The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Population boom heralds big global economic shifts Posted: 27 Oct 2011 03:02 AM PDT  A man watches the skyline of Shanghai from the Shanghai Financial Centre building on October 25, 2011. ― Reuters pic As the number of people on the planet reaches 7 billion, his modern-day peers are cautiously confident that the English clergyman will remain synonymous with unwarranted doom and gloom. With the global population headed for the 9 billion mark by 2050, economists are pinning their faith on continued technological innovation and the invisible hand of market prices to lead to a more efficient, sustainable use of finite natural resources instead of a deadly fight to the end for the last barrel of oil and drop of water. "Malthus has been proven wrong for the past 200 years, so why should he be right in the next 100?" asked Robert Aliber, a professor of international economics and finance at the University of Chicago. Part of the answer to that rhetorical question presupposes uninterrupted advances in technology and productivity of the sort that Malthus, writing before the Industrial Revolution, was unable to foresee. As Willem Buiter, Citi's chief economist, put it, the world would have been doomed long ago if it had been stuck with the largely artisanal modes of production familiar to Malthus. For a start, if cars and trains and bicycles had not replaced horse-drawn transport, London would be buried now under a deep layer of horse manure. "There is always a Malthusian scenario that will cause the world to collapse. It has been a race between the exhaustibility of resources and innovation, and so far innovation has won," Buiter said. "We have several thousand years of human history to support us on that, so I'm reasonably optimistic." Game changer Still, the rapid economic re-emergence of China and India, both with populations of well over 1 billion, is changing the equation. The failure of the cost of oil and many other commodities to fall farther than they have despite stagnation in the West is a harbinger of the wrenching changes to prices and consumption patterns that rapid growth in emerging economies will bring about. "When you've got China, India and Brazil that are so big and are growing so fast, you're going to get a major reorganization, if not disruption, of the world economic order," said Professor Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in England. "We're going to go through a massive adjustment in the next 15 to 20 years. We're just beginning to see it," he said. Some countries are introducing carbon taxes to reflect the non-renewability of fossil fuels and induce consumers to change the way they behave. The fact that water is largely free for most farmers, who use 70-80 per cent of the world's water, leads to enormous waste, Buiter added. "Either prices or policies will have to change. One way or another we will have to ration these things," he said. "Technical change can't do it all for us. We can choose: we can either have physical rationing, which is difficult and inefficient, or price rationing of some kind." To grasp the scale of the behavioral changes that policymakers will have to bring about, Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental organization in Washington, has estimated the impact on the world's natural resources if, as he projects, China's per capita gross domestic product (measured at purchasing power parity) catches up with that of the United States by 2035 ― and if Chinese were to spend their income more or less as Americans do. China would use four-fifths of the world's paper and 70 per cent of the world's current grain output. Were China to have three cars for every four people, as the United States does, China would be consuming nearly all today's oil production. "The world population is outrunning its basic support systems. That's why the world's forests are shrinking, its fisheries are collapsing, its grasslands are turning into deserts from overgrazing, why soil is eroding and why water tables are falling now in 18 countries that contain half the world's people," Brown said. "So we're over-using everything. You can over-pump in the short run but not in the long run. At some point, you have to reduce the pumping to the rate of recharge," he added. Political challenges Getting well-fed, gas-guzzling Westerners to change their lifestyles will be a political minefield. Telling Asians and Africans that they cannot aspire to such a lifestyle in the first place because the Earth will not support it raises even tougher questions. Can South Asia, for example, put the priority on sustainable development when hundreds of millions still do not have access to clean water and many go hungry? "For a region that's clocked something like 6 per cent growth on average over the past decade, the statistics on malnutrition are just truly astonishing and unacceptable," said Kalpana Kochhar, the World Bank's chief economist for South Asia. She said India, whose population is set to overtake China's in a generation, could feed its own people and its neighbors with little difficulty if market forces were given free rein. "There's more than enough food. The problem there is when everything is so tightly controlled by the government, farmers are not able to respond to price