Progressively cheaper natural resources underpinned 20th-century global economic growth. But the 21st century could be different. Indeed, over the past ten years, rapid economic development in emerging markets has wiped out all of the previous century’s declines in real commodity prices. And in the next two decades, up to three billion people (and their spending power) will be added to the global middle class. Is the world entering an era of sustained high resource prices, leading to increased economic, social, and geopolitical risk?
Similar questions have arisen in the past, but with hindsight the perceived risks proved unfounded. In 1798, land was at the center of such worries. In the famous Essay on the principle of population, Thomas Malthus fretted that rapid population growth would outstrip the world’s supply of arable land, producing widespread poverty and famine.1 But his dire vision never came to pass. Instead, the agro-industrial revolution swept across Britain and then the rest of Europe and North America, breaking the link between the availability of land and economic development.