According to a recent report by the Washington, D.C. based nongovernmental organization Population Action International, world population is growing eight times as fast as cultivated land area, and the food security of hundreds of millions of people may be at risk early in the next century. Based on the United Nations low and high population projections for the year 2025, the study predicts that 1 to 3 billion people will be living in 26 to 37 countries that, by then, will have only 0.07 hectares of arable land per capita. By 1990, the number of countries with scarce arable land had risen to nine. By 2025, however, at least 17 additional countries are projected to join the ranks of countries suffering from a scarcity of arable land, among them some of the world's poorest nations such as Bangladesh, Mauritania, Somalia, and Yemen. The study also reports that fully 12 of 29 countries projected as land scarce in 2025 will also be classified as water scarce, with less than 1,000 cubic meters of renewable fresh water available per person for agricultural, industrial, and domestic purposes each year.
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