With the price of oil breaking new records amid projections that oil could soon reach $200 a barrel, it’s not surprising that the national security community is concerned about the rising price of food and fuel and its impact on political stability. More surprising perhaps, the connection is also being drawn to population.

In the past year, riots over food and energy prices have broken out in more than a dozen countries, most recently in South Africa.  Foreign policy experts are concerned that the rising cost of food and fuel could destabilize conditions in current-day hotspots like Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and in potential hotspots like Egypt, Jordan, and the Philippines.

In the short-term, emergency food shipments by the U.N.’s World Food Programme can help defuse the food crisis, but there is a growing concern in the foreign policy community that population growth in countries already struggling to feed themselves could lead to chronic unrest as the food crisis worsens. 

Earlier this year the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), listed 36 nations as “Countries in Crisis Requiring External Assistance.” The population of these 36 nations, currently 1.1 billion, is expected to rise to 1.5 billion by 2025 and 2.0 billion by 2050.
 
Three weeks ago, in a speech delivered at Kansas State University, CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden warned that:

Today, there are 6.7 billion people sharing the planet. By mid-century—by mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion. That’s a 40 to 45 percent increase—striking enough—but most of that growth is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism—not just in those areas, but beyond them as well.

There are many poor, fragile states where governance is actually difficult today, where populations will grow rapidly: Afghanistan, Liberia, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That group—the population is expected to triple by mid-century. The number of people in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Yemen is likely to more than double. Furthermore—just beyond the raw numbers—all those countries will therefore have, as a result of this, a large concentration of young people. If their basic freedoms and basic needs—food, housing, education, employment—are not met, they could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, and extremism.

And through the fact of global migration, this impact of rapid population growth in Africa or Southeast Asia and elsewhere is not going to be confined to those places. It will be felt in the developed world as well. Millions of young people from fast-growing, poorly developed countries will emigrate—legally and illegally—in search of economic opportunity, security, or political freedom.

Last week, an article written by Lee Hudson Teslik at the Council on Foreign Relations also warned about the threat posed by population pressures:

"The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over parking spaces." So writes Suketu Mehta in his recent portrait of Mumbai, a city pushing the limits of overpopulation, struggling with sewage overflows, and clawing for limited electricity, water, and gas supplies. The wars Mehta predicts in fact are well under way. Easily missed in the clamor over the spiking prices of oil, natural gas, coal, iron, aluminum, copper, and a long list of other commodities (WSJ)—not to mention shortages of wheat, rice, flour, and other basic foodstuffs—is that population pressures weigh on the availability of all these goods.

Like the CIA Director’s speech, Teslik’s article expresses concern about global population growth projections:

Currently, some 6.6 billion humans inhabit the Earth. By 2050, experts say that number will likely hit 9 billion. The rate of global population growth has abated in recent years, and some regions, mostly in the developed world, even fear population decline (Foreign Affairs). But global population growth remains a long-term dilemma for producers of food, energy, and raw materials. At current levels, there are almost two-and-a-half times as many people in the world as there were in 1950, when global population sat around 2.5 billion. The world has largely been able to make up for this growth through increased efficiency, and by finding new sources for materials. Substantial gains have been made against global hunger...though international targets for hunger reduction remain unmet….

….Projections from the International Food Policy Research Institute show the world's need for food rising significantly in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The prominent academic Jared Diamond says demand problems could be exacerbated as consumption rates rise in the developing world, as seems likely. Improvements in agricultural efficiency may continue, but at some point they will be limited by physical factors. One acre, however efficiently it is cultivated, can only grow so much food.

Emerging security concerns about population trends are not limited to population growth.  As Gen. Hayden noted in his Kansas speech, in some areas of the world a shrinking population poses security concerns:

Another example of demographics: Russia, which faces a different kind of demographic stress. In the next four decades, we expect Russia—the population of Russia—to shrink by 32 million people. That means Russia will lose about a quarter of its population. To sustain its economy, Russia increasingly will have to look elsewhere for workers. Now some of them—some of them will be immigrant Russians coming from the former Soviet states, what the Russians call the near abroad. But there aren’t enough of them to make up that population loss. Others will be Chinese and non-Russians from the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere, potentially aggravating Russia’s already uneasy racial and religious tensions.

