The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) in Washington, D.C. recently released its latest estimates of global, regional and >country population numbers and population growth projections. They are sobering. Our world is estimated to currently host 7.4 billion people, and this is projected to rise to 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.9 billion in 2050.
Don’t blame it on ‘them’ By any reckoning 9.9 billion is large, and these global numbers naturally make many people apprehensive about things like the earth’s carrying capacity and environmental sustainability. Even if the discussions around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) skirt the ‘population question’, there is no shortage of groups and agencies and private conversations virtuously horrified by the prospect of so many more of ‘them’. Because of course, it is ‘them’ that mess up the earth, never us.
Sometimes, the ‘them’ refers to the poor and the uneducated in one’s own backyard (in India, for some reason, it is the apparently unbridled fertility of domestic workers that we most frequently shake our heads over); at other times, it’s the multiplying hordes in other parts of the world. These days, the disaggregated figures on population growth lead to the greatest finger-pointing at Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa. And there is a correspondingly large industry devoted to spreading contraception in that region.
Giving African women (and men) the same access to voluntary birth control that those in most other parts of the world have is of course a good idea from the point of view of women’s reproductive health and rights. But as far as the relationship between population and the SDGs goes, perhaps the gaze should turn elsewhere.
It is true that PRB estimates that Africa’s population will reach a whopping 2.5 billion by 2050. Asia’s will rise to 5.1 billion and Europe’s will fall from 740 million to 728 million. Asia will look gross, but it is already very large and the expected increase is of only (only!) 900 million. It is Africa that will be bounding forward in growth terms – almost doubling its numbers between now and 2050.
So it is Africa that is the most worrying, at least a first glance. But only at first glance. The PRB factsheet has some other very interesting data that should divert us from Africa’s population size and growth to focus a little more about what is happening elsewhere. Take just two examples below.
One of the central reasons for caring about population size is because it affects population density, and population density is a good measure of the pressure on resources; in Malthusian language, it is a very good indicator of the strains on food production. But the latest figures suggest that many of the countries in Africa are not really ‘over-populated’ by this measure: population densities in several of these countries are around or less than 500 persons per square kilometre of arable land. Compare this to figures of closer to a thousand in Asia (China: 1296; India: 846) or West Asia (Saudi Arabia: 1033; Jordan: 3543) or Latin America (Venezuela: 1149; Colombia: 2899) or even many of the rich island states (U.K.: 1047; Japan: 2958; South Korea: 3396).
If malnutrition and undernutrition levels are high in Africa (and they are), it is not because of population impacting the land available for agriculture.
A second frequent reason for disquiet about population is for its presumed impact on the environment. Population size is an important factor in the old I = f(PAT) equation which states that environmental impact is a function of population, affluence and technology. Without going to the trouble of quantifying these components, the PRB data on one important variable are telling. The factsheet tells us what percent of total energy consumption in a country comes from renewable resources.
Sustainable consumption The African countries, especially the Sub-Saharan ones, are the least blameworthy in this respect — the majority of them get 75 per cent or more, often as high as 90 per cent or more, of their energy from such renewable resources. Compare this to the alarmingly low figures (in spite of much publicity and advocacy around the question of carbon emissions) for the rest of the world — a mere 4 per cent of energy use in the U.K. is from renewable sources; in Russia, it is 3 per cent, in Australia 8 per cent, in the U.S. 8 per cent. Ninety per cent or more of the energy consumption from this second group comes from non-renewable sources. If campaign promises are to be believed, a Republican President in the U.S. will mean even less interest in reducing dependence on coal and other carbon spewing non-renewables.
African women need access to good contraceptive services for reasons of autonomy, health and human rights. But the population growth in that region, even as it outpaces every other part of the world, cannot be blamed for the food or environmental problems of Africa or the rest of the world.
Alaka M. Basu, a professor in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University, is currently Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation.
