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