Let's concentrate on couple of countries to simplify the discussion: Iran, Egypt, Algeria. Water scarcity there is dominated by explosive population growth there in the last 70 years.
Water is not scarce in general, just yet. It scarce where population is exploding.
I think it's both. Local populations adapt to whatever the local reservoirs can sustain but as soon as an unexpected climate event occurs (such as unusually low rainfall in a given season), the water reserves can no longer sustain the population. See Cape Town (2015-2018), Chennai (2019), São Paulo (2014-2015), California (2012–2016 & 2020–2022), etc.
If the local reservoirs were not already at capacity, or had much more redundancy, these events would have been much easier to manage. Fewer people in high risk areas would in fact reduce the risks of water scarcity.
The world has more than enough water, food, and energy to sustain a much, much higher population. The issue is that people in the areas with a lot of resources don't want to share - that's more of an observation than a criticism. People don't have to share.
This is a commonly stated aphorism which betrays a deep ignorance of the issue. Namely the logistics. If we had Star Trek transporter technology we could in fact solve world hunger. We could take the excess bananas grown in Colombia and drop them outside the doors of hungry people in Nigeria. But we don't. It is very expensive and difficult to transport food and water from one place to another. The world has sent Africa $1.5T over the last 50 years, and yet the number of undernourished people has almost tripled in that time, from 100M to 282M as of 2022. Why?
1. Corruption. I saw this first hand. For every $1M sent into Africa, a very large proportion is confiscated by tribes, gangs, militia, and the government. You can send all the excess food in the world, but there are thousands of people between production and the hungry person who is eager to violently steal it.
2. Africa's population is booming. Thanks, in part, to food aid. Half of Nigeria doesn't have access to toilets. 40% doesn't have electricity. 25% doesn't have running water. Their fertility rate is 5.2 children per woman. We are unintentionally propping up a future catastrophe.
3. Food aid has destroyed local farming and food production. Locals cannot compete with free.
4. Equitable allocation is impossible. There is no hunger score above each person's head. Even if there were, there is no supply chain anywhere in the world which can reliably and repeatedly deliver the necessary food aid to each person in the deepest African jungles. We rely on distribution hubs which are sparse, poorly run, intermittent, and subject to temperature and humidity extremes. This means food perishes fast unless it is ultra processed and packed for durability. Basically army rations. Even those expire after some time. Meaning we can't just take the Colombian bananas and send them around the world. Only certain foods work, and they need to undergo expensive and specialised processing. This entire supply chain is far more expensive than you can imagine.
I will close with my own opinion. While the world could sustain a higher population, it is clear to me that it will result in diminishing quality of life for everyone. Crowded conditions and increasing scarcity are not aspirational goals for humanity.
This is why I favor tractors, tooling, and bulk material like steel and copper over sending food aid. Give a hungry man bread and he eats for a day, give a hungry man a tractor and a lathe and he will become a farmer/machinist/well driller.
Gangs can only want so many machine tools and steel plates, if you don't use them they are just in the way. But people who do use them and learn how to do it well become immensely valuable and beneficial to all.
I understand the logistics very well. I'm not suggesting we move the food and water to the people. I'm suggesting we move the people to the food and water. Cities like New York have a population density of 50k/mile^2. We can build lots more cities at that scale much closer to where resources are easily available.
I'm choosing to ignore a lot of the problems with people from disparate backgrounds living together, people not actually wanting to leave where they live, people not wanting to share freely available resources, etc. Those are very hard to solve problems.
I'm only saying that over-population is not the cause of resource problems. If we can solve the other problems then a lack of resources stops being a problem, which proves population size is not the root cause.
Water available in Nunavut, Canada is no help to Algeria's water crisis.
And the opposite, natural gas available in Algeria is no help to Nunavut energy situation.
This perspective dates to at least 1940, when the population was a fraction of the current size. The fantastic Charles C. Mann wrote an excellent book, The Wizard and the Prophet, about it.
Regarding water specifically, we now have multiple desalination projects of 1MM m^3/day, enough to support a city of 4MM people. They are expensive, but getting cheaper, and real (rich) polities in the Middle East are relying on them.
Why would you leave the question of whether it's true or not aside? If it's false, isn't it a good thing that not many people are ready to admit something false?
Based on what metric you declare my statement as false?
For example for Algeria:
"available resources dropping from 1500 \(m^{3}\)/capita/year in 1962 to 500 \(m^{3}\)/capita/year by 2016, far below the 1000 \(m^{3}\) threshold set by the World Bank"
Hate to see this downvoted. The definition of “overpopulated” shifts as technology improves our ability to produce and distribute resources, but we’re arguably approaching that threshold for current technology. As it stands, we’re only getting by because a small fraction of the world consumes at American levels.
Water scarcity is mostly caused by factors other than overpopulation.
Let's concentrate on couple of countries to simplify the discussion: Iran, Egypt, Algeria. Water scarcity there is dominated by explosive population growth there in the last 70 years.
