Published April 13th, 2008 by Future Atlas
Future hunger, future instability
Soldiers distributing rice in the Philippines, bread lines in Egypt, and food riots in Haiti all reinforce what some have been warning for years: the price of food may spike, and stay high, and this may drive future instability.
Current high prices are mostly due to short-term causes, but two factors could make expensive food a long-term fact:
- sustained increasing demand by China, India, and other developing countries
- high energy prices, especially if they were driven by peak oil
The upshot would be food too expensive for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people, who might simultaneously be hit by the pressures of global warming on agriculture.
The instability that could result is one of the possible triggers for some of the darker scenarios for the 21st century.
Image: Visualpanic (Flickr)