Population growing pains?

A new report suggests that world population will rise by 45 per cent by 2050. What’s the problem with that?

The 2004 World Population Data Sheet produced by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington says there will be very rapid population growth in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but the population of Europe and Japan will fall (1). ‘Some experts question whether Earth can even carry today’s population at a “moderately comfortable” standard for the long term, let alone three billion more’, says environmental economist Herman Daly (2).

The implication is that all these extra people will be an unmanageable burden, as the number of mouths to feed outstrips available food, shelter and other resources. Yet there is no simple relation between population and prosperity. For example, industrialising societies usually experience rapid population growth alongside economic growth; then a demographic transition occurs where birth rates fall to match the fall in death rates, and population stabilises. In fact, this demographic transition has started already, and world population is expected to more or less stabilise around mid-century (3).

Recent history suggests that pessimism about population growth is misplaced. The rise in population is largely due to falls in infant mortality (which has halved in Africa in the past 50 years) and longer life expectancies (up from 41 years to 65 years across the developing world since 1950). This has been mirrored by the decline of most infectious diseases (the major exception being AIDS) and increases in the amount of food available. The application of existing best practice in agriculture could feed many more people than are ever likely to live on Earth. That doesn’t mean that there are no problems - infant mortality in Africa is still 90 per thousand live births, compared with seven in North America and Europe. But the solution to these problems is not fewer people but more productive and better organised socities. People are far more likely to be the solution to problems than the cause of them.

(1) 2004 World Population Data Sheet, Population Reference Bureau

(2) World faces population explosion in poor countries, Guardian, 18 August 2004

(3) Human Population: Fundamentals of Growth, Population Research Bureau

Too many people?, by Rob Lyons

Worth reading: Population and Development, by Frank Furedi (for more details, see his website at FrankFuredi.com