Tracking the future. Daniel Silke
While technology has largely dumped the Malthusian predictions into the garbage bags of history, the time lag it takes to produce a greater supply of food for a growing population can cause considerable instability.
New technology and better farming methods suggest that an initial undersupply of food now can become a glut in the decades to come – pushing prices from highs to lows. And if Africa can use the seeds, fertilisers and irrigation methods used elsewhere to great effect, the continent could deliver to millions, assuming we haven’t all moved to Siberia by then! A convergence of science and technology is coming and it will alleviate the stresses, but can it come quick enough to avert societal implosions?
Before the world’s population stabilises after 2050, we can expect an ongoing scramble for resources. As we possibly enter a period of peak oil, the pervasive fear of an imminent energy crisis resulting from the depletion of oil will motivate large population centres (read powerful nations) to pursue potentially expansionist foreign policies.
In a sense, falling fertility rates will help the world regroup after 2050. Until then humanity is possibly entering a very dangerous period, waiting for non-conventional fossil fuels to be exploited and for solar and geothermal power, which might not be as imminent as we would want, to address our energy needs. Furthermore, as this is written, the advent of the cheap motor vehicle – the Tata Nano – could pump up the vehicle count on the world’s roads to almost three billion by 2025, creating untold environmental pressures.
Waiting for supply to equal demand is a tense time. Expect increased unrest in many of the world’s poorer nations as populations find higher food prices a burden they can no longer bear. In September 2010, seven people were killed in Mozambique in protest against a 30 percent rise in bread prices. Food still accounts for 30–70 percent of household spending in emerging countries, compared with 10–15 percent in Europe, Japan and the United States[25]. These poorer societies will need special government efforts to keep prices in check or unrest might mushroom.
Water as a cause of war?
Population growth and climate change have forged perhaps one of the most critical alliances to disrupt the planet. Political and social issues historically determined by the quest for a scarce natural resource like oil will transfer to water. Water might be the new oil in terms of scarcity, but will it also carry political ramifications and be the cause of wars?
Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase over the last century. Although there is no global water scarcity an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water. By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world population could be under conditions of water stress[26].
The situation will be exacerbated as rapidly growing urban areas place heavy pressure on local water resources. Per capita consumption (the amount of water each person uses) is also expected to rise as the world becomes more developed. Add in undefined climate change and projected more frequent periods of drought and water will take on a new strategic role in future.
For China and India, it will become a commodity critical to survival. The two countries combined make up 73 percent of the world’s population but possess only 47 percent of the available water. Compare this with the Americas which have 14 percent of the world’s population but 40 percent of the world’s water. Watch out therefore for Brazil, Argentina and the United States to take a lead in exporting grain to other developing markets[27] given their comparative advantage in water supplies.
Water scarcity has the potential to lead either to conflict or increased global co-operation. Conflicts can certainly occur in water-stressed areas among local inhabitants and between countries that find themselves sharing this increasingly limited essential resource.
Oil has been the cause of wars, so why not water as well? Fortunately for humanity, international convention seems to be that it should be shared, perhaps because it is simply too precious a commodity to risk going to war over. In a strange way, unlike oil, water scarcity in a region like the Middle East is more likely to reinforce an unsteady peace than to provoke war in the future.
Perhaps the fundamental nature of food and water makes them both a very human issue. Global co-operation on latent water conflicts has established something of a common ground, even if climate change resolutions often gain little consensus. Food and water represent the essence of human survival. Locked inextricably into the seismic demographic shifts over the next four decades, these issues will all need to be assessed together. Regional strength, areas of drought and climate degradation, the social inequalities in underdeveloped yet youthful nations, and food security for the powerful developing (and developed) nations can present a combustible mix. When looked at together, water as part of these burning issues becomes so critical for survival that it too could be the cause of major conflict.
What is likely, however, is that food and water shortages will in future be key drivers behind the migration of people across the planet. Both drought and flood risk in affected regions can cause the movement of people. Rural livelihoods are also at risk in parts of the world affected by global warming. Not everyone has the resources to pick up and move; expect a degree of intra-societal tension as those who are leaving part company with those unable to move.
As indicated earlier in this chapter, large-scale migration to the developed world is currently off the radar screen due to the effects of the global recession, but just as the effects of a depopulation of workers will necessitate reform, so too will the humanitarian aspect of a body of people seeking a way out of environmental degradation.
If food and water issues aren’t resolved through technology, the application of proven agri-business methods in hitherto untrammelled parts of the globe and the management and implementation of efficient public–private initiatives, then demands for the relaxation of immigration policies will increase as millions find themselves in unsustainable regions. The West will find that keeping people out will simply be a violation of human rights, and realise that taking in skills from other lands will also enhance their own societies and all-important productivity levels.
Food and water scarcity and security, along with the addition of two billion people to the planet over the next 40 years, pose a risk the likes of which the world has not yet faced. But Malthus got his dire predictions wrong because he failed to take technology and economic growth into account – and these can be kick-started by international co-operation.
The current era is unique. Growing populations are simultaneously sharing the earth with those that are rapidly ageing. The divide will pit generations against each other on a global basis never seen before. Business will move to the workers and the movement to hitherto underdeveloped regions will be rapid. The political and social values of an ageing West will compete with often fractious and alienated youth in achingly poor parts of the world. But technology and connectivity can empower millions into the Internet age virtually unaided by teachers. In fact, the millions of youth can overcome the somewhat pessimistic predictions of this chapter by developing skills en masse and which are practically useful in a connected age – as can the ageing if encouraged to do so. Education is the key, but this can only be accomplished by alleviating the threat of food and water insecurities to build healthy and peaceful communities. The combination of these forces speaks to core of the survival of humanity in the decades prior to 2050.
Oh yes, another 606 996 people have now been born since the beginning of the chapter[28] – bringing the number of people to feed up to 6 890 404 910!
[1]http://www.economist.com/node/17492964?story_id=17492964&CFID=152088419&CFTOKEN=35560941
[2]http://www.un.org