The Planet has a surface of 149 million sqkm total land, splitted in North Hemisphere with 100 million sqkm and South one, with 49 million sqkm, so the Northern is about twice the Southern (67/33%).Also as arable land the proportion remain around 70/30. In terms of population, the total is around 8 billion people, and the split is around 7 billion in the North and 1 billion in the South (85/15%), so twice the land but 7 times population. In terms of density this means around 71 people for sqkm versus 20, enormous difference.Let’s disaggregate:
Australia
- Land: 7.7M km²
- Population: ~26M
- Density: ~3.4/km²
Extremely underpopulated relative to size.
Argentina
- Land: 2.8M km²
- Population: ~46M
- Density: ~16/km²
- Patagonia is vast and sparsely populated
Brazil
(southern half below equator)
- Large southern agricultural belt
- Still moderate density
Namibia
- Density: ~3/km²
- One of the least dense countries globally
Antarctica
- 14M km²
- 0 permanent population
If Antarctica were excluded Southern Hemisphere density rises slightly — but remains far below northern levels.
Southern Hemisphere has of course a lot of environmental difficulties, like low productivity of land, water distribution, infrastructures for internal settlements, people live in big cities along coasts, immigration national policies. But progressively we will have more agricultural technologies, desalination of water, climate milding for iced areas. Let’s quantify hypothetical rebalancing: reaching same density means 3,5 billion people more in South, but of course this is true in raw spatial terms, not ecologically and politically. a more reasonable hypothesis could be doubling the present density, which means 1.7 billion more in the South. A new Development Pact should be done between the North and South, not the mainstream economical North and South, the geographical ones. The causes of transferring could become realistically: politically instability of North, energy transition reshaping geopolitics, water crisis along densely populated megaregions. Southern States should form a development bloc (Brics but more geographically organised?) focused on: land utilisation, green energy export, population attraction strategy. Big projects are needed in infrastructures, desalination, new cities, tax free zones. Population could grow to two billion people, reducing immigration pressures and brain escaping in Northern countries. So the South could become a reserve of stability for the world.