Population trends, of course, have always played a role in world events, but as Gen. Hayden emphasized in his speech, they may take center stage in the 21st Century.

The recent calamities in Myanmar and China are stark reminders that—despite advances in the detection and mitigation of natural disasters—many people in the world still live in harm’s way.

The threats posed by tsunamis, earthquakes and other natural disasters are as old as the world, but the world is constantly changing.  Despite declining fertility rates, global population continues to rise and it’s rising fastest in some of the more disaster-prone areas of the world. 

The cyclone that devastated Myanmar may or may not be related to climate change, but climate change is expected to intensify cyclones and typhoons in South Asia.  The fourth assessment report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released late last year, noted that: 

Recent studies indicate that the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones originating in the Pacific have increased over the last few decades (Fan and Li, 2005). In contrast, cyclones originating from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea have been noted to decrease since 1970 but the intensity has increased (Lal, 2001). In both cases, the damage caused by intense cyclones has risen significantly in the affected countries, particularly India, China, Philippines, Japan, Vietnam and Cambodia, Iran and Tibetan Plateau (PAGASA, 2001; ABI,2005; GCOS, 2005a, b).

The IPCC report predicted that: 

Countries in temperate and tropical Asia are likely to have increased exposure to extreme events, including forest die back and increased fire risk, typhoons and tropical storms, floods and landslides, and severe vector-borne diseases.

South Asia is not the only part of the world that is affected by rising oceans and increased storm activity. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a study last December that estimated the exposure of 136 of the world’s largest port cities to coastal flooding. The study concluded that the number of people in these 136 cities (each with a population of one million or higher) that are currently exposed to a 1 in 100-year coastal flood event will more than triple by 2070.  At present, about 40 million people are at risk.  By 2070, the number will rise to about 150 million due to the “combined effects of climate change (sea-level rise and increased storminess), subsidence, population growth and urbanization.”

The OECD report also found that “asset exposure could grow even more dramatically,” reaching $35 trillion by the 2070s, “more than ten times current levels and rising to roughly 9% of projected global GDP.”The report concluded that even if cities adopt high levels of protection in the future, “the large exposure in terms of population and assets is likely to translate into regular city-scale disasters across the global scale.”  The report went on to say that, “The policy implications of this report are clear: the benefits of climate change policies – both global mitigation and local adaptation at the city-scale – are potentially great.”

Population change, particularly increasing urbanization, may also be exposing more people to the threat of earthquakes.  This year marks the first time in history that half of the world’s population lives in an urban environment. While urbanization entails some potential benefits, it also heightens certain risks. GeoHazards International, a nonprofit research group seeking to reduce suffering due to natural disasters, issued a statement (“Trends in Global Urban Earthquake Risk: A Call to the International Earth Science and Earthquake Engineering Communities”) a few years back, that warned:

Urban earthquake risk in poor countries is large and rapidly growing. Fifty years ago, the population of the world’s largest earthquake-threatened cities was equally divided between rich and poor countries. Today, there are five times as many people in poor as in rich earthquake-threatened cities. Fifty years ago, the earthquake resistance of buildings in rich countries was better than that of buildings in poor countries, and since then it has steadily improved, while that in poor countries has steadily worsened. Data of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance indicate that the average number of deaths resulting from fatal earthquakes in rich countries decreased by about a factor of 10 between the first half of the 20th century and the last half. This improvement in seismic safety is presumably the result of, among other things, better building and land-use codes and better enforcement of those codes. By contrast, there are indications that earthquakes in developing countries will increase their lethality in the future.

The 2004 statement went on to note:

The future does not look better. In the next 20 years, the world’s population will increase by 2 billion. Of that 2 billion, only 50 million will be added to industrialized countries, the rest to developing countries. Because of internal migration, from the countryside to cities, the urban population of developing countries will increase by itself by 2 billion people over this period. Imagine that in the next 20 years the combined population of today’s India and China will be added to such cities as Algiers, Cairo, Istanbul,Ankara, Aleppo, Teheran, Tabriz, Mashed, Kabul, Quetta, Rawalapindi, Delhi, Calcutta, Dhaka,Yangon, Manila, Jakarta, Mexico City, Guatemala City, Bogotá, Quito, and Lima. Recall that the 8th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering occurred only 20 years ago. In that same amount of time, 2 billion people will appear in some of the world’s poorest cities and will need places to live, learn, and work. Given the lack of resources and the urgency to build, the quality of construction will, unless something changes quickly, continue to decline.

