The Global Environment

Food security and promoting modern uses of biomass as a source of energy are two key goals in developing countries. Are these conflicting interests impossible to reconcile or two ends of a common strategy?

Biomass is the most important source of energy in many developing countries, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy rising global demand for agricultural products in a sustainable way. Climate change, a rising world population with changing diets, increasing urbanization and industrialization and rising production of non-food crops all raise the global demand for agricultural land. How can population growth, food consumption patterns, climate patterns and land use be brought into a sustainable equilibrium?

Partially replacing gasoline and diesel with biofuels requires agricultural products that compete with food production for the world´s scarce resources of fertile land. A range of factors, including the growing world population and rising incomes in emerging economies, have led to the sharp rise in agricultural prices over the past few years (recently interrupted by the global financial crisis but not obviated in the longer run). But price rises have also been driven by the expansion of biofuels.

In policy discussions of climate change, mitigation has been the main focus to date but adaptation to climate change is moving up the policy agenda. Simulation models suggest that the negative effects of climate change disproportionately fall on the developing world. Some argue that such effects have already started to become visible in the form of agricultural damage, displacement of people by floods, etc.

Three quarters of the global marine fish stock are deemed fully exploited oroverfished. Declining or collapsing fish stocks imply not just the loss of economic benefits but also the loss of livelihood for many people in developing countries. The global challenge is to come up with management approaches to sustain global fish stocks in the future without withdrawing the basic food for developing countries in the present.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy the rising global demand for food in a sustainable manner. A number of factors contribute to uncertainty about the world’s ability to meet the food demand of an increasing population: average living standards are rising; land use is shifting from agriculture to urban and industrial uses; the production of nonfood crops for biofuels is on the rise; investments in increasing agricultural productivity are growing slowly; water and arable land are increasingly becoming scarce; and global warming is making it more difficult to produce food in some poor countries. Moreover, the food price crisis of 2008 added fuel to the fire and put food security on top of the policy agenda.

The nuclear catastrophe in Japan in March 2011 radically changed many preconceptions around the world about energy for the future. Before then, many countries with nuclear power plants sought a constant or rising share of nuclear energy in the mix, while today the future of nuclear energy is unsettled. At the same time, the threat of climate change requires restrictions on the use of fossil fuels such as coal for electricity generation.

The United Nations estimates that the number of megacities with a population of more than 10 million will triple from 20 in 2003 to 61 in 2015. It is estimated that more than nine tenths of urban growth will occur in developing nations, with four fifths of urban growth occurring in Asia and Africa.

Ensuring secure and affordable supplies of energy is a global challenge of growing importance. The challenges ahead include the depletion of oil and other fossil fuels; the reliance of most countries on foreign energy sources; global distributional conflicts arising from the rapidly growing demand for exhaustible fossil fuels; geopolitical conflicts arising from the political instability of exporter countries, from exporters using their market power for political purposes or from terrorism funded by petrodollars.

With increasing public awareness of climate and sustainability issues and prices for fossil energy sources rising, green technologies have emerged as a viable and promising field for business growth as well as for distinctive policy-making. Previously neglected by mainstream political agendas, governments and companies, nowadays initiatives to foster a “Green New Deal” are widespread—mostly in resource-dependent countries and regions such as the European Union, the United States, China and Japan.

Diminishing emissions budgets on one side and increasing risks of catastrophic damages from climate change on the other may require rapid response options such as climate engineering. Climate engineering measures can basically be distinguished by whether they aim at decreasing atmospheric carbon concentration or directly influencing the earth’s radiation balance.

The future global economy is likely to consume ever more energy, especially with the rising energy demand of developing countries such as China and India. At the same time, the tremendous risk of climate change associated with the use of fossil fuels makes supplying this energy increasingly difficult.

In principle, solar and wind are more than enough to deliver any amount of energy that the world’s population might need. But these sources are usually best exploited in areas that are far from centers of demand. It is technologically challenging to transport electricity over large distances and even more to store it. As a consequence, electricity markets have tended to develop as regional markets.

Two fifths of the world’s population faces water shortages. During the coming decades, water scarcity is expected to rise as a result of a rapid increase in the demand for water due to population growth, urbanization and increasing consumption of water per capita. In addition, climate change is expected to influence the supply of water, modifying the regional distribution of freshwater resources.