Resilience // Natural Resource Security in an Uncertain World

By Sylvia Lee .The rapid industrialization and economic growth of the twentieth century brought tremendous progress – life expectancy doubled and billions of people are no longer living in poverty. With this progress, however, new risks and vulnerabilities have also come to the fore. Exponential population growth and the burgeoning middle and urban classes are rapidly driving up the demand for water, food and energy, severely straining our natural resources and creating new sources of tension or conflict. The Water-Food-Energy-Security-Climate Nexus has consistently been identified as containing some of the greatest threats to the global economy and security. Resource insecurity is already acting as a threat multiplier in many parts of the world and will intensify considerably in the coming years. As the world crosses our environmental thresholds, unanticipated socio-economic impacts and frequent political instability will become the norm unless we strengthen our systemic resilience and improve our predictive capacity.