As these and other statements suggest, various population trends—including population growth, urbanization, and the growing number of people living in coastal regions—pose a significant challenge to governments and international institutions seeking to mitigate the death toll resulting from large natural disasters.  That’s why understanding these demographic trends—their magnitude and their implications—becomes ever more important to policymakers around the world.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) is hosting its annual meeting this week in Maputo, Mozambique.  The Ministerial Round Table Discussions is the key event of the Annual Meetings Seminars, taking place a day before the formal opening of the Bank Group Annual Meetings. The theme of this year’s plenary session is “Fostering Shared Growth: Urbanization, Inequalities and Poverty in Africa.”   

As concerns mount about the impact of rising food prices on Africa’s poor, particularly its urban poor, AfDB reported today that: 

Strong urban economies form the base of the wealth of many nations. Yet over the last half century, Africa has experienced rapid urban growth, even as long-term economic growth has remained stagnant, and even declined in some decades. It is estimated that the continent’s cities and towns will absorb another 12-13 million people in 2008, with the urban population outpacing rural population from about 2035. While inequalities between cities and the countryside appear to be narrowing, the differences between the rich and the poor are becoming more conspicuous as unhealthy, overcrowded slums grow. More than 250 million people—or around 60% of the urban population—live precariously in these settlements, and, if present trends continue, the number of slum dwellers will grow to over 350 million by 2020.

The AfDB also reported that:

In his speech at the plenary session, AfDB President, Donald Kaberuka, highlighted the difference between urban and rural poverty, explaining that while majority of Africans living below the poverty datum were rural dwellers, the living conditions of the urban poor were dire and remained a major challenge to development and urbanization, as demonstrated by recent food riots in some African cities and beyond.

 “Our determination to fight poverty everywhere must be, and is an inclusive one. It targets all those who are part of the “bottom million” and these include the urban poor,” Mr. Kaberuka said, noting that internal migration to urban areas would increase rather than decrease.

This week's AfDB meeting comes on the heels of another conference held in Austria last week on "Forging a Uniquely African Green Revolution." In addressing the conference,   Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of United Nations (UN) expressed concern over the impact of the ‘world food crisis’ on Africa.  He warned that the unfolding food crisis:

.....may roll-back the progress that has been achieved by African countries in the last decade.The solution to the food crisis in Africa today is to stimulate a domestic supply response to raise food production. If ever there was a time for an African Green Revolution, it is now. The time for talk is over. We must implement immediate solutions for today’s crisis, and do so in the context of a long-term concerted effort to transform smallholder agriculture, to increase productivity and sustainability, and end poverty and hunger.

As the global food crisis intensifies, so will the debate over its origins. Several factors account for the emerging international food crisis, including rising energy prices, a drought in Australia, and the conversion of cropland to biomass production. More recently, hoarding of grains and financial speculation in grain commodity prices have exacerbated the rise in food commodity prices. But policymakers should not overlook the role that population growth and other demographic trends play in increasing the world's appetite for food.

A drop in oil prices or a good harvest in Australia might offer some short-term relief from skyrocketing food prices, but demographic trends are slow to change and likely to make high food prices a concern for years and possibly decades to come.

The World Bank reports that over the last forty years demand for food in developing countries has increased more than threefold. It also estimates that global food demand will double by 2030 as world population increases by an additional two billion people. It's not possible to grasp the implications of the current food crisis without understanding the demographic factors that underlie these trends in food consumption.

The first and most obvious demographic dimension to the food crisis is global population growth, which rose by 1.2 percent last year, increasing the number of people on the planet by over 70 million people. That's more than the population of France (61.7 million). Between 2007 and 2050, global population is projected to climb from 6.6 billion to 9.3 billion, an increase of 40 percent and roughly equivalent to the current populations of India and China combined.

