Food insecurity sparks reverberating nuclear war.

Based upon these recent cases of food conflicts, and upon the lessons gleaned from the longer history of the interaction between food and war, several regions of the planet face a greatly heightened risk of conflict towards the mid twenty-first century.

Food wars often start out small, as mere quarrels over grazing rights, access to wells or as one faction trying to control food supplies and markets. However, if not resolved quickly these disputes can quickly escalate into violence, then into civil conflagrations which, if not quelled, can in turn explode into crises that reverberate around the planet in the form of soaring prices, floods of refugees and the involvement of major powers – which in turn carries the risk of transnational war. The danger is magnified by swollen populations, the effects of climate change, depletion of key resources such as water, topsoil and nutrients, the collapse of ecosystem services that support agriculture and fisheries, universal pollution, a widening gap between rich and poor, and the rise of vast megacities unable to feed themselves (Figure 5.3).

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Each of the world’s food ‘powderkeg regions’ is described below, in ascending order of risk.

United States

In one sense, food wars have already broken out in the United States, the most overfed country on Earth. Here the issue is chiefly the growing depletion of the nation’s mighty groundwater resources, especially in states using it for food production, and the contest over what remains between competing users – farmers, ranchers and Native Americans on the one hand and the oil, gas and mining industry on the other. Concern about the future of US water supplies was aggravated by a series of savage droughts in the early twentyfirst century in the west, south and mid-west linked to global climate change and declining snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, both of which affect not only agriculture but also the rate at which the nation’s groundwater reserves recharge.

‘Groundwater depletion has been a concern in the Southwest and High Plains for many years, but increased demands on our groundwater resources have overstressed aquifers in many areas of the Nation, not just in arid regions’, notes the US Geological Survey.24

Nine US states depend on groundwater for between 50 per cent and 80 per cent of their total freshwater supplies, and five states account for nearly half of the nation’s groundwater use. Major US water resources, such as the High Plains aquifers and the Pacific Northwest aquifers have sunk by 30–50 metres (100–150 feet) since exploitation began, imperilling the agricultural industries that rely on them. In the arid southwest, aquifer declines of 100–150 metres have been recorded (Figure 5.4).

[Figure omitted]

To take but one case, the famed Ogallala Aquifer in the High Plains region supports cropping industries worth more than US $20 billion a year and was in such a depleted state it would take more than 6000 years to replace by natural infiltration the water drawn from it by farmers in the past 150 years. As it dwindles, some farmers have tried to kick their dependence on groundwater – other users, including the growing cities and towns of the region, proceeded to mine it as if there was no tomorrow.25 A study by Kansas State University concluded that so far, 30 per cent of the local groundwater had been extracted and another 39 per cent would be depleted by the mid century on existing trends in withdrawal and recharge.26

Over half the US population relies on groundwater for drinking; both rural and urban America are at risk. Cities such as New Orleans, Houston and Miami face not only rising sea levels – but also sinking land, due to the extraction of underlying groundwater. In Memphis, Tennessee, the aquifer that supplies the city’s drinking water has dropped by 20 metres.

Growing awareness of the risk of a nation, even one as large and technologically adept as the USA, having insufficient water to grow its food, generate its exports and supply its urban homes has fuelled tensions leading to the eruption of nationwide protests over ‘fracking’ for oil and gas – a process that can deplete or poison groundwater – and the building of oil pipelines, which have a habit of rupturing and also polluting water resources. The boom in fracking and piping is part of a deliberate US policy to become more self-reliant in fossil fuels.27 Thus, in its anxiety to be independent of overseas energy suppliers, the USA in effect decided to barter away its future food security for current oil security – and the price of this has been a lot of angry farmers, Native Americans and concerned citizens.

The depletion of US groundwater coincides with accelerating climate risk, which may raise US temperatures by as much as 4–5 C by 2100, leading to major losses in soil moisture throughout the US grain belt, and the spread of deserts in the south and west. Food production will also be affected by fiercer storms, bigger floods, more heatwaves, an increase in drought frequency and greater impacts from crop and livestock diseases. In such a context, it is no time to be wasting stored water.

The case of the USA is included in the list of world ‘hot spots’ for future food conflict, not because there is danger of a serious shooting war erupting over water in America in the foreseeable future, but to illustrate that even in technologically advanced countries unforeseen social tensions and crises are on the rise over basic resources like food, land and water and their depletion. This doesn’t just happen in Africa or the Middle East. It’s a global phenomenon.

Furthermore, the USA is the world’s largest food exporter and any retreat on its part will have a disproportionate effect on world food price and supply. There is still plenty of time to replan America’s food systems and water usage – but, as in the case of fossil fuels and climate, rear-guard action mounted by corporate vested interests and their hired politicians may well [freeze] paralyse the national will to do it. That is when the US food system could find itself at serious risk, losing access to water in a time of growing climatic disruption, caused by exactly the same forces as those depleting the groundwater: the fossil fuels sector and its political stooges. The probable effect of this will, in the first instance, be a decline in US meat and dairy production accompanied by rising prices and a fall in its feedgrain exports, with domino effects on livestock industries worldwide.

