Migration of the Center of the Ecological Trouble and Geo-Ecological Transition

Abstract

The ecological situation deterioration in the cores of economic development in the second half of the 20th century was replaced by a multidirectional environmental trends in the macroregions of the World in the first decades of the 21st century. Interregional and cross-country shifts in the environmental situation are closely linked to transformations in the geography of the World economy. The post-industrial structure in the highly developed countries has ended the direct relationship between economic growth and its environmental costs. Environmentally positive trends in these countries are determined by economic and social factors. The countries of the world’s Semi-Periphery have become hotbeds of catching-up industrialization, to which the main focus of environmental problems on the planet has shifted from the countries of the Center of the World economy. The increasing complexity of the relationship between economic growth and its environmental consequences at the turn of the century indicates the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the development of the World economy and the environmental situation on the Earth. In the coming decades, the environmental situation in the World will become spatially more complex, becoming more and more mosaic, possibly marking the beginning of a global geo-ecological transition of the entire World economy.