The climate and resource security megatrend captures the increasing pressure on critical resources within the mega-ecological narrative of climate change.
By mid-century demand for food and water will place these resources under stress. We will need to produce 60 – 100% percent more food and 5 billion people could be facing a critical lack of water. The world’s fish stock is being pushed towards collapse – at the current rate, 88% of stock will be over-fished by 2050. This unprecedented demand on the earth’s resources is unfolding against the bigger story of global climate change.
We are witnessing unstoppable bushfires and smoke-filled cities. Glaciers and islands are disappearing. Tropical archipelagos are increasingly lashed by intense monsoon storms. Climate change is not a prediction, it is our new normal. Prolonged droughts, rising sea levels and more frequent severe weather events threaten to make more areas unliveable displacing many millions of people from their home. Climate disruption is also accelerating global biodiversity crisis, threatening 1 million species to the brink of extinction.
This megatrend contains the “environmentalist’s paradox”: the more we deplete our resources and degrade our ecosystems, the more average human well-being improves globally. But how long can we sustain rising consumption in the face of ecosystem degradation that is also increasingly global?
By 2050 demand for energy will increase by 30% above current global use. Technological and market innovations are racing to unlock the promise of renewable energy. With innovations like battery storage, solar and wind technologies, we are creating the potential to rethink energy production and revolutionise how consumers access energy. More than 60 rare metals are critical for renewable technologies, batteries, electric and hybrid cars, smartphones and tablets. However, increasing demand and the rare nature of such materials could severely limit the continued production of new technologies.
Corporations are principal agents in the production of greenhouse gas and can no longer ignore the trade-off between economic and environmental well-being. It is no longer possible to continue with business as usual, but as capitalism depends on consuming the natural environment to ensure continual economic growth, how can business and governments respond to the challenge of our time?

References
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