The flip-side to this issue is that America’s old rival, Russia, is likely to gain in both farmland and water availability as the planet warms through the twentyfirst century – and likewise Canada. Both these countries stand to prosper from a US withdrawal from world food markets, and together they may negate the effects of any US food export shortfalls.

Central and South America

South America is one of the world’s most bountiful continents in terms of food production – but, after decades of improvement, malnutrition is once more on the rise, reaching a new peak of 42.5 million people affected in 2016.28 ‘Latin America and the Caribbean used to be a worldwide example in the fight against hunger. We are now following the worrisome global trend’, said regional FAO representative Julio Berdegué.29

Paradoxically, obesity is increasing among Latin American adults, while malnutrition is rising among children. ‘Although Latin America and the Caribbean produce enough food to meet the needs of their population, this does not ensure healthy and nutritious diets’, the FAO explains. Worsening income inequality, poor access to food and persistent poverty are contributing to the rise in hunger and bad diets, it adds.30

‘The impact of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean will be considerable because of its economic dependence on agriculture, the low adaptive capacity of its population and the geographical location of some of its countries’, an FAO report warned.31

Emerging food insecurity in Central and Latin America is being driven by a toxic mixture of failing water supplies, drying farmlands, poverty, maladministration, incompetence and corruption. These issues are exacerbated by climate change, which is making the water supply issue worse for farmers and city people alike in several countries and delivering more weather disasters to agriculture.

Mexico has for centuries faced periodic food scarcity, with a tenth of its people today suffering under-nutrition. In 2008 this rose to 18 per cent, leading to outbreaks of political violence.32 In 2013, 52 million Mexicans were suffering poverty and seven million more faced extreme hunger, despite the attempts of successive governments to remedy the situation. By 2100 northern Mexico is expected to warm by 4–5 C and southern Mexico by 1.5–2.5 C. Large parts of the country, including Mexico City, face critical water scarcity. Mexico’s cropped area could fall by 40–70 per cent by the 2030s and disappear completely by the end of the century, making it one of the world’s countries most at risk from catastrophic climate change and a major potential source of climate refugees.33

The vanishing lakes and glaciers of the high Andes confront montane nations – Bolivia, Peru and Chile especially – with the spectre of growing water scarcity and declining food security. The volume of many glaciers, which provide meltwater to the region’s rivers, which in turn irrigate farmland, has halved since 1975.34 Bolivia’s second largest water body, the 2000 square kilometres Lake Poopo, dried out completely.35 The loss of water is attributed partly to El Niño droughts, partly to global warming and partly to over-extraction by the mining industries of the region. Chile, with 24,000 glaciers (80 per cent of all those in Latin America) is feeling the effects of their retreat and shrinkage especially, both in large cities such as the capital Santiago, and in irrigation agriculture and energy supply. Chile is rated by the World Resources Institute among the countries most likely to experience extreme water stress by 2040.36

Climate change is producing growing water and food insecurity in the ‘dry corridor’ of Central America, in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Here a combination of drought, major floods and soil erosion is undermining efforts to raise food production and stabilise nutrition.

Food production in Venezuela began falling in the 1990s, and by the late 2010s two thirds of the population were malnourished; there was a growing flood of refugees into Colombia and other neighbouring countries. The food crisis has been variously blamed on the Venezuelan government’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ (modelled on that of China – which also caused widespread starvation), a halving in Venezuela’s oil export earnings, economic sanctions by the USA, and corruption. However, local scientists such as Nobel Laureate Professor Juan Carlos Sánchez warn that climate impacts are already striking the densely populated coastal regions with increased torrential rains, flooding and mudslides, droughts and hurricanes, while inland areas are drying out and desertifying, leading to crop failures, water scarcity and a tide of climate refugees.37 These factors will tend to deepen food insecurity towards the mid century. Venezuela’s climate refugees are already making life more difficult for neighbouring countries such as Colombia.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has, in recent decades, removed around 20 per cent of its total tree cover, replacing it with dry savannah and farmland. At 40 per cent clearance and with continued global warming, scientists anticipate profound changes in the local climate, towards a drying trend, which will hammer the agriculture that has replaced the forest.38 Brazil has already wiped out the oncevast Mata Atlantica forest along its eastern coastline, and this region is now drying, with resultant water stress for both farming and major cities like São Paulo. Brazil’s outlook for 2100 is for further drying – tied to forest loss as well as global climate change – increased frequency of drought and heatwaves, major fires and acute water scarcity in some regions. Moreover, as the Amazon basin dries out, it will release vast quantities of CO2 from its peat swamps and rainforest soils. These are thought to contain in excess of three billion tonnes of carbon and could cause a significant acceleration in global warming, affecting everyone on Earth.39

Latin America is the world capital of private armies, with as many as 50 major guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, terrorist, indigenous and criminal insurgencies over the past half century – exemplified in familiar names like the Sandanistas (Nicaragua), FARC (Colombia) and Shining Path (Peru).40 Many of these drew their initial inspiration from the international communist movement of the mid twentieth century, while others are right-wing groups set up in opposition to them or else represent land rights movements of disadvantaged groups. However, all these movements rely for oxygen on simmering public discontent with ineffectual or corrupt governments and lack of fair access to food, land and water generally. In other words, the tendency of South and Central America towards internal armed conflict is supercharged significantly by failings in the food system which generate public anger, leading to sympathy and support for anyone seen to be challenging the incumbent regimes. This is not to suggest that feeding every person well would end all insurgencies – but it would certainly take the wind of popular support out of a lot of their sails. In that sense the revolutionary tendency of South America echoes the preconditions for revolution in France and Russia in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

