This is a little difficult to understand. Can you give me an example of when you would use it? I'm not sure what you mean by "higher". The second half of the sentence makes sense, but I would need more information to understand.

Recently there have been calls to reduce expenditure on space research programmes. I think it would be a serious mistake to allow this to happen .There is a direct link between the development of space research programmes and different earth technologies.The higher the former are the more developed the latter are.

And yes, it is a correct sentence. But it doesn't mean much unless we know what came before it.

This sentence is a back reference. If you can supply the previous sentence it will make it easier to give an explanation.