The second demographic dimension is the population growth rate of the countries that are most vulnerable to food inflation. Many of the fastest growing countries in the world—including Niger, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—are severely impacted by the food crisis. The UN's Farm and Agriculture Organization (FAO) maintains a list of "countries in crisis" that require external food assistance. In February, there were 36 nations on the list. The population of those countries is presently 1.1 billion. In just 17 years (2025), their projected population will reach 1.5 billion, and by 2050 an estimated 2.0 billion.

The third demographic trend is a rapidly growing middle class. The World Bank estimates that the size of the middle class in developing nations will triple by 2030, rising from 400 million in 2007 to 1.2 billion. Homi Kharas, a Brookings Institution scholar, earlier this year projected even faster growth. According to Kharas over half of the world (52%) will be middle class by 2020, compared to 30 percent today. China, according to his projections, will have the world's largest middle class and the size of India's middle class will be 10 times larger than today's.

A growing middle class is translating into a larger appetite for food. As incomes rise, diets tend to change. People tend to eat more meat, fruits and vegetables, and fewer grains. Consumption of meat, in particular, puts added stress on global food production. That's because, it takes 7-8 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef and about 3-4 pounds of grain to produce a pound of pork.

In recent years, meat consumption has been increasing significantly faster than global population. Between 1991 and 2005 meat consumption rose at an annual rate of 6.2 percent a year in China, and 3.1 percent in seven other Southeast Asian nations. Globally, meat production is projected to double by 2020 due to increased incomes, population growth, and rising per capita global consumption of meat.

The forth demographic dimension is growing urbanization. This year, for the first time in history, half of the world's population lives in urban areas, including smaller cities and towns. An estimated 3.3 billion people now live in urban environments and by 2030 that number is expected to climb to 5 billion. The urban population of Africa and Asia will double between 2000 and 2030 and many of these urban dwellers will be poor.

The urban poor—because they are not growing their own food—are severely impacted by the spike in food prices. The World Food Programme and other international agencies warn that rising food prices will force many people to reduce their consumption of meat and other sources of protein, and that the poorest of the poor—those living on less than a dollar a day—will be forced to reduce their total caloric intake.

Understanding these four demographic challenges is essential to averting famine and losing ground in the battle against hunger and malnutrition. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, estimates that the current food crisis has already pushed 100 million people deeper into poverty. If food and energy prices continue to rise, that number could climb sharply in the years ahead.

In the weeks and months ahead, the world may see some temporary relief from rising food commodity prices as speculation eases and higher food prices encourage farmers to expand production. Wheat prices are already in decline. Rice prices may soon follow. The real challenge, however, lies ahead. Can farmers, particularly in developing countries, overcome climate change, water scarcity, and rising production costs in time to meet the demands of a growing population and a rising middle class. That's the big question.

Americans as a whole may be living longer, but two recent studies reveal growing and disturbing disparities in longevity.  In fact, not all Americans are living longer; life expectancy in some areas of the country is actually declining.

Two weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office released a report (“Growing Disparities in Life Expectancy”) that found:

Though the gaps in life expectancy between men and women and between whites and blacks have narrowed somewhat, differences by income and educational attainment have been growing. The close relationship between socioeconomic status and mortality—the flip side of longevity—has been long observed and is well documented.5 Individuals with higher lifetime earnings or more education experience lower mortality rates than those with lower lifetime earnings or less education. But in recent decades, socioeconomic status has become an even more important indicator of life expectancy, whether measured at birth or at age 65. 

•  
  • In 1980, life expectancy at birth was 2.8 years more for the highest socioeconomic group than for the lowest. By 2000, that gap had risen to 4.5 years. The 1.7-year increase in the gap amounts to more than half of the increase in overall average life
    Expectancy at birth between 1980 and 2000.
  • In 1980, the difference in life expectancy at age 65 between the highest and lowest socioeconomic groups was 0.3 years. By 2000, the difference had grown to 1.6 years. That increase in the gap equals more than 80 percent of the increase in overall average
    Life expectancy at age 65 over that period.

Changes in life expectancy between 1990 and 2000 show a similar pattern among people with different levels of educational attainment. The gap in life expectancy at age 25 between individuals with a high school education or less and individuals with any college education increased by about 30 percent over that period. The gap widened because of increases in life expectancy for the better-educated group; life expectancy for those with less education did not increase over that period. The growing differentials by level of educational attainment have occurred for both men and women and for both blacks and whites.

A second study (“The Reversal of Fortunes: Trends in County Mortality and Cross-County Mortality Disparities in the United States”) published in the Journal PLoS Medicine, found that rising mortality from lung cancer, diabetes, and chronic pulmonary disease is beginning to offset some of the progress made in reducing mortality from cardiovascular disease. The study found “overall life expectancy in the U.S. increased more than seven years for men and more than six years for women between 1960 and 2000,” but that, “These gains are not reaching many parts of the country; rather, the life expectancy of a significant segment of the population is actually declining or at best stagnating.”

The report by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health ( HSPH ) and the University of Washington found that, “4% of the male population and 19% of the female population experienced either decline or stagnation in mortality beginning in the 1980s.”

The study looked at geographical disparities in longevity at the county level and found a significant number of counties where longevity had declined.  The report found that “The majority of the counties that had the worst downward swings in life expectancy were in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, and in Appalachia, extending into the southern portion of the Midwest and into Texas.”

A number of factors may account for these differences in life expectancy, including smoking, obesity, and disparities in health care treatment, but whatever the causes, the reports suggest that we have long a way to go in reducing health care gaps in America.

It seems inevitable that the world food crisis, combined with climate change and rising energy prices, will spur a renewed and contentious debate over the issue of population.  Before that debate is renewed in its full intensity, everyone should read More:  Population, Nature, and What Women Want, a new book by Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute. 

What Engelman gives us, and what is so desperately need at this critical juncture in the debate over population, is historical perspective.  His book, in fact, takes up back to our ancestral roots to give us a better understanding of such things as human reproduction, the centuries’ old debate over population, and efforts by governments to “control” population by encouraging human procreation or restricting it.

My father once said to me, “The problem with your generation is that you think you invented sex.”  Along the same lines, it might be said that many of us today believe that birth control is a thoroughly modern invention, but as Engelman makes clear in his book, women throughout history have sought to control their fertility, as well as enhance it.  In response to shrinking resources or deteriorating conditions, women have often sought—though not always successfully—to space or limit their pregnancies.

Engelman, as a result, takes a “Zen’ approach to population. Based upon his historical research and his conversations with women in developing countries, he concludes that:

The best way to “control” population is to give up control, in fact to give control away to those who can best decide for themselves when to bear a child.  Enlightenment will arrive only after one has given up the search, and positive population outcomes only after the forcing stops.

He notes that many women in the world still lack access to modern contraceptive methods and that, if given that access, fertility rates will likely decline further. Giving girls the education they need and the gender equality they deserve, he argues, would also result in lower fertility rates.

At the same time, he voices the conviction that concerns about an eventual population implosion are overblown.  As the planet gets less crowded, he believes that women will want more children, enough at least to keep fertility rates at or near the “replacement rate” needed to stabilize population.

Engelman makes clear, however, that world population may already be, or may soon be, unsustainable. He says, “…the world food situation has become in recent years less reassuring, less comfortably a refutation to Malthus’s prediction….As hazardous as prediction is, it’s getting hard to be confident that farmers and families will easily feed the 9.2 billion people projected to be alive in 2050.”

In the last chapter, he notes that people in developing countries dream of acquiring the necessities that we take for granted. “But what happens,” he asks, “when the dreams of people everywhere become unsustainable—not because of the nature of the dreams, but because the numbers of the dreamers?” 

Good question.  His book, however, may help us to avoid having to answer that question.  Let’s hope.

This morning I received an emergency e-mail appeal from Mercy Corps.  Warning that “a perfect storm” of factors “is pushing global food prices up dramatically,” it appealed for help:

In Niger, prices of bread, powdered milk and wheat flour have spiked, exacerbating the West African nation’s precarious food situation.  Last December, more than three million Nigeriens didn’t have enough food to meet their minimum nutritional needs; today, shortages are pushing the country closer to famine.

Left unsaid in the appeal is the fact that Niger is tied with Guinea-Bissau for the highest total fertility rate in the world.  On average, a woman in Niger will have seven children over her lifetime.  Despite the threat of famine, Niger’s population is projected to rise from 14.2 million in 2007 to 26.3 million in 2025 and 53.2 million in 2050. 

