Overpopulation is going to ebb faster than some had imagined. A new report by the University of Washington published in the Lancet predicts mankind will peak at some 9.7 billion in 2064 before declining to 8.8 billion by the end of the century.
The major factors in shrinking the population are widening access to contraception and improvements in educating women and girls. If those trends are curtailed, higher growth will ensue. For instance, although sub-Saharan Africa’s population is projected to soar, its fertility rates are forecast to decline from 4.6 births per woman in 2017 to 1.7 by 2100. If that decline in fertility should fail to materialise, the overall growth will be much greater.
Christopher Murray, the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle, the lead author of the research, said this opened up the potential for negative consequences if governments chose coercive policies over embracing immigration.
“The best solutions for sustaining current population levels, economic growth and geopolitical security are open immigration policies and social policies supportive of families having their desired number of children,” he said. “However, a very real danger exists that, in the face of declining populations, some countries might consider policies that restrict access to reproductive health services, with potentially devastating consequences. It is imperative that women’s freedom and rights are at the top of every government’s development agenda.”The report (you can find it here) models three factors: fertility (including contraception), mortality and migration. It does not account for the impacts of climate change, the loss of biodiversity, species extinction, degradation of the biosphere (soils fertility, etc.), resource shortages and problems such as wars. If, as it seems, we are on a path to a 5 C hotter world, these projections could be almost meaningless.
4 comments:
Like you, I suspect increased access to birth control and education will at best be minor factors in population decline. Historically, war, famine and pestilence have been much more significant contributors and I see no reason to expect that to change for the better.
Cap
It is an interesting report, Cap, but it treats life on Earth as though we were bottled up inside a giant terrarium. It's worth a read but you quickly discern the narrowness of focus and all the potential factors that may, in some cases will, drive population decline that are omitted in its conclusions.
" . . . life on Earth as though we were bottled up inside a giant terrarium."
You mean we aren't :?:
As to war, famine and pestilence, the Twentieth Century saw half a billion lost to those and the world population tripled since my birth.
The reference to terrarium was meant to indicate a tightly controlled and isolated environment, Toby. It's a place where order prevails, not chaos. No, our biosphere is no terrarium.
Your mention of the 20th century is unclear. To my mind the 20th century was much like all previous centuries only with great technological and scientific advancements. All bets are off for the Anthropocene as we're beginning to experience it now.
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