Unprecedented Global Resource Demand

The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals a collaborative report by American and European fellows of the Transatlantic Academy, is the first international study that analyzes the nexus of challenges that arise from interconnections between five different key and interrelated resources – energy, fresh water, food, minerals, and land. More than any other factors, these five resources comprise the most valuable ones in terms of international trade, are essential for human security, and will be the most likely to set off international conflict. Transatlantic Academy

By looking at the interrelationship of these key resources, the study provides an integrated view and avoids the stove piping of only looking at one resource in isolation from the others and demonstrates how changes in one resource effects the others. The study also emphasizes three additional factors that magnify the basic resource problem: climate change and its impact on weather patterns and rising sea levels; the growth of a new middle class in Asia and Latin America that aspires to the same levels of affluence enjoyed by the West; and the parallel growth of a new global underclass with billions of people lacking the bare necessities for survival. Transatlantic Academy

Over the next 10-20 years, the world is likely to see accelerating demand for most natural resource commodities, as well as increasingly volatile markets. Scarcities are likely to be more common. Resource or material scarcities, as experienced by states, firms, or populations, arise primarily from failures of governance rather than from a physical shortage of resources or materials. Transatlantic Academy

Resource Nexus The resource nexus originates in the interconnections between different resources, for example from the requirement of one resource as an input to produce another or from the substitutability of two or more resources. Actions taken by governments, firms, or communities affecting one resource often have consequences for other resources, in the same locale or on the other side of the world. Transatlantic Academy

These consequences often take the form of scarcity, environmental degradation, or destruction of livelihoods. A number of factors render the threats of today more pressing and more complex than the concerns about resource limits in the 1970s: the scale and rate of global ecological changes, the emergence of new global players with political and economic weight, and the growth of the resource-hungry middle classes. Transatlantic Academy

Connected “resource surprise” Are you concerned about the global demand for land? Yes No I do not know enough yet

Connected “resource surprise” Are you concerned about the global demand for energy? Yes No I do not know enough yet

Connected “resource surprise” Are you concerned about the global demand for food? Yes No I do not know enough yet

Connected “resource surprise” Are you concerned about the global demand for water? Yes No I do not know enough yet

Connected “resource surprise” Are you concerned about the global demand for minerals? Yes No I do not know enough yet

Are you concerned about the interconnectedness of the unprecedented global demand for these five necessities? Yes No I do not know enough yet