Central Asia

The risk of wars breaking out over water, energy and food insecurity in Central Asia is high.41 Here, the five main players – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – face swelling populations, crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure, flagging resource cooperation, a degrading landscape, deteriorating food availability and a changing climate. At the heart of the issue and the region’s increasingly volatile politics is water: ‘Without water in the region’s two great rivers – the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya – vital crops in the downstream agricultural powerhouses would die. Without power, life in the upstream countries would be unbearable in the freezing winters’, wrote Rustam Qobil.42

Central Asia’s water crisis first exploded onto the global consciousness with the drying of the Aral Sea – the world’s fourth largest lake – from the mid 1960s43, following the damming and draining of major rivers such as the Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Naryn. It was hastened by a major drought in 200844 exacerbated by climate change, which is melting the ‘water tower’ of glacial ice stored in the Tien Shan, Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges that feed the region’s rivers. The Tien Shan alone holds 10,000 glaciers, all of them in retreat, losing an estimated 223 million cubic metres a year. At such a rate of loss the region’s rivers will run dry within a generation.45 Lack of water has already delivered a body blow to Central Asia’s efforts to modernise its agriculture, adding further tension to regional disputes over food, land and water.

‘Water has always been a major cause of wars and border conflicts in the Central Asian region’, policy analyst Fuad Shahbazov warned. This potential for conflict over water has been exacerbated by disputes over the Fergana valley, the region’s greatest foodbowl, which underwent a 32 per cent surge in population in barely ten years – while more and more of it turned to desert.46

The Central Asian region is ranked by the World Resources Institute as one of the world’s most perilously water-stressed regions to 2040 (Figure 5.6). With their economies hitting rock bottom, corrupt and autocratic governments that prefer to blame others for their problems and growing quarrels over food, land, energy and water, the ‘Stans’ face ‘a perfect storm’, Nate Shenkkan wrote in the journal Foreign Policy. 47 Increased meddling by Russia and China is augmenting the explosive mix: China regards Central Asia as a key component of its ‘Belt and Road’ initiative intended to expand its global influence, whereas Russia hopes to lure the region back into its own economic sphere. Their rival investments may help limit some of the problems faced by Central Asia – or they may unlock a fresh cycle of political feuding, turmoil and regime change.48

A 2017 FAO report found 14.3 million people – one in every five – in Central Asia did not have enough to eat and a million faced actual starvation, children especially. It noted that after years of steady improvement, the situation was deteriorating. This combination of intractable and deteriorating factors makes Central Asia a serious internal war risk towards the mid twentyfirst century, with involvement by superpowers raising the danger of international conflict and mass refugee flight.

The Middle East

The Middle East is the most water-stressed region on Earth (see Figure 5.5 above). It is ‘particularly vulnerable to climate change. It is one of the world’s most water-scarce and dry regions, with a high dependency on climate-sensitive agriculture and a large share of its population and economic activity in flood-prone urban coastal zones’, according to the World Bank.49

The Middle East – consisting of the 22 countries of the Arab League, Turkey and Iran – has very low levels of natural rainfall to begin with. Most of it has 600 millimetres or less per year and is classed as arid. ‘The Middle East and North Africa [MENA] is a global hotspot of unsustainable water use, especially of groundwater. In some countries, more than half of current water withdrawals exceed what is naturally available’, the Bank said in a separate report on water scarcity.50

[Figure omitted]

‘The climate is predicted to become even hotter and drier in most of the MENA region. Higher temperatures and reduced precipitation will increase the occurrence of droughts. It is further estimated that an additional 80–100 million people will be exposed by 2025 to water stress’, the Bank added.

The region’s population of 300 million in the late 2010s is forecast to double to 600 million by 2050. Average temperatures are expected to rise by 3–5 C and rainfall will decrease by around 20 per cent. The result will be vastly increased water stress, accelerated desertification, growing food insecurity and a rise in sea levels displacing tens of millions from densely populated, low-lying areas like the Nile delta.51 The region is deemed highly vulnerable to climate impacts, warns a report by the UN Development Programme. ‘Current climate change projections show that by the year 2025, the water supply in the Arab region will be only 15 per cent of levels in 1960. With population growth around 3 per cent annually and deforestation spiking to 4 per cent annually... the region now includes 14 of the world’s 20 most water-stressed countries.’ 52

The Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region has 6 per cent of the world’s population with only 1.5 per cent of the world’s fresh water reserves to share among them. This means that the average citizen already has about a third less water than the minimum necessary for a reasonable existence – many have less than half, and populations are growing rapidly. Coupled with political chaos and ill governance in many countries, growing religious and ethnic tensions between different groups – often based on centuries-old disputes – a widening gap between rich and poor and foreign meddling by the USA, Russia and China, shortages of food, land and water make the Middle East an evident cauldron for conflict in the twentyfirst century.

