Too Many People

Ever Increasing Numbers

The world's population is exploding.  Human numbers, 6.7 billion in 2009, are expected to reach over 9 billion by 2050, and are growing by 78 million a year. Every week 1.58 million extra people - a sizeable Canadian city - are added to the planet with nearly 10,000 arriving each hour. While almost all of this takes place in the developing world, migration is also driving growth in high consuming countries such as Canada.  Urgent measures are needed worldwide to reverse population growth to levels which can be environmentally sustained.  

The Population Institute of Canada urges leaders and the public at large to be more open and candid on the subject of population growth and its impact on poverty and the environment and to support programs (educational and tangible) directed at non-coercive population reduction,  It believes that a relentless increase in numbers is harmful to the environment and to the quality of life of Canadians, most who live in crowded, ever expanding urban centres.  Sooner or later measures will be needed to stabilize population to levels sustainable in the long term.

Population Increases: the Cost

The human species is already causing serious environmental degradation to its only habitat - Earth.  Long-denied consequences of exploding populations on ecosystems, food supplies, energy resources and the quality of life should be evident to all.  Yet population policies continue to be low priority or, as in Canada, almost non-existent. The alternatives, Nature's methods of population control - famine, disease and war - remain salient features of mankind’s existence, never far from daily media headlines.  Nevertheless, news reports almost invariably fail to link the disasters they describe with the underlying population/resource causes that typically give rise to them.  With fewer people, living in balance with nature, mankind’s horizons could stretch far into a more peaceful, harmonious future.  If parents everywhere had smaller families, wouldn’t their children be more likely to have a better future?  

GRAPH 1: WORLD POPULATION GROWTH

(Some details - e.g. Black Death effects - are not represented.)

The numbers are alarming.  On a planet inhabited by 2.5 billion people in 1950 - within the lifetimes of many alive today - there are now close to three times this number. Population is growing by 1.2% a year, with fertility at an average 2.54 children per woman, well above the 2.1 replacement level.

Although birth rates are falling, the world’s population looks set to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050. One reason is population momentum - the effects of high birth rates decades ago resulting in twice as many fertile women today as in 1970.  Even a halving of birth rates can be cancelled out by an increase in the number of potential mothers.

The population of developed countries is likely to remain almost unchanged, at 1.28 billion.  However, that of less developed regions is likely to rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050, with a tripling of numbers in some of the poorest nations.  Net migration from developing to developed countries is projected to average 2.4 million people a year.  Populations are continuing to age, with people 60+ expected to triple worldwide to 2 billion by 2050 as fertility drops to 2.02 (below the 2.1 replacement rate).

The urgency of realizing reductions in projected fertility is highlighted by the UN: "A fertility path half a child below the medium [variant projection] would lead to a population of 8 billion by mid-century.  Consequently, population growth until 2050 is inevitable even if the decline of fertility accelerates."  If the world's mothers reduced the number of children they have, by 2050 there could be 1.1 billion fewer climate changers than currently projected.

GRAPH 2: WORLD POPULATION GROWTH WITH LOWER FERTILITY

In recognition of the negative impact of population growth on the environment, the UN Population Department published (9 December 2003) longer-term world population scenarios. Its Constant-fertility Scenario extrapolation of growth to 2300 (at 1995-2000 fertility levels) shows the world reaching 134 trillion by 2300. The UN calls this as an "untenable outcome" which "clearly reveals that current high levels of fertility cannot continue indefinitely." These estimates put fears surrounding ageing populations into perspective when compared with the dire consequences of continuous population growth.

 Population Growth: A History

World population grew very slowly throughout human history, until the Industrial Revolution and the dawn of the age of fossil fuels. By 1900 it had reached 1.65 billion. It then multiplied nearly fourfold to 6 billion within a century, as cheap energy (oil) and rapidly improving technology enabled parents to have large families and for their children to survive.  During the 20th century improvements in health and welfare increased life expectancy, a trend which has continued into the 21st century as did the steady fall in average family size (falling since the 19th century).  Future population growth will be affected by life expectancy, family size, and the number of young people already born and nearing the age range of fertility.  The world’s recent rampant population growth is graphically portrayed in Graph 1 (above) while in Graph 2 one sees the effect of a reduced rate of growth.

WORLD POPULATION GROWTH IN FIGURES

*Medium variant projection UN WPP 2006

China has adopted a coercive, controversial policy of family planning, opposed by many nations including Canada, but has achieved dramatic results curbing its population, as noted in the official Xinhua News item below:

Other countries, such as Thailand, using sustained, voluntary family planning approaches of the types endorsed by the Population Institute of Canada, have demonstrated that where the will exists, numbers can be greatly reduced to the benefit of economic and social development, and enhanced environmental protection.  

N.B. For current world population statistics, including rates of population increase for each country, see World Population Data Sheet 2008 (Population Reference Bureau).  For more information on population growth in relation to poverty, the environment, youth and gender issues, see State of World Population 2008 (United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA]).

Continuous Population Growth: A Possibility?

Does anyone seriously believe that endless population growth is sustainable?  Surprisingly, yes, along with those who still argue that continuous growth in consumption is possible.  Logically however, given that the Earth is finite, global population numbers must, sooner or later, reach saturation. Well before then growth needs to be stabilized and, eventually, reversed… but how? 

Unplanned Pregnancies

"Eighty million unplanned pregnancies a year - the same number by which world population increases annually" -some people assume on hearing this that by eliminating 80m unplanned pregnancies the 80m annual pop growth would be eliminated too, but of course many prevented pregnancies would be deferred and occur as planned pregnancies in a later year so it doesn't follow.

