The Global Resource Nexus – The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals

The Global Resource Nexus – The Struggles for Land, Energy, Food, Water, and Minerals is a collaborative report by American and European fellows of the Transatlantic Academy that analyzes the nexus of challenges that arise from interconnections between five different key and interrelated resources – energy, fresh water, food, minerals, and land. More than any other factors, these five resources comprise the most valuable ones in terms of international trade, are essential for human security, and will be the most likely to set off international conflict. By looking at the interrelationship of these key resources, the study provides an integrated view and avoids the stove piping of only looking at one resource in isolation from the others and demonstrates how changes in one resource effects the others. The study also emphasizes three additional factors that magnify the basic resource problem: climate change and its impact on weather patterns and rising sea levels; the growth of a new middle class in Asia and Latin America that aspires to the same levels of affluence enjoyed by the West; and the parallel growth of a new global underclass with billions of people lacking the bare necessities for survival.