Growing awareness of their food risk has impelled some oil-rich Arab states into an international farm buying spree, purchasing farming, fishing and food processing companies in countries as assorted as South Sudan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Ukraine, the USA, Poland, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and Morocco. In some food-stressed countries these acquisitions have already led to riots and killings.53 The risk is high that, by exporting its own food–land–water problems worldwide, especially to regions already facing scarcity, the Middle East could propagate conflicts and government collapses around the globe. This is despite the fact that high-tech solar desalination, green energy, hydroponics, aquaponics and other intensive urban food production technologies make it possible for the region to produce far more of its own food locally, if not to be entirely self-sufficient.

Dimensions of the growing crisis in the Middle East include the following.

Wars have already broken out in Syria and Yemen in which scarcity of food, land and water were prominent among the tensions that led to conflict between competing groups.

Food, land and water issues feed into and exacerbate already volatile sentiment over religion, politics, corruption, mismanagement and foreign interference by the USA, China and Russia.

The introduction of cheap solar-powered and diesel pumps has accelerated the unsustainable extraction of groundwater throughout the region, notably in countries like Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.54

Turkish building of new dams to monopolise waters flowing across its borders is igniting scarcity and potential for conflict with downstream nations, including Iraq, Iran and Syria.55

Egypt’s lifeline, the Nile, is threatened by Ethiopian plans to dam the Blue Nile, with tensions that some observers consider could lead to a shooting war.56

There are very low levels of water recycling throughout the region, while water use productivity is about half that of the world as a whole.

There is a lack of a sense of citizen responsibility for water and food scarcity throughout the region.

Land grabs around the world by oil-rich states are threatening to destabilise food, land and water in other countries and regions, causing conflict.

A decline in oil prices and the displacement of oil by the global renewables revolution may leave the region with fewer economic options for solving its problems.

There is a risk that acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran may set off a nuclear arms race in the region with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and possibly Turkey following suit and Israel rearming to stay in the lead. This would translate potential food, land and water conflicts into the atomic realm.

Together these issues, and failure to address their root causes, make the Middle East a fizzing powder keg in the twentyfirst century. The question is when and where, not whether, it explodes – and whether the resulting conflict will involve the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, thus affecting the entire world.

China

China is the world’s biggest producer, importer and consumer of food. Much of the landmass of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is too mountainous or too arid for farming, but the rich soils of its eastern and southern regions are highly productive provided sufficient water is available and climate impacts are mild. Those, however, are very big ‘ifs’.

In 1995, American environmentalist Lester R. Brown both irked and aroused the PRC Communist Party bosses with a small, hard-hitting book entitled Who Will Feed China? Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet. 57 In it he posited that Chinese population growth was so far out of control that the then-agricultural system could not keep up, and China would be forced to import vast amounts of grain, to the detriment of food prices and availability worldwide. His fears, so far, have not been realised – not because they were unsoundly based, but because China managed – just – to stay abreast of rising food demand by stabilising and subsidising grain prices, restoring degraded lands, boosting agricultural science and technology, piping water from south to north, developing high-intensity urban farms, buying up foreign farmland worldwide and encouraging young Chinese to leave the country. What Brown didn’t anticipate was the economic miracle that made China rich enough to afford all this. However, his essential thesis remains valid: China’s food supply will remain on a knife-edge for the entire twentyfirst century, vulnerable especially to water scarcity and climate impacts. If the nation outruns its domestic resources yet still has to eat, it may well be at the expense of others globally.

Some western commentators were puzzled when China scrapped its 35-year ‘One Child Policy’ in 2015, but in fact the policy had done its job, shaving around 300 million people off the projected peak of Chinese population. It was also causing serious imbalances, such as China’s huge unmarried male surplus. Furthermore, rising urbanisation and household incomes meant Chinese parents no longer wanted large families, as in the past. Policy or no policy, China’s birthrate has continued to fall and by 2018 was 1.6 babies per woman – well below replacement, lower than the USA and nearly as low as Germany. Its population was 1.4 billion, but this was growing at barely 0.4 per cent a year, with the growth due at least in part to lengthening life expectancy.58

For China, female fertility is no longer the key issue. The critical issue is water. And the critical region is the north, where 41 per cent of the population reside. Here surface and groundwaters – which support not only the vast grain and vegetable farming industries of the North China Plain but also burgeoning megacities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shenyang – have been vanishing at an alarming rate. ‘In the past 25 years, 28,000 rivers have disappeared. Groundwater has fallen by up to 1–3 metres a year. One consequence: parts of Beijing are subsiding by 11 cm a year. The flow of the Yellow River, water supply to millions, is a tenth of what it was in the 1940s; it often fails to reach the sea. Pollution further curtails supply: in 2017 8.8 per cent of water was unfit even for agricultural or industrial use’, the Financial Times reported.59 On the North China Plain, annual consumption of water for all uses, including food production, is about 27 billion cubic metres a year – compared with an annual water availability of 22 billion cubic metres, a deficit that is made up by the short-term expedient of mining the region’s groundwater.60

To stave off disaster, the PRC has built a prodigious network of canals and pipelines from the Yangtse River in the water-rich south, to Beijing in the water-starved north. Hailed as a ‘lifeline’, the South–North Water Transfer Project had two drawbacks: first, the fossil energy required to pump millions of tonnes of water over a thousand kilometres and, second, the fact that while the volume was sufficient to satisfy the burgeoning cities for a time, it could not supply and distribute enough clean water to meet the needs of irrigated farming over so vast a region in the long run, nor meet those of its planned industrial growth.61 Oft-mouthed ‘solutions’ like desalination or the piping of water from Tibet or Russia face similar drawbacks: demand is too great for the potential supply and the costs, both financial and environmental, prohibitive.

