Pressure on Natural Resources

From Future of Local Services to the Public

From Clayton, S. and Schultz, W. (April 2008) 'Local Government Horizon Scan 2015-30'

Summary

Susan Clayton and Wendy Schultz identify demographic and environmental trends which may impact on the supply of natural resources:

• Increase in world population from 6.7 billion in 2006 to 9.2 billion in 2050.
• Rising demand for international goods and services, including food and energy, due to the increasing size of the world’s middle class, from 400m in 2005 to over 1billion people in 2030, and a decline in global absolute poverty.
• Growing demand for crops by 70-85% between 2007 and 2050.
• Climate change leads to very serious losses in food productivity, including up to 50% decline in yields in Africa.
• Water scarcity will increase globally due to resource exhaustion combined with extreme water pollution, with two-thirds of the globe to suffer high to moderate water stress by 2030. By 2025, 3.4 billion people will live in areas prone to chronic drought (currently 0.5 billion). In the UK water availability will be increasingly constrained as runoff in summer declines, particularly in the South East where population density is increasing.