World is heading for deficit territory

While most of mankind’s focus is on the problem of climate change it runs the risk of being blindsided by fresh-water shortages, driven by unmanageable population growth, and food shortages, with some important regions of the globe already in negative territory in terms of its water and other resources.

Climate change is probably the world’s biggest distraction and not its biggest and most immediate challenge, which belongs to clean water, warned Professor Grant Cawthorn of the University of the Witwatersrand in a recent lecture on the issue of climate change.

He pointed out that eight of the world’s top economists, including four Nobel laureates, at the meeting of the international convention on climate change in December 2009 in Copenhagen put the Kyoto accord on climate change at the bottom of their better-world priority list. They argued  that “it would cost a great deal and do little good.”

How timely is Cawthorn’s warning is illustrated by the fact that the world’s most populated nation, China, consumes 40 billion cubic metres of water annually over and above its renewable supplies. The balance comes from groundwater via irrigation wells, which is starting to run out.

So much water has been withdrawn that the ground level is dropping in the north of the country and destabilising infrastructure. The aquifer has fallen between 50 and 90 metres over an area of several million square kilometres.

One of the most demanding sectors drawing on China’s water resources is wheat production. It is the world’s largest wheat producer at 114.5 million tons a year, which represents 17% of  global production. In comparison South Africa produces in the order of 1.5 million tons of wheat annually and imports another 1.5 million tons.

Still there are massive pressures on China to supply its ever-growing and increasingly prosperous populating with enough wheat. According to one report China will have to import as much as 20 million tons of wheat this year. The huge Chinese demand could cause wheat prices, already 60% above levels of a year ago, to climb even further, resulting in high global food-price inflation.

Population pressure

The  United Nations predicts that the global population will reach seven billion this year and rise to a possible nine billion by 2050.

A more affluent and growing population will compete for ever-scarcer resources and could make for an unrecognisable world by 2050, researchers warned at the recent annual meeting of the  American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington D.C.

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8 000. By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognisable” if the current trends continue, said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund.

Besides the growing population, per capita incomes are alsoset to rise considerably over the next 40 years, adding more strain to global food supplies and, by implication, fresh-water resources.

As their income improves people tend to eat more meat. It requires more than three kilogrammes of wheat to produce 0.5 kilogrammes of meat and more than three kilogrammes of wheat to produce a kilogramme of cheese – all adding to the pressure on water resources.

“We want to minimise population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning,” said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

A conundrum

It would seem, however, that there might be some other serious ramifications and problems built into the population solution approach.

For one the presently dominating global economic model of market-driven capitalism needs the growth and spending power from especially the developing world to get out of the current economic slump and to survive in the long run.

At the same time family planning of the magnitude envisaged by leading authorities such as Casterline implies an ageing global population as is already experienced in most of the developed world. As it is, there are visible strains on the solvency of social security systems in much of Europe which, among other things, have to provide income for the elderly with increasing life expectancy.

Clay for his part at the AAAS-meeting urged scientists and governments to start making changes in how food is produced.

While in many parts of the world in under-developed and developing countries there are millions of poor, unemployed and starving people, some of the advanced economies of Europe are finding it difficult to keep up production and living standards due to a lack of appropriate labour.

In the meantime, as is again being experienced in North Africa and the Middle East, social unrest is fed by poverty and hunger. Nothing is more destabilising than when the food starts running out.

In 2008 countries around the globe experienced food riots. Migration from under-developed parts of the world to the opportunities and provisions of the developed world has been picking up over the past decade or two and can be expected to gain momentum in the decades ahead, bringing social problems of its own.

In his lecture Cawthorn also questioned the wisdom of the sharp focus on a culture of recycling that is being put forward as part of the fight against climate change.

“We’re encouraged to recycle. I disagree totally. Manufacturers should be forced to make products that can be repaired, reused, refilled and then only as a last resort, recycled.  We’re generating a vast quantity of plastic pollution. We live in a throw-away society and that’s going to destroy the world,” he said.

Single-factor solutions won’t work

It is clear that single-factor solutions will not preserve human life as we know it. A much more holistic and integrated response is needed to the resource and climate challenges facing humanity at the moment than has come to the fore to date.

In a recent article for the Information Clearing House Chris Hedges writes: “The global economy is built on the erroneous belief that the marketplace — read human greed — should dictate human behaviour and that economies can expand eternally. Globalism works under the assumption that the ecosystem can continue to be battered by massive carbon emissions without major consequences. And the engine of global economic expansion is based on the assurance that there will always be plentiful and cheap oil. The inability to confront simple truths about human nature and the natural world leaves the elites unable to articulate new social, economic and political paradigms. They look only for ways to perpetuate a dying system.”

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