July 24, 2012
Urbanization, Security and Resiliency
Note: This post originally appeared on the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 blog on July 19, 2012.
In 2008, for the first time, the world’s urban population exceeded its rural population. According to theUnited Nations estimates, urbanization will grow from about 50 percent of the world’s population today to about 60 percent by 2030. More importantly, urbanization – and its accompanying pressures – will not be evenly distributed. As illustrated in Figure 1, the urban population as the percentage of the total population has grown around the world over the last three decades; however, the urban population as a percentage of total population has risen more quickly in Latin America & the Caribbean the Middle East & North Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific.
NIC Blog – Urbanization, Security and Resiliency – Figure 1
More than 90 percent of projected urban growth will continue to occur in developing nations, fueled by increasing population and rural to urban migration.
Researchers note that, traditionally, the largest drivers of urbanization are primarily natural disasters (and increasingly ecological degradation). War and conflict have also caused populations to flee into urban areas. Climate change and the increasing desertification of once-arable lands have also fueled rural to urban movements in recent years, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Certainly, urbanization may be the result of conflict. But it is also the case that urbanization may be associated with poor security conditions in countries. The (rapid) movement of people from rural areas to more urban (or even peri-urban) cities may exacerbate underlying ethnic and religious tensions, place pressures on weak infrastructure that is already being pushed beyond capacity, increase distributional pressures, and demand governance and better planning from governments too weak to sustain themselves.
Continue reading at GT2030.com.
More from CNAS
-
Why Stopping Environmental Crime Is a Matter of National Security
Commentary
Last week, the presidency of the Financial Action Task Force, the global intergovernmental standard-setter for combatting illicit financial threats, passed from China to Germa...
By Neil Bhatiya
-
Can Tariffs and Sanctions Lead to a Better Climate Change Strategy?
Commentary
A little more than two years since he announced in the Rose Garden that the United States was “getting out” of the Paris climate change agreement, President Donald Trump was i...
By Neil Bhatiya
-
Climate Change: The New Asian Drama
Commentary
When the Swedish economist and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his magisterial three volume study of postwar economic and political development in Asia, he questioned whether ...
By Neil Bhatiya
-
Why Abandoning Paris Is a Disaster for America
Ever the showman, President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday about his soon-to-be-announced decision on whether or not to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement with the air of...
By Julianne Smith
