WASHINGTON: The International Geographic Union said during its latest convention that in the next 2 decades, among many other changes they foresee, that India will lose Punjab and part of Kashmir, According to the Ontaria Canada “Spectator” the geographers have been hard at work looking at the map of the future, in which states and nations will be decided on self-determination, ethnic and cultural issues and treaties will be economic in nature.

Imagine a world in which Scotland gains independence from Britain and Italy divides in half. Russia and China both fragment into a dizzying array of new slates, while Canada disappears altogether. Along the way, a host of new states including Sami land, Pushtunistan, and Zululand are born. “What we’re dealing with is the re-creation of countries,” said William B. Wood, the U.S. State Department’s chief geographer.

Over the next 25 to 30 years, the world roster may increase by 50% or more, “There’ll be more than 300 countries,” predicted Saul B. Cohen, past resident of the Association of American Geographers.

The political geographers do not agree on all the details of the future world map, But they do agree that recharging the globe will be the byproduct of several concurrent trends, ranging from the powerful pull of ethnicity and the spread of democracy to changes in the very concept of a modern state.

First, some borders will be altered as nations break away from traditional states, as has happened painfully in Yugoslavia over the past year and peacefully in Czechoslovakia this year.

“Borders of present countries or so-called natural boundaries will increasingly lose their importance when they do not correspond to well-recognized linguistic and territorial identities,” said Fabrizio Eva, an Italian geographer.

Second, other new countries will be added as the last colonies become independent countries the dominant trend during the second half of the 20th century and evident most recently when the Soviet empire’s collapse spawned 15 new states,

We are now in a major new phase of demands for ‘self-determination’ demands which, if all are acceded to, will result in significant changes to the world’s political map at both state and sub-state levels,” said David B. Knight, chairman of a special Commission on the World Political Map of the International Geographical Union, or the IGU.

On a third and more sweeping level, the new lines on a map will be produced by fundamental changes in the role of states, largely in response to economic and social pressures and political alienation.

A stratified system of governance and powers is likely to replace traditional states. “At the top will be a stronger United Nations or an equivalent body responsible for peace, environment and other global issues,” explained Julian Minghi, U.S. representative to the IGU Commission on the World Political Map. He places regional groupings like the European Community on the second

tier, while the tiny ethnically and linguistically based mini-states of the future will be the lowest level.

 Already, at least 17 regional blocs from Latin America’s Southern Cone Common Market to Central Asia’s Economic Co-operation Organization are reshaping the globe. The latest is the new continental pact forming the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Should the world’s current powers give priority to the right of self-determination, potentially threatening the current configuration of states? Or should they be committed to preserving territorial integrity potentially at the expense of individual rights? “The tendency now and in the future will be to preserve the status quo,” said the State

Department’s Mr. Wood. “The United Nations is the best example. Its members states are recognized governments with control over defined space.”

But experts at this month’s 27th International Geographical Congress in Washington suggested self-determination will often prevail.

More than ever before, political movements are inclined toward a subdivision within states,” said Eva, the Italian geographer.

Since up to a third of the world’s current states face border challenges from neighboring nations or from minorities at home, geographers are urging steps to prevent repetitions of the bloody conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia.

In the longer term political geographers think the importance of borders will wane, as economic and technological inter-dependence span not only states, but continents.

Courtesy, “The Spectator”

Article extracted from this publication >> October 9, 1992