Global Health

Global Health

Global Health

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One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typi-cally we project the future by extrapo- lating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.

For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not fi nd it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might col- lide with an asteroid, too!

For many years I have studied global agricul- tural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined ef- fects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of govern-

ments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.

I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continu- ing failure to deal with the environmental de- clines that are undermining the world food econ- omy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.

The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the vital signs of our cur- rent world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental fi eld are well into our third de cade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any signifi cant effort to reverse a single one.

In six of the past nine years world grain pro- duction has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest be- gins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near re-

ENVIRONMENT

COULD FOOD

BRING DOWN ?

BY LESTER R. BROWN

The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation

SHORTAGES

KEY CONCEPTS Food scarcity and the re- ■ sulting higher food prices are pushing poor coun- tries into chaos.

Such “failed states” can ■ export disease, terrorism, illicit drugs, weapons and refugees.

Water shortages, soil ■ losses and rising tempera- tures from global warm- ing are placing severe lim- its on food production.

Without massive and rapid ■ intervention to address these three environmental factors, the author argues, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order.

—The Editors

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CHILDREN CLAMOR for food in the village of Dubie, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The photograph was taken in December 2005.

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everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number fi ve, is a hotbed for terrorist train- ing. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo (number six).

Our global civilization depends on a func- tioning network of politically healthy nation- states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian fl u—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threat- en the stability of global civilization itself.

A New Kind of Food Shortage The surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food securi- ty—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatical- ly several times. In 1972, for instance, the Sovi- ets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pull- ing rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—

cord low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.

As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price infl ation puts severe stress on the governments of coun- tries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Un- able to buy grain or grow their own, hungry peo- ple take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [see sidebar at left ]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, en- tire nations will break down at an ever increas- ing rate. We have entered a new era in geopoli- tics. In the 20th century the main threat to inter- national security was superpower confl ict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.

States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to dis- integrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.

Failing states are of international concern be- cause they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weap- ons and refugees, threatening political stability

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FAILING STATES Every year the Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace jointly analyze and score countries on 12 social, economic, political and military indicators of national well-being. Here, ranked from worst to better according to their combined scores in 2007, are the 20 countries in the world that are closest to collapse:

Somalia■

Sudan■

Zimbabwe■

Chad■

Iraq■

Democratic Republic of the Congo■

Afghanistan■

Ivory Coast■

Pakistan■

Central African Republic■

Guinea■

Bangladesh■

Burma (Myanmar)■

Haiti■

North Korea■

Ethiopia■

Uganda■

Lebanon■

Nigeria■

Sri Lanka■

SOURCE: “The Failed States Index 2008,” by the Fund for Peace and the Carnegie Endow- ment for International Peace, in Foreign Policy; July/August 2008

[FOOD STRESS ON THE RISE]

Numbers That Go the Wrong Way

SOURCES: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2008; U.S. Census Bureau

Both the absolute number and the percentage of chronically under- nourished people in the world’s 70 least developed countries are climbing, while the world’s back- up food supply of carryover stocks (the amount of grain in the bin when the new harvest begins) is declining.

Undernourished: 980 million Total population: 3,080 million

Each icon represents 200 million people

Undernourished: 1,200 million (projected) Total population: 3,650 million (projected)

World carryover grain stocks: 108 days

World carryover grain stocks: 62 days

World carryover grain stocks: Not projected

Undernourished: 775 million Total population: 2,550 million

RISING HUNGER IN THE WORLD’S 70 LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

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temperatures (and other effects) of global warm- ing—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand . Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most imme- diate threat. The biggest challenge here is irriga- tion, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of under-

drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typi- cally returned to normal with the next harvest.

In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to re- verse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the on- going addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain- intensive livestock products [see “The Green- house Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive di- version of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.

The extra demand for grain associated with rising affl uence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affl uent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per per- son is nearly four times that much, though per- haps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.

The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insa- tiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest— enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels— will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making etha- nol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fi ll a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.

The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition be- tween cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substitut- ing grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.

Water Shortages Mean Food Shortages What about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising

[CAUSES AND EFFECTS]

Key Factors in Food Shortages

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The spreading scarcity of food is emerging as the central cause of state failure. Food shortages arise out of a tangled web of causes, effects and feedbacks whose interactions often intensify the effects of any one factor acting alone. Some of the most common factors are depicted in the diagram. According to the author, today’s food shortages are not the result of one-time, weather-driven crop failures but rather of four critical long- term trends (below): rapid population growth, loss of topsoil, spreading water short ages and rising temperatures.

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ground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in coun- tries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.

Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient wa- ter and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aqui- fer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pump- ing. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.

In China the water table under the North Chi- na Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is fall- ing fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future

The greatest drain on supplies of freshwater is irrigation, which accounts for 70 percent of freshwater usage. Irri- gation is essential to most high-yield farming, but many aquifers that supply irrigated crops are being drawn down faster than rain can recharge them. Furthermore, when farmers tap “fossil” aquifers, which store ancient water in rock impermeable to rain, they are mining a nonrenewable resource. Pumping from ever deeper wells is problematic in another way as well: it takes a lot of energy. In some states of India, half of the available electricity is used to pump water.

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generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.

As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 per- cent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.

But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food con- sumption and survival is more precarious. Mil- lions of irrigation wells have dropped water ta- bles in almost every state. As Fred Pearce report- ed in New Scientist:

Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of sui- cides among those who rely on them. Elec- tricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].

A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhaust- ed. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social confl ict.

Less Soil, More Hunger The scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is erod- ing faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essen- tial plant nutrients, the very foundation of civi- lization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.

In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situa- tion in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Af- rica. The team’s fi nding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic fu- ture; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, deg- radation and the decline in soil fertility.”