Going Against the Grain on the Post-2005 Commodity Price Boom. Over the past decade, metal and energy prices have tripled while food prices have almost doubled.
Many observers have responded to those increases by reflexively pointing to rapid growth and industrialization in emerging markets, arguing that a structural shift in the demand for commodities was under way. Given that China and India together account for 37 percent of the world’s population, even minor changes in their pattern of demand growth are capable of affecting world commodity prices. NEW REPORT: Unprecedented Global Resource Demand Will Lead To Severe Market Disruptions And Conflict. Download WASHINGTON (May 15 2012) — A study released this week by the Transatlantic Academy reveals that severe market disruptions and violent conflict at the interstate and local level in many hot spots -- especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America -- are increasingly likely unless the transatlantic community takes the lead in addressing the challenges of unprecedented global demand for a nexus of resources.
The Global Resource Nexus – The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals, a collaborative report by American and European fellows of the Transatlantic Academy, is the first international study that analyzes the nexus of challenges that arise from interconnections between five different key and interrelated resources – energy, fresh water, food, minerals, and land. ”Governments are currently making plans in the event of conflict with neighbors over access to resources and the expected growth in large-scale immigration,” said Stephen F. . (3) Working with new players. Resources from space.