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Does population matter?

Matilda Lee | 29.05.11

From Paul Ehrlich, to Jonathon Porritt, David Attenborough and James Lovelock, greens have long campaigned against overpopulation, pinning it as the issue underlying resource scarcity, food insecurity and climate change.

‘Most population growth around the world is happening where soils are eroding and water tables are falling. The number of failing states [countries unable to provide public services or without legitimate authority] we have in the world today is disturbing - 16 of the top 20 have high rates of population. I don't think that's a coincidence,’ says prominent environmentalist Lester Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute.

So when the UN recently revised its world population predictions upwards to reach 10 billion by 2100 instead of stabilising at just above 9 billion by 2050, there was further cause for alarm. We are living in a century of extreme population growth. In October this year, the global population is expected to pass 7 billion and shockingly, this is only a dozen years after it reached 6 billion.

How should we tackle the problem? Paraphrasing a former US President slightly, 'It's women, stupid'. 

Environmental writer Fred Pearce, in his book Peoplequake: mass migration, ageing nations and the coming population crash, argues that women have diffused Ehrlich's 'population bomb' themselves by having fewer children. Since Ehrlich wrote his influential book more than 40 years ago, the world's women, given greater say in their own fertility, have collectively started to have fewer children. The world average is down from 5 or 6 children per woman 40 years ago to 2.6 on average today.  As Pearce found, reporting from Bangladesh to Italy, if women are forced to choose between having children and working, they will choose to work.

The recent UN report highlighted Africa as the area where population growth forecasts are the greatest. While many previously high growth rate countries, including Iran, Bangladesh, Mexico and Thailand have reduced birth rates, as a result of greater access to information and birth-control methods for women, the population of Africa could more than triple in this century - from 1 billion to 3.6 billion.

It is not only a question of access to contraception, researchers have found. In a Harvard study in Zambia, it was found that only when women had greater autonomy to decide whether to use contraception did they have fewer children. So family planning clinics and free contraception is a start, but not enough.

Campaign for women

What does this mean for the many campaigns that focus on reducing population? Put women on top and follow it with a focus on justice and equality in using the world's resources.

While it would not be impossible to live in a world with 10 billion, life for many would be extremely difficult. Author, farmer and campaigner Colin Tudge argues in his new book Good Food for Everyone Forever: A people’s takeover of the world’s food supply that taking the 4.6 billion hectares of land around the world that can reasonably be called agricultural, we could easily feed a population of 9 billion. It's the mega-industrialised, profit-driven farming models that need to be scrapped if we're really going to do it. It is food injustice, not food scarcity that will stop us from feeding the world's growing population.

In Pearce's view, the real problem is consumption. The figures he provides are something to chew on: the world’s richest half-billion people - about 7 per cent of global population – are responsible for 50 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. The poorest 50 per cent, on the other hand, are responsible for just 7 per cent of emissions.By focusing on population, we somehow defer blame for the world's problems from us to 'them'.

Yet in many, many ways population matters. Our planet may become unfit for humankind if current population and consumption trends continue unchecked. Women's inequality is a major driving force behind this. 

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