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Chapter 1

People and the Planet

This is a unique period for the world. The era of the fastest-ever population growth is with us and will peak in 2050 before tapering off. The strain on the planet of more than 9 billion people by 2050 will be immense. Demographic changes will pit generations against each other and alter the power balance between the developed and developing world. The challenges and opportunities of environmental trends and food and water security will shape humanity in the decades to come.

By 2050 the planet’s population will have hurtled to a record 9.1 billion. Put more starkly, the global population has risen by almost four billion people since 1950 and will grow by another two billion in the next 40 years. To make this dramatic population rise more meaningful, let us note that at the start of this chapter the global population stood at 6 889 797 914. You can flip to page 32 (but do come back and read it all) to see how many people have been born while the author has been writing.

Some time by the beginning of 2012 or sooner, the seven billionth living person will be born. While it took an initial 250 000 years for the planet to play host to a billion inhabitants (circa 1800), each successive billion has taken substantially shorter periods. More than a century passed to reach two billion in 1927. The billion after that took only a third of the time (1927–1960) and the next billion half as long. The most recent additional billion took just 12 years, and the one before that, 13 years.

Fertility rates will slow

There is, however, an important surprise ahead. This era of unprecedented acceleration is over, or it will be pretty soon. It is just as important to understand this as to acknowledge the overall rise in the population thus far. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Baby Boom resulted in high birth rates in richer countries and even higher rates in poorer nations. These are now falling. Momentum is shifting and numbers being added to the total population are dropping. The current population rise, as dramatic as it is, will be the last to happen in such a short period.

Fertility rates (children per woman in a lifetime), the underlying impetus for growth, are now falling and families are getting smaller. This change has been breathtaking in some developing countries noted for their historically high birth rates. In Iran, for example, fertility fell from seven to below two in 2006; in Bangladesh – a long-time culprit of mass population expansion – from six to three between 1980 and 2000[1]. Significantly, these changes are occurring not just in the West or Japan, but in large developing nations normally associated with very high birth rates. The West can no longer assert that it is the poor who will continue to procreate without thought about the responsibilities larger families bring. Even in Africa longer-term trends show a real decline.

A new milestone will shortly occur and it will change the way we live, think and interact with one another. Half of mankind will soon be living in countries or regions where fertility rates are at 2.1 or below. This is an accepted replacement rate where a country has just enough children to keep the population stable (births balancing deaths). With the global population sprinting to over nine billion, humanity is ironically confronting a future of depopulation and sub-fertility for the first time. These phenomena will become core concepts in everyday speak and in political action in the future.

In the latter part of this century, slower or even negative population growth will fortunately allow the world more time to deal with the demographic and environmental problems overpopulation trends have caused to date.

Urbanisation, education, advancements in medical science and a rising middle class will be the core drivers for such a numbers decrease. A decline in mortality will therefore be pretty positive for the planet. So, while we have always feared overpopulation – which may well reach a peak by 2050 – the opposite will become the focus of attention. It is going to be increasingly difficult to find young people after the middle of the century.

However, while long-term projections forecast a more manageable planet – at least in terms of population growth – this is probably beyond the lifetime of most people reading this book. For the rest of our current lifetimes (the next 40 years) the planet will add almost 30 percent of its current humanity to its grand total. Most of the additional 2.3 billion people will swell the population of developing countries, which is projected to rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050. The rise in humanity will be distributed among the population aged 15–59 (1.2 billion) and 60 or over (1.1 billion) because the number of children under the age of 15 in developing countries will decrease[2].

In contrast to the large population increases in China, India and other developing nations to 2050, the population of the more developed regions of the world is expected to change minimally, passing almost unnoticed from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion. In fact, developed world populations would decline to 1.15 billion were it not for the projected net migration from poorer to richer countries, which is projected to average 2.4 million people annually from 2009 to 2050[3].

Larger workforce in developing countries

The uniqueness of this era is further enhanced by the fact that in both developed and less developed regions the number of people in the main working ages of 25 to 59 is at an all-time high – 605 million in developed regions and 2.5 billion in less developed regions. Yet whereas in developed countries that number is expected to peak over the next decade and stagnate thereafter, in the developing world it will continue rising, increasing by almost half a billion over the next decade and reaching a total of 3.6 billion in 2050[4].

