Working Paper

Globalization and Scarcity: Multilateralism for a world with limits

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Globalization has improved the living standards of hundreds of millions of people – but growing resource scarcity means it risks becoming a victim of its own success.

Left unaddressed, scarcity of food, energy, water, land and other key ‘natural assets’ has the potential to trigger intensifying zero sum competition between states – in the process, increasing poverty, state fragility, economic instability, inflation, and strategic resource competition between major powers.