AQA GCSE Geography Paper 2Challenges in the Human Environment — every question, answered

I order the eleven values from lowest to highest: 79.6, 79.6, 80.0, 80.4, 80.4, 81.1, 81.3, 81.5, 81.9, 82.3, 83.6. With eleven values the median is the sixth value in the ordered list, which is 81.1 years.

Six of the fourteen labelled cities are shown in Asia: Delhi (+79), Shanghai (+53), Dhaka (+74), Mumbai (+51), Jakarta (+27) and Manila (+29). Adding these gives 313, and dividing by 6 gives a mean of 52 people per hour, to the nearest whole number.

Ordering the seven values from lowest to highest, the upper quartile is India's 560,035 and the lower quartile is Bangladesh's 57,088. Subtracting these gives an interquartile range of 502,947.

I draw five complete symbols for Hull, since each symbol represents 10 percent and 50 percent divided by 10 gives exactly five whole symbols with none partially shaded.

I draw the Swindon bar so its top reaches 26.5 percent, which sits 0.1 percentage points lower than the Luton bar immediately to its left on the chart.

I draw the theft of motor vehicle bar so its end reaches exactly 350 on the number of reports axis, matching the style of the other four bars already drawn.

The majority of the 5 to 14.9% band countries are found in west Africa, forming two separate clusters there. Only South Africa and Lesotho, in the far south, fall into this band outside west Africa.

The majority of the cities are found in Asia, north of the Equator, including a dense cluster in and around China. There are no new megacities expected in the Americas, so this and Australasia are the only continents shown with none.

Most of the highest growing urban areas are in the south and east of the UK, while most of the lowest growing areas are further north. All ten of the lowest growing areas are in England, whereas three of the highest growing areas, including Aberdeen and Edinburgh, are outside England.

The largest area of very low risk countries stretches across central Africa towards the south. Madagascar is the only very low risk country that does not connect to this central belt, sitting isolated off the east coast.

Famine is a widespread shortage of food affecting a large number of people, often severe enough to cause starvation and death.

Water insecurity means people do not have reliable access to enough clean, safe water to meet their daily needs.

Energy insecurity means a country does not have a reliable supply of affordable energy to meet its needs.

Managing transport is central to urban sustainability, because congestion and vehicle emissions are among the biggest barriers to a city being liveable. Singapore's road pricing and quota schemes for car ownership are estimated to have cut traffic by around 45% and reduced accidents by around a quarter, showing that pricing people out of unnecessary car journeys genuinely changes behaviour rather than just adding infrastructure.

Reducing congestion in this way lowers nitrogen oxide emissions and improves air quality, which brings health benefits and makes a city more attractive to families who might otherwise move to the suburbs. Bristol's integrated transport system, linking buses, trains and cycle routes, shows the same principle can work through investment in alternatives rather than pricing alone, so managing transport well supports environmental, social and economic sustainability together rather than any one strand in isolation.

Comparing the two maps shows substantial new housing has been built on what was farmland to the west of Aberdeen in the 1950s map, along with an upgraded, dualled road running west to east that did not previously exist. This loss of green space at the fringe reduces habitat for wildlife and increases the amount of impermeable surface, which raises the risk of surface water flooding in the surrounding area.

The new park and ride site shown in the modern map also suggests the area now supports commuters travelling into Aberdeen, meaning residents get the benefit of cheaper, more accessible housing on the edge of the city, but the original village character is diluted as new estates come to dominate and local roads become busier with commuter traffic at peak times.

Figure 2 shows real progress, the share of houses in sub-Saharan Africa meeting good standards of space, water and sanitation roughly doubled from 11% to 23% between 2000 and 2015, but this still leaves the majority of housing below that standard, showing planning has improved conditions without yet transforming them.

In Rio de Janeiro's Favela Bairro scheme, poorly built houses were replaced with brick structures and residents were granted ownership rights, which removes the fear of eviction and the stress that comes with it. The scheme also added day care centres offering adult education classes, improving job prospects and giving families a more secure income, so quality of life improves through housing security and economic opportunity together, not housing alone.

Figure 3 shows that even informal, volunteer run classes provide children with schooling that would not otherwise be available, which is a genuine social opportunity, but the small, outdoor setting also shows this opportunity is limited in scale and quality compared with a properly resourced school.

In Dharavi, Mumbai, children can attend school where none existed in the rural areas many families migrated from, and a strong sense of community has developed within the settlement over time. However, only a limited number of children can access these opportunities at once, so while urban growth has clearly created social opportunities that did not exist before, the extent to which they reach the whole population remains limited by capacity.

