Whose forecast will be verified in 2025: Malthus’ or Condorcet’s?Arie S. IssarKeywords Waterdeficiency . Food . Developingworld .EducationIntroductionOne of the main objectives of the World Water Forum(WWF), which convenes every 3 years, is to support anddeepen the discussions regarding solutions to the interna-tional water issues of the twenty-first century. The fourthWWF, which convened March 2006 in Mexico City,restated that freshwater is a finite resource and isimperative for sustainable development and that morethan 1 billion people currently have no access to safedrinking water. Moreover, an estimated 2.7 billion people,or one third of the world’s population, will face majorwater shortages by 2025. Louise Fresco, former UN Foodand Agricultural Organization (FAO) member, argued thatthere can be no solution to water issues without tacklingagriculture and poverty, since agriculture is the mostimportant user of water and that 70% of the world’s poorlive in rural areas, thus depending on agriculture. Shepredicted that a 70% increase in global food production isrequired to meet the demands of the world’s growingpopulation (WWF 2006). Fred Pearce, author of the bookWhen the Rivers Run Dry: What Happens When OurWater Runs Out? (Pearce 2006) substantiates, with amplefield evidence, the WWF’s statements, namely that allover the world, the deficiency and quality of drinkingwater is becoming a humanitarian crisis.Former forecastsThomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was born in thecounty of Surrey, south of London, UK, and got hisacademic education at Cambridge University. Teaching inthis university, with its tapestry of green lawns, watered allyear long by rain or drizzle, Malthus, could not imaginethat the lack of water may spell doom for humanity.Moreover, born to the class of the gentry, for whom waterwas not the vital drink, he concluded that the deficiency offood, not water, would spell famine to the lower class ofpoor workers. Such a misfortune was inevitable as thispopulation was multiplying, in his time, at a geometricrate, while food production was growing at an arithmeticrate (Malthus 1798).Malthus did not agree with the ideas of the Frenchmathematician and philosopher Marquis de Condorcet(1743–1794) who in his book Esquisse d’un TableauHistorique des Progrès de l’Esprit Humain (Condorcet1795), written in hiding to avoid execution by Robespierre’sguillotine, anticipated much of Darwin’s idea of evolu-tion. He even extended it to the evolution of the intellectand morality of the human being and his organized socialmoral code. He looked forward to an era when republicangovernments would be established throughout the world,and called for complete social, legal, and educationalequality between the sexes. Condorcet forecasted thathuman life in the remote future could be greatlyprolonged by improvement in medical sciences. At thesame time, the intellectual and moral achievements ofhumans will bring about the abolition of war whilepopulation growth will be controlled by the free will ofenlightened families. Needless to say that the highstandard of living and low rate of birth (for good andworse) of the “Western World” is in many ways thematerialization of Condorcet’s “utopia”. In the “develop-ing world” the state of Kerala in India is an example of thematerialization of Condorcet’s solution, namely voluntar-ily self-control of birth rate by an educated population.Present forecastsThe map prepared by the International Water ManagementInstitute, as input for the World Water Vision, convened inThe Hague 2000 (IWMI 1998), shows that in 2025 mostof the southern part of the world will suffer from waterscarcity. Yet Louise Fresco, at her above-mentionedReceived: 17 May 2006 /Accepted: 1 December 2006Published online: 12 January 2007© Springer-Verlag 2007A. S. Issar ())Department of Environmental Hydrology and Microbiology,Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research,J. Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research,Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,Sede Boker, Israele-mail: Issar@bgu.ac.ilTel.: +972-2-6525778Fax: +972-2-6519411Hydrogeology Journal (2007) 15: 419–422 DOI 10.1007/s10040-006-0146-9
