By Paul Kennedy

These are heady times in which to be a commentator and opinionator on world affairs. What, after all, should one write about next? The down-to-the-wire negotiations on trimming the dreadful U.S. federal debt? The perils and opportunities of pulling lots of Western troops out of Afghanistan? The crisis in Greece, and the larger crisis of the common European currency? The "Arab Spring" and its terrifying disintegration in Syria, Yemen, Libya, potentially in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and further afield? Chinese expansionism, or the perils of the Chinese "bubble" economy exploding? The possibility of a mad-dog Iranian attack upon Israel or an equally foolish Israeli attack upon Iran? Readers can take their choice, but none of them are pretty.

Yet, in the background, there are more worrying global trends, nowadays pushed into the secondary pages of even the most distinguished of our international newspapers. On May 4, for example, the New York Times ran a few paragraphs on its front page entitled "U.N. Sees Rise for the World to 10.1 Billion," although the rest of this important piece had to be discovered on a later page. Perhaps I did not do enough due diligence in my follow-up, but I failed to see any serious op-eds by our mighty pundits on this topic. The ephemeral issue of how long Colonel Gadhafi holds power -- another three months?; another six months? -- was much more gripping.

This is a sad commentary on our lack of global perspective, and our obsession with the here-and-now. So, how about coming back into the real world? As we entered the 21st century, our human population breached the total of 6 billion people. This coming October, and less than a dozen years later, according to the U.N., there will be 7 billion of us homo sapiens putting our footprint upon the planet Earth; such a big footprint, from Antarctica to the Newfoundland Banks.

Those are already awful figures, for demographic experts knew that there were further absolute increases to come, even as they anticipated a relative slowing-down of the Earth's population to around 9 billion people in 2050. That would be bad enough, but this new projection, suggesting a total population of 10 billion people on our planet by 2100 (i.e., there is NO mid-century stabilization), is really scary.

Why is this happening? Demographers are, thankfully, a cautious lot and prefer to spend their time teasing out new data about fertility rates rather than offering judgments about the behavior of entire nations and generations. Still, one reason impresses them: it is that the so-called "demographic transition" (crudely put, a condition wherein women have on average fewer children, usually under urbanization, when living standards rise, when they are empowered and have greater education) is not happening as swiftly as early forecasts had predicted. Since this new report is by the U.N.'s Population Division, a respected technical organization which made some of the earlier forecasts, it can hardly be brushed aside. This is serious scholarship.

The centerpiece of this story is, alas, Africa and certain nearby Arab states. Some other tidbits catch the eye: For instance, the populations of the United States, Britain, Denmark and Australia, are growing nicely, while the decrepit populations of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia and Japan will face tougher times ahead. The report also suggests that the restrictive one-child-per-family policies carried out in China over the last half-century will reap the whirlwind of a catastrophically skewed demographic profile for the generations to come. More specifically, its present population of 1.4 billion people, stable though increasingly aging, is forecast to reduce itself to 940 million by the year 2100. So much for the Chinese century.

But, Africa, Africa ...

General de Gaulle once famously said that the 20th century had not been kind to Africa. The hard message of this report is that the 21st century may be even more unkind. Frankly, I do not see any alternative conclusion when I read that Africa's current overall population of around 1 billion people is forecast to rise to an epic 3.6 billion people by century's end. Poor women's health care, male-dominated cultures, inadequate clinics are all there. They have been there for centuries, but the report suggests that they are not going away quickly enough, in some countries not going away at all. The Malthusian "cut" of AIDS is not cutting as deeply these days, thanks to new, successful HIV drugs.

The forecasts for individual countries cause one to think they must be untrue, and yet they lie before your eye. Malawi, already grappling with today's population of 15 million, is forecast to reach 129 million. That God-stricken land across the Red Sea, Yemen, whose population lifted itself five-fold from 5 million in 1950 to 25 million today, will embrace a four-fold increase by century's end, to 100 million, in one of the driest parts of the world. The largest country of this demographic disaster remains Nigeria, the bellwether state of West Africa and far beyond. The U.N. Population Division's forecasts suggest that Nigeria will grow from its present unsustainable 162 million to around 730 million in 2100 -- far above the population of all the states of Europe combined.

Is all this imaginable? Tolerable? Absolutely not. Certain food-supply experts and demographers argue that a world economy sustaining the needs of 9 billion people (now they will have to factor in 10 billion) is feasible. These projections pay no attention to the international politics of food, which are very nasty. They pay no attention to the increasingly high price of food internationally -- who can pay for it? They pay no attention to China and India's massive future food demands, which will buy out any global surpluses from America, Brazil, Canada, to the disadvantage of states with no purchasing power.

Finally, they pay no attention to the world's fresh-water supplies, which will probably be the key physical indicator of how states fare as the present century unfolds. Without adequate water, the Chinese and Indian miracles are over, barring some sensational new source. Whereas, possessing adequate water, the United States, Western Europe, Brazil, Canada, will go on, but without adequate supplies of water, Yemen's forecast 100 million will never reach that total; they will have been beaten down, by dehydration, dysentery and malnutrition on the way. Along with hundreds of millions of other Africans.

So much for our fascination with the Greek fiscal crisis, or the travails of a recent head of the IMF. Let's start pulling our heads out of the sand, and start seriously thinking about the larger challenges of the 21st century.

(Paul Kennedy is Dilworth Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University; and the author/editor of 19 books, including "The Rise And Fall Of The Great Powers.")

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World

Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (The Contemporary Middle East)

Enemies of Intelligence

The End of History and the Last Man

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

 

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