Questions for discussion.

1. How will increased life expectancy and as a result a shift towards an aging population in high-income developed countries affect their societies?
2. Why will North America, Australia, and New Zealand continue to have the highest rates of population growth among the developed countries?
3. Why will the declining ratio of working people to retirees strain social services, pensions, and health systems in developed countries?
4. Why is it hard to foresee how the shift towards a greater proportion of older voters will change the political dynamics in developed countries?
5. Why will a high proportion of young people trend be destabilizing in some developing countries, in Sub-Saharan Africa and a few countries in Latin America and the Middle East?
6. Do you find it is true that the growing number of legal and illegal migrants will increase social and political tension? Explain your point.

II

Read the article and look up the meaning of the underlined words and phrases in the dictionary.

Global Trends 2015:

A dialogue about the future with non-government expert. Natural resources and environment

Food

Driven by advances in agricultural technologies, world food grain production and stocks in 2015 will be adequate to meet the needs of a growing world population. Despite the overall adequacy of food, problems of distribution and availability will remain.

• The number of chronically malnourished people in conflict- ridden Sub-Saharan Africa will increase by more than 20 per cent over the next 15 years.
• The potential for famine will still exist where the combination of repressive government or internal conflict and natural disasters prevents or limits relief efforts, as in Somalia in the early and North Korea more recently.
• Donors will become more reluctant to provide relief when the effort might become endangered in military conflict.

The use of genetically modified crops has great potential for meeting the nutrition needs of the poor in developing countries. Popular and political opposition in the EU countries and, to a lesser extent, in the United States, however, has clouded the prospects for applying this technology.

Water

By 2015 nearly half the world's population — more than 3 billion people — will live in countries that are «water-stressed» — have less than 1, 700 cubic meters of water per capita per year — mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and northern China. Water has been a source of contention historically, but no water dispute has been a cause of open interstate conflict; indeed, water shortages often have stimulated cooperative arrangements for sharing the resource. But as countries press against the limits of available water between now and 2015, the possibility of conflict will increase.

Nearly one-half of the world's land surface consists of river basins shared by more than one country, and more than 30 nations receive more than one-third of their water from outside their borders.

• Turkey is building new dams and irrigation projects on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which will affect water flows into Syria and Iraq — two countries that will experience considerable population growth.
• Egypt is proceeding with a major diversion of water from the Nile, which flows from Ethiopia and Sudan, both of which will want to draw more water from the Nile for their own development by 2015. Water- sharing arrangements are likely to become more contentious.

Water shortages occurring in combination with other sources of tension — such as in the Middle East — will be the most worrisome.

Energy

The global economy will continue to become more energy efficient through 2015. Traditional industries, as well as transportation, are increasingly efficient in their energy use. Moreover, the most dynamic growth areas in the global economy, especially services are less energy intensive than the economic activities that they replace. Energy production also is becoming more efficient.

Global economic growth, along with population increases, will drive a nearly 50 per cent increase in the demand for energy over the next 15 years. Total oil demand will increase from roughly 75 million barrels per day in 2000 to more than 100 million barrels in 2015, an increase almost as large as OPEC's current production. Over the next 15 years, natural gas usage will increase more rapidly than that of any other energy source — by more than 100 per cent — mainly stemming from the tripling of gas consumption in Asia.

Asia will drive the expansion in energy demand, replacing North America as the leading energy consumption region and accounting for more than half of the world's total increase in demand.

• China, and to a lesser extent India, will see especially dramatic increases in energy consumption.
• By 2015, only one-tenth of Persian Gulf oil will be directed to Western markets; three-quarters will go to Asia.

Nuclear energy use will remain at current levels.

Meeting the increase in demand for energy will pose neither a major supply challenge nor lead to substantial price increases. Estimates of the world's total stock of oil have steadily increased as technological progress in extracting oil from remote sources has enabled new discoveries and more efficient production. Recent estimates indicate that 80 per cent of the world's available oil still remains in the ground, as does 95 per cent of the world's natural gas.

• The Persian Gulf region — absent a major war — will see large increases in oil production capacity and will rise in its importance to the world energy market. Other areas of the world — including Russia, coastal West Africa, and Greenland — will also increase their role in global energy markets. Russia and the Middle East account for three- quarters of known gas reserves.
• Latin America — principally Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil — has more than 117 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and potentially 114 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, according to the US Geological Survey. With foreign participation, Latin American production could increase from 9 million barrels per day to more than 14 million.
• Caspian energy development is likely to be high by 2015. New transport routes for Caspian oil and gas exports that do not transit Russia will be operating.

Oil-producing countries will continue their attempts to increase prices but are unlikely to achieve stable high prices. Energy prices are likely to become more unstable in the next 15 years, as periodic price rises are followed by price collapses.

By 2015, global energy markets will have developed along two patterns. Asia's energy needs will be met either through coal from the region or from oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and Russia. Western Europe and the Western Hemisphere will draw on the Atlantic Basin for their energy sources at world prices.