China is already among the world’s most water-stressed nations. The typical Chinese citizen has a ‘water footprint’ of 1071 cubic metres a year – three quarters of the world average (1385 cubic metres), and scarcely a third that of the average American (2842 cubic metres).62 Of this water, 62 per cent is used to grow food to feed the Chinese population – and 90 per cent is so polluted it is unfit to drink or use in food processing. Despite massive investment in water infrastructure and new technology, many experts doubt that China can keep pace with the growth in its demand for food, at least within its own borders, chiefly because of water scarcity.63 Adding to the pressure is that China’s national five-year plans for industrialisation demand massive amounts more water – demands that may confront China with a stark choice between food and economic growth. ‘The Chinese government is moving too slowly towards the Camel Economy. It has plans, incentives for officials; it invests in recycling, irrigation, pollution, drought resistant crops; it leads the world in high voltage transmission (to get hydro, wind and solar energy from the west of China). None of this is sufficient or likely to be in time’, the Financial Times opined.64

As the world’s leading carbon emitter, China is more responsible for climate change than any other country. It is also, potentially, more at risk. The main reason, quite simply, is the impact of a warming world on China’s water supply – in the form of disappearing rivers, lakes, groundwater and mountain glaciers along with rising sea levels. To this is coupled the threat to agriculture from increasing weather disasters and the loss of ecosystem services from a damaged landscape.65

China is thus impaled on the horns of a classic dilemma. Without more water it cannot grow its economy sufficiently to pay for the water-conserving and food-producing technologies and infrastructure it needs to feed its people. Having inadvertently unleashed a population explosion with its highly successful conversion to modern farming systems, the challenge for China now is to somehow sustain its food supply through the population peak of the mid twentyfirst century, followed by a managed decline to maybe half of today’s numbers by the early twentysecond century. It is far from clear whether the present approach – improving market efficiency, continuing to modernise agricultural production systems, pumping water, trying to control soil and water losses and importing more food from overseas – will work.66

China has pinned its main hopes on technology to boost farm yields and improve water distribution and management. Unfortunately, it has selected the unsustainable American industrial farming model to do this – which involves the massive use of water, toxic chemicals, fertilisers, fossil fuels and machines. This in turn is having dreadful consequences for China’s soils, waters, landscapes, food supply, air, climate and consumer health. Serious questions are now being asked whether such an approach is not digging the hole China is in, even deeper. Furthermore, some western analysts are sceptical whether the heavy hand of state control is up to the task of generating the levels of innovation required to feed China sustainably.67

Plan B, which is to purchase food from other countries, or import it from Chinese-owned farming and food ventures around the world, faces similar difficulties. Many of the countries where China is investing in food production themselves face a slow-burning crisis of land degradation, water scarcity, surging populations and swelling local food demand. By exporting its own problems, China is adding to their difficulties. While there may be some truth to the claim that China is helping to modernise food systems in Africa, for example, it is equally clear that the export of food at a time of local shortages could have dire consequences for Africans, leading to wars in Africa and elsewhere. How countries will react to Chinese pressure to export food in the face of their own domestic shortages is, as yet, unclear. If they permit exports, it could prove catastrophic for their own people and governments – but if they cut them off, it could be equally catastrophic for China. Such a situation cannot be regarded as anything other than a menace to world peace.

Around 1640, a series of intense droughts caused widespread crop failures in China, leading to unrest and uprisings which, in 1644, brought down the Ming Dynasty. A serious domestic Chinese food and water crisis today – driven by drought, degradation of land and water and climate change in northern China coupled with failure in food imports – could cause a re-run of history: ‘The forthcoming water crisis may impact China’s social, economic, and political stability to a great extent’, a US Intelligence Assessment found. ‘The adverse impacts of climate change will add extra pressure to existing social and resource stresses.’ 68

Such events have the potential to precipitate tens, even hundreds, of millions of emigrants and refugees into countries all over the world, with domino consequences for those countries that receive them. Strategic analysts have speculated that tens of millions of desperate Chinese flooding into eastern Russia, or even India, could lead to war, including the risk of international nuclear exchange.69

Against such a scenario are the plain facts that China is a technologically advanced society, with the foresight, wealth and capacity to plan and implement nationwide changes and the will, if necessary, to enforce them. Its leaders are clearly alert to the food and water challenge – and its resolution may well depend on the extent of water recycling they are able to achieve. As to whether the PRC can afford the cost of transitioning from an unsustainable to a sustainable food system, all countries have a choice between unproductive military spending and feeding their populace. A choice between food or war. It remains to be seen which investment China favours.

