World Population guide
The optimum strategy for restraining future population
growth is to overcome financial and cultural
impediments to the provision of sexual and reproductive
health services. Such recognition of women’s rights is
however no substitute for tackling contemporary habits
of excessive consumption. A lower population trajectory
will relieve pressure on environmental limits but is far Cambodian children © Thnam
from sufficient as a vision for sustainable use of our Kanha Net
finite resources.
updated July 2010
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Data Collection Environmental Limits
Global Projections Resource Depletion
Demographic Transition Food, Water and Energy
Population and Development Cairo Consensus
Economic Pressures Family Planning Obstacles
Data Collection
Accurate population data is a vital ingredient of social and economic policy.
Governments cannot make plans for schools, hospitals and housing without knowledge of
the national demographic profile – the size of the population, where people live, how old
they are, and the net effect of births, deaths and migration.
Compiling this essential information is far from straightforward in the developing world.
The conduct of a census requires professional management, a very large number of
enumerators, and skilled interpretation of the results.
International agencies often provide generous financial and
logistical support. Nigeria is one example of a country which
has had consistent difficulty in delivering reliable census results,
doubly unfortunate in that it is Africa’s most populous nation.
The UN strives to ensure that data has value in the global as
well as national domain. Its 2010 World Population and Problems with
Housing Census Programme has engaged the cooperation of counting in Nigeria ©
every country to complete at least one census between 2005 and OneWorld TV
2014.
Every two years the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs publishes its World Population Prospects, essentially a “revision” of previous
projections. Based on the latest national census results and other surveys, this is the
acknowledged source of global population data.
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Global Projections
Latest figures report a global population of 6.8 billion in July 2009, rising each year by
78 million. This total has doubled since 1965 and is projected to rise to 9.1 billion in
2050.
By 2050, India (1.7 billion) will have overtaken China (1.4 billion) and together these
two countries will account for over a third of the global population. The largest rate of
increase will be in Africa where numbers are expected to double to 2.0 billion. In more
than 20 African countries, the total fertility rate (TFR - the number of children predicted
for each woman) is over five.
There is a more positive interpretation of the data. The rate of annual
population growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.4% in 1963
and the number of births is falling each year. Global TFR has fallen
dramatically from 6.0 to 2.6 in this period, largely thanks to the
introduction of family planning programmes. In almost all richer
countries, fertility has fallen below 2.1, the approximate rate for
natural replacement. Populations in 45 countries are expected to be Indian population
lower in 2050 than at present. set to overtake
China ©
World Population Prospects concedes that the two key variables in [Link]
population projections, life expectancy and fertility, are fraught with
uncertainty over such a long period. For example, the impact of HIV and AIDS could not
have been anticipated on a 40 year timescale. Life expectancy in Southern Africa is
unlikely to be restored to its 1990s level until 2045.
The report also acknowledges that a relatively modest error of 0.5 in the fertility rate
would be significant, creating lower and upper estimates of 8.0 and 10.5 billion for the
2050 projection. This sensitivity is an important motivation for strategies to restrain
population growth.
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Demographic Transition
To stereotype sub-Saharan Africa with the custom of large family sizes is to turn a blind
eye to history. Most people now living in richer countries will discover similar fecundity
in their own families by tracing back just a few generations.
The reasons might have had much in common with contemporary Africa – poverty and
high child mortality, lack of education or opportunities for women, dependence on
children for economic support and the unavailability of any form of contraception.
The evolution to lower fertility and mortality rates experienced in developed countries
correlates with their improving economic circumstances. This “demographic transition”
reflects how greater choice in work, education and consumption lessens the appeal of
large families, narrowing the gap between birth and mortality rates. The consequence is a
relative bulge in those of working age, before eventually
leading to an older population profile.
The current global picture illustrates this demographic
model. In the 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs),
40% of the population is aged under 15; by contrast in
developed countries there are now more people over the
age of 60 than in this younger group.
The UN’s population projections assume that the
demographic transition will be reproduced in the LDCs, School in Burundi © Judith
with fertility rates falling from 4.4 to 2.4 by 2050. They Basutama / IRIN News
also imply a relatively quick transition, as happened in
South Korea and Sri Lanka.
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Population and Development
There is undoubtedly strong correlation between high national fertility rates and measures
of poverty. Less clear is whether it is economic growth or improved access to family
planning that stimulates a demographic transition. Is poverty the cause of high fertility or
a symptom?
Many economists assert that high population growth explains why relatively strong
economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990 has failed to deliver the desired
progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. A typical annual growth rate in
this period of 5% is effectively halved by typical population growth of 2.5%,
undermining social investment.
Development practitioners might challenge this simplistic formula, pointing out that
poverty reduction depends on effective policy interventions as much as the cash available
in government coffers.
The quandary has been encapsulated by an Indian politician, Dr Karan Singh, who in
1974 coined the phrase that “development is the best contraceptive.” Many years later he
mused whether it should be inverted to “contraception is the best development.”
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Social and Economic Pressures
Other characteristics of demographic transition offer much more certainty in their
economic consequences. Projections of the “dependency ratio” are particularly valuable.
This compares the numbers of available workers in a population with the young and old
who are dependent on them, both directly and through government services funded by
taxation.
This measure is causing considerable concern in mature economies, where health and
pension provisions are inadequately resourced to support ballooning numbers of older
people, living ever longer. The rational solution is to
import migrant labour from countries in surplus. But
politicians shrink from such options, preferring to
provide tax incentives to encourage women to have
more children.
The presence of such incentives in influential countries,
including France, Germany and Japan, seems to
contradict the message of those who advocate that
population growth must be reduced in poorer countries.
Migrant labour can influence
A more favourable dependency ratio occurs in the demography © Liz
earlier stage of the demographic transition during which Highleyman / Independent
the population profile is dominated by active adults. Media Center
This is sometimes described as the “demographic
dividend” and has been associated with the tiger economies of East Asia.
Hopes that African countries are poised to take their turn are tempered by worries about
poor infrastructure, governance and education. Very high rates of youth unemployment
persist in Africa and parts of the Middle East. The demographic dividend is a fleeting
opportunity which can quickly overturn into social unrest.
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Environmental Limits
Animal species have sustained vastly longer tenancy of the biosphere than humans,
completing countless demographic cycles in their various ecological homes. These cycles
typically follow a pattern of “boom and bust.” Rampant reproduction encounters a
threshold known as “carrying capacity” beyond which the environmental resources
essential to that species deteriorate, leading to a sharp decline in its population.
Humans have greater capacity to control their own
destiny. How to defeat nature’s demographic template
whilst respecting humanity’s special quality of altruism
is one of the great questions of our time.
The answer may have much less to do with future
population growth than is popularly supposed. The more
fundamental concern is our global addiction to a Are we smarter than the
measure of economic success which rewards animal kingdom? © Piet van
consumption of resources rather than efficiency of their der Poel
use. Economic “growth” is arguably far more damaging to the planet than population
growth, yet is relentlessly pursued.
Environmental impact is determined by global population, its economic capacity to
consume resources, the technology available and the choices made. It is only the extreme
inequality of consumption by our current population that prevents more chronic
disruption of our ecosystem than has already occurred. More than half of the world’s
population lives on less than $2.50 per day.
If everyone enjoyed the consumption pattern of modern industrialised countries, the
current world population would already greatly exceed the carrying capacity of the planet
for human beings. The immediate priority is to find a narrower and less damaging range
of consumption in which the less fortunate can live in dignity but which in aggregate
remains within the earth’s limits.
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Scapegoat for Resource Depletion
Much of the ecological damage inflicted on the earth is irreversible and cannot be blamed
on citizens as yet unborn. Greenhouse gases already emitted will
contribute an estimated 1.3 degrees of global warming, a serious threat
to agriculture and water management. Many fish stocks have collapsed
beyond recovery. The unprecedented rate of species extinction,
estimated to be 1,000-10,000 times the natural rate, has an
unpredictable impact on biodiversity and its value to our survival.
We cannot unwind our demographic history nor undo medical Bluefin threat:
advances which enable us to live longer. “Overpopulation” is a population or
contradictory concept because it refers to our living selves. greed? © WWF-
Canon/M.
Any intervention to reduce future population growth can certainly Sutton / WWF
enhance our prospects of sustainability, but will be of relative International
insignificance to a remodelling and redistribution of global consumption. Reluctance to
acknowledge that population is only part of the problem tends to allow root causes of
ecological failure to escape attention.
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Food, Water and Energy
For example, a 2009 conference billed as “how to feed the world in 2050” by the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) generated much media anxiety that
overpopulation will impede strategies to achieve the necessary 70% increase in food
production. In the event, the FAO declared itself to be “cautiously optimistic” whilst
stressing the “need for a proper socioeconomic framework to address imbalances and
inequalities.” Feeding over a third of the world’s grain to animals, largely for meat
production, may be one of the imbalances to address.