Water is not scarce in general, just yet. It scarce where population is exploding.
High birth rates in low-resource localities seems like a poor survival strategy.
Unless the new people are used as an army to take the needed resources from others...
I think it's both. Local populations adapt to whatever the local reservoirs can sustain but as soon as an unexpected climate event occurs (such as unusually low rainfall in a given season), the water reserves can no longer sustain the population. See Cape Town (2015-2018), Chennai (2019), São Paulo (2014-2015), California (2012–2016 & 2020–2022), etc.
If the local reservoirs were not already at capacity, or had much more redundancy, these events would have been much easier to manage. Fewer people in high risk areas would in fact reduce the risks of water scarcity.
The world has more than enough water, food, and energy to sustain a much, much higher population. The issue is that people in the areas with a lot of resources don't want to share - that's more of an observation than a criticism. People don't have to share.
This is a commonly stated aphorism which betrays a deep ignorance of the issue. Namely the logistics. If we had Star Trek transporter technology we could in fact solve world hunger. We could take the excess bananas grown in Colombia and drop them outside the doors of hungry people in Nigeria. But we don't. It is very expensive and difficult to transport food and water from one place to another. The world has sent Africa $1.5T over the last 50 years, and yet the number of undernourished people has almost tripled in that time, from 100M to 282M as of 2022. Why?
1. Corruption. I saw this first hand. For every $1M sent into Africa, a very large proportion is confiscated by tribes, gangs, militia, and the government. You can send all the excess food in the world, but there are thousands of people between production and the hungry person who is eager to violently steal it.
2. Africa's population is booming. Thanks, in part, to food aid. Half of Nigeria doesn't have access to toilets. 40% doesn't have electricity. 25% doesn't have running water. Their fertility rate is 5.2 children per woman. We are unintentionally propping up a future catastrophe.
3. Food aid has destroyed local farming and food production. Locals cannot compete with free.
4. Equitable allocation is impossible. There is no hunger score above each person's head. Even if there were, there is no supply chain anywhere in the world which can reliably and repeatedly deliver the necessary food aid to each person in the deepest African jungles. We rely on distribution hubs which are sparse, poorly run, intermittent, and subject to temperature and humidity extremes. This means food perishes fast unless it is ultra processed and packed for durability. Basically army rations. Even those expire after some time. Meaning we can't just take the Colombian bananas and send them around the world. Only certain foods work, and they need to undergo expensive and specialised processing. This entire supply chain is far more expensive than you can imagine.
I will close with my own opinion. While the world could sustain a higher population, it is clear to me that it will result in diminishing quality of life for everyone. Crowded conditions and increasing scarcity are not aspirational goals for humanity.
This is why I favor tractors, tooling, and bulk material like steel and copper over sending food aid. Give a hungry man bread and he eats for a day, give a hungry man a tractor and a lathe and he will become a farmer/machinist/well driller.
Gangs can only want so many machine tools and steel plates, if you don't use them they are just in the way. But people who do use them and learn how to do it well become immensely valuable and beneficial to all.
I understand the logistics very well. I'm not suggesting we move the food and water to the people. I'm suggesting we move the people to the food and water. Cities like New York have a population density of 50k/mile^2. We can build lots more cities at that scale much closer to where resources are easily available.
I'm choosing to ignore a lot of the problems with people from disparate backgrounds living together, people not actually wanting to leave where they live, people not wanting to share freely available resources, etc. Those are very hard to solve problems.
I'm only saying that over-population is not the cause of resource problems. If we can solve the other problems then a lack of resources stops being a problem, which proves population size is not the root cause.
Water available in Nunavut, Canada is no help to Algeria's water crisis. And the opposite, natural gas available in Algeria is no help to Nunavut energy situation.
The good news is they don't have to. Populations of all species regulate themselves in response to availability of resources.
This perspective dates to at least 1940, when the population was a fraction of the current size. The fantastic Charles C. Mann wrote an excellent book, The Wizard and the Prophet, about it.
Regarding water specifically, we now have multiple desalination projects of 1MM m^3/day, enough to support a city of 4MM people. They are expensive, but getting cheaper, and real (rich) polities in the Middle East are relying on them.
Leaving the question of whether the statement is true or not aside, I doubt many people are ready to admit it.
Why would you leave the question of whether it's true or not aside? If it's false, isn't it a good thing that not many people are ready to admit something false?
Based on what metric you declare my statement as false?
For example for Algeria: "available resources dropping from 1500 \(m^{3}\)/capita/year in 1962 to 500 \(m^{3}\)/capita/year by 2016, far below the 1000 \(m^{3}\) threshold set by the World Bank"
the main factor is a region overpopulation.
Hate to see this downvoted. The definition of “overpopulated” shifts as technology improves our ability to produce and distribute resources, but we’re arguably approaching that threshold for current technology. As it stands, we’re only getting by because a small fraction of the world consumes at American levels.