The simple truth is that some of the countries hardest hit by the food crisis are among the least sustainable and fastest growing in the world.  Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a feature story (“Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty”) about the Philippines and the food crisis.  The story reports that:

There are many reasons why this country is poor, including feudal patterns of land ownership and corrupt government. But there is a compelling link between family size and poverty. It increases in lock step with the number of children, as nutrition, health, education and job prospects all decline, government statistics and many studies show.

Birth and poverty rates here are among the highest in Asia. And the Philippines, where four out of five of the country's 91 million people are Roman Catholic, also stands out in Asia for its government's rejection of modern contraception as part of family planning.

The great tragedy in the Philippines and many other countries severely affected by the food crisis, there are many couples who want to control their fertility but who do not have access to modern contraceptives, and their governments are not always to blame.  International support for family planning has been in the decline for more than a decade.

Tod Preston of Population Action International wrote a compelling blog post yesterday (“Family Planning in the Philippines: A Global Wake-Up Call for Policymakers”) that details the declining real dollar support for family planning and reproductive health services in the Philippines and elsewhere.  He concludes:

The great tragedy in all of this -- “outrage” might be a more accurate term -- is that the cuts in FP funding are depriving women and men, many of them impoverished, of something they fundamentally want: that most basic ability to choose how many children to have and when to have them. And by depriving them of this reproductive right, we’re contributing to an increasingly unsustainable and impoverished world.

If there is a ground zero to the food crisis, it’s probably in the Philippines. Concern is mounting that the Philippines will not be able to import enough rice this year and experts—inside and outside the Philippines—are warning that major food riots could erupt as a result of the shortfall.

Productivity in the rice fields is very high, but farmland is increasingly scarce in the Philippines. As a result, the Philippines typically imports about 15 percent of its rice needs, but it’s getting more and more difficult to buy rice in the global marketplace.  Four of the major rice producers—Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam—have imposed export restrictions this year, and rice prices are skyrocketing. In response to the food shortage, the government recently imposed a temporary ban on the conversion of farmland for property development.

It’s against that backdrop that the government of the Philippines announced today that its population reached 88.57 million last August, up from 76.5 million in 2000, the government.  The Reuter news story reports that:

The country's top economic planner said population control policies needed to be reviewed, but promoting artificial birth control, anathema to the Church, is not a likely option.

"The population is increasing and it means that government has to more vigorously implement its population policy, which is responsible parenthood and the advocacy for natural family planning," Economic Planning Secretary Augusto Santos told Reuters. "I think the population commission will have to review its policies," he added. "We really need greater efforts. It means we have to work harder to make the economy function more properly and more smoothly."

Fertility rates have fallen significantly in many parts of Southeast Asia—including Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia—but the total fertility rate (TFR) in the Philippines (3.4) is third highest in the region.  The National Statistics Office indicates, however, that the annual population growth rate is declining.  It reported today that it was 2.04 percent between 2000 and 2007, lower than the average annual growth of 2.34 percent between 1990 and 2000.

The Reuter’s article noted, however, that the government’s population policy has its critics:

"I think it is a significant drop," said Benjamin de Leon, President of the Forum for Family Planning and Development Inc. "But I still have to see in this administration a policy that informs people of the need to space their children, the need to plan their families."
Solita Monsod, professor of economics at the University of the Philippines, said the problem did not lie with the Church. She said most Filipinos wanted to regulate their families and providing access to information and funding for civil service groups involved in family planning was key.

"Survey after survey has shown that when it comes to family planning, the Church does not make a difference," Monsod said. "The people don't have access. Give them what they want and then the population problem will take care of itself."

Yesterday, the UN’s International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) warned, “The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.” 

Citing the “increasingly intolerable price, paid by small-scale farmers, workers, rural communities and the environment,” an IAASTD report issued last week in South Africa called for a wide range of reforms aimed at boosting food production by small farmers in developing countries. 

In a separate report also released last week, IAASTD cautioned that “a vast swathe of central and western Asia and parts of Africa are running out of water.” The report indicated that:

About half the region's internal renewable water resources are already below the minimum threshold for development (500 cubic metres per person per year), it says. And some countries have begun using the region's large reserves of groundwater without concluding any formal agreements with their neighbours.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan, the world’s fifth largest wheat exporter, yesterday imposed a ban on wheat exports until September in order to contain domestic food prices.  Also, the World Food Program warned yesterday that millions could go hungry in North Korea. WFP estimates that North Korea's annual food deficit could nearly double from 2007 to 1.66 million tons due to rising food prices and the devastating floods that hit the country last year.

World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, today warned that the surge in food prices could push 100 million people into deeper poverty.  Speaking to the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, Zoellick said:

Based on a very rough analysis, we estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. This is not just a question of short-term needs, as important as those are; this is ensuring that future generations don’t pay a price too.

Zoellick’s remarks come on the heels of his appeal last week for a “New Deal” to address the food crisis. Zoellock last week said that surging food prices could mean “seven lost years” in the fight against worldwide poverty,  “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day.”

Echoing similar concerns, Newsday today published “Long-term Solutions Needed to Feed the World,” a column that I wrote that looks at the demographic implications of the international food crisis. In the column, I note that:

The Food and Agricultural Organization maintains a list of "countries in crisis" currently requiring external food assistance. In February, 36 nations were on that list, including some of the poorest and fastest growing countries in the world. The total population of those nations, currently 1.1 billion, is expected to rise to 1.5 billion by 2025, and 2.0 billion by 2050. Will these countries, with their high incidence of poverty and their rapid population growth, be able to feed themselves?

The recent comments made by Zoellick suggest that some of these 36 countries may not be able to meet that challenge. If so, many of the world’s poor, many of whom have migrated to urban areas, will be standing in food lines...or worse. 

In past decades, food crises were local phenomena, generally precipitated by a bad harvest, and the solution was to expand emergency relief efforts. The current food crisis, by contrast, is not a local phenomenon; it’s global. 

Within the past week severe food riots have broken out in opposites sides of the world.  Five people have now died in Haitian rioting and a young boy was killed earlier this week in Egypt in rioting that has led to the arrest of more than 150 people. Rioting this week may also have broken out in Ethiopia.  Last week it was the Ivory Coast.

In total, a dozen or so countries have experienced food riots since the beginning of the year, and the United Nations is warning that more rioting should be expected.  The World Bank estimated last week that 33 nations may be prone to food riots.

One consequence of living in a global economy is paying global prices, and right now at least the global price of just about every basic food staple—from rice to milk to vegetable oil—is soaring. The rioting that we are witnessing is not a response to a local food shortage; it’s a reaction against rising food commodity prices by those who can no longer afford to pay those prices.

The point was driven home this week by Sir John Holmes, Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, who spoke this week to an international conference in Dubai.  Here’s what he had to say:

Compounding the challenges of climate change, in what some have labeled the 'perfect storm,' are the recent dramatic trends in soaring food and fuel prices, which are poised to have a major impact on hunger and poverty across the world and are having an immediate impact on the cost of humanitarian operations. Since mid-2007, food prices have risen an estimated 40% as a confluence of factors have increased demand. These factors include rapid global population growth, ever greater numbers of people eating resource-intensive foods such as meat and milk, bio-fuel production, shortage of reserves, and increasing oil prices.

Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity; and as many households will spend more on food to the detriment of other household needs, price rises will also result in lower school attendance rates, poorer health care and asset depletion. The security implications should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe.

We have to ask the question: are we properly prepared for this? Not only are we adequately prepared for the next big storm or flood or drought that devastates countless lives and livelihoods, but also how close are we to a generalized crisis of hunger and malnutrition? How exposed is the global emergency system to overload and failure? More to the point, are the tens of millions of people living in impoverished, drought and disaster-prone areas ready? Because in the cruel calculus of natural disasters, it is always the poorest who are most vulnerable and least able to withstand the impact of a crisis.

For those countries most at risk of starvation, the World Food Programme and other international agencies can provide relief—if they receive the necessary funds from the U.S. and other donor countries—but there are, quite possibly, tens of millions of urban poor spread around the world who may face what officials in Bangladesh are calling a “hidden hunger,” or a “silent famine.”

Citing the “realities of demography, changing diets, energy prices and biofuels, and climate changes,” World Bank president Robert Zoellick earlier today called for “a New Deal for Global Food Policy.”  In a speech delivered this morning in Washington, Zoellick said:

As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have soared.   Since 2005, the prices of staples have jumped 80 percent.  Last month, the real price of rice hit a 19-year high; the real price of wheat rose to a 28-year high and almost twice the average price of the last 25 years.