Figures 5a and 5b show the scale of the original problem, derelict looking warehouses and an empty, unsafe feeling street, which the after photo shows transformed with repainting, murals, new lighting and a mix of food, drink and gallery businesses now bringing people of different ages back into the area. This is Hull's Fruit Market regeneration on Humber Street, an around eighty million pound scheme delivered by a partnership between Wykeland, Beal and Hull City Council.

The scheme solves urban problems by mixing housing with leisure and creative business use, which brings people back to live and spend time in an area that had lost its original economic purpose. The annual Humber Street Sesh festival, held in the same street, shows how the regeneration also creates a sense of community event and identity that the derelict warehouses could never have supported.

Overall, this regeneration solved urban problems by combining physical renewal with a genuine change of use and community activity, not visual improvement alone, which is why the area has sustained new business and footfall rather than reverting to decline.

Lagos, Nigeria is growing by an estimated 600,000 people a year, and the city currently collects only around 40% of the waste it produces, showing infrastructure is failing to keep pace with population growth by a wide margin, not a small one.

Despite investment in a Bus Rapid Transit system and new expressways, many residents still face commutes of over two hours, showing that even genuine infrastructure investment has not yet solved the scale of the challenge. This suggests the problem is less a lack of effort by planners and more that population growth is outrunning what any single infrastructure scheme can deliver in the time available.

Overall, the challenges in Lagos are extensive rather than isolated, because the underlying driver, extremely rapid population growth, is outpacing waste collection and transport infrastructure at the same time rather than one at a time. This lands short of the very top mark because the evidence here covers two service areas in depth rather than a wider range, and does not weigh any way in which the challenges might be more limited.

In Liverpool, deindustrialisation left large areas of poor quality housing that were slow to be redeveloped, so slow that some houses in the Granby Four Streets area were sold for just one pound each because they were in such poor condition. This shows the scale of housing dereliction is not a minor issue but one severe enough to make normal market sale impossible.

Unemployment in Anfield stood at around 9% of adults, higher than the UK average, showing that urban change from deindustrialisation created lasting economic as well as environmental challenges. The new Liverpool2 port development, intended to double capacity and create jobs, shows the city is responding, but such large infrastructure projects take years to translate into local employment, so the two challenges of dereliction and unemployment are linked rather than separate problems with separate solutions.

Overall, Liverpool's challenges from urban change are significant precisely because housing dereliction and unemployment reinforce each other, a derelict area attracts less investment and fewer jobs, which in turn leaves housing empty for longer, so tackling one in isolation is unlikely to be enough.

Birmingham has developed real economic opportunities, hosting the largest number of businesses of any UK city outside London across a wide range of sectors. This gives Birmingham a genuinely broad economic base rather than dependence on a single industry.

Social opportunities have also grown, the Balti Triangle area reflects the cultural enrichment and diversity that has come with migration into the city, offering a distinctive social and leisure experience not available in most other UK cities. However, this kind of cultural and leisure opportunity mainly benefits those with disposable income to spend on it, whereas the economic opportunities from new businesses create jobs and income that reach a wider cross section of residents directly.

On balance, economic opportunities in Birmingham are more far reaching, because employment and business growth affect income directly for a broad range of residents, although not evenly. Younger and more skilled workers have gained the most from the new roles, while some residents in Birmingham's older manufacturing industries have lost out as the economy has changed. Social opportunities, though real, depend more on residents already having the money and time to enjoy them. Taken together, I agree that economic opportunities have had the greater overall impact, even though that impact itself is not shared equally across the city.

I partly agree. Kenya earns around 12% of its GNP from tourism and the sector directly and indirectly employs around 600,000 people, so tourism clearly brings in significant foreign currency and jobs that support development, as the World Bank official's comment on foreign currency in Figure 7b also suggests.

However, Figure 7b's local resident notes that most available jobs are low skilled, such as driving or waiting tables, and much of the money tourists spend can be lost in leakage to foreign owned tour operators and airlines rather than reaching the local economy. This suggests tourism increases the appearance of growth in arrivals without guaranteeing that the underlying income actually closes the development gap for most residents.

Asha's approach, shown in Figure 8, targets people directly, its microfinance loans reach around 700,000 people across 91 slums with a 99% repayment rate, which suggests aid delivered at this bottom up, community level can genuinely reach people that larger national schemes might miss.

