Some environmentalists warn that the planet can't handle that many people, but we may need to rethink our attitude toward population growth.
Accompanying the milestone of the human population, hitting 8 billion people precisely on 15 November 2022 hears the wake-up call for all: “Man begets, but the land does not beget.”
Indeed, the symbolism between man and land has been seeking a balance, while 8 billion pledge the overarching demands of mankind tilts the scale. As people compete with wildlife for water, food, and space, more people are placing pressure on the environment. At the same time, high population paired with climate change, according to experts, might lead to mass migration and violence in the coming decades. The affair and foresight, however, are cast upon whether food, water, batteries, or gasoline, as the world's population expands, would still fit, and whether the atmosphere could fit more.
According to a 2020 study conducted by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the non-profit organization Oxfam International, between 1990 and 2015, the richest 1% of the population, or over 63 million people, released more than twice as much carbon as the poorest half. Analysts also predict that resource demands will be especially difficult in African countries where populations are expected to grow rapidly. These are also the areas of the country that are most vulnerable to climate change and in desperate need of climate funding. And so, the relationship between climate actions and population trends is carefully tracked, displaying a subtle coincidence amid the discourse between environmentalists and the stunning demographics.
Population Trend
According to UN forecasts, the world population would peak at around 10.4 billion in the 1980s before leveling down by the end of the century. The red line is the median of multiple forecasts (some of which are represented in gray), each derived using different criteria such as fertility and mortality throughout the world.
Here’s the punchline of the trend: the number of people on Earth continues to grow, but the rate of growth is slowing.
A “Planetary Crisis”
Milestones make for good headlines, but focusing on a few large figures can conceal more illuminating trends that truly illustrate how the world has evolved since we were just 7 billion people. Here are a couple of such instances. Over the last decade, the share of individuals living in severe poverty has gradually decreased. (In 2010, 16.3 percent of the world's population lived on less than $2.15 a day, whereas currently, just 9 percent do.) And, in India and China, the two nations that have supplied the most babies over the last decade, GDP per capita and life expectancy have increased even as the population has increased. Simply put, more people are wealthier and healthier today than at any other point in history.
Similarly, when we talk about population and climate change, we need to proceed with caution. Looking at a world of 8 billion people, it is simple to infer that there are "too many" people on the globe. But how many is “too many”? And who are we talking about when we talk about overpopulation? Every year, people in the United States produce around 15 metric tons of CO2. However, per capita emissions in the eight nations where the majority of population increase will be concentrated by 2050 are a fraction of those in the United States. Each individual in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is predicted to expand by more than 120 million over the next 20 years, produces just 30 kg of CO2 each year. Emissions are caused by the consumption, not merely population growth.
As mentioned earlier, the overwhelming fear is that, whether it's food or water, batteries or gasoline, there will be less and less of them available as the global population grows. However, the amount these 8 million people consume is as crucial, meaning that governments may have a significant influence by forcing a shift in consumption patterns.
The real problem
The real problem falls on the population itself. While we continue to improve our carrying capacity, humans confront an irrevocable problem: a declining growth rate. Surprisingly, it is not the terrible threat of a large population that concerns us, but rather the unease about whether that number will be sustained and increased consistently.
“The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional,” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. There may be a subconscious fear that a large population will inhibit sustainable growth, yet it’s the other way around.
The World Population Prospects 2022 states that fertility rates have declined significantly in several countries in recent decades. Today, two-thirds of the world's population live in countries or areas with lifetime fertility below 2.1 children per woman, just about the number needed to achieve zero long-term population growth with low mortality. Also unprecedented is that from 2022 to 2050, the populations of 61 countries or areas are projected to decline by 1 percent or more because of low fertility and, in some cases, increasing immigration rates.
Let us consider the population and well-being of our planet in a tangle: Rapid population expansion makes eradicating poverty, combating hunger and malnutrition, and expanding access to health and education systems more challenging. However, fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those relating to health, education, and gender equality, will aid in lowering fertility rates and slowing global population growth.
Wake up-call, not a warning
Whether our planet can support a continuously growing population remains a subject of intense debate. Many analysts still subscribe to the hypothesis, first advanced by philosopher Thomas Malthus in a 1798 essay, that humanity's ability to provide ever-increasing resources will always be overwhelmed by the ever-increasing volume of population growth. Others, however, have argued that growing population numbers can be supported through proper and efficient resource allocation. In any case, growing populations coupled with climate change will have implications for resource availability and allocation.
I like to see it this way: “Thinking of a population as a faceless crowd or mass—you really don’t think about people’s identities or humanity in that context,” says Kimberly Nicholas, a climate scientist at Lund University in Sweden. “Part of the challenge of solving the climate crisis is trying to expand our sphere of empathy beyond just the immediate circle of our closest family and friends.”