However, it is vital to understand that the problem of whether China can feed itself through the twentyfirst century is not purely a Chinese problem. It’s a problem, both economic and physical, for the entire planet – and it is thus in everyone’s best interest to help solve it. For this reason, China is rated number 3 on this list of potential food/war hotspots.

Africa

Food wars – that is, wars in which food, land and water play a significant contributing role – have been a constant in the story of Africa since the mid twentieth century, indeed, far longer. In a sense, the continent is already a microcosm of the world of the twentyfirst century as climate change and resource scarcity combine with rapid population growth to ratchet up the tensions that lead competing groups to fight, whether the superficial distinctions between them are ethnic, religious, social or political.

We have examined the particular cases of Rwanda, South Sudan and the Horn of Africa – but there are numerous other African conflicts, insurgencies and ongoing disturbances in which food, land and water are primary or secondary triggers and where famine is often the outcome: Nigeria, Congo, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Maghreb region of the Sahara, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe have all experienced conflicts in which issues of access to food, land and water were important drivers and consequences.

The trajectory of Africa’s population in the first two decades of the twentyfirst century implies that the number of its people could quadruple from 1.2 billion in 2017 to 4.5 billion by 2100 (Figure 5.6). If fulfilled, this would make Africans 41 per cent of the world population by the end of the century. The UN Population Division’s nearer projections are for Africans to outnumber Chinese or Indians at 1.7 billion by 2030, and reach 2.5 billion in 2050, which represents a doubling in the continent’s inhabitants in barely 30 years.70 While African fertility rates (babies per woman) remain high by world standards – 4.5 compared with a global average of 2.4 – they have also fallen steeply, from a peak of 8.5 babies in the 1970s. Furthermore, the picture is uneven with birthrates in most Sub-Saharan countries remaining high (around five to six babies/woman), while those of eight, mainly southern, countries have dropped to replacement or below (i.e. under 2.1). As has been the case around the world, birth rates tend to drop rapidly with the spread of urbanisation, education and economic growth – whereas countries which slide back into poverty tend to experience rising birthrates. Food access is a vital ingredient in this dynamic: it has been widely observed that better-fed countries tend to have much lower rates of birth and population growth, possibly because people who are food secure lose fewer infants and children in early life and thus are more open to family planning. So, in a real sense, food sufficiency holds one of the keys to limiting the human population to a level sustainable both for Africa and the planet in general.

[Figure omitted]

Forecasting the future of Africa is not easy, given the complexity of the interwoven climatic, social, technological and political issues – and many do not attempt it. However, the relentless optimism of the UN and its food agency, the FAO, is probably not justified by the facts as they are known to science – and may have more to do with not wishing to give offence to African governments or discourage donors than with attempting to accurately analyse what may occur. Even the FAO acknowledges however that food insecurity is rising across Sub-Saharan Africa as well as other parts.

In 2017, conflict and insecurity were the major drivers of acute food insecurity in 18 countries and territories where almost 74 million food-insecure people were in need of urgent assistance. Eleven of these countries were in Africa and accounted for 37 million acutely food insecure people; the largest numbers were in northern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and South Sudan

the agency said in its Global Report on Food Crises 2018.71

The FAO also noted that almost one in four Africans was undernourished in 2016 – a total of nearly a quarter of a billion people. The rise in undernourishment and food insecurity was linked to the effects of climate change, natural disasters and conflict according to Bukar Tijani, the FAO’s assistant director general for Africa.72

Even the comparatively prosperous nation of South Africa sits on a conflict knife-edge, according to a scientific study: ‘Results indicate that the country exceeds its environmental boundaries for biodiversity loss, marine harvesting, freshwater use, and climate change, and that social deprivation was most severe in the areas of safety, income, and employment, which are significant factors in conflict risk’, Megan Cole and colleagues found.73

In the Congo, home to the world’s second largest tropical forest, 20 years of civil war had not only slain five million civilians but also decimated the forests and their ecological services on which the nation depended. Researchers found evidence that reducing conflict can also help to reduce environmental destruction: ‘Peace-building can potentially be a win for nature as well, and... conservation organizations and governments should be ready to seize conservation opportunities’. 74

As the African population doubles toward the mid century, as its water, soils, forests and economic wealth per capita dwindle, as foreign corporations plunder its riches, as a turbulent climate hammers its herders and farmers – both industrial and traditional – the prospect of Africa resolving existing conflicts and avoiding new ones is receding. The mistake most of the world is making is to imagine this only affects the Africans. The consequences will impact everyone on the planet.

A World Bank study has warned that 140 million people will have to leave just three regions of the world as climate refugees before 2050 – and the vast majority of these, some 86 million, would be displaced from their homes in Sub-Saharan Africa.75 The second decade of the twentyfirst century has already witnessed a blow-out in the number of Sub-Saharan Africans fleeing north, across the desert into the already dangerously overstressed region of North Africa. From there many have headed by boat for Europe, with shocking loss of life on the way – up to 5000 deaths due to drowning in a single year. The number of Africans fleeing across the Mediterranean has fluctuated, climbing as high as a third of a million people (in 2016) with most of them headed for Italy, followed by Greece, Cyprus and Spain. By this time Europe already had a population of five million Sub-Saharans.76

It is worth recalling, for a moment, that a food failure in the North African grainbowl in the third and fourth centuries was a primary factor in the collapse and demolition of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Asia Minor.

