Schmidt M., Purwins S. (2018): Simultaneity as a challenge for development. In: GeoJournal 83, 1193-1204. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-017-9828-1(0 Simultaneity as a challenge for development Matthias Schmidt .and Sebastian Purwins Abstract Societies in the Global South are simultaneously confronted with various challenges that societies in the Global North faced over a long period of time. From the beginning of the 18th century the Global North has faced challenges in line with its industrialization and modernization processes including population growth with the necessity to feed that growing population, rapid urbanization or infrastructure development. Solving these challenges during past centuries has led to highly developed societies but produced new threats: environmental degradation and climate change—features of Beck’s ‘reflexive modernity’. Today, societies in the Global South not only face similar challenges such as population growth, malnutrition or lacking infrastructure, but also the consequences of the human- made environmental change and its related risks. Change in the Global South has reached a previously unseen pace and notable simultaneity. This paper aims to operationalise and visualise the challenge of simultaneity. By identifying six indicators for three main issues, the extent of simultaneity will be analysed using the examples of Kenya, India, Brazil and Germany. The findings show that simultaneity is a key challenge for current social, economic and ecological transformations in the Global South. Keywords Simultaneity _ Global South _ Acceleration _ Development Introduction Hunger, disease and war have always been major problems of humankind, affecting populations throughout all centuries and regions (Harari 2017). While the latter is the result of political processes, the emergence of hunger and disease are closely connected with socioeconomic and technological developments. Consequently, these three curses strike people very differently depending upon space and time, or more precisely on political, social, economic and technological achievements. Today, hunger and epidemics are not a big issue in highly developed societies of the Global North but they have been in the past. The solving of these problems took a lot of time and effort. Socio-economic and technological developments helped to overcome these challenges but eventually created new ones. For example, innovations of the Industrial Revolution and afterwards helped to eradicate diseases, to increase yields and to produce better and cheaper consumer goods but they also induced new challenges related to population growth and rapid urbanization with the well-known side effects of poor housing, epidemics and other social and health problems. Although the mentioned problems were largely tackled in the Global North, others are not: the resource intensive economic development produced new threats and risks such as environmental degradation and climate change. Humankind is confronted with the aftermaths of its own achievements—features of Beck’s (2007) ‘reflexive modernity’. The situation for societies in the Global South, the so-called developing countries, is different. Many nations of the Global South are still confronted with hunger and disease; they are challenged with feeding their growing populations and resolving major health issues, but also in managing rapid urbanization processes and establishing infrastructures. Additionally they are