Israel-Gaza War Is Just One Example of How Conflict Is the Biggest Driver of World Hunger

Nov 10, 2023 | David Dodwell
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In 1798, Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning that unchecked population growth put unsustainable pressure on food supplies, and that poverty, starvation and other miseries would follow. There were less than 1 billion people in the world then. With the world’s population surging past 8 billion, few theories can have been proven so comprehensively wrong. But what Malthus represented over 200 years ago is an unstaunched anxiety over poverty – in particular, food security. Many would also blame unchecked population growth for some of our more recently recognised scourges, such as climate change, environmental degradation and pandemics.