Monday, January 11, 2016

Estimating fair share #1 – LAND only

Estimating fair share – LAND only

The chart provides one way to estimate what is fair when the nations of the world try to figure out how to help Syrian refugees. How many should go where? This is NOT A POLICY PROPOSAL! This is a sketch to help think.
                                   
It’s simply a list of the 25 largest nations, the 25 nations with the most arable land, and the 25 nations with the largest populations. It gives the area of each nation in square kilometers as of 2015 (CIA World Factbook). It calculates what percentage of the world’s land that nation has (divide by 149 million, the world total). Then it provides an estimated “fair share” (multiplying the percentage times the number of Syrian refugees at the end of 2015, about 4 million).

This is a seriously flawed method. If you go by land only, Canada should take more refugees than the USA. Greenland should take a little more than its current population. Germany should take 10,000, and Mongolia should take four times as much as Germany. This will not work as a way to find justice.

In this (flawed) sketch, the fair share for the USA would be about 250,000.

# by size
Nation
area
% of total
fair share
1
RUSSIA
17,098,242
11.5%
459,013
2
CANADA
9,984,670
6.7%
             268,045
3
USA
9,826,675
6.6%
             263,803
4
CHINA
9,596,960
6.4%
             257,637
5
BRAZIL
8,514,877
5.7%
             228,587
6
AUSTRALIA
7,741,220
5.2%
             207,818
7
INDIA
3,287,263
2.2%
               88,249
8
ARGENTINA
2,780,400
1.9%
               74,642
9
KAZAKHSTAN
2,724,900
1.8%
               73,152
10
ALGERIA
2,381,741
1.6%
               63,939
11
CONGO, DR
2,344,858
1.6%
               62,949
12
GREENLAND
2,166,086
1.5%
               58,150
13
Saudi Arabia
2,149,690
1.4%
               57,710
14
MEXICO
1,964,375
1.3%
               52,735
15
INDONESIA
1,904,569
1.3%
               51,129
16
SUDAN
1,861,484
1.2%
               49,973
17
LIBYA
1,759,540
1.2%
               47,236
18
IRAN
1,648,195
1.1%
               44,247
19
MONGOLIA
1,564,116
1.0%
               41,990
20
PERU
1,285,216
0.9%
               34,502
21
CHAD
1,284,000
0.9%
               34,470
22
NIGER
1,267,000
0.9%
               34,013
23
ANGOLA
1,246,700
0.8%
               33,468
24
MALI
1,240,192
0.8%
               33,294
25
SOUTH AFRICA
1,219,090
0.8%
               32,727
27
ETHIOPIA
1,104,300
0.7%
               29,646
30
EGYPT
1,001,450
0.7%
               26,885
32
NIGERIA
923,768
0.6%
               24,799
36
PAKISTAN
796,095
0.5%
               21,372
37
TURKEY
783,562
0.5%
               21,035
40
BURMA
676,578
0.5%
               18,163
43
FRANCE
643,801
0.4%
               17,283
46
UKRAINE
603,550
0.4%
               16,203
51
THAILAND
513,120
0.3%
               13,775
52
SPAIN
505,370
0.3%
               13,567
62
JAPAN
377,915
0.3%
               10,145
63
GERMANY
357,022
0.2%
                  9,584
66
VIETNAM
331,210
0.2%
                  8,892
70
POLAND
312,685
0.2%
                  8,394
72
ITALY
301,340
0.2%
                  8,090
73
PHILIPPINES
300,000
0.2%
                  8,054
80
United Kingdom
243,610
0.2%
                  6,540
95
BANGLADESH
143,998
0.1%
                  3,866