However, aid is not automatically the best strategy compared with alternatives such as Fairtrade, which secures a guaranteed price for farmers' produce without depending on continued donor goodwill the way charity funded aid does. Asha itself depends on a mix of government and charity funders, so its long term future is less secure than a trade based strategy that generates its own ongoing income, meaning aid may work well at a local scale but is not necessarily the best strategy overall for closing the development gap.

Shell directly employs around 65,000 people in Nigeria and a further 250,000 indirectly, with 91% of its contracts going to Nigerian companies, which shows the advantages are substantial and reach well beyond direct staff into the wider Nigerian business community.

However, oil spills in the Bodo region have damaged fishermen's livelihoods and continued gas flaring adds to greenhouse gas emissions, while resentment over oil wealth has helped fuel armed groups such as the Niger Delta Avengers, showing the disadvantages are not minor side effects but ongoing sources of economic and social harm for the communities living closest to the operations.

On balance, I disagree that TNCs bring more disadvantages than advantages here, because Shell's jobs and contracts reach a wide cross section of the Nigerian economy every year, while the environmental and security harms, though real and serious, fall mainly on specific communities in the Niger Delta rather than the country as a whole.

The Southampton Science Park shows real environmental ambition, with 27 of its 72 acres protected as a conservation area and a stated commitment to minimising waste and improving energy efficiency, which goes well beyond older industrial estates that were built with little regard for green space or emissions.

However, building the science park still required removing existing trees and green space to create the site in the first place, and a development of this scale will generate significant car based commuting, adding to congestion and air pollution even if the buildings themselves are efficient. This suggests modern industrial developments are more sustainable than in the past but are not fully sustainable, since the process of building and using them still creates environmental costs the green branding does not remove.

The Humber Local Enterprise Partnership had, by 2019, secured around £532 million of investment, created nearly 6,000 jobs and supported over 13,000 businesses in an economically deprived region, showing a genuinely large scale of intervention rather than a small pilot scheme.

However, HS2, the other major strategy intended to boost the north through faster rail links to London, has become significantly over budget, and questions remain over whether the benefits will genuinely reach the north or mostly benefit London and Birmingham through easier access to southern jobs. This suggests success varies considerably by strategy and scale, a smaller, locally targeted scheme like the Humber LEP shows measurable results, while a very large national infrastructure project carries more uncertainty over who actually benefits.

Overall, targeted, locally delivered strategies like the Humber LEP show clearer, more measurable success at resolving regional differences than very large national schemes like HS2, whose benefits are harder to guarantee will reach the areas that need them most.

In commuter villages within reach of Cambridge, population growth has brought new housing and business opportunities as more affluent residents move in, but house prices have also risen enough to price out many existing local families, and roads and school places have become increasingly congested at peak times.

In declining areas of rural Cumbria, shops and schools have closed as populations fall and age, which clearly harms the immediate services available, but a strong sense of community has often developed as remaining residents work harder to keep local life going, and villages have avoided the identikit new housing estates that have changed the character of many growth areas elsewhere.

I do not fully agree with the statement, growth areas gain economically but lose some social cohesion and affordability, while decline areas lose services but can gain community identity, so the real picture in both types of area is a mix of gains and losses rather than a simple positive versus negative divide.

Unilever employs around 16,000 people in India, and its Project Shakti scheme gives around 45,000 poor rural women an income opportunity selling Unilever products, which research suggests has a bigger impact on whole family quality of life than an equivalent income gained by men. Unilever's operations have also helped extend sanitation access to around 115 million people in India, directly improving health and quality of life.

However, this same economic development has environmental costs, a mercury spill at Kodaikanal contaminated the surrounding area, showing that a lack of attention to safety in the pursuit of production can cause lasting environmental damage. This directly links the two sides of the statement, the same drive for growth that funds sanitation and income schemes also created the conditions for the contamination, rather than the benefits and costs being unrelated events.

The scale of this contrast is also worth noting, the contamination at Kodaikanal was concentrated on one site and its surrounding community, while the jobs, Project Shakti income and sanitation improvements described above reach many more people right across India. This shows the same TNC operations can deliver widespread benefits and serious, localised harm at the same time, rather than one cancelling out the other.

Figure 10a shows offshore wind is the cheapest source of electricity shown, at around £50 per megawatt hour, roughly half the cost of coal or gas at around £90. Onshore wind, at around £81, is also cheaper than fossil fuels but by a much smaller margin. This creates an economic dilemma, because Figure 10b shows a protest sign objecting to a new onshore turbine's landscape impact, meaning even the less economically attractive of the two wind options still provokes strong local opposition, while the genuinely cheapest option, offshore wind, sits further out at sea and avoids this same objection.