The risk of a tsunami of people attempting to escape Africa for Europe, and to a lesser degree the Middle East, in coming decades is building with ominous intensity. The stress in SubSaharan Africa is already forcing conditions in North African countries closer to crisis point. Were their food systems to fail in domino-succession, the scale of potential movement of desperate people into Europe can only be guessed – but is certainly in the range of tens to hundreds of millions. Large enough, in other words, to swamp the nations of Italy, Spain and Greece and eliminate their governments altogether, forcing many of their own people in turn to flee into northern Europe. Given the crisis caused by a million Syrians fleeing into Europe in 2013, the consequences for European stability and the world economy of an African eruption tens or hundreds of times the size can only be imagined.

The good news is that, in the view of the World Bank, up to 80 per cent of Africa’s climate refugees could be prevented from leaving their homes in the first place by timely climate and development (i.e. food, land and water) action taken by the rest of the world. The bad news, however, is that most of the world’s large oil and coal companies and their climate-denying puppet governments remain implacably opposed to the sort and scale of action necessary, preferring to pull the global house down on their own heads.

Canadian ecologist Paul Chefurka argued in a far-sighted paper that the outlook for Africa by 2040 was grim, even if the continent were able to lock in a 1 per cent year-on-year increase in farm yields. Even then Africa might still be forced to spend half its wealth – an almost impossible proportion – on food imports by 2050, assuming sufficient affordable food was available globally to supply them. Chefurka argued the solutions were:

First, the developed world must get its act together when it comes to foreign aid. Our lack of performance with regard to the Millennium Development Goals is beyond contemptible. A minuscule sliver of the GDP of the richest nations could help prevent a catastrophic outcome for hundreds of millions of people and scores of countries. That we have failed our African brothers and sisters so egregiously is a shame that should follow all of us into the afterlife.

Second, and most importantly, we must develop an immediate crash program of education and contraception in all the regions at risk from this gathering storm. Africa may be the first, but the conditions are ripe for much of South Asia to follow in their footsteps. We must blanket Africa with schools and family planning clinics.77

There is substance to both points. Unfortunately expanding conventional farming with a view to feeding all the Africans in 2050 and 2100 is unlikely to succeed. It is a twentieth-century solution to a twentyfirst-century problem, even with more advanced farming technologies added. It would unleash cataclysmic soil and water loss, gross pollution, the spread of deserts and animal, plant and human diseases, accelerate climate change (through land clearing and the use of fossil fuels and fertilisers) and extinguish the last of Africa’s wildlife. The combined outcome of this would be war, potentially on a continent-wide scale – and it is for this reason Africa ranks second on this list of world food and war hotspots.

Where the true solutions to Africa’s and the world’s food challenges may lie is dealt with in the concluding chapters of this book.

South Asia

The constellation of burgeoning food demand, water scarcity, degrading land, a turbulent climate, social, political and religious feuding and rampant militarisation make the region of South Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – the most dangerous of all for civilisation during the twentyfirst century.

The population of the region has more than tripled since the 1960s. India alone is looking at a population of 1.73 billion by 2050, Pakistan at 306 million, Bangladesh 202 million and Sri Lanka at 23 million – a combined total approaching 2.3 billion.78 The Indo-Gangetic Plain is the bread-basket of the three largest countries and currently feeds more than 900 million from both surface and groundwater.

‘India is facing a perfect storm in managing water. Centuries of mismanagement, political and institutional incompetence, indifference at central, state and municipal levels, a steadily increasing population that will reach an estimated 1.7 billion by 2050, a rapidly mushrooming middle class demanding an increasingly protein-rich diet that requires significantly more water to produce – together, these are leading the country towards disaster', says Professor Asit Biswas of the National University of Singapore.79 ‘India is now facing a water situation that is significantly worse than any that previous generations have had to face. All Indian water bodies within and near population centres are now grossly polluted... Not a single Indian city can provide clean water that can be consumed from the tap on a 24x7 basis’, he adds. This was underlined by a warning from the Indian Supreme Court in 2018 that the capital, New Delhi – population 25 million – was on track to run out of groundwater completely.80 Facing similar water scarcity were 20 other Indian cities, including Bangalore and Hyderabad – heartbeat of the Indian high-tech boom – menacing the lives and jobs of 600 million Indians.81

Free electricity and cheap diesel pumps led to an explosion in the extraction of groundwater across the Indo-Gangetic plain. ‘The best estimate is that at present India uses 230–250 cubic kilometres of groundwater each year. This accounts for about one-quarter of the global groundwater use. More than 60% of irrigated agriculture and 85% of domestic water use now depends on groundwater.’ Over large areas, India’s groundwater levels have been falling precipitously, in places at rates of a metre or more a year, since the start of the twentyfirst century and scientists fear its reserves will be largely exhausted by 2050.82

