Geoscience Reference
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renewable resource that is constantly been reused
and recycled as part of the global water cycle. But
the excessive use of water resources in particular
regions is causing serious water shortage issues.
This situation is further complicated by the
potential impacts of climate change on water
supply . Figure 2.9 illustrates key regions in the
world that are already subject to water scarcity.
Places such as the southwest US, North Africa,
Southern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East
are currently most at risk from scarcity in the
availability of fresh water. What is particularly
troubling, however, is the fact that due to climate
change these same regions are likely to see declines
in water supply by somewhere in the region of 40
per cent. More worrying still is the fact that many
of these areas are likely to see some of the largest
increases in demand for water (see section 2.4 for
a discussion of the situation in the Nile Basin).
Taking these factors into account, it becomes
apparent that water availability could be one of the
most pressing resource issues of the twenty-first
century.
place on human development. Malthus famously
described a key difference in the nature of
population growth and the development of new
resources. According to Malthus, while levels of
resource discovery and availability tended to
increase gradually, population tended to grow
at much more rapid rates. According to Malthus,
the rapid growth in population that he observed
in eighteenth-century England would lead to
an increasing demand for key resources (such
as food, minerals and timber). Malthus was
concerned that the ability to produce these
resources could not match the demands of an
expanding population. In this context, Malthus
predicted that checks would be placed on human
population growth. In Malthus's terms, these
checks took two basic forms: positive and negativ e.
Positive checks involved people proactively
addressing the problems of excessive population
growth through birth control and reducing the size
of their families. Malthus's negative checks are
more troubling. Negative checks are associated not
with reduced birth rates but increased rates of
death. In this context, Malthus argued that
excessive population growth would ultimately
lead to food shortages and hunger, and increases
in human conflict and warfare as states scrambled
to gain control of scarce resources.
Thomas Malthus's ideas have been widely
criticized. At one level these criticisms have
focused on the historical fact that Malthus's
predictions have simply not come true: the global
population has been able to rise to approximately
7 billion people (a figure that would have been
inconceivable to Malthus), while the economy
has grown to be 68 times bigger now than it was
in 1800 , 3 without being subject to the sustained
forms of negative check. At another level, many
have been critical of the underlying principles
associated with Malthus's work (see Jackson, 2003;
2009: 6-13). Most crucially in this context, many
have focused on Malthus's failure to take account
of the role of technologies (from inorganic
fertilizers to the use of modern mechanics) to
increase the supply of resources.
2.3 DOOMSTERS,
CORNUCOPIANS AND
EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
Having now established changing patterns in
the human use of environmental resources, this
section outlines some theories and ideas that
can help us to understand these processes. While
many of these theories directly contradict each
other, collectively they can help us to under-
stand the nature and likely consequences of the
resource demands that we are now placing on
the planet.
2.3.1 Parson Malthus and the neo-
Malthusians
In 1798 a little-known English parson named
Thomas Robert Malthus penned what would
become one of the most influential statements
on the limits that environmental resources could
 
 
 
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