Water scarcity induces similar despair about future human needs. But the 2006 UN
Human Development Report observed that “there is more than enough water in the world
for domestic purposes, for agriculture and for industry.... scarcity is manufactured
through political processes and institutions that disadvantage the poor.”
Likewise the exponential demand for energy that aggravates climate change projections
is caused by the extremes that we tolerate. The WorldWatch Institute’s State of the World
2010 records that “the world’s richest 500 million people (roughly 7 percent of the
world’s population) are currently responsible for 50 percent of
the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest 3
billion are responsible for just 6 percent.” Most population
growth will occur in developing countries.
There is natural concern about new carbon dioxide emissions
that will be released in providing electricity to 1.6 billion people
who currently manage without it. But the World Bank’s World What if everyone
Development Report 2010 succinctly observes that these new owned a car? ©
emissions could be offset by persuading 40 million US families Greenpeace UK
to exchange their Sports Utility Vehicles for saloons matching current European fuel
efficiency.
Future population growth will indeed aggravate all aspects of sustainability. Deploying it
as a smokescreen for our incompetence in the equitable management of finite resources
will not improve our chances.
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Cairo Consensus
The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) has proved
to be a decisive influence on population policy. Known as the Cairo Consensus, the ICPD
20-year Programme of Action clarified that population concerns are best addressed by
redoubling commitment to national poverty reduction plans, as opposed to dedicated
population policies and targets.
In particular, it recognised that women’s rights to education and reproductive health
provision are the prerequisite for fertility reduction. A
target of universal access to these services by 2015 was
established.
Although implementation and funding of the Consensus
has been slower than planned, it has contributed to the
falling rate of global population growth. Global use of
contraception is steadily increasing and the rate of
unplanned pregnancies had fallen to 55 per 1,000
women of reproductive age in 2008. Education for girls
Education goals, too, have made considerable progress. According to the 2010 UN
Millennium Development Goals report: “there were 96 girls for every 100 boys enrolled
in primary school, and 95 girls for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary school” in
developing countries.
Nevertheless, 215 million women in developing countries, including 22% of married
women in Africa, remain in urgent need of family planning services.
Advocates of the Cairo Consensus increasingly promote their goals by reference to
environmental pressures, especially climate change. They point out that keeping
population growth in check through empowerment of women is a highly cost effective
strategy for emission reductions.
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Obstacles to Family Planning
Campaigners for funding and commitment for the 2015 goal have had to contend with the
most sensitive issues in international development. The first obstacle has been the narrow
dividing line between voluntary family planning and coercion. Fears have stemmed
largely from the history of over-enthusiastic birth control policy in India in the 1970s and
1980s.
The one-child policy imposed by China since 1979 is explicitly coercive and claims to
have averted 400 million births. A high price has been paid in the denial of human rights
in family life and in the widespread tolerance of sex-selective abortion. Chinese men
outnumber women by 32 million in the under-20 age group alone. Similar distortion is
found in India.
Although the Cairo Consensus has provided reassurance about coercion, it has been
unable to overcome the further obstacle of religious conservatism. The Catholic Church,
which claims over 1.1 billion followers, resolutely opposes
all forms of contraception, despite evidence of the
consequent human distress.
In the Philippines, a staunchly Catholic country, there are 1.4
million unwanted pregnancies each year of which a third end
in abortion. On a visit to Cameroon in 2009, the Pope
suggested that the use of condoms was an inappropriate
response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.
Islamic teachings generally adopt a pragmatic interpretation
of the Koran, supporting the right of women to space their
children through use of family planning within marriage. Population control at a
Government programmes in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and price in China © Teachers
especially in Iran, have been praised for their success in Without Borders
reducing high fertility rates.
The religious right in the US has been successful in imposing its doctrine at the highest
level. The Bush administration withheld contributions of $230 million from the UN
Population Fund (UNFPA). Through legislation known as the Global Gag rule, it also
prevented US aid agencies from supporting any developing country organisation whose
programmes provided support for abortion.
One of President Obama’s first acts was to repeal the Global Gag rule. Normal relations
with UNFPA have also been restored. The change of atmosphere may encourage political
leaders, aid agencies and environmental groups to be more forthcoming in their views
about population issues. A veil of caution has hung over the subject for too long.
