Mission 1: In 1990, two in three people in East Asia and the Pacific lived in extreme poverty. By 2025, fewer than 1 in 50 did. So why did the number of extremely poor people in sub-Saharan Africa rise?

Measuring extreme poverty

• The World Bank's international poverty line is $3.00 per person per day, in 2021 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars. Anyone living on less is in extreme poverty.
• PPP converts currencies into a common unit that allows for price differences between countries.
• The $3.00 line was set in June 2025. It replaced the $2.15 line based on 2017 prices.

Global progress

• In 1990, 43.4% of the world's people lived in extreme poverty: 2,300.6 million.
• By 2025 (a nowcast: an estimate for a year without full survey data yet), it was 9.95%: 816.9 million.
• That is about 1.5 billion fewer people in extreme poverty, while the world's population grew by about 2.9 billion.

Regional progress

• Rates fell fastest in East Asia and the Pacific (67.0% in 1990, 1.7% in 2025) and South Asia (49.7% to 2.1%).
• Sub-Saharan Africa fell far less: 61.5% to 44.1%.
• The World Bank's regions were redrawn: Afghanistan and Pakistan now sit with the Middle East and North Africa, not South Asia.
• Rapid economic growth and industrial jobs, above all in China, are the usual explanation for East Asia's fall.

Rate down, number up: sub-Saharan Africa

• Sub-Saharan Africa's extreme poverty rate fell from 61.5% (1990) to 44.1% (2025).
• But its population grew from 521 million to 1,323 million.
• So the number of extremely poor people rose from 320.6 million to 583.8 million.
• Exam move: always say whether a figure is a rate (a share) or a number (a count). They can move in opposite directions.

Progress has stalled

• The UN reports that about 10% of people (some 826 million) still lived in extreme poverty in 2026, only three percentage points below 2015.
• The COVID-19 pandemic hit the poorest regions hardest. Sub-Saharan Africa returned to pre-pandemic levels only in 2025.
• About 9% of people are projected still to be in extreme poverty in 2030, even before counting the 2026 Middle East crisis: "four in five of them in sub-Saharan Africa or in fragile and conflict-affected countries".

The new global middle class

• Kharas and Hamel (Brookings, 2018) sort households by spending per person per day, in 2011 PPP dollars.
• Middle class: $11–110 a day. Below it are the vulnerable and the poor; above it, the rich.
• Their scale uses the older $1.90 poverty line (2011 prices), not the $3.00 line (2021 prices) on screen 1.1.
• By their estimate, in September 2018 "just over 50 percent of the world's population, or some 3.8 billion people" were middle class or rich: a "global tipping point".

Who is joining the middle class?

• In 2018 they estimated that "five people a second are entering the middle class", against one a second escaping extreme poverty.
• "Almost nine in 10 of the next billion middle-class consumers will be Asian", spread across China, India and South and South-East Asia.
• In 2018 they projected the middle class to reach 5.3 billion people by 2030. This is a model projection made in 2018, not a count.

Why this matters for resources

• Kharas and Hamel argue that "the middle class drive demand in the global economy".
• More people with spending to spare means more demand for food, water, energy and manufactured goods: the subject of Missions 2–5.
• Exam move: link poverty reduction to resource consumption. Rising incomes are a success for people and a pressure on resources at the same time.

Evaluating the evidence (AO3)

• Definitions decide the count. In June 2025 the World Bank put extreme poverty in 2022 at about 838 million, an upward revision of about 125 million: the combined effect of new 2021 PPPs, the new line and new survey data.
• Data are revised. The September 2026 release now puts 2022 at 868.8 million. Quote the release date with the figure.
• The middle-class figures are model estimates from a think tank and a data company, and the authors say the middle class "does not have a precise definition that can be globally applied".

Mission 2: If everyone lived like the average person in Qatar, humanity would use up a whole year's worth of nature by 4 February. If everyone lived like the average person in India, the year's supply would not run out before the year ended. What is being measured?

Ecological footprint and biocapacity

• Ecological footprint: "how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual, population or activity requires".
• Biocapacity: "the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate what people demand from those surfaces".
• Both are measured in global hectares (gha), the accounting unit of footprint accounts: a hectare of world-average biological productivity.
• Global overshoot "occurs when humanity's demand on nature exceeds the biosphere's supply". For a country, a footprint larger than its own biocapacity is an ecological deficit.

