A swelling global population, changing diets and mankind's expanding "water footprint" could be bringing an end to the era of cheap water.
The warnings, in an annual report by the Pacific Institute in California, come as ecologists have begun adopting the term "peak ecological water" - the point where, like the concept of "peak oil", the world has to confront a natural limit on something once considered virtually infinite.
CANBERRA - Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.
A confidential security review by Australia's Defense Force, completed in 2007 but obtained in summary by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, said environmental stress had increased the risk of conflicts in the Pacific over resources and food.
A new
report by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on the emerging strategic landscape, "Global Trends 2025," has attracted worldwide attention because it forecasts a future environment in which the United States wields less power than it does today and must contend with a constellation of other, newly ambitious great powers.
November 2008 was the
100-year anniversary of the Congo's conversion from the personal property
of Belgian King Leopold II to a colonial possession of Belgium, itself.
The King's brutal rule, documented in Leopold's Ghost, embarrassed
the Belgians into switching "landlords" in 1908, but did little
to ease the colonial burden on the Congolese people.