These population trends justify the urgency of supporting employment creation in developing countries. Only such domestic economic growth can offset growing internal frustrations that often lead young, unemployed men to resort to crime and terrorism.

The sheer numbers of potential workers in the developing world will shift business even further away from the developed world. While globalisation resulted in offshoring for price, the future motivation for offshoring will be necessity and practicality. There are simply going to be fewer workers in the West and many more in the developing world. This is good news for the developing world because a rising proportion of younger people entering the workforce (with skills) should drive productivity and economic growth closer to home and, if they are lucky, discourage emigration to the West.

Fewer workers in the West also means ageing populations. Between 1950 and 2000, the percentage of the world’s population older than 60 years rose marginally from 8 percent to 10 percent. By 2050 this percentage will almost double to 21 percent. Age will be the key demographic trend in many countries, particularly in Western Europe and Japan, where the share of population aged 60-plus will be more than 40 percent by mid-century. In South Korea, the entire working age population will barely exceed the 60-and-older population. The world is currently witnessing the fastest growth ever of those aged 60 and above[5].

If you think this is only a developed world trend, think again. Today only 11 percent of the Chinese population is older than 60, but by 2040 it will rise to 28 percent[6], largely due to the generational effects of the one-child policy. In 2050, 30 percent of Chinese will be over 60 – up from 12 percent currently.

These demographic changes may create new imperatives for changing China’s model of economic growth. The country will have to look for alternatives to the heavily labour-intensive pattern of the past and integrate ageing workers into less physical jobs. Ageing countries that become leaders at this will have an outstanding advantage. One aspect China will have to address – and it will have an economic effect – will be to create a comprehensive social safety net before it is too late. The sheer size of its younger population will mean it hits skills shortages later than the United States or the United Kingdom, but its reported preponderance of males over females may cause a gender imbalance sooner.

Human life expectancy was 37 years in 1800. New 21st-century technologies have the potential to overcome problems that humanity has struggled with for eons. Biotechnology and nanotechnology have the potential to overcome disease and vastly extend human health and longevity.

Radical life extension could be the medium- to long-term demographic trend of our time. The use of nanobots embedded in human bloodstreams, together with advances in artificial intelligence, is making futurists the world over talk about humans potentially becoming immortal by 2050[7] as cancers and other diseases are wiped out. It is more feasible, though, that the average life will be 125 years by 2050 rather than the 70 or 80 we might currently enjoy.

Managing benefits in an ageing world

These trends will have profound business and social implications. Already Western economies are feeling this demographic challenge. In the aftermath of the global recession of 2007–2010, their stagnant ageing populations are now confronted by public sector budget cuts. The recession could not have come at a worse time for older workers. Increasing health and pension claims come, demographically speaking, when the number of older people is growing and at a time when austerity measures on both sides of the Atlantic are kicking in.

With the world entering its current peak era of ageing humans, social benefits are in retreat. Add to this rather gloomy picture the shrinking pool of workers in the West and Japan and a critical global juncture is being reached – and perhaps overlooked – now and towards 2050.

With budgets cut, services across all government departments are likely to be severely curtailed or even eliminated. The key debating point in future will be a domestic issue rather than foreign policy. The Left/Right divide that often characterises our public discourse as human beings will mutate into a spending debate about societal priorities.

One of the key domestic issues in the developed world will be to establish whether it is a priority for a country to care for its elderly or look to stimulate the younger generations to become more productive and innovative. While global politics will still focus on ‘sexy’ strategic issues, such as who wields power in a multi-polar world or whether democracy will prevail in a future China, the politics of pensions and health care will become more mainstream. The next 20 years will bring greater fiscal and public debt pressures as aged and related healthcare services remain under fiscal stress.

Expect new political parties to emerge to represent older voters and their interests. Retired peoples’ political movements aren’t new, but they will become more vocal, activist in methodology and popular, just as the Green movement accomplished for much of the last decade. The politics of ageing will envelop the globe. It will have an impact on economic growth, investments and savings, consumption habits, the workplace and, of course, on pensions. Beyond the economic, social change in the ways families are composed, living arrangements, housing and again the troublesome issue of health care will dominate this new demographic-induced debate.

A maturity–youth divide will join the north–south or digital divides as a measure of potential conflict. Societies will need to make stark choices or work at compromises. The worst of all possible worlds will occur when both safety nets for the elderly and increased tuition fees for the young are introduced simultaneously, as in the United Kingdom in 2010. Societies will need simultaneously to advance the prospects for younger people and keep the elderly onboard – pretty tough unless economic growth can resume. A clash of generations may now be seen as an addition to Samuel’s Huntington’s seminal predictions of a clash of civilisations[8].

Undermining either generational group right now can be the stuff of political instability in the short term and dire social problems later on. If families are to be encouraged to have children in the depopulated Western world, high university tuition fees are a disincentive. Similarly, if the elderly find their benefits cut, their ability to contribute meaningfully to society in future will be undermined. Both these dangers loom in today’s ageing and increasingly youth-less Western societies.

Of course, an ageing world is already changing our lifestyle as human beings. Retirement ages are now being extended to 67 in major European countries like Britain, Germany and Holland. France has been one of the more recalcitrant countries (witness trade union protests) to understand that working longer – to accumulate more, to rely less on the state and because it is possible to be productive much later in life – will become a societal norm in future.

New ways to manage retirement benefits from the state will be a key trend in the ageing West. In the Netherlands, there are already innovative debates about whether the state should move from a fixed age of retirement to a fixed period of paid retirement, so that the retirement age would be index-linked to average life expectanc[9]y. Indeed, healthy ageing is likely to redraft the way we think about retirement in the future.

The United States will be shielded to some degree owing to higher fertility rates and more immigration than their European counterparts. The United States has the lowest median age – 36.6 years – of the g7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United States) according to United Nations’ estimates for 2010. Youthfulness is one variable for future growth because younger people tend to have more children.

Despite this, the US working-age population will grow only by 15 percent over the next four decades when compared with the 62 percent between 1950 and 2010. There will be a net inflow of 30 million immigrants into the United States over the next three decades, providing the one bright spark of potential economic growth in the Western world. The more tolerant and integrative methods used in immigration by the United States will prove their worth, even though there will be an ongoing and raging debate about this[10].

But there is a long way to go. Ageing is still often seen by the Western world (and corporates) as regressive. Older people are regarded as an unproductive burden. The demographic future will reappraise and revalue more mature citizens but thinking needs to alter now.

The challenges of fewer young people

A shortage of children is a key trend for the latter part of this century. At the global level, the number of older persons is expected to exceed the number of children for the first time in 2045. By implication, add a shortage of workers – predominantly in the West – to this trend. Moving businesses to India, China and other countries where a younger pool of workers awaits will be the key feature of outsourcing’s second-wind in the years to come (see Chapter 6).

While outsourcing was never politically popular in that it cost jobs and killed off entire industries in the West, it will now become a necessity. And it will be less unpopular than the alternative of liberalising migration to bring younger, more productive workers from the developed world to the West. Still, developed countries will need to incentivise companies to stay the course in their mother markets rather than relocate in an effort take up some of the domestic unemployed slack.

Societies likely to lose the child dividend (the advantage that some developing countries have of a younger population able to work in large numbers) should also be incentivising larger families or at least making it more comfortable by providing child care, extended leave time and financial allowances to families with younger children. Singapore – whose total fertility rate dropped far below the replacement rate – and Japan are doing so. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to find political support in the West, particularly in times of spending cuts. But it will come in the future as necessity hits home.

Probably the most feasible short-term solution is to use robotics and it-related advances to boost productivity. Job-redesign processes to equip elderly people with basic skills sets and some it knowledge will become big business in future. This will be essential to integrate older workers who live longer, but societal and corporate values about employing the aged will need to change drastically.

Another option that is certainly controversial is to encourage a migration of older immigrants from the developed to the developing world. Already, retired Americans find favourable conditions in a country like Costa Rica. Retirement complexes with outstanding medical facilities have resulted in thousands of elderly Americans moving to this Central American country that many can’t even pin on a map. Although it is a niche industry (but not unlike cosmetic or dental tourism), developing world countries with superior medical standards, like South Africa, could benefit if such a campaign to lure ageing Americans were launched.

This would give the developing world a chance to improve their medical standards, retain trained practitioners who might be tempted to emigrate, and provide additional employment opportunities locally. Reverse migration may therefore become an unintended consequence of ageing in a developed country that can no longer afford to pay all the bills. This will reduce the burden on entitlement programmes and payments in the ageing West.