There are also environmental issues beyond the visual impact shown in Figure 10b, since continuing to use coal and gas means ongoing greenhouse gas emissions despite their high cost, while both wind sources shown avoid this cost entirely. This shows the economic and environmental issues are connected rather than separate, fossil fuels are not just the most expensive sources shown, they also carry a long term environmental cost that neither wind option does.

Figure 10a shows beef and lamb produce far more CO2 per kilogram than chicken or eggs, creating a genuine challenge, UK producers of beef and lamb face pressure to reduce emissions or lose customers as awareness grows, and farmers cannot simply switch livestock overnight without significant cost and disruption.

Figure 10b shows an opportunity created by the same concern, services like edible16 let customers order from several local producers in one delivery, reducing the transport emissions of buying food from many separate suppliers while still supporting local farmers' income. This shows the same growing concern that challenges high emission producers also creates a genuine new market opportunity for those able to supply lower carbon, local alternatives.

Figure 11 shows dishwasher ownership more than doubling from 22% to 49% between 1998 and 2018, alongside a trend for more bathrooms per household, both of which increase water demand per household even without any rise in the number of households.

Figure 11 also shows the UK population is increasingly concentrated in the south, which is already the area of greatest rainfall deficit, so this rising per household demand is landing precisely where supply is already most stretched. This means the challenge is not just growing overall demand but demand growing fastest exactly where a water transfer scheme, itself expensive, would be needed to meet it.

Figure 11a shows many everyday UK foods travel long distances, which is a genuine challenge for producers overseas if UK demand shifts towards local alternatives to cut food miles, since losing the UK market could damage their income. Figure 11b shows this challenge is more complicated than it first appears, since transport is only a comparatively small slice of total food supply chain emissions, with production itself the largest source.

This creates a genuine opportunity too, since Figure 11b shows that reducing emissions from production, for example through lower carbon farming methods, could cut the food supply chain's carbon footprint by more than simply switching to local food would, while UK producers also gain the opportunity to meet clear demand for everyday produce grown or reared with lower emissions.

Figure 12a shows urban rooftop farming, which makes fresh food available close to where it is eaten, cutting the transport emissions that come with shipping produce long distances, while also making use of otherwise unused city space rather than requiring new farmland to be cleared elsewhere.

Beyond urban farming, sustainable fishing schemes allow fish stocks to replenish rather than collapsing under overfishing pressure, and grass fed beef systems that return manure to the soil are far less carbon intensive than beef raised on grain grown on cleared forest land, since they avoid both the emissions from grain production and the loss of a forest carbon store.

Figure 14a's water queues show a clear economic impact, time spent queuing or travelling for water is time not spent in paid work or farming, which directly reduces household income and can lower a farmer's crop yield if water is delayed reaching their land.

Figure 14b's protest sign shows water insecurity also has a social dimension, disagreements and unrest can develop where access to water is unequal or contested, even in a wealthy country like the USA. This shows water insecurity is not only a problem of poorer countries and not only an economic issue, its social impacts, including conflict over access, can occur wherever a supply becomes unreliable or unfairly shared.

A micro-hydro scheme in rural Nepal generates electricity from a small, local river using simple, low cost equipment that villagers can maintain themselves, giving communities a reliable supply where connecting to the national grid would be too expensive or impractical due to the terrain.

Because it uses locally available materials and does not depend on imported fuel, the scheme is more sustainable than diesel generators, avoiding both the cost of transporting fuel to remote areas and the emissions produced by burning it, and because the community itself is involved in running the scheme, local people have a genuine stake in keeping it working long term.

Desalination clearly can increase supply, Dubai gains around 99% of its water this way, showing it can guarantee a reliable supply even in an extremely dry climate. However, Figure 15b shows desalination costs between $2,200 and $4,300 per acre foot, up to nearly fifty times more than groundwater at $90 to $160, meaning it is realistically only an option for wealthy nations able to absorb that cost.

Treating wastewater, at $1,600 to $1,700 per acre foot, sits between groundwater and desalination in cost, offering a cheaper alternative that still increases usable supply without needing coastal access. This suggests desalination can increase supply to a very high degree where cost is not the limiting factor, but for most countries, cheaper strategies like wastewater treatment or better groundwater management will increase supply more realistically at scale.

Some countries are poorer than others, so they are less able to afford enough food to feed their population, which is why undernourishment is often concentrated in the world's lowest income countries.

HICs and NEEs have more factories than LICs, and these factories use large amounts of energy in their production processes, which is why industrialised countries tend to consume far more energy overall.