Global Challenges Facing Humanity
3. Population and resources: How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?
Today’s 6.9 billion population is expected to grow to 9.1 billion by 2050 and could reach 11 billion if fertility rates do not continue to fall. If the rates do continue to fall, then world population could actually shrink by 2100, creating an elderly world difficult to support. Nearly all the population increases will be in urban areas in developing countries. Over 20 countries have falling populations, which could increase to 44 countries by 2050, with the vast majority of them in Europe. Scientific and medical breakthroughs over the next 50 years will give people longer and more productive lives than most would believe possible today. Globally, life expectancy at birth is 68 years, and some forecast that it could increase by one year each year by 2030. The global population profile is changing from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility.
About 20% of the world will be over 60 by 2050, and 20% of the older population will be aged 80 or more. Some 20% of Europeans are 60 or older compared with 10% in Asia and Latin America and 5% in Africa. To reduce the economic burden on younger generations and to keep up living standards, people will work longer and create many forms of tele-work, part-time work, and job rotation. The economic slowdown and unemployment, combined with elevated food and fuel prices, pushed some 100 million people into chronic hunger. Over 1 billion people were undernourished in 2009. In 2010, WFP plans to bring food assistance to more than 90 million people in 73 countries, yet in some of these countries, agricultural lands are being bought by foreign investors. Some 2.5 million hectares (about 20% of all EU farmland) in developing countries have been subject to transactions or talks involving foreigners since 2004, in deals estimated to be worth $20–30 billion. Government-backed foreign investors have bought farmlands around the world totaling about half the size of Europe. Meanwhile, 25% of all fish stocks are overharvested; the entire value of fish caught is $85 billion, but $27 billion spent on government subsidies, mostly in rich countries, lead to overexploitation.
To keep up with population and economic growth, food production should increase by 70% and meat production by over 200 million metric tons to reach 470 million metric tons by 2050, which increases demands on water and land, further increasing prices and competition between rural and urban requirements. An additional $83 billion per year will be needed to keep up with these new demands. Cutting the number of hungry people in half by 2015 would generate global annual incremental benefits of $120 billion by 2015. Some 30–40% of food production from farm to mouth is lost in many countries.
Climate change and monocultures undermine biodiversity, which is critical for agricultural viability. Developing countries could experience a decline of 9–21% in overall potential agricultural productivity by 2050 as a result of global warming. An increasingly difficult fungus to stop (Ug99) could wipe out more than 80% of the world’s wheat crops unless new wheat varieties resistant to it are created. Conventional breeding techniques can take 9–12 years; hence, a food crisis may be inevitable.
New agricultural approaches will be needed, such as meat production without growing animals, better rain-fed agriculture and irrigation management, genetic engineering for higher-yielding and drought-tolerant crops, precision agriculture and aquaculture, and saltwater agriculture on coastlines to produce food for human and animals, biofuels, and pulp for the paper industry as well as to absorb CO2, reduce the drain on freshwater agriculture and land, and increase employment. An animal rights group has offered $1 million to the first producers of commercially viable in-vitro chicken by mid-2012.
Urban population is projected to jump from 3.4 billion in 2009 to 6.3 billion in 2050. During the same period, the 1 billion people living in slums today could double. Without sufficient nutrition, shelter, water, and sanitation produced by more intelligent human-nature symbioses, increased migrations, conflicts, and disease seem inevitable. ICT continues to improve the match between needs and resources worldwide in real time, and nanotech will help reduce material use per unit of output while increasing quality.
Challenge 3 will be addressed seriously when the annual growth in world population drops to fewer than 30 million, the number of hungry people decreases by half, the infant mortality rate decreases by two-thirds between 2000 and 2015, and new approaches to aging become economically viable.
Regional Considerations
Africa: The Africa Factbook 2009 by the Global Footprint Network warns that if current population and consumption trends continue, Africa’s Ecological Footprint will exceed its biocapacity within the next 20 years. Africa’s population doubled in the past 27 years to reach 1 billion. There were two Europeans for every African in 1950; by 2050 there will be two Africans for every European. Only 28% of married women of childbearing age are using contraceptives, compared with the global average of 62%. Food production in sub-Saharan Africa grew in 2008 for the first time in decades, yet about 40% of children under five are chronically malnourished. Very rapid growth of the young population and low prospects for employment in most nations in sub-Saharan Africa and some nations in the Muslim world could lead to prolonged instability until at least the 2030s. Much of the urban management class is being seriously reduced by AIDS, which is also lowering life expectancy. Conflicts continue to prevent development investments, ruin fertile farmland, create refugees, compound food emergencies, and prevent better management of natural resources.
Asia and Oceania: China is growing old before it has grown rich. There were six Chinese children for every one elder in 1975; in 2035 there will be two Chinese elders for every one child. With the one-child policy (to continue for at least another decade), the fertility rate in China has fallen to 1.4 from about 5.8 in 1970. The boy-to-girl ratio in 2009 was 119 to 100; the world average is 107 to 100. China has to feed 22% of the world’s population with less than 7% of the world’s arable land and could face a food shortfall of 100 million tons by 2030. Today, 40% of China’s arable land has suffered from deterioration, and 90% of its natural grassland is affected by deterioration to some extent. India has more than 500 million people under 25, will have more people than China by 2050, and has more malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa does. Crop yields could be reduced by up to 20% in East and Southeast Asia and up to 30% in South and Central Asia by 2050. Almost 23% of Japan’s population is older than 65; retiring baby boomers will further strain the pension system. By 2025 South Asians may consume 70% more milk and vegetables and 100% more meat, eggs, and fish than today. Asians earning more than $7,000 annually outnumber the total population of North America and Europe—laying the foundation for unprecedented consumption. New concepts of employment may be needed to prevent political instability among the 60% of Arabs who are now under 25 and face poor prospects for conventional employment.
Europe: Six European countries will have a median age of 50 or higher by 2050. Germany and Italy are losing population today. Russia has begun to grow again: in 2009, birth rates had grown 2.9% and mortality rates had dropped by about 3%. The Russian government offers $10,000 when a second child turns three and gives reproduction days off. Rural populations are expected to shrink, freeing additional land for agriculture. Europe’s low fertility rate and its aging and shrinking population will force changes in pension and social security systems, incentives for more children, and increases in immigrant labor, affecting international relations, culture, and the social fabric. Approximately 85 million people (17 %) of EU27 lived below the EU “relative poverty” concept in 2008, and nearly 261,000 people sought asylum in the EU during 2009.
Latin America: Malnutrition in the region has increased from 45 million to 53 million over the last five years. Brazil leads South-South cooperation on food security, with the President honored as a Global Champion in the Battle Against Hunger by WFP. The share of elderly in Latin America’s population is likely to triple from 6.3% in 2005 to 18.5% in 2050—to 188 million. In several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, the share of the population that is older may already be greater than in the U.S. The population is expected to grow from 580 million in 2009 to about 750 million by 2050 and become 85% urban by 2030, requiring massive urban and agricultural infrastructural investments. Currently, Latin American’s population is growing at 1.3%.
North America: Less than 2% of the U.S population provides the largest share of world food exports, while 37 million people in the United States receive food from Feed America. About 30% of food in the U.S., worth $48 billion, is thrown away each year along with 56 tons of trash. Reducing “throw-away” consumption could change the population-resource balance. An estimated one-third of U.S. corn production in 2009 was used to produce ethanol. The U.S. population could increase to 438 million by 2050 from 309 million today. Biotech and nanotech are just beginning to have an impact on medicine; hence dramatic breakthroughs in longevity seem inevitable in 25–50 years. Global warming should increase Canadian grain exports.