signals," Kochhar said. Brown is less optimistic about the potential to keep raising agricultural yields. Large-scale farm land purchases in Africa and Latin America were a taste of what's to come, he said: "Land has become the new gold. It's an early view of the sort of thing we'll be seeing. It becomes an every-country-for-itself world ― whether it's oil, water, grain or copper." Conversely, Brown is excited by rapid progress in developing alternatives to fossil fuels. China does not have to become less energy-intensive, but the energy must come from renewable sources, he said. Haddad with the Institute of Development Studies agreed that China, starting with a blank slate, had the opportunity to become a leader in the low-carbon economy and green technology, carving out a huge market in the process. To ensure Malthus's fears remain unfounded, the onus for change lay mainly with Western countries that have accumulated their wealth without realising the damage that unchecked carbon consumption was doing to the planet. "We're the ones that have to change our behaviour and give countries like India and China more of a run at economic growth and poverty reduction," Haddad said. ― Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| UN wants better life for world of 7b Posted: 27 Oct 2011 01:56 AM PDT  Indian children ride in a cart on the way home from school in the outskirts of New Delhi in this file picture taken on February 26, 2001. ― Reuters pic "It is both about consumption and population," the UN's Population Fund Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said at a media conference to launch the report, referring to people's impact on the environment and economic growth. While growing populations could be a drain on the world's resources, the UN's Population Fund's "The State of World Population 2011" released yesterday said a contributing factor was overconsumption by the existing population. "With planning and the right investments in people now, to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves ... our world of 7 billion can have thriving sustainable cities, productive labor forces that fuel economies, and youth populations that contribute to the well-being of their societies," Osotimehin said in the report. It was vital to engage with the world's youth and to harness their entrepreneurial skills to boost economies and prevent potential alienation, the report said. Those under the age of 25 make up 43 per cent of the population, and as much as 60 per cent in some countries, and this group must be educated and trained if countries are to have a dynamic work force, it said. Failure to do so would see a loss of ideas, innovation as well as tax income. A major contributor to the recent Arab uprisings was a youth unemployment rate of nearly 25 per cent, the report quoted the International Labor Organisation as saying. Fertility and migration The UN also said migration will become more significant in the coming century, with people moving across borders as well as within their own countries. The report looked at nine countries to see how they were responding to different rates of fertility and migration. In some of the poorest countries, high fertility rates have stunted development and perpetuated poverty, the report said. Getting girls to school and providing women with jobs and equal opportunities as well as sexual and reproductive healthcare including family planning was essential, it said. In some of the richest countries, low fertility rates and too few people entering the job market have raised fears about the prospects for sustained economic growth and the viability of social security systems. Every country has a population that is aging to some degree. The global proportion of people over the age of 60 is expected to grow from 11 per cent in 2009 to 22 per cent in 2050. In Finland, which enjoys a high standard of living but where low fertility rates have led to a quarter of the population being over 60 years old, the emphasis is on excellent social services to make parenthood easier. Academics have said that in countries such as China, which is getting older before it gets richer, there is need for old-age security, medical care and social services. More funding, including from governments and foundations, was needed, Osotimehin told reporters at the media conference. "Family planning, for instance, has not been funded as much as it should have been," he said. A UN Secretary General report showed that US$68 billion (RM212.84 billion) would be needed in 2011 if its program on sexual and reproductive health initiatives set out in Cairo in 1994 was to be met, yesterday's report said. Countries were expected to contribute US$34 billion, with a further US$10.8 billion coming from international and bilateral donors, leaving a shortfall of around US$25 billion. Growing global interdependence meant governments had to work out how to deal with record populations if they were to avoid future competition for limited resources such as food and water. Reports already suggest a 40 per cent global shortfall in water supply by 2030, while developing countries are buying up land in Africa to offset any future shortages at home. ― Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Features To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan