"We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures,” writes the chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) Christopher Kojm in the council’s latest forward-looking quadrennial report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, released yesterday.
This year, principal author Mathew Burrows and his colleagues focus on a series of plausible global scenarios for the next 20 years and the trends or disruptions that may influence which play out. Among the most important factors in these projections are demography and the environment.
[…]
Resource Constraints, Conflict Potential
Natural resource constraints – especially when layered on top of demographic trends and other environmental stresses – are expected to increase uncertainty and instability worldwide, the NIC concludes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, where water and land shortages will often coincide with “disproportionate levels of young men,” the report warns of an increased risk of intrastate conflict.
In the discussion of natural resources and the potential for conflict, the focus is often on oil, water, or minerals. In this case, however, the NIC saves its gravest warning for an often-overlooked resource: soil.
The authors classify the erosion and depletion of soil as “a natural disaster that might cause governments to collapse,” alongside threats like drought or crop infestations, tsunamis, and solar storms. The problem of soil depletion has been a long time in building: “Worldwide soil erosion has caused farmers to abandon 430 million hectares of arable land since the Second World War, an area the size of India,” they note.
To avoid a future of scarcity policymakers and the private sector “will need to be proactive” to apply technological advances and public policy in a manner that avoids exacerbating resource constraints. That will be a complex task, since “tackling problems pertaining to one commodity won’t be possible without affecting supply and demand for the others,” and the NIC predicts “many countries probably won’t have the wherewithal to avoid food and water shortages without massive help from outside.”
Aside from shortages, traditional national resource dynamics may be upended as well. The NIC points out that, depending on the degree of development, shale gas development has the potential to make the United States energy independent and upend the power of OPEC, with potentially grave economic and social consequences for traditionally-oil dependent economies.
Climate change too will contribute to resource management challenges, as the observed extreme weather events of today, from floods to droughts “almost certainly will continue during the next 20 years.” Furthermore, what happens over the next 20 years will likely determine what happens over the next 80 since, by 2030, the world’s “emissions trajectory will be cast, determining this century’s climate outcome.”
Overall, over the next 18 years, the report cautions that “there is as much scope for negative tradeoffs as there is the potential for positive synergies” in the environmental sector.
For the complete article, please see New Security Beat.
“We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures,” writes the chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) Christopher Kojm in the council’s latest forward-looking quadrennial report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, released yesterday.
This year, principal author Mathew Burrows and his colleagues focus on a series of plausible global scenarios for the next 20 years and the trends or disruptions that may influence which play out. Among the most important factors in these projections are demography and the environment.
[…]
Resource Constraints, Conflict Potential
Natural resource constraints – especially when layered on top of demographic trends and other environmental stresses – are expected to increase uncertainty and instability worldwide, the NIC concludes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, where water and land shortages will often coincide with “disproportionate levels of young men,” the report warns of an increased risk of intrastate conflict.
In the discussion of natural resources and the potential for conflict, the focus is often on oil, water, or minerals. In this case, however, the NIC saves its gravest warning for an often-overlooked resource: soil.
The authors classify the erosion and depletion of soil as “a natural disaster that might cause governments to collapse,” alongside threats like drought or crop infestations, tsunamis, and solar storms. The problem of soil depletion has been a long time in building: “Worldwide soil erosion has caused farmers to abandon 430 million hectares of arable land since the Second World War, an area the size of India,” they note.
To avoid a future of scarcity policymakers and the private sector “will need to be proactive” to apply technological advances and public policy in a manner that avoids exacerbating resource constraints. That will be a complex task, since “tackling problems pertaining to one commodity won’t be possible without affecting supply and demand for the others,” and the NIC predicts “many countries probably won’t have the wherewithal to avoid food and water shortages without massive help from outside.”
Aside from shortages, traditional national resource dynamics may be upended as well. The NIC points out that, depending on the degree of development, shale gas development has the potential to make the United States energy independent and upend the power of OPEC, with potentially grave economic and social consequences for traditionally-oil dependent economies.
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