What the footprint adds up

• It adds up people's competing demands on productive areas: "food, timber, fibers, carbon sequestration, and accommodation of infrastructure".
• Carbon sequestration is the area of forest needed to absorb the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
• The carbon footprint makes up 61% of humanity's ecological footprint.

Global overshoot

• Earth Overshoot Day is the date when humanity's demand on nature for the year exceeds what Earth's ecosystems can regenerate in that year.
• In 2026 it fell on 30 July. Humanity used nature "73% faster than ecosystems can regenerate, the equivalent of living off 1.73 Earths".
• Recalculated with the latest accounts, the first overshoot day was 31 December 1972. Since then the date has moved much earlier overall, with some reversals.

Why the 2026 date moved later

• The 2026 date was six days later than the date announced in 2025. On the recalculated series, 2025 is 1 August, so 2026 sits two days earlier. Global Footprint Network says this was "the result of revised data rather than any easing of resource use".
• New data moved the date eight days later, mainly "an upward revision of the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon"; real changes moved it two days earlier.
• It still calls 2026 "the highest level of ecological overshoot ever recorded".
• Exam move: when an indicator improves, check whether the method or the data changed before you call it progress.

National footprints

• A Country Overshoot Day is when Earth Overshoot Day would fall if everyone lived like that country's residents.
• 2026 dates are based on 2024 data.
• High-income economies and Gulf oil exporters overshoot earliest: Qatar on 4 February.

Countries with no overshoot day

• If everyone lived like the average person in India, humanity would use 75% of Earth's biocapacity; in Jordan, 89%; in Bangladesh, 46%.
• 11 of the 13 countries listed with no overshoot day are in Africa or South Asia.
• Pattern: none of the 13 is high income; 10 are low or lower-middle income.

Individual footprints and scale

• Global Footprint Network offers an online Footprint Calculator for individuals.
• Footprints work at three scales: individual, national (per person and total) and global.
• A country with a modest footprint per person but a very large population can still have a large total footprint. Always say which you mean.

The limits of the footprint (AO3)

• Its own authors say "it is not a full assessment of sustainability". It "does not evaluate the level of degradation", nor the long-term effects of resource use on ecosystem productivity.
• They also note that "not all aspects of consumption can be captured", so it probably underestimates demand.
• For the 2026 country dates, 18 countries with low data-quality scores, including the Netherlands and Norway, plus a few smaller countries, were left out.
• Freshwater use is tracked by a separate measure, the water footprint: Mission 3.

Mission 3: Producing 1 kg of beef takes about 15,400 litres of water, on a world average. Is beef draining the world's rivers?

Water stress: a global pattern

• Water stress is "how much freshwater is withdrawn relative to available supply".
• World, 2023: 18%, nearly the same as in 2015.
• Pattern (2023): highest in Northern Africa (101%) and Western, Central and Southern Asia (about 68%); lowest in Oceania (3%), Latin America and the Caribbean (5%) and sub-Saharan Africa (10%).
• About 10% of the world's people live in countries with high or critical water stress.

Who withdraws the water?

• Agriculture: 72% of freshwater withdrawals, mostly for irrigation.
• It is also the least efficient sector: about $0.7 of output per m³, against $38 in industry and $115.5 in services.
• Water-use efficiency (economic output per m³ withdrawn) rose 24% between 2015 and 2023, while withdrawals stayed broadly stable.

Physical and economic water scarcity

• Physical scarcity: too little water to meet demand, as in much of Northern Africa and Western Asia.
• Economic scarcity: water exists, but the money and infrastructure to deliver it are lacking.
• The Falkenmark indicator compares renewable water per person per year: below 1,700 m³ is stress, below 1,000 m³ scarcity, below 500 m³ absolute scarcity.

Access to safe drinking water

• In 2024, 74% of the world's people had safely managed drinking water, up from 68% in 2015.
• That still leaves about 2.1 billion people, roughly one in four, without it.
• People in the least developed countries were two to three times as likely to lack safe water, sanitation and hygiene.

The water footprint: blue, green and grey

• The water footprint measures freshwater consumed or polluted:
  • blue: surface and groundwater consumed (rivers, lakes, aquifers)
  • green: rainwater consumed, mainly by crops and pasture
  • grey: the freshwater needed to dilute pollution to water-quality standards.
• World, 1996–2005: 9,087 billion m³ a year, 74% green, 11% blue and 15% grey. Agriculture made up 92%.

Consumption per person

• Water footprint of consumption, 1996–2005 averages:
  • world average: 1,385 m³ per person per year
  • USA 2,842; India 1,089; China 1,071.
• Differences reflect how much people consume and how much water each tonne of product takes where it is made. In Bolivia, meat consumption is 1.3 times the global average, but water per tonne of meat is five times the global average.
• These data are old (1996–2005). Diets have changed since: Mission 4.

Embedded water in food

• Embedded (virtual) water is the water used to produce a product.
• World averages, m³ per tonne (equal to litres per kg): beef 15,400; sheep meat 10,400; pig meat 6,000; chicken 4,300; pulses 4,000.
• Per calorie, beef's water footprint is 20 times that of cereals and starchy roots.

Embedded water in manufactured goods

• Cotton is thirsty: a 2005 study put the global average for a pair of jeans (1 kg) at about 10,850 litres.
• Industrial production makes up 4.4% of the world's water footprint, and industrialised countries have larger footprints from industrial products than developing countries.
• Calculate the T-shirt next.

Virtual water trade (spatial interaction)

• Trade in farm and industrial goods moved about 2,320 billion m³ of virtual water a year between countries (1996–2005).
• The biggest net exporters are in North and South America, southern Asia and Australia.
• Water-scarce countries depend heavily on water used abroad: Malta 92%, Kuwait 90%, Jordan 86% of their water footprint is external.
• Importing food is, in effect, importing water.

Weighing the evidence (AO3)

• For beef, the water footprint is 14,414 m³ green, 550 blue and 451 grey per tonne: 93.5% green, 3.6% blue, 2.9% grey.
• For all farm animals, feed makes up 98% of the water footprint.
• An earlier study (Pimentel) put beef at 43,000 m³ per tonne. Mekonnen and Hoekstra call such values "rough estimates" whose assumptions "have not been spelled out". Method changes the answer, and so does place: blue water from a stressed aquifer costs more than rain on wet pasture.

Mission 4: China imported about ten times as many soybeans in 2023 as in 2000. In 2025, nearly three in four came from Brazil. Why does what people eat in China matter to land in Brazil?

Land for food

• Agricultural land covered 36.9% of the world's land area in 2023.
• Arable land per person: 0.359 ha in 1961, 0.173 ha in 2023.
• With less arable land per person, more food per person has had to come mainly from higher yields.

Enough food, but not for everyone

• World food supply rose from 2,196 kcal per person per day in 1961 to 2,884 in 2013.
• Yet in 2025 an estimated 645 million people (7.8%) were chronically undernourished.
• And 2.1 billion people (25.8%) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025.
• Availability (enough food in the system) is not the same as access (enough money or means to obtain it).

Changing diets in middle-income countries

• Meat supply per person rose most, in kg per person, in middle-income Asia, 2010–2023: Viet Nam 41.0 → 60.5 kg.
• China, Viet Nam and Indonesia are upper-middle income; India is lower-middle income.
• In the high-income USA, meat supply is high but flat; in Africa it fell slightly.

China's long nutrition transition

• Mainland China's meat supply was 3.3 kg per person in 1961, 23.7 kg in 1990 and 44.0 kg in 2000.
• By 2023 it was 73.5 kg.
• Caution: FAO changed its method in 2010. The 1961–2000 figures use the old series, the 2023 figure the new one. Compare across the break with care.
• Rising incomes, urbanisation and a growing middle class (Mission 1) are the usual explanations.

From diet to animal feed

• The US Department of Agriculture (2016) describes China as "the world's largest importer of soybeans".
• It links this to "dietary shifts toward more animal proteins", which create "a strong demand for soybean meal used for livestock feed rations".
• Policy matters too: in 1995 China adopted a policy of 95% self-sufficiency for grains, and in 2016 its import tariffs were lower for soybeans than for soybean meal or oil.

A spatial interaction: China and Brazil

• FAO: mainland China's soybean imports rose from about 10.4 million tonnes (2000) to 103.4 million tonnes (2023).
• UN Comtrade: in 2025 China reported 111.8 million tonnes; Brazil supplied 73.6%, the USA 15.0% and Argentina 7.1%.
• A change in diets in one country is met by farmland on another continent.

Consequences in South America

• South America's soybean area more than doubled, from 26.4 million ha (2000) to 55.1 million ha (2019).
• "Most soybean expansion occurred on pastures originally converted from natural vegetation for cattle production".
• But across the continent "9% of forest loss was converted to soybean by 2016", and nearly half of soy-driven deforestation was in Brazil's Cerrado.
• Soy exports also bring income and jobs to farming regions. Gains and costs fall in different places.

Exam move: interrelated trends (synthesis)

• Rising incomes (Mission 1) → more meat in diets → more feed → more soy imports → more land and water used abroad (Missions 3 and 4).
• The same chain works at several scales: the household (diet), the nation (China's grain policy) and the globe (trade with Brazil).
• The guide asks how trends "are interrelated and involve spatial interactions between different places". Name the places and the flow.

Mission 5: In 2025, solar power generation grew by about 30%. In the same year, the world used more fossil fuel than ever. How can both be true?

Hydrocarbons still dominate

• Hydrocarbons (fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas).
• In 2025 total energy supply passed 600 exajoules, up 1.7% on 2024.
• Fossil fuels "continued to expand in absolute terms" and supplied 86% of total energy supply.
• Oil consumption reached 103 million barrels a day.

The changing electricity mix

• Shares of world electricity generation, 2000 → 2025:
  • coal 38.0% → 33.1%; nuclear 16.6% → 8.9%
  • wind, from almost nothing to 8.6%; solar, from almost nothing to 8.8%.
• Electricity is only part of energy use: transport and heat still run mostly on fuels.

Where the coal is burned

• In 2024 China consumed about 56% of the world's coal (25,599 of 45,851 TWh).
• In 2025 China's coal use was flat. India's rose 0.6%, well below its 10-year average of 3.6%, and US coal use rose 10%.
• Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel, so its geography shapes the geography of emissions.

Unequal energy use

• Primary energy per person, 2024: USA 76,800 kWh; India 7,813 kWh; world average 21,654 kWh.
• Pattern: Gulf oil exporters and high-income countries use the most; South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa the least.
• These are Our World in Data's figures, built from Energy Institute and US EIA data.

Access to modern energy

• In 2024, 92% of the world's people had electricity, leaving 655 million without.
• Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 86% of the people without electricity.
• 75% of people had clean cooking fuels and technologies in 2024, but only 22% in sub-Saharan Africa.

New sources of modern energy

• Modern renewables (solar, wind, hydro and modern bioenergy, not wood or dung burned on open fires) rose from 10.2% to 13.4% of final energy use between 2015 and 2023.
• Renewables supplied over 30% of world electricity consumption in 2023, but only 4.3% of transport energy.
• For remote and low-income areas, the UN highlights off-grid solar and mini-grids.

Adding, or replacing? (AO3)

• In 2025, renewables were "the largest source of TES growth for the first time outside of a recession".
• But all major energy sources reached "all-time highs for the second consecutive year". New energy is still adding to fossil fuels, not yet replacing them.
• Shares depend on method: the Energy Institute gives fossil fuels 86% of total energy supply (2025), using the physical energy content method. Our World in Data's substitution method, which counts non-fossil electricity as the fossil fuel it would replace, gives 81% (2024).
• Exam move: separate share from absolute amount, and name the method and year.

Mission 6: In March, April and May 2026, oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz averaged about 2.7 million barrels a day, down from about 20 million. Why did farmers and food importers far from the Gulf feel the shock?

Three kinds of security

• Food security: "when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food" for an active and healthy life (World Food Summit, 1996).
• Water security: "the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water" (UN-Water, 2013).
• Energy security: the IEA describes it as "reliable, affordable access to all fuels and energy sources".
• FAO's four dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability.
• All three are about reliable access, not only about how much exists.

The water–food–energy nexus

• The nexus means that water, food and energy depend on one another, so a change in one affects the others.
• Water for food: agriculture accounts for 72% of freshwater withdrawals.
• Energy for food and water: the food chain uses about 30% of the energy consumed globally (FAO, 2011 data), and energy is needed to "extract, pump, lift, collect, transport and treat water".
• Water for energy: hydropower, and cooling water for thermal power stations.

Nexus trade-offs

• Groundwater pumping: affordable pumps underpin the food security of China, India and Pakistan, but pumping "has accelerated the depletion of water resources".
• Desalination: Singapore's reverse-osmosis plants use about 3.5 kWh of energy per m³ of drinking water.
• Bioenergy: when poorly implemented, the IPCC finds, land-based mitigation brings "risks from bioenergy crops at large scale to water supply, food security and biodiversity".

Energy pathways: the Strait of Hormuz

• An energy pathway is a route by which energy moves from producer to consumer: a shipping lane, pipeline or power line.
• In 2025, an average of 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and oil products passed through the Strait of Hormuz.
• Asia is "normally the destination for the vast majority of the oil and gas that flows through the Strait".
• Bypass pipelines exist: Saudi Arabia's East–West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, and the UAE's 380 km pipeline from Habshan to Fujairah.

The 2026 disruption (geopolitics)

• The IEA reports that "the conflict in the Middle East that began on 28 February 2026 has impeded oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz".
• Flows averaged 2.7 million barrels a day in March, April and May.
• According to the IEA, the North Sea Dated crude oil price "reached an all-time high of $144 per barrel – more than double its pre-war levels" in early April.

Responses, and their limits

• On 11 March 2026, IEA member countries agreed to make 400 million barrels of emergency oil stocks available, which the IEA calls the largest release ever.
• Saudi exports from Yanbu rose from 2 million barrels a day before the war to "more than 5 million barrels per day in early June". The UAE's Habshan–Fujairah pipeline enabled it to export 1.8 million barrels a day.
• 400 million barrels ÷ a shortfall of about 17.3 million barrels a day ≈ 23 days of lost flow: stocks buy weeks, not months.
• A chokepoint has few substitutes.

From oil and gas to food

• The UN's SDG Report 2026: disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz "affected the movement of key inputs for food production – including fertilizers, sulphur, natural gas and fuels".
• This drove up "production and transportation costs across food systems".
• "Import-dependent countries are especially vulnerable".
• The nexus at work: an energy shock became a food shock.

Climate change and the nexus

• The IPCC finds that climate change, including more frequent and intense extremes, has "reduced food and water security" (high confidence).
• Climate change has slowed the growth of agricultural productivity over the past 50 years (medium confidence). Impacts were mainly negative in mid- and low latitudes, but positive in some high-latitude regions (high confidence).
• Roughly half of the world's people experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, "due to climatic and non-climatic drivers" (medium confidence).

Climate change: water for food and power

• At about 2 °C of warming, glacier loss is projected to "diminish water availability for agriculture, hydropower, and human settlements" (medium confidence).
• Changes in rainfall and river flow put some planned hydropower projects at risk of lower output.
• Adapting hydropower and thermal power stations works in most regions up to 1.5–2 °C, but less well beyond (medium confidence).

Is the nexus a useful idea? (AO3)

• Strength: it shows trade-offs that a single-sector plan misses, such as cheap power for pumps draining aquifers.
• Criticism: FAO notes the argument that it "adds relatively little to already existing integrated approaches", such as integrated water resources management.
• Priorities differ by place: Asia normally receives most Hormuz oil and gas, so for its importers, we infer, the priority is secure supply. Exporters with bypass pipelines (Saudi Arabia, the UAE) could keep some oil moving.

Mission 7: Singapore imports more than 90% of its food and makes about 95% of its electricity from imported gas. Jordan has about 61 m³ of renewable water per person a year. Which is more resource-secure, and why?

Two scarce countries, contrasting security

• Singapore: an island city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. High income: GNI per capita $81,760 (2025).
• Jordan: in Western Asia, between Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel and the West Bank. Upper-middle income: GNI per capita $5,260 (2025).
• Renewable internal freshwater per person, 2022: Singapore 106 m³, Jordan 61 m³, both far below 500 m³.
• Both import most of their food and energy.
• Resource security is reliable access to water, food and energy, not self-sufficiency.

Singapore: the Four National Taps

• The government says Singapore "is amongst the most water-stressed countries in the world".
• Local catchment: two-thirds of the land collects rain, through more than 8,000 km of drains and canals into 17 reservoirs.
• Imported water: under the 1962 Water Agreement, up to 250 million gallons a day from Malaysia's Johor River. The agreement expires in 2061.
• NEWater (treated, recycled used water, since 2002) and desalinated seawater (five plants).

Singapore: the costs of security

• NEWater and desalination are "weather-resilient" sources.
• But desalination uses about 3.5 kWh per m³, so water security depends on imported energy: the nexus again.
• Water demand "is expected to almost double by 2065".
• The UN water-stress indicator gives Singapore only 7% (2023), because it compares withdrawals with renewable supply. Singapore's problem is "limited land to collect and store rainwater".

Singapore: food

• Singapore "imports more than 90 percent of our food".
• Singapore Food Story 2 has four pillars: Diversify Imports, Global Partnerships, Stockpile and Grow Local. The aim is for local farms to supply 20% of fibre (vegetables) and 30% of protein (eggs and seafood) by 2035.

Singapore: energy

• About 95% of its electricity comes from imported natural gas.
• It aims to import about 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, from projects conditionally approved in Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam (EMA's spelling).
• Diversifying suppliers is the same strategy as for water and food.

Jordan: severe water scarcity

• Jordan's National Water Strategy (2023–2040) puts renewable water at about 61 m³ per person per year, "much less than the minimum 500 cubic metres a person needs as per global standards" (as reported by UNICEF).
• Jordan's water stress was an estimated 105.2% in 2023: it withdrew more freshwater than its available renewable supply.
• 10 of Jordan's 12 main aquifers are "being used faster than they can naturally recharge", and some are falling by more than 10 m a year.

Jordan: losses and access

• "Close to half of Jordan's drinking water is lost before it reaches people's homes", through leaks, illegal connections and damaged infrastructure.
• Most people are connected to piped water, but "around half of the population receives water only once a week".

Jordan's response: the National Carrier Project

• The Aqaba–Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project will take Red Sea water at Aqaba, desalinate it and pipe it 450 km north to Amman: 300 million m³ a year, expected by the end of 2028 (EIB, 2023).
• The government calls the National Carrier Project "one of the most important national projects", part of its Water Sector Strategy 2023–2040.
• Evaluation: it adds a weather-resilient source, but desalting and pumping water uphill need a lot of energy in a country that imports most of its energy. The EIB describes plans for solar (photovoltaic) power and an emissions cap of 3.2 kg of CO₂ per m³.

Jordan: food and energy

• Food: in 2023 Jordan produced 80 thousand tonnes of cereals, against a domestic supply of 3,539 thousand tonnes. In 1996–2005, 86% of its water footprint lay outside Jordan.
• Energy: self-sufficiency (production as a share of supply) rose from 5% (2017) to 12% (2022), so Jordan still imports most of its energy.
• New energy: renewables rose from 0.5% of electricity (2010) to 24.1% (2024): solar 16.6% and wind 7.4%.

Security is not self-sufficiency (synthesis)

• Both countries import most of their food and energy. The difference is reliability of access: Singapore's diversified, well-funded systems against Jordan's overdrawn aquifers, losses and intermittent supply.
• Security can come with a large footprint: Singapore's 2026 Country Overshoot Day was 23 February, while living like Jordanians would use 89% of Earth's biocapacity.
• Both are import-dependent: the group the UN calls "especially vulnerable" to shocks such as the 2026 Hormuz disruption.

Perspectives and priorities

• Singapore: priority on diversification, technology and stockpiles; the risk is dependence on imported energy and on partners.
• Jordan: priority on cutting losses, new supply (the National Carrier Project) and renewable electricity; the risks are aquifer depletion, cost and shocks to regional import routes.
• Scale: at household scale, Jordanians manage weekly supply; at national scale, strategies to 2040; at international scale, water and energy partnerships.

Mission 8: In 2016, China reported importing about 8.8 million tonnes of plastic waste. In 2018, it imported about 51,000 tonnes. What happened, and where did the waste go?

Where consumer waste goes

• Only about 9% of all plastic waste had been recycled (an estimate cited in 2018); about 80% had been landfilled or ended up in the environment.
• Plastic is hard to recycle: there are many types, and products can be recycled only a limited number of times.
• Disposal options: landfill, incineration, recycling, export or dumping.

Why waste crossed oceans

• "Upward of half of the plastic waste intended for recycling has been exported".
• China had imported a cumulative 45% of the world's plastic waste since 1992.
• High-income countries supplied 87% of all plastic waste exports (1988–2016). OECD countries exported plastic waste "(70% in 2016) to lower-income countries in the East Asia and Pacific".
• Chinese firms could use it profitably as raw material, "especially when ships could efficiently deliver the material".

China closes its door

• 2013: China's temporary "Green Fence" demanded much less contaminated waste.
• 2017: China announced a policy "permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste".
• The ban took effect after 31 December 2017. Researchers estimated that 111 million tonnes of plastic waste would be displaced by 2030.

Where the waste went

• Plastic waste imports as reported to UN Comtrade (HS 3915), thousand tonnes, 2016 → 2018:
  • China 8,801.6 → 51.4
  • Malaysia 287.7 → 872.5; Thailand 69.5 → 552.7; Türkiye 152.9 → 424.6.
• By 2024, Türkiye imported 677.7 thousand tonnes and Malaysia 433.5 thousand tonnes.
• Waste moved to new destinations. Exporters also had to handle more at home, where the alternatives to export are landfill or incineration.

International rules

• Basel Convention: in 2019, its parties adopted amendments for "enhancing the control of the transboundary movements of plastic waste". They took effect on 1 January 2021.
• EU: its 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan aims to "ensure that the EU does not export its waste challenges to third countries".
• These are international and regional responses to a problem that a national decision (China's ban) exposed.

Tighter rules, and their limits (AO3)

• E-waste: Basel amendments adopted in 2022 make "all electronic and electrical waste subject to the prior informed consent" procedure, from 1 January 2025.
• EU: exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries are banned from 21 November 2026 under its new Waste Shipment Regulation.
• Limits: Türkiye's imports still rose to 677.7 thousand tonnes by 2024. The rules shifted flows rather than stopping them.

E-waste

• In 2022 the world generated a record 62 billion kg of e-waste: 7.8 kg per person.
• Only 22.3% was documented as formally collected and recycled.
• Europe generated 17.6 kg per person and recycled 42.8%; in Africa, less than 1% was documented as formally collected and recycled.
• E-waste is projected to reach 82 billion kg by 2030.

E-waste flows

• 5.1 billion kg of e-waste crossed borders in 2022.
• An estimated 3.3 billion kg, 65% of it, went from high-income to middle- and low-income countries "through uncontrolled and undocumented transboundary movements".
• Control is hard because it is difficult to tell waste from used equipment that still works.
• The energy transition adds to it: e-waste from solar panels is expected to rise from 0.6 to 2.4 billion kg between 2022 and 2030.

The circular economy

• The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines a circular economy as "a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated".
• Three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution; circulate products and materials at their highest value; regenerate nature.
• It replaces the linear "take-make-waste" economy with loops: maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling and composting.
• It is a systems approach: materials and energy cycle through the economy instead of flowing through it once.

The EU's circular target

• In its Circular Economy Action Plan (11 March 2020), the EU aims to "double its circular material use rate in the coming decade".
• The circular material use rate is the share of the materials used in the economy that comes from recovered (recycled) waste.
• EU rate: 10.7% (2010), 11.2% (2020), 12.2% (2024).
• 2024 range across members: the Netherlands 32.7%, Romania 1.3%.

How effective is the circular economy? (AO3)

• Strengths: it tackles causes (design, reuse) rather than only disposal, and the Netherlands shows high rates are possible.
• Limits: the EU rate rose only 1.5 points between 2010 and 2024. Globally, e-waste "has grown 5 times faster than compliant collection and recycling since 2010".
• Scale: national bans and regional plans can shift waste elsewhere unless global rules (Basel) and design changes work together.

Mission 9: In 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that population would outrun food. Since 1961, the world's population has grown about 2.6 times. Has food per person risen or fallen?

Malthus: the pessimistic view

• Malthus (1798): "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio".
• Population grows faster than food until checks act:
  • preventive checks reduce births (for example, delaying marriage)
  • positive checks raise deaths (for example, hunger and disease).

The neo-Malthusian view: The Limits to Growth

• Neo-Malthusians apply Malthus's logic to all resources and to pollution.
• The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972): if trends in "population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years".
• But its second conclusion was that "it is possible to alter these growth trends". Even this pessimistic book left room for action.

Boserup: the optimistic view

• Ester Boserup (The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, 1965) argued the reverse of Malthus. In Turner and Ali's summary, "population growth is the central source of demand driving the intensification of cultivation".
• Pressure on land drives new techniques, such as irrigation that allows two or three crops a year and "green revolution" inputs.
• In short: necessity is the mother of invention.

Testing the views with data

• World population: 3.06 billion (1961), 8.06 billion (2023).
• World cereal yield: 1,422 kg per hectare (1961), 4,229 kg per hectare (2023).
• World food supply: 2,196 kcal per person per day (1961), 2,884 (2013), on FAO's older series.

The other side of the ledger (AO3)

• An estimated 645 million people were still chronically undernourished in 2025.
• In 2023, scientists found "six of the nine" planetary boundaries transgressed. The Planetary Health Check 2025 reported seven, adding ocean acidification.
• Higher yields came partly from fertilizer, irrigation and land conversion.
• A study of Bangladeshi villages (1950–1986) found farmers "kept pace with the demands on production", but the share of landless households rose. Its authors say the answer "depends in a large part on temporal and spatial scale".

Limits of both models (AO3)

• Malthus did not foresee technological change (the Green Revolution), trade in food, or fertility falling as incomes rise.
• Boserup assumed gradual population growth in farming communities with time to adapt; rapid growth or degraded soils can outpace intensification.
• Both focus on food. Neo-Malthusians widen the limits to pollution and resource depletion (screen 9.2).

A balanced view: resource stewardship

• Resource stewardship: managing resources carefully so that they meet present needs and are conserved for future generations.
• It builds on the Brundtland Report's (1987) idea of development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".
• It rejects both inevitable collapse and automatic rescue by technology: outcomes depend on choices.
• It works at every scale: individual consumption, national strategy (Singapore, Jordan), global agreements (Basel, the SDGs).

The Sustainable Development Goals

• In 2015, UN member states agreed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets, to be met by 2030.
• Goals on resources include no poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7) and responsible consumption and production (SDG 12).
• Their role: a shared global framework of targets and indicators that governments report against.

Progress towards the SDGs

• Of 139 targets with enough data (SDG Report 2026):
  • 15% on track and 21% making moderate progress
  • 49% moving too slowly
  • 15% have slipped below their 2015 baselines.
• Examples: extreme poverty about 10% in 2026, projected about 9% in 2030; electricity access 92% in 2024.

How useful are the SDGs? (AO3)

• Strengths: common targets and better data. The UN says that without monitoring "it would be impossible to know where progress is accelerating".
• Limits: the goals are not legally binding, and funding is falling. Official development assistance "collapsed by a record 23 per cent in 2025".
• Scale: progress depends on national action. Central and Southern Asia nearly closed its electricity gap, while sub-Saharan Africa did not.

How Unit 3 is examined (Paper 2)

• Paper 2: 1 hour 15 minutes, 50 marks. That is 40% of the grade at SL and 25% at HL.
• Section A: a structured question on each core unit (30 marks in total). Section B: an infographic or visual stimulus with structured questions (10 marks). Section C: one 10-mark extended answer from a choice of two.

What the top band rewards (Section C, 9–10 marks)

• Answers the question set: the topic and the command term.
• Examples, statistics and details are "integrated" and explained, not listed.
• Evaluation covers cause and effect, other perspectives, and "strengths and weaknesses of evidence", such as the footprint's limits or poverty data revisions.
• The conclusion is "balanced and aligned with the evidence". Maps and diagrams are annotated and support the argument.

Planning a Unit 3 answer

• Practice question (NEW): "To what extent is national resource security determined by physical resource endowment?" [10]
• For: Jordan's 61 m³ per person and overdrawn aquifers.
• Against: Singapore's wealth, technology and diversified imports; the 2026 Hormuz shock shows that pathways and geopolitics matter too.
• Judgement: endowment sets the challenge; wealth, governance and trade decide how secure a country is.

The big ideas

• Extreme poverty has fallen fast in Asia but stalled in sub-Saharan Africa; a growing middle class drives resource demand.
• The ecological footprint compares demand with biocapacity: humanity uses 1.73 Earths, very unequally.
• Water, land/food and energy: embedded water, changing diets and a fossil-dominated but changing energy mix link places through trade.
• The water–food–energy nexus: the 2026 Hormuz shock turned an energy crisis into a food-cost crisis.
• Resource security means reliable access, not self-sufficiency (Singapore and Jordan).
• Waste flows shift with policy (China's ban, Basel); the circular economy and the SDGs are responses, with limited progress so far.
• Malthus, Boserup and stewardship: weigh each view against the evidence.

Final screen. Score, the mission list ticked, and "Next: test yourself in the Verify stage" (links to the Verify quiz).