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2005-2</title></head><body>
<div>Visonaires: The following description of a new book by
Lester Brown, President</div>
<div>of the Earth Policy Institute, focuses on population, land and
conflict.</div>
<div>Ther are specific references to the increasing pressure on our
limited</div>
<div>water supplies.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Tom Trail</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Eco-Economy Excerpt 2005-2<br>
For Immediate Release<br>
June 14, 2005<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>POPULATION, LAND, AND CONFLICT<br>
<a
href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote2_3adapt.htm"
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Ote2_3adapt.htm</a><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
By Lester R. Brown<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
As land and water become scarce and as competition for these vital<br>
resources intensifies, we can expect mounting social tensions
within<br>
societies, particularly between those who are poor and dispossessed
and<br>
those who are wealthy, as well as among ethnic and religious
groups.<br>
Population growth brings with it a steady shrinkage of
life-supporting<br>
resources per person. That decline, which is threatening to drop
the<br>
living standards of more and more people below survival level, could
lead<br>
to unmanageable social tensions that will translate into
broad-based<br>
conflicts.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Worldwide, the area in grain expanded
from 590 million hectares (1,457<br>
million acres) in 1950 to its historical peak of 730 million hectares
in<br>
1981. By 2004, it had fallen to 670 million hectares. Even as the
world’s<br>
population continues to grow, the area available for producing grain
is<br>
shrinking.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Expanding world population cut the
grainland area per person in half, from<br>
0.23 hectares (0.57 acres) in 1950 to 0.11 hectares in 2000. (See data
at<br>
<a
href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/ch2data_index.htm"
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/ch2data_index.htm</a> ) This
area of<br>
just over one tenth of a hectare per person is half the size of a
building<br>
lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This halving of grainland area per
person<br>
makes it more difficult for the world’s farmers to feed the 70
million or<br>
more people added each year. If current population projections
materialize<br>
and if the overall grainland area remains constant, the area per
person<br>
will shrink to 0.07 hectares in 2050, less than two thirds that in
2000.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Having less cropland per person not only
threatens livelihoods; in largely<br>
subsistence societies with nutrient-depleted soils, it threatens
survival<br>
itself. Tensions among people begin to build as land holdings shrink
below<br>
that needed for survival. The Sahelian zone of Africa, the broad
swatch of<br>
the continent between the Sahara Desert and the more lush forested
land<br>
to the south, which stretches from Sudan in the east through
Mauritania in<br>
the west, has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations. It is
also<br>
an area of spreading conflicts.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>In troubled Sudan, 2 million people have
died and over 4 million have been<br>
displaced in the long-standing conflict of more than 20 years between
the<br>
Muslim north and the Christian south. The conflict in the Darfur
region in<br>
western Sudan that began in 2003 illustrates the mounting tensions
between<br>
two Muslim groups—Arab camel herders and black African
subsistence<br>
farmers. Government troops are backing Arab militias, who are engaging
in<br>
the wholesale slaughter of black Africans in an effort to drive them
off<br>
their land, sending them into refugee camps. To date, some 140,000
people<br>
have been killed in the conflict and another 250,000 have died in
the<br>
refugee camps of hunger and disease.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>In Nigeria, where 130 million people are
crammed into an area not much<br>
larger than Texas, overgrazing and overplowing are converting
351,000<br>
hectares (1,350 square miles) of grassland and cropland into desert
each<br>
year. The conflict between farmers and herders in Nigeria is a war
for<br>
survival. As the New York Times reported in June 2004, “in recent
years,<br>
as the desert has spread, trees have been felled and the populations
of<br>
both herders and farmers have soared, the competition for land has
only<br>
intensified.”<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Unfortunately, the division between
herders and farmers is also often the<br>
division between Muslims and Christians. This competition for
land,</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>amplified by religious differences and
combined with a large number of<br>
frustrated young men with guns, has created what the New York
Times<br>
describes as a “combustible mix” that has “fueled a recent orgy
of<br>
violence across this fertile central Nigerian state [Kebbi]. Churches
and<br>
mosques were razed. Neighbor turned against neighbor. Reprisal
attacks<br>
spread until finally, in mid-May, the government imposed emergency
rule.”<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Similar divisions exist between herders
and farmers in northern Mali, the<br>
Times noted, where “swords and sticks have been chucked for
Kalashnikovs,<br>
as desertification and population growth have stiffened the
competition<br>
between the largely black African farmers and the ethnic Tuareg and
Fulani<br>
herders. Tempers are raw on both sides. The dispute, after all, is
over<br>
livelihood and even more, about a way of life.”<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Water, too, is a source of growing
tension. Although much has been said<br>
about the conflicts between and among countries over water resources,
some<br>
of the most bitter disagreements are taking place within countries
where<br>
needs of local populations are outrunning the sustainable yield of
wells.<br>
Local water riots are becoming increasingly common in countries like
China<br>
and India. In the competition between cities and the countryside,
cities<br>
invariably win, often depriving farmers of their irrigation water and
thus<br>
their livelihood.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>The projected addition to the earth’s
population of 3 billion people by<br>
2050, the vast majority of whom will be added in countries where
water<br>
tables already are falling and wells are going dry, is not a recipe
for<br>
economic progress and political stability. Continuing population
growth in<br>
countries already overpumping their aquifers and draining their rivers
dry<br>
could lead to acute hydrological poverty, a situation in which
people<br>
simply do not have enough water to meet their basic needs.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Reversing this situation depends on
quickly slowing population growth.<br>
Otherwise the resulting political instability could soon eclipse
terrorism<br>
as a threat to society.<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
Adapted from Chapter 2 of Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The
Food<br>
Security Challenge in An Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising<br>
Temperatures (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005),<br>
<a
href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out"
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out</a><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
# # #<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Additional data and information sources
at www.earth-policy.org or<br>
contact<br>
<a
href="mailto:jlarsen@earth-policy.org">jlarsen@earth-policy.org</a><br>
For reprint permission contact <a
href="mailto:rjkauffman@earth-policy.org">rjkauffman@earth-policy.org</a
>---<br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
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</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>
<ul>
<li>--</ul>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>-- <br>
Dr. Tom Trail<br>
International Trails<br>
1375 Mt. View Rd.<br>
Moscow, Id. 83843<br>
Tel: (208) 882-6077<br>
Fax: (208) 882-0896<br>
e mail ttrail@moscow.com</div>
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