Australia
Australia exhibits island biogeography at continental scale: 70% of exports come from mining ($385B in 2024-25) while population clusters on arable coastal fringes.
Australia is simultaneously island, country, and continent—the only land mass that can make all three claims. Its extreme isolation (2,500 miles from New Zealand, 5,000 from Africa, 7,000 from South America) produced extraordinary endemic biodiversity and, in the colonial era, made it a destination for British convict transportation. Today that same remoteness shapes its geopolitical position: a Western-oriented democracy sitting in proximity to a rising China.
The economy runs on extraction. Mining contributes over 12% of GDP and 70% of export earnings. Iron ore alone constitutes 25% of resource exports, generating $116.9 billion in 2024-25. China imports 63 million tons of Australian ore monthly—a dependency that creates both opportunity and vulnerability. As China develops alternatives like Guinea's Simandou project, every $10/tonne drop in iron ore prices reduces Australia's GDP by approximately 0.4-0.5%. Gold has emerged as a hedge: exports are forecast to reach $60 billion in 2025-26, up 27.7% as prices exceeded $3,600/oz.
Geography imposes hard limits on carrying capacity. Population clusters along the eastern and southwestern coasts; the vast interior Outback remains largely uninhabitable—a desert shield that historically deterred invasion but now faces escalating drought and wildfire risk as climate changes. Tim Marshall observes that Australia is 'territorially huge' but functionally constrained by the small proportion of arable land.
The strategic calculus is shifting. AUKUS and partnerships with the US, UK, and Japan reflect Australia's response to regional power dynamics. The question for the coming decades: can a resource-dependent economy, concentrated on vulnerable coastlines, adapt to both climate disruption and the decline of its primary customer's demand?