The good news for some farmers adds a crushing load to the most vulnerable – children, as young as four or five, forced to flee the safety of their rural communities to fight for food in teeming cities; food riots threatening societal breakdown; mothers deprived of nutrition for healthy babies.   The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices.  For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.

Zoellick said that the New Deal should:

…. focus not only on hunger and malnutrition, access to food and its supply, but also the interconnections with energy, yields, climate change, investment, the marginalization of women and others, and economic resiliency and growth.   Food policy needs to gain the attention of the highest political levels, because no one country or group can meet these interconnected challenges.

Paul Krugman, the noted New York Times economist and columnist, wrote in his blog today (“Grains Gone Wild”) that “the current food crisis may well be a bigger deal” than the financial crisis.  Here’s what he said:

What I don’t quite understand is why food prices have spiked so dramatically. Demand has been rising for a number of years; bio-fuels is a big thing, but how much bigger is it this year than a year or two ago? It can’t be speculation: that raises prices by inducing stockpiling, and stocks of wheat and rice are at or near record lows.

Important stuff.  We need to figure this out.

There are, of course, a host of factors that have contributed to the emerging food crisis.  Numerous observers, including UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, have referred to it as a “perfect storm.”  Among the factors cited most often are: 1) increased consumption of meat in China and other developing countries; 2) global population growth, 3) diversion of agricultural land to biomass production; 4) drought and other climate changes, 5) and the rising costs, mostly due to rising fuel prices, of fertilizing, cultivating and transporting crops.

Most of these factors are not going to go away anytime soon.  That’s why the World Food Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the World Bank have been warning that the food crisis could persist for 3-5 years…or longer.

A global recession might temporarily dampen appetite for meat, the Australian drought might ease, and the U.S. and European countries might someday reverse course on biomass subsidies, but factors like population growth and climate change do not turn around on a dime, and most experts believe that the era of cheap fuel is over.

As to “grain prices gone wild,” that’s what happens when growing demand hits an inelastic supply curve.  Global grain reserves have been dropping for several years. Reserves are now at the lowest level in decades. When reserves get that low, and supply doesn’t respond, it doesn’t take much to make grain prices soar. We don’t need to “figure that out.” That’s basic economics. 

But what, we need to do, as Krugman blog suggests is “figure out” what can be done about it. The first thing, of course, is don’t make matters worse.  But that’s what happening.  

More and more countries are restricting grain exports—and thereby restricting the amount of grain that grain-importing countries have access to. Today, India announced that it was banning exports of non-Basmati rice. That may help keep a lid on the price of rice in India, but it will make things worse for countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

And, despite the food crisis, other countries are still increasing subsidies for biomass. Britain this month is boosting the biomass requirement for its motor fuels.  Meanwhile, the European Community, as a whole, is continuing to ramp up support for biofuels.

But what we really need to figure out is whether there is any relief in sight, or whether the current food crisis is just a taste of things to come.  Can we—in the face of climate change, rising fertilizer and fuels costs, growing water scarcity, and changing global diets—plow  enough new farmland and raise agricultural productivity enough to feed an additional 2.5 billion over the next 40 years? 

That's the big question.  And we need to figure it out sooner, rather than later.

The Population Reference Bureau this week has released an important new data sheet Family Planning Worldwide 2008 that looks at the growing demand for family planning services.  Looking at two key factors—the growing number of young people entering their childbearing ages and the increased usage of contraceptives—the data sheet projects that there will be a “huge increase” in demand for family planning services in the years ahead. PRB’s report cites two reasons:

First, many women who do not now use family planning say they would like to control the number and timing of their children. In sub-Saharan Africa, about one-quarter of the married women of reproductive age fall into this category. They could constitute a large population of users if modern contraceptive methods become more easily accessible. Second, contraceptive use has increased in nearly every country in recent decades, whether they started at a very low level (as with Senegal) or a relatively high level (as with Colombia).

With Congress preparing to debate the level of funding for family planning and reproductive services in FY2009, this is an extraordinarily timely and valuable report.  Congratulations to Donna Clifton, Toshiko Kaneda and Lori Ashford, who prepared the new data sheet for PRB.