For all this talk about age, depopulation and a shortage of youth, there will still be a host of countries around the world where young people will be in oversupply. Ageing might eventually give the world a breather, but the next 40 years will see little of that in key regions. At the moment these are some of the least developed or socially combustible places on the planet.

Remaining population growth continues to be concentrated in some of the most populous countries. An astonishing 70 percent of the world’s population growth between now and 2050 will occur in 24 countries, each classified by the World Bank as low- or middle-income with an average per capita income of under $3 855 in 2008[11].

During 2010–2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Republic of Tanzania, China and Bangladesh, listed according to the size of their contribution to global population growth[12]. The United States and India are the only two nations of this list well placed to take advantage of the youth dividend thanks to better educational and governmental systems and integration into the global economy.

Currently, about nine out of ten children under the age of 15 live in developing countries – the very same countries that will continue to have the world’s highest birth rates. These children and young people constitute an all-time high for the developing world and pose a major challenge to their countries[13].

We have already discussed the profound effect on retail that a growing middle class in the developing world will have. Throughout this book, the rising power of the developing world, based on its population growth, is a recurring trend.

The biggest demographic increase is going to be in Africa. By 2050, roughly 20 percent of the world population is going to be in Africa, up from 9 percent in 1900. A similar trend is true in parts of Asia and the Middle East. In the next decade alone, the youth dividend will be adding 250 million people in Central and South Asia, nine million in Iraq and another nine million in Iran. In Pakistan some 38 million people will be added, making that increase alone half as big as Germany’s entire current head count. In unstable Yemen, the population will increase from 17 million today to 39 million in 2025[14]. Over the next 15 years an additional 20 million will be born in Afghanistan and that population is set to soar to almost 75 million by 2050.

A key characteristic of countries with an expanding youth is that most are Muslim. In 1950 Nigeria, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia had a combined population of 242 million. By 2009 those six countries were the most populous Muslim majority countries with a combined population of 886 million[15]. By 2050 these nations are likely to add just fewer than 500 million collectively. By contrast, the six most populous developed nations will add a paltry 44 million over the same period.

Employment, education and migration challenges

Looking at the regions set to show the greatest growth, it is no wonder these countries need particular encouragement to provide employment for their rampant populations. The depopulated labour markets of Europe and North America will look increasingly attractive to those desperate to advance themselves. Migration is therefore set once again to rear its head politically (does it ever really disappear?). Ironically, as the West and particularly Europe tighten immigration options following the recession and high levels of domestic unemployment, so the demands from millions of jobless will increase, causing a renewed case of desperation.

The real challenge for the United States with an ageing population is to enhance productivity rather than add labour. In the 1970s some 80 percent of economic growth came from adding labour and only 20 percent from productivity. Over the next decade, the country will need to get 70 percent from productivity and 30 percent from labour. Europe needs to get 100 percent from productivity and Japan needs 160 percent to boost growth and productivity[16]. Just how realistic these estimations are will be severely curtailed by a lack of young people able to do the work in these advanced economies.

Enhanced border controls are perhaps overdue all over the world, but intelligent immigration policies intended to bring skills to ageing societies will have to be revisited and implemented afresh, despite the current tend towards Fortress Europe. Once the West moves out of recession into a sustained period of positive growth (optimistically predicted for the 2015 period and beyond), more liberal immigration policies will have to be considered.

Any forecaster must make the difficult point that the predominant increase of young people in the world is regional, or more significantly and maybe contentiously, religious. If younger people are concentrated in states least likely to allow them to flourish, then radicalisation, alienation and poverty could cause extreme disruption to society or an increasing divide between an ageing North and a desperate South (and near-East), characterised by Berlin Wall-style immigration policies. For all the talk of a population slow-down being positive for the world after 2050, the rebooting of the planet following falling fertility rates could be delayed by a demographic dividend of young people in societies ill-prepared for it.

One of the world’s greatest challenges – and by implication trends – will be to create tomorrow’s computer engineers and scientists from these rising population centres. Sound unlikely? Invest now in concepts akin to Hole in the Wall education[17]. This places free computers in public locations for children in slums and poor villages across India, guided by the concept of Minimally Invasive Education. The theory is that children can learn on their own, in a cost-effective manner, and gain computer literacy by teaching themselves simply through the availability of computers. It is not that unlikely when you think that your ten-year-old son knows much more about how your Mac works than you do – without having had hours of training!

