Geographic Information Question

help me finish this tutorial paper 7

Definitions

Determinism: That human behaviour, the structure and character of human communities, and the distribution of human communities across space, are controlled by processes or phenomena exogenous to (originating outside of) those communities.

Environmental Determinism: that human activities and the character of human communities are controlled by biophysical processes, characteristics and phenomena. A common perspective from the late 19th and, particularly, the early to middle 20th century, environmental determinism (particularly when coupled with Darwinian principles) has come to be seen as rationalising racism, colonialism, and the dispossession of First Nations peoples around the world.

Environmental Possibilism: championed by geographers such as Carl Sauer in the second half of the 20th century but with much deeper roots in Geographical thought (back to Strabo in the first centuries BCE/CE), environmental possibilism recognises that the biophysical components of the Earth System set limits on human culture and social structures, but that human communities are shaped by adaptive choices within that broader environmental context. Thus human societies are not the inevitable result of environmental conditions, but are also shaped by cultural processes.

Preamble

During the 1980’s, severe drought over north Africa coincided with armed conflict in places like Darfur. In their post-conflict assessment (Links to an external site.) of the Darfur crisis, the United Nations were clear that environmental degradation and climatic instability were the major underlying causes of conflict in Darfur. Today, humanitarian agencies (Links to an external site.) continue to stress the role that climate variability and change plays as a ‘threat multiplier’ in armed conflict (Links to an external site.), and scientific research has demonstrated a link between climate stress and conflict. In a paper (Links to an external site.) published last year, Toby Ide (Geography, University of Melbourne) and colleagues concluded that “climate-related disasters increase the risk of armed conflict onset…almost one third of all conflict onsets over the 1980-2016 period have been preceded by a disaster within 7 days”.

The awareness that biophysical processes can play a deterministic role in shaping human societies has deep roots in Geographical thought and has been (and continues to be) a key intellectual battleground. In their 2017 book (Links to an external site.) on the rise and fall of determinism in Geography (well worth a look if you have the time), Will Meyer and Dylan Guss pose an important question: