Last month, most likely on its 15th day, the world population reached some 8 billion human beings. This figure represented the doubling of our population in 47 years, and this happened without bringing about the constantly referenced famines and related disasters popularly predicted since the 1960s.
Despite 50 years of failed predictions of a dire future, the pundits still prattle on about ‘their overpopulation growth’ and how it threatens ‘our way of life’. It is a constant reference point in the popular zero-sum ‘us’ and ‘them’ worldview.
Recent population data and analysis clearly suggests that the majority of population growth is not due to births but to people living longer lives. World population grew by less than 1% per year in 2020 and 2021, the first time since the ending of the second world war and represents the lowest growth rate in more than 70 years.
While births peaked in 1990, the latest figures indicate that globally, births in 2022 were 8.5 million fewer than in 1990. The populations of at least 61 countries are now forecast to decrease by at least 1% between 2022 and 2050. The associated low fertility rates will also combine with improving healthcare to accelerate the ageing of societies.
Over the past century, world population has more than tripled in size, due largely to improvements in diet, sanitation, and medicine (especially mandatory vaccination) both of which have improved life expectancy and decreased infant mortality rates throughout the world.
Most informed analysis notes that population increases will continue (albeit at an ever-decreasing rate) until population growth reaches zero somewhere between 2080 - 2100, peaking at about 10.4 billion people. Given recent trends the date is expected to be earlier rather than later in that timeframe.
The slowdown in numbers is also significantly due to many millions of women insisting on the right to choose how many children they have and being in a position to act on that choice. For example, the average woman in Tanzania had four children in 2020, 9% down on the previous decade. Demographic projections now expect that fall to increase to 15% a decade resulting in an average of 2.3 children by 2080. There are many more such examples.
Africa overtook Asia in 2020 to become the main source and focus of population growth. More than half of the projected population increase to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries, mostly in Africa. This growth will be significantly urban and will pose significant challenges for most dimensions of basic human development, especially for infrastructure, education, health, and democracy.
While many orthodox economists argue that this slowdown in population growth poses a threat to our obsession with ever-increasing economic growth, environmentalists and social analysts welcome it in quality of life and sustainability terms.
Our traditional (and selective) angst with population growth focused primarily on food with many claiming we simply cannot/could not feed the world’s people. Until very recently, the number of the world’s hungry has declined and declined very significantly. In the years immediately past, the number has risen again due primarily to growing inequality, conflict, and climate change.
The world continues to have more than enough to feed all if only it was accessible equally to all regions, communities, and vulnerable groups. Food inequality and insecurity is the issue not population numbers.
Now our focus has shifted significantly to the impact of population growth on environment and on climate change. The story now crudely insists that a world population of 9 or 10 billion will place impossible burdens on our resource base and on planet boundaries.
In our lazy and uninformed ‘us’ and ‘them’ worldview, it is convenient to catastrophise world population growth in the context of climate breakdown. Since ‘they’ have the highest population growth numbers, then clearly ‘they’ are the problem.
Frequently the debate becomes racialised with all kinds of fantastical assertions about ‘their’ behaviour.
Yet the most basic analysis of the causes of climate change immediately highlights the massively disproportionate impact of the so-called ‘developed world’ and its population’s behaviour and demands.
In climate justice terms, we are the problem. We are the ‘overpopulated’ who consume, waste and damage in a relentless orgy of consumption, much of it absolutely unneeded and unproductive.
Human impact on the environment and on our global resource base and on damaging emissions is not about crude numbers but is about inequality, greed, and waste.
So yes, by all means let’s talk about rising population numbers and the challenges this throws up but let’s also ensure we put that growth in context. That context is one of growing international inequality on a scale hitherto unknown, profligate, and rising waste and resource misuse and the apparently insatiable greed of those already well-heeled across the world.