power (74.4%) worldwide. It is followed by Sweden (43.4%) and Ukraine (43.0%), while the United Kingdom comes fifth with 19.2%.
World Heritage
April 18th marks the International Day for Monuments and Sites declared by UNESCO in 1983. Most important element in UNESCO’s efforts in preserving the world’s cultural and natural heritage are the currently 1031 World Heritage Sites around the world managed by the World Heritage Centre. The following cartogram shows the global distribution of all sites, as well as splitting these by category in the smaller sized maps below the main map (802 cultural sites, 197 natural sites and 32 described as mixed properties):
Data skills in geography: Gridded cartograms
Data Skills in Geography is a two year programme at the Royal Geographical Society, supported by funding from the Nuffield Foundation. Continue reading
In Focus: Where Art meets Science
Public spending cuts have been an important part of the political debate in Britain in recent years. In an article for the “In Focus” section of Political Insight (April 2016, Volume 7, Issue 1) Danny Dorling and I plotted the distribution of funding for the arts and universities in England.
The United Kingdom, and especially England, has become geographically extremely unequal. This inequality is not only seen in growing economic disparities within the population, but also becomes increasing visible across all parts of public life, such as science and education, as well as the arts. A report on arts funding in 2013, highlighted just how concentrated such funding was within London compared to the rest of the country. This represents the continuation of a now long-established trend.