To reduce populations family planning measures are necessary.  However, improving education and women's rights are also vital.   Access to family planning on its own is simply not enough to stabilize and reduce population in the short term.  With so many persons under 25, growth has an inbuilt momentum which will be hard to curb.  Attitudes to family size, prompting couples to have fewer children, are also needed.  Here, governments and non-governmental organizations could help promote change through traditional educational channels.

Earth’s Carrying Capacity

The mid-20th century view that technology would enable unfettered population growth (e.g. the development of unlimited, risk-free energy or the colonization of other planets) proved to be a chimera.  However, most international agencies and national governments still share a vision of sustainable development and poverty alleviation worldwide that relies on unlimited consumption-based economic expansion.  Some believe the earth can support an additional three billion people (3 times the population of India), with everyone enjoying a 'sustainable' standard of living. Others sense that an irreversible mass extinction is already under way.  The inescapable truth is that the impact on the earth's biosphere of more than nine billion people living at a desired higher standard in 2050 would be fatal to the planet, if only in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.   

Carbon Dioxide

At a 1990 per capita emission rate of about four tonnes of CO2 per person per year, the optimum global population level would have to drop to around two billion (living at an average 1990 lifestyle), if CO2 concentrations were to be stabilized in the atmosphere.

Peak Oil

Experts believe that oil and natural gas reserves have reached – or soon will – a point where more known reserves have been used up than remain.  Since the most accessible reserves have already been exhausted, future supplies will become more expensive to extract and, accordingly, more costly to consumers. To address the reality of peak oil production and the fact that fossil fuels generate dangerous levels of greenhouse gases, we must move faster into a post-fossil fuel age.  An ever-increasing human population will need increased renewable energy sources, which in turn could require vast tracts of land or sea.  However, if the numbers of people decrease steadily, while new forms of renewable energy become available, land will be freed from hyper-urbanization, the pace of environmental degradation will be reduced, and quality of life targets should become easier to achieve.

Climate Change

The need to curb man-made climate change provides a compelling reason to push for population stabilization and reduction - to reduce climate impact, it helps to reduce the number of climate changers!   The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere tracks closely the sharp rise in population beginning from the start of mass industrialization. Ecological foot printing shows that we are also overshooting by 30% the earth's biological capacity to provide renewable natural resources.  It follows that if the less-developed world is to be lifted out of poverty, global population must stabilize and, gradually, fall.

The Population Institute of Canada maintains that governments must take both separate and collective action to reduce world population, alongside individuals, and do so by voluntary, non-coercive means, for example by a Kyoto-type protocol committing countries to reductions to 1990 levels.  Since there is no international protocol aimed at stabilizing, let alone reducing global numbers, support must come from the bottom up, from citizens deciding that population policies are necessary and then being willing to push for these policies, nationally and internationally.

What can be done?

Environmentally Sustainable Population Policies.   

Just as individual countries can set policies for their own territories, so individual couples can make a difference since even low rates of natural increase, if allowed to continue, will lead to substantial and unsustainable growth over time. A population growing at 1% a year doubles in 70 years; one growing at 2% a year doubles in 35 years, and so on. Action is needed both at the national and the private level if increases are to be halted and then reversed.  

Countries with population policies.

Although worldwide fertility is falling, decline has been much less, and slower, in the developing world where large families remain the norm and where many governments are abandoning their earlier attempts to reverse population growth.  World Population Policies 2007 (UN, 2008) noted that 82 countries in 1996 had an official policy designed to lower fertility.  By 2007 that number had shrunk to 75.   Likewise, there has been a reduction in countries with policies aimed at lowering immigration, down from 78 in 1996 to just 38 in 2007.

Smaller Families: How?

By providing universal access to family planning and reproductive health services, and by offering young people sex education and information on the benefits of a reduced human footprint.  In developed countries there is an increasingly wide choice of contraceptive methods, for the most part readily available.  Elsewhere, over 200 million women in sexual relationships have no, or only limited, access to this full range.  True, some want large families, and yet large-scale, reliable surveys have repeatedly shown that at least half wish to prevent pregnancy.  The UN estimates that one third of pregnancies are unintended.

Life and Death

Every minute in the world 380 women become pregnant.  Of those, 190 did not plan to do so (UNFPA, 2002). Since every minute a woman dies through unsafe induced abortion or in childbirth (600,000 a year), these same figures suggest that half are killed by pregnancies that could have been avoided if they had had the contraceptive choices available to women in developed countries.  Nowhere is the need nor the benefit of family planning greater than in the poorer regions of the world where most of mankind resides and where too often the reality is children having children in a cycle of continuous pregnancy -- with its severe implications for the health of women -- that is an ongoing fact of life and death.

HIV/AIDS

Devastation caused by HIV/AIDS is another central argument for prevention through comprehensive reproductive and sexual health care which, regardless of the issues of numbers and sustainability, should be funded as a human right and a key intervention for improving the health of women, their partners and their children.

Individual Action is Important

More and more couples are opting for fewer children as they recognize the inextricable link between environmental survival and population containment.   Many already limit family size to the one or two children they want and can comfortably afford to raise.  However, there are also those also who care about the quality of the environment to be inherited by future generations and who see small family size as an effective way to help preserve that precious environment. 

The Population Institute of Canada joins other like-minded international organizations in urging as many couples as possible to “Stop at One or Two” children, and to engage in the larger challenge of reducing  populations as the best means possible of fighting poverty, of bringing socio-political stability to the world, and of protecting an endangered global environment.

PIC is grateful to the Optimum Population Trust, UK, (Rosamund McDougall, Professor John Guillebaud and others) for extensive research material included in this paper.