Global Food Security, Population and Limits to Growth

Abstract

This text is taken from Health of People, Places And Planet: Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding, edited by Colin D. Butler, Jane Dixon and Anthony G. Capon, published 2015 by ANU Press, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Egalitarians have long called for a fairer global distribution of the determinants of health and nutrition. But the progress made towards global health for all, especially between 1960 and 1990 is now faltering, though some emerging technologies and social movements may still have the potential to reverse this trend. This chapter will argue that the struggle for global development is placed at risk by insufficient high-level recognition of the nexus between emerging ‘limits to growth’ manifested by high energy prices, climate change and the diversion of food crops to fuel. These, with other issues, such as inequality, neoliberalism, and the general refusal of the West to accept its role in the genesis for the ‘War on Terror’ have profound implications for human well-being that are immensely troubling over the next few decades and beyond