In Chapter 7 we will discuss the profound effect on retail that a growing middle class coming from the developing world will have. If these millions of youth in poorer countries or regions can really grasp educational opportunities through the strengthening of educational resources in their own nations, they will tilt the power balance in the world. Education equals power so we can expect a real focus on advancing educational resources in poorer regions of the world. Along with green technology and a host of other great investment prospects coming from the developing world, look to private–public partnerships or outsourced opportunities when hundreds of millions of students cry out for help in academic studies.

The need to improve relations between Islam and the West

Along with the obvious educational focus, so too must attention be paid to improving relations between the Islamic world and the West. Responsible leadership from both the West and the Muslim world must counter continued and widespread distrust for the West among large swathes of Muslim youth. Political integration rather than isolation will pressure parts of the Western world to open their borders to a greater degree.

The vexed issue of Turkey’s inclusion into the European Union is a case in point. Europe is reluctant to allow millions of Turks (read Muslims) to enter their societies, but the exclusion of Turkey may drive it towards a more radicalised future. This will be one of the key geopolitical debates of the future, based on fundamental shifts in demographics.

The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35 percent in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030[18]. New political and military alliances will be needed between the ageing West and the youthful rest. Watch out for a much more inclusive world as the demographic differences force previously suspicious regional, economic and military groupings into new alliances. If the West tries to shut out Turkey – and symbolically other Muslims as well – prepare for more religious division and conflict. Demographic realities, harsh as they might be, should trump political concerns. But will they?

Demographic changes alter the power balance

A rise in youth populations in developing countries has a commensurate effect on the political clout of those societies facing depopulation, or ageing. Europe was once the population centre of the planet. In fact, following the period of economic growth spurred on by the Industrial Revolution, Europe in the first decade of the 21st century had more people than China.

But watch the decline of the continent – population-wise. In 1912 the combined population of Europe and North America was 33 percent of the earth’s total. In 2003 it was 17 percent and by 2050 it is projected to be just 12 percent[19]. Within Europe, regional disparities will cause southern Italy, Greece and much of eastern Europe – characterised by very low fertility and larger than average migration – to fall further behind their northern European counterparts.

When it comes to global institutions of power like the United Nations, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, expect the West – and particularly Europe – to find itself increasingly isolated by developing large-population societies who will be demanding greater representation.

In the United States, congressional seats are apportioned to a state’s population. As a result, southern US states have gained representatives these last few years as demographics have shifted from the north to the sun-belt of Florida, California, Texas and Arizona. Expect this type of population-induced power balance to shift in future, but on a global scale (see Chapter 4).

Already Africa is clamouring for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. How about a president of the World Bank who comes from the developing world? These demands, based on a combination of demographic changes and economic shifts, will alter the power balance towards a more inclusive planet when it comes to global decision-making. Developing nations will be demanding their political place in the sun. Even if their youth are somewhat alienated, the sheer clout of numbers will change the representation on international bodies in their favour.

Feeding the planet

Despite the trend towards depopulation, the world will still add more or less the equivalent of another two Chinas by 2050. Developing nations are going to demand access to all types of resources. Two key environmental issues – those of access to water and food – will change the way we think about these essentials. In other words, resources and consumption will sweep into the psyche of all humanity, creating uncertainty and stress.

If we believe eminent geographer Laurence C Smith’s thesis in his excellent book, The World in 2050, the geographical place to be will be in the northern United States and Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian countries owing to global warming and a more temperate northern zone opening up to exploration and human settlement[20]. In these regions, plentiful oil, natural gas, water and arable land are still to be found. Investing in property in Montreal or land near Petropavlovsk on the barren Kamchatka peninsula off Russia’s far eastern seaboard would then become much more exciting than southern Spain or Florida. Watch for a world when Siberia becomes well known for global growth rather than gulags!

In the interim, until we get our heads used to property investments in Murmansk, we are likely to see more people on the planet having more disposable income. The World Bank shows that since 1980 the general prosperity of China and India has been doubling every six to ten years. The rise of middle classes in the developing world is already an unprecedented feature of our time – alongside a bottom billion of people on the planet who remain out of the economic loop.

