Due to poor leadership and corruption

With the exception of Singapore, all tropical countries are poor. The reasons are:

1) For a great many of them, agriculture is the main backbone of their economy & most of them have not taken up the implementation of newer technologies in the sector. Except for the cash crops, oil seeds & condiments, other crops don't seem to yield much to their economy.

2) Individual productivity is low due to the humid climate, as compared to temperate belts.

3) Increase in population is quite substantial, so much so that there's isin't much to export to other countries, with very few exceptions.

4) Little attention is paid to the setting up of industries, as the agrarian sector vehemently feels that the resultant pollution will certainly lower agri production.

5) Productivity of agrarian lands has fallen due to the use of inorganic fertilizers.

6) Importance to education & health are not their due place, as compared to developed countries. Those of them who have substantial & higher education, migrate to developed countries for a better future.

Comparto las opiniones del M Sc Trivedi, agregaría los factores históricos: el proceso de industrialización que llevo a los países al desarrollo comenzó en Europa y luego en América del Norte, las maquinas de vapor entre otros grandes cambios permitió dejar la economía basada en agricultura para incorporar procesos mecánicos industriales que ocupaba gran cantidad de mano de obra y elevaba el producto bruto de los países. Esto ha sucedido mucho después en países del trópico y del Hemisferio Sur basados en una agricultura poco desarrollada, solo los esfuerzos de los países en educación pueden revertir esta tendencia de subdesarrollo.

Acredito que seja devido a incapacidade de seus povos de entender que a economia verde pode ser um avanço formidável para seus países

Lack of technology in the domain of conservation, pollution control and natural resource management.

Most tropical countries have huge rainforests with many inhabited by an agrarian native population who prefer to live and survive there with abundant natural resources for food and other activities. Since deforestation to free more agricultural land does take place it is limited by governments and frowned upon by international conservation bodies and climatologists. The regions outside the forests are heavily populated with people who are poorly educated and skilled in only agrarian productivity for its local population, barely enough to export. The very skilled are lured to better living conditions and salaries outside their homeland and leave permanently for better pastures elsewhere, without returning to share their expertise. Their colonial masters are still sucking them dry as is happening in many former French colonies. Hate to be political here but that's the fact.

The wealth of any country is directly dependent on its soils--volcanic, grassland, drained wetland and riverine soils = long-lasting wealthy countries. Ultimately, it is the amount of organic material that the plants have sequestered is like money in the bank. Because our species needs cultivated plants and domesticated animals to survive, we are parasitic on grassland and riverine soils worldwide.

Desert soils the poorest because of the lack of rainfall, and tropical and temperate forest soils are next poorest. However, deserts can be irrigated, but the accumulation of salts in the soil carried by the water can slowly or quickly eliminate that option over time.

Dear Craig

Then which region has a fertile soil?

Fertile soil = where plants have added the most organic matter, like grassland soil, and riverine soils. Volcanic soils are the exception, because it is where the plant nutrients were added by the volcanos themselves. Tropical and temperate forests, the organic matter is mostly locked up in the vegetation itself.

For example Haiti in the 1700s with its volcanic soils, produced more value of products than all of the 13 US colonies combined, because the US colonies were working with with forest soils. Economists estimate that in the 1750s Haiti provided as much as 50% of the Gross National Product of France.

But when France and the US forced over the period of 122 years, the Haitian people to pay for their freedom in part by cutting down their forests, that allowed a lot of that carbon-rich topsoil to wash into the ocean, and that loss now make Haiti one of the poorest country in the region. When rain fall, your rivers and streams should always run clear, never looking like a cup of coffee. Our agriculture project in Haiti had this logo.

Wealth in terms of soils and agriculture can very easily be increased, by making slight changes in farming methods, as our project in Haiti was introducing, as you can see from the project logo.

1.) No soil erosion, you need to see clear rivers and streams at ALL times.

2.) Soil constantly have a mulch cover.

3.) Legumes planted every other year to add nitrogen, and always inoculate the seeds when planting.

4.) Turn plant waste into compost and biochar.

5.) Look for local sources of calcium, like limestone deposits, and add that to farm soils.

6.) Plant native trees that create the rain clouds, they are the host plants for the Pseudomonas bacteria, that you can read about at https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/does-rain-come-from-life-in-the-clouds

So many countries have decreased their annual rainfall and whole civilizations have fallen, when they cut down too many of their Pseudomonas host plants, like the Indus Valley people 3,500 years ago, to fire the bricks for their 1,000 cities.

We also need to add the massive impact of colonization of ALL of the tropical countries from the 1600s by the European powers, and only gained their independence since the 1940s to 1990s--with the European countries financial parasites on those tropical countries. In the 1940s, 1/3 of the world's population lived in non-self governing territories

There are still "colonies" in the world, mostly islands--Montserrat, Saint Helena, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, United States Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Turks and Caicos Islands, French Polynesia, American Samoa, Guam, Pitcairn, New Caledonia, Tokelau, Puerto Rico, etc.