(United Nations) We will officially be 8 billion people on Earth on November 15, is that too much? Not necessarily, answer the experts, who rather warn about the overconsumption of the planet’s resources by the richest part of humanity.
Posted yesterday at 11:20 p.m.
“Eight billion is a major milestone for humanity”, notes the head of the United Nations Population Fund Natalia Kanem, welcoming the increase in life expectancy and the drop in infant mortality. and maternal.
“However, I realize that this is not a moment necessarily celebrated by everyone. Some are worried about an overcrowded world, with far too many inhabitants and insufficient resources to live on, ”she adds, calling not to be “afraid” of a number.
So, are there too many of us on this Earth? This is the wrong question, according to many experts.
“Too much for whom? Too much for what? If you ask me if I’m too much, I don’t think so, ”replies Joel Cohen, from Rockefeller University in New York, to AFP.
“I view the question of how many people the Earth can support as a two-sided question: natural constraints or limits, and choices made by humans.”
“Gluttons”
Choices that mean that we consume far more biological resources (forests, fish, land, etc.) than the Earth can regenerate each year and that this overconsumption, particularly of fossil fuels, always leads to more CO emissions.2 responsible for the warming.
In terms of resources, it would take 1.75 Earth to meet the needs of the population in a sustainable way, according to the NGOs Global Footprint Network and WWF.
On the climate side, the latest report by UN climate experts (IPCC) noted that population growth is indeed one of the major drivers of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, but less so than economic growth.
“Often we are stupid. We lacked vision. We are gluttons. This is where the problem and the choices lie”, insists Joel Cohen, calling despite everything not to consider humanity as a “plague”.
“Our impact on the planet is determined much more by our behavior than by our numbers,” adds Jennifer Sciubba, researcher in residence at the Wilson Center think tank.
“It’s lazy and damaging to continue to highlight overpopulation,” she continues, pointing to the risk that rich countries, instead of changing their own behavior, blame the problem on developing countries that drive population growth. .
Whereas if everyone lived like an inhabitant of India, humanity would only need 0.8 planets each year, compared to more than 5 planets for an inhabitant of the United States, according to the Global Footprint Network and WWF.
Too numerous or not, these 8 billion people are already there, and the population will continue to grow, with 9.7 billion projected in 2050 by the UN, which notes that due to the large number of young people, a very much of this growth will take place even if the countries with the highest fertility were to fall today to two children per woman.
Womens rights
A question of fertility directly linked to women’s rights, which provokes immediate defensive reactions even from those who would lean towards a “yes” to the question “are there too many of us on this Earth”.
The NGO Population Matters thus pleads for a drop in the world population, but “only by positive, voluntary and rights-respecting means”, explains to AFP its director Robin Maynard, opposing any “policy of regulation”. births imposed by the state.
The Drawdown Project makes education and family planning one of its 100 or so solutions to slow global warming: “Globally, a smaller population with sustainable consumption levels would reduce the demand for ‘energy, transport, materials, food and natural resources’.
Because “every person born on this Earth adds additional stress on the planet,” said Vanessa Perez, an analyst at the World Resources Institute.
“There were already too many of us years ago”, but “it’s a very thorny question”, she admits to AFP, refusing that “the elites take hold of this narrative to ask to cap growth demographics in the countries of the South”.
A narrative thread that she prefers to center around “equity” and the “distribution” of resources, in particular access to food.
Just like Joel Cohen. Even if there is mathematically enough food produced for 8 billion inhabitants, “800 million people, one in 10 people on the planet, are chronically malnourished”, he insists.
“The concept of ‘too many’ is a distraction from the real issues related to the well-being of the human species and the species with which we share the planet.”
Some keys to the global balance sheet
PHOTO MANJUNATH KIRAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A market in Bangalore, India
Slow-down
The UN population division estimates that humanity will reach 8 billion people on November 15, more than three times more than the 2.5 billion in 1950.
But “key message”, “the pace of world population growth has dropped dramatically since the peak of the 1960s,” Rachel Snow, of the United Nations Population Fund, told AFP.
This growth has thus fallen from 2.1% between 1962 and 1965 to below 1% in 2020 and could fall further to around 0.5% in 2050.
Around 9 billion, then 10?
Given the number of people of childbearing age and the increase in life expectancy, the population will nevertheless continue to grow, with approximately 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, before a peak at 10.4 billion in the 2080s and stagnate until the end of the century, according to UN projections.
Figures that are not unanimous. A study by the American IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) published in 2020 thus predicts a peak much earlier, in 2064, without reaching 10 billion (9.7 billion), then a decline up to 8.8 billion. in 2100.
“We are below (the UN) because we have a very different fertility model”, which notably predicts 1.66 children per woman in 2100, explains to AFP the main author Stein Emil Vollset, who estimates that growth will stop “between 9 and 10 billion”.
Falling fertility
In 2021, the average fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman, up from about 5 in 1950, according to the UN, which predicts 2.1 in 2050.
“Now, the majority of the world’s inhabitants live in a country where fertility is below the population replacement rate” of 2.1, notes Rachel Snow.
getting older and older
A key factor in population growth, average life expectancy is increasing: 72.8 years in 2019, nine years more than in 1990. And the UN predicts 77.2 years in 2050.
Result, combined with the decline in fertility: the proportion of people over 65 should increase from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050.
An aging that has effects on the labor market, pension systems, care for the elderly, etc.
So “more and more countries are asking us to help them understand how they could do to increase their population,” says Rachel Snow.
Unprecedented diversity
The global numbers mask immense demographic diversity.
Thus, more than half of population growth by 2050 will come from just 8 countries according to the UN: Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and Tanzania.
The average age also illustrates this diversity, with 41.7 years in Europe against 17.6 years in sub-Saharan Africa. “In the past, the countries were close in age, rather young; in the future, the countries will be close in age, especially old”, but at this precise moment in history, “the world is very divided”, underlines Rachel Snow.
Discrepancies that can play a role in geopolitical relations, some experts note.
India will overtake China
Another illustration of the changing trends, the two most populous countries, China and India, will exchange places on the podium from 2023, according to the UN.
China’s population and its 1.42 billion inhabitants in 2022 will begin to decline, falling to 1.3 billion in 2050. And only 800 million by the end of the century.
India’s population of 1.41 billion in 2022, despite falling below the replacement rate, will continue to grow, with 1.66 billion expected in 2050.
In 2050, India should thus be the most populous country ahead of China. On the third step of the podium, still the United States, but tied with Nigeria, at 375 million inhabitants.