Is there possibilities of war for resources?

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States and Markets                                               Nikola Kjurchiski

IS THERE POSSIBILITY OF WAR FOR RESOURCES

        The close relation between war and natural resources is of long standing. What else was colonial conquest about? There a lot of examples of wars leaded for resources in history. Beginning from ancient times and conquering territories for controlling the gold mines, conquistadores from middle age, World Wars, until today’s modern wars for controlling oil, diamonds, coca, and even bananas. World resources are materials that are regenerating slow, on the other hand the necessity of the world population is growing faster than the regeneration of the resources. Today’s over 7 billion people have enormous consumption for food, place for living or job placement, in other words we can divide resources as organic (food, water) and nonorganic(materials as zinc, cooper, lead etc). I will try to look on this analysis from different perspectives. I will try to explain the world necessity for these two kinds of resources, also here we are going to include the living place. Can world support all the people’s needs in quantity and quality? Do we already have wars for resources? Can this situation be radicalized? These are few of the questions I will try to answer them.

        Firstly I would like to write about the necessity of today’s population. It is important to see what are the trends on global scale, how population growth will develop with the reserves of resources. In 1950 world population stood at 2.5 (UN statistics) billion people, by the last year it had reached 7 billion. With almost all the population growth occurring in the emerging economies, by the 2030 some 2 billion people will have joined the “global middle class”. That population is around the population combined of Africa, North America and Europe. Naturally all these people will want phones, fridges, cars, washing machines, food and place for living. 2.000 new cars already join Beijing’s streets every day. In 2010 China had 40 cities of populations of more than a million, by 2020 it plans to have additional 225 cities. The implications for world’s commodity resources are stark and sobering: global demand for food and water is expected to increase by 50% and 30% respectively by 2030, the pressure on lead, zinc, cooper and corn is already becoming unsustainable and no one has a clue where the where the energy we’ll need is going to come from.

        The growth in food demand and need is the result of the combined effects of world population growth to over 9 billion by 2050, rising incomes and dietary changes towards higher meat intake. Meat production is particularly demanding in terms of energy, cereal and water. Today, nearly half of the world’s cereals are being used for animal feed.

        Each day 200,000 more people are added to the world food demand. The world’s human population has increased near fourfold in the past 100 years (UN population Division, 2007). The largest population increase is projected to occur in Asia, particularly in China, India and Southeast Asia, accounting for about 60% and more of the world’s population by 2050 (UN Population Division, 2007). The rate of population growth, however, is still relatively high in Central America, and highest in Central and part of Western Africa. In relative numbers, Africa will experience the most rapid growth, over 70% faster than in Asia (annual growth of 2.4% versus 1.4% in Asia, compared to the global average of 1.3% and only 0.3% in many industrialized countries) (UN Population Division, 2007). In sub-Saharan Africa, the population is projected to increase from about 770 million to nearly 1.7 billion by 2050.

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These were facts about the increasing the population in the world. Another key part is the fertilized land need for growing food and the food supply. Increased fertilizer application and more water usage through irrigation have been responsible for over 70% of the crop yield increase in the past. Yields, however, have nearly stabilized for cereals, partly as a result of low and declining investments in agriculture. In addition, fisheries landings have declined in the past decade mainly as a result of overfishing and unsustainable fishing methods. 

Food and nonorganic resources supply, however, is not only a function of production, ...

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