The World Resources Institute, which keeps a hawk-like gaze on global water issues, notes that more than half of India is already water stressed, affecting more than 600 million people – and the situation will become extremely grave towards 2040 (Figure 5.7).83

Climate change is only making matters worse for South Asia – the rising intensity of droughts, floods and heatwaves threatens to undermine the region’s fragile ability to feed itself. Indeed, according to some projections, parts will be so hot as to become uninhabitable and unfarmable.84 Recent climate modelling identified India as the world’s second most vulnerable country for climate-related hunger, and Bangladesh third, with the situation worsening towards 2 C of global warming.85 The Indian Ministry of Finance concurs, warning that climate could shrink agricultural incomes by as much as 25 per cent in unirrigated farmland and 18 per cent in irrigated areas by 2100.86

[Figure omitted]

South Asia’s main water reserve, the glacial ice of the Hindu Kush and Himalaya which supports two billion people, is in dire straits, according to a study by 210 scientists. A third of it will be gone by 2100, in a ‘climate crisis you haven’t heard of’, said lead author Philippus Wester. Its loss due to global warming holds catastrophic consequences for rivers, groundwater, food production and the cities that rely on it.87

‘Climate change is likely to have a detrimental effect on South Asia out to 2030 and beyond, mainly because of its ability to exacerbate one of South Asia’s biggest challenges: an expanding population and the challenge of feeding, housing, clothing, watering and employing it’, wrote analyst Benjamin Walsh.88 Melting glaciers, increased evaporation and swelling cities are all intensifying existing food and water insecurity and, since climate change cannot be prevented in the short run, governments had better prepare for it, he said. In this sense, Walsh and Biswas tender similar advice: whether or not South Asia can ride out the ‘perfect storm’ will depend on the competence and determination of hitherto somewhat inept governments in taking the essential steps to conserve water and find new ways to produce food. The subcontinent’s existing food and water model is broken and cannot survive the mid century.

On the positive side is the enthusiasm with which South Asia has embraced renewable energy and the IT revolution, expressed in the region’s strong economic growth. These demonstrate that vast and rapid national and regional changes are possible. Water, land and food, however, present far more intractable problems – social, political and technical – on which age-old disputes over religion, ethnicity and caste lie like a pall.

Since India and Pakistan partitioned in 1947, there has been ongoing low-level conflict over the waters of the Indus and the territory of Kashmir. Pakistan considers India is stealing its water and trying to assert hegemony through dam-building, while India claims Pakistan is losing water due to climate change: the scarcer water becomes for either country, the more the tensions escalate. Both sides are heavily armed: India has 2.1 million soldiers under arms, and Pakistan 644,000. Both nations have 120+ nuclear warheads. Between them, they spend US$65 billion a year on their militaries.89 How close they have been to open war is highlighted by legal expert Dr Waseem Quereshi: ‘The tension over water conflicts between India and Pakistan has been soaring. India has threatened that it will scrap the IWT [Indus Waters Treaty] entirely. In response, Pakistan has stated that such a revocation of a bilaterally agreed treaty would be considered an act of war’. 90

Large-scale food, land and water failures anywhere on the Indian subcontinent could spark immense refugee movements in the tens or hundreds of millions, capable of obliterating neighbour countries and igniting wars. They are liable to be on a scale that dwarfs the Syrian refugee problem into insignificance, with worldwide repercussions. For example, some 130 million people on the subcontinent inhabit low-lying coastal regions that will be under the sea by 210091, and that is but a single dimension of the climate–water crisis. The World Bank rates the Indian subcontinent the world’s second most vulnerable region for enforced climate migration, with 40 million climate refugees alone in India by 2050.92 These estimates take no account of the scale of migration that could result from major failures in food or water, or people fleeing resulting conflicts.

The scenario of major collapse in the South Asian food and water system is so appalling that no government or agency, as yet, seems prepared even to contemplate its possibility, or to risk the displeasure of South Asian governments and peoples by speaking openly about it. As a result, the world at large is doing little to forestall or prevent it. However, for whatever the vox populi is worth, when the website Debate.org asked readers to vote on the question “Will India Collapse?”, 76 per cent of respondents (mostly Indians) were of the view that it would.93 The Oslo Peace Research Institute, in a rather more structured attempt to predict the likelihood of future conflicts based on past behaviour, rated Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka among the countries more likely to face wars up to 2050.94

The great issue for humanity is South Asia’s combined arsenal of 250+ nuclear weapons. Though many of these are thought to be ‘battlefield’ or tactical nukes (as opposed to city busters), there are enough of them to cause a worldwide famine affecting everybody and lasting several years. This insight arises out of the increasing sophistication of global climate models, which can now describe the impact of nuclear release on the global climate system with far greater precision than ever before. Meteorologist Alan Robock from Rutgers University and physicist Brian Toon from the University of Colorado have devoted 30 years to projecting the effects of nuclear war. They estimate that a limited nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would throw up at least five million tonnes of dust and smoke from burning forests and incinerated cities, lofting it into the high atmosphere where it will linger for up to 20 years. In climatic terms, this would be the equivalent of an asteroid impact on Earth or a large volcanic eruption, they said – enough to unleash a worldwide ‘nuclear winter’. 95