from Sunday Herald, 23 October 2011
It’s going to happen, the United Nations says, at the end of this month. Somewhere in the world on the 31 October, a baby will be born that for the first time in history will bring the planet’s population to seven billion.
The precise day, of course, is little more than an educated guess. But the undeniable prospect of the world reaching seven billion will generate a whole new flurry of international arguments about whether we can feed and house so many people without destroying the planet.
The UN will this week be releasing a new report on the state of the world’s population, starting a countdown to the 31 October. There will be those who say that that the “population bomb” will explode and engulf us all; and there will be those who argue that it has been defused and we should all be OK.
Whatever view you take, there is no doubt that an expanding population creates challenges. The world first reached one billion people in 1804, and it took 123 years to get to two billion in 1927.
But then the growth accelerated, with six billion being reached in 1998 (see table below) and seven billion just 13 years later. In May the UN predicted a global population on 9.3 billion by 2050 and more than ten billion by the end of the century.
The predictions are where the disputes began. Since the Reverend Thomas Malthus started warning of the dire consequences of Britain’s burgeoning population two hundred years ago – wrongly, as it turned out - there have been deep disagreements about how fast the population will expand, and what the impact will be.
The arguments flared up after the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ in 1968, and they have started again in recent years as evidence has mounted of the damaging effect of pollution on the climate. At almost every public meeting about climate change, the population issue is raised.
Sometime the warnings are, well, Malthusian. The Gaia scientist, James Lovelock, has argued that there will be “death on a grand scale from famine and lack of water” as the world’s population drops to a billion or less by 2100.
Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh, has long been worried about population growth. “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause unless we limit population,” he says. “People don’t like talking about population control, but we have to.”
He argues that the number of humans is “out of balance” with the natural world, and that almost every country is over-populated. He advocates reducing Britain’s population, but stresses he is not suggesting a cull.
Others, however, take a more optimistic view. Fred Pearce, a science writer and author of the book, ‘Peoplequake’, points out that half of the world’s women are now having two or less children.
“If you are over 45, you have lived through a period when the world population has doubled. No past generation has lived though such an era – and probably no future generation will either,” he says.
“But if you are under 45, you will almost certainly live to see a world population that is declining – for the first time since the Black Death almost 700 years ago.”
Pearce argues that the education of women coupled with rising standards of living and reduced infant mortality is driving down the birth rate, meaning that ‘peak population’ may not far away.
“Women have always wanted freedom, not domestic drudgery and the childbirth treadmill,” he says. “And, now that most of their babies survive to adulthood, they are having it.”
The problem is not over-population, but over-consumption by the rich, industrialised nations like Britain and the US, Pearce contents. He goes further: some of the demands for population control are tainted by racism.
“You can see it as underpinning the notion that it's people in countries far away, with dark skins, breeding, that are damaging planetary systems and are causing greenhouse gases emissions,” he says. “Is there racism in that? I suspect there is a bit.”
That is a criticism that advocates of population control would reject. But there is still a clear divide between those who want to put population growth at the top of the political agenda, and those who don’t.
“People tend to overlook population when talking about climate change,” said Roger-Mark De Souza from Population Action International in Washington DC. “Yet, rapid population growth expands and exacerbates people’s vulnerability to climate change impacts.”
He says that there are 26 “hotspot” countries with rapid population growth and low resistance to climate change. “Ensuring women have access to the contraceptives they want, starting today, is the first step toward creating healthier lives for the seven billion, and protecting our planet for those yet to come.”
Development charities like Oxfam and Christian Aid, however, argue that there is too much of a focus on population. Though it is part of the challenge to shift the world away from climate pollution, it is given “disproportionate attention”, said Alex Cobham, the chief policy adviser with Christian Aid.
“The balance of current population growth occurs in those countries where consumption is lowest, that is in poorer countries. By far the greatest increases in unsustainable consumption occur in rich countries like the UK,” he pointed out.
The solution was not to seek to limit “fertility choices” in developing countries, as that would just impose an unfair burden on some of the world’s poorest people, Cobham argued. “The fundamental obstacle to sustainable consumption is not population growth, but inequality.”
Population trends do vary dramatically in different parts of the world. The UN has identified 58 “high fertility” countries where populations are still growing fast, including 39 in Africa, nine in Asia, and 10 elsewhere. Africa’s population is predicted to more than treble, rising from one billion now to maybe 3.6 billion in 2100.
But in Western Europe, Japan and Russia, the main worry is low birth rates, prompting some countries to offer financial incentives to have children. The population of Europe as a whole is projected to peak around 2025 at 0.74 billion and decline thereafter.
In the world’s two most populous nations, India and China, birth rates are also slowing. Demographers say India's fertility rate — now at 2.6 children per woman — should fall to 2.1 by 2025 and to 1.8 by 2035. China’s population of 1.34 billion is expected to start shrinking around 2027 and could be smaller in 2050 than it is today.
The US has one of the highest population growth rates of the industrialised nations. Though its fertility rate is marginally below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman, its population has been slowly rising because of immigration.
For the executive director of the UN Population Fund, former Nigerian health minister Babatunde Osotimehin, the build-up to the world reaching seven billion is a call to action. He wants teenage girls to stay at school and become empowered to control the number of children they have.
“It's an opportunity to bring the issues of population, women's rights and family planning back to centre stage," he told Associated Press. “There are 215 million women worldwide who need family planning and don't get it. If we can change that, and these women can take charge of their lives, we'll have a better world.”
The world’s growing population
year / world population
1804 / 1 billion
1927 / 2 billion
1959 / 3 billion
1974 / 4 billion
1987 / 5 billion
1998 / 6 billion
2011 / 7 billion
2025 / 8 billion (predicted)
2083 / 10 billion (predicted)
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