But developing countries have also unlocked the secret to economic growth and are doing so, often with much greater success than their Western counterparts. The paradox is that rising living standards as a result of economic growth among millions changes diets and puts pressure on the environment – for the whole planet.

The world has woken up to the pressures on the planet only recently, but the focus on green issues is now deeply embedded in our collective psyche. As population pressures increase in the medium term, we will feel the environmental pressure in everything we do.

The new middle classes (300 million in China alone) are changing their eating habits. They want higher quality foods and more proteins – notably beef, chicken and pork. Production of meat on a calorie-by-calorie basis requires roughly ten times the amount of grain as simply eating grain (the livestock eat grain too).

This has a knock-on effect on the global demand for grain and a resulting upward pressure on the price of the feed. Severe drought in major wheat and barley exporter countries has and will exacerbate price increases. In other words, consumption is already testing the limits of global supply, and with the rising use of biofuels it will do so further.

The global demand for animal feeds has been volatile over the last year. Combined with changing diet and incidental events like further droughts, expect a rise in prices in the future. Given that agriculture already takes up 40 percent of the world’s surface, that the world’s arable land is increasingly limited due to unprecedented urbanisation, that ecosystems have been heavily destroyed by agricultural exploitation, that agriculture consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater sources right now, that fisheries have been overexploited, and that rising incomes will involve more consumption of meat and dairy products (heavily intensive in resource-use), the picture is troubling.

China already consumes around 50 percent of the global supply of pork products[21]. Russia is the world’s largest importer of meat and poultry[22] and consumes 20 percent of all global supplies[23]. The 190 million big meat-eating Brazilians consume almost the same amount of beef and veal as 1.3 billion Chinese. The Taiwanese ate an average 43 kilograms of meat in 1985. Ten years later, with rising incomes, it was 73 kilograms[24]. With China’s per capita consumption of beef at only 11.6 percent of the United States’ and poultry at 25 percent, projected rising prosperity will increase these demands even further. A rise in food prices will clearly hit the poor but even the new middle classes will feel the pressure on their new menu aspirations.

In 1789 the British economist and demographer Thomas Malthus predicted that short-term gains in living standards would inevitably be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production and drove living standards back toward subsistence. Although he was a noted pessimist, this never came to pass. In fact, global growth, together with technological strides, has boosted global production to keep pace with increasing consumption. Clearly this can continue.

The real danger as the world’s population expands at record levels for the next 40 years is that humanity enters a period in which supply lags behind demand. After all, ratcheting up virgin arable land in Africa for food production doesn’t happen overnight. 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

[3]http://www.un.org

[4]http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/pressrelease.pdf

[5]Jack A Goldstone, The New Population Time Bomb, in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010

[6]http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10105?pg=all

[7]http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138726/Nanotech_could_make_humans_ immortal_by_2040_futurist_says

[8]Samuel P Huntingdon, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Shuster 1996

[9]http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/11/sustainable_welfare_systems

[10]Jack A Goldstone, The New Population Time Bomb, in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010

[11]ibid

[12]http://www.un.org

[13]http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/pressrelease.pdf

[14]United Nations Population Division

[15]Jack A Goldstone, The New Population Time Bomb, in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2010

[16]Why Trends Matter, in McKinsey Quarterly, July 2010

[17]http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/

[18]http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth

[19]United Nations Population Division

[20]Laurence C Smith, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Dutton 2010

[21]http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/110610/china_of_the_worls_pork_consumption_.aspx

[22]http://www.globaltrade.net/international-trade-import-exports/f/market- research/pdf/Russia/Food-Processing-Processed-Meat-Russian-State-Subsidies-Flush-for-Promoting-Genetics-Trade.html

[23]http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ideas/brics/book/BRICs-Chapter21.pdf

[24]http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/09/27/bric-food-file-emerging-markets-redraw-the-world-food-map/

[25]http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/09/27/bric-food-file-emerging-markets-redraw-the-world-food-map/

[26]http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/downloads/documents/escarcity.pdf

[27]Scott Phillips, Buying at the Point of Maximum Pessimism, FT Press 2010

[28]http://www.populationspeakout.org/