Global Population -- Let's Talk About the Numbers by John R. Bermingham

Global Population -- Let's Talk About the Numbers

John R. Bermingham

Thirty years ago the global population problem was discussed everywhere and Congress was fully supportive of family planning efforts abroad. Not so today, yet the problem is as severe as ever. The “failed state” condition has either arrived or is approaching rapidly for more and more nations. And, for the whole world, the now tight supplies of food, water, and energy will only become tighter and more costly as the world population swells by another 2.3 billion people in the next 41 years.

Why so little discussion of this problem in the media and public at large? Population worries have been sidelined because population organizations are now focused on women’s reproductive health, not numbers, and news stories argue carelessly that the world’s falling growth rate means that the “population explosion” is over. When major population organizations do not explain the numbers and the urgent need for action, it’s no surprise that the media falls silent, public discussion lapses, and Congressional appropriations diminish.

The silence about numbers is a direct consequence of the efforts of women’s organizations at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Their efforts to raise awareness of women’s reproductive health issues was highly welcome and proper, but coupled with those efforts was a doctrine that talk about numbers should be avoided. Numbers were equated with targets, quotas, and force. “Control” was something done by dictatorships, not free nations. The high ideal of “Talk about women, not numbers,” is the major explanation of the refrain we hear so often, “Population has fallen off the radar screen.”

Fewer births occur when women have ready access to a full array of family planning services and supplies. Industrialized nations can make these available, but this requires an opening of purse strings by administrators and legislators, most of whom are men. How best to reach them? I may be prejudiced, but I do believe that the individuals who hold the purse strings will be far more responsive to arguments based upon numbers than to arguments based upon women’s health problems.

Numbers are now more important than ever. Growing populations of the world and of many of its individual nations are approaching the points at which nature’s limitations will halt that growth under a brutal Malthusian combination of war, famine and disease. No person nor any computer can be specific about the break points, but that we are approaching them is clear, and that we should make every effort to avoid them is also clear. What follows are just a few of the numbers that I would present to Congress when arguing for increases in US family planning aid for the world’s impoverished billions. And while reading the numbers, be sure to consider how they exacerbate each of planet Earth’s big environmental problems—climate, energy, forests, fisheries, soil depletion, oceans, extinctions, and—especially—the availability of food and fresh water.

Except as otherwise stated, all numbers come from the United Nations World Population Prospects, the 2008 Revision.

Rising global growth projections. The global total today is 6.8 billion people. The United Nations medium projection for 2050 has been hovering just above 9.1 billion – 9.1 billion in 2004, 9.2 billion in 2006, and 9.15 billion in the 2008 projection. The 2050 projection of the much respected Population Reference Bureau in Washington falls between 9.3 and 9.4 billion.
Global growth totals overwhelm local declines. The populations of Europe, Russia, Korea, and Japan are declining, but the total declines of those populations by 2050, per the UN 2008 Revision, is less than 1/32nd the increases expected in the rest of the world by 2050 – that’s right, less than 1/32nd – a hair over 3%.
Fertility declines are too slow or stalled. Fertility declines in Africa and Asia tend to slow as they get closer to replacement level, and there is no certainty that they will follow the industrial nations’ pattern of fertility falling below replacement levels. Fertility declines in Kenya and several other high growth-rate nations have stalled. Stalled declines mean a return to exponential growth and a promise of Malthusian conclusions – growth ending due to strife, famine or disease.
Abortion – The total number is estimated at over 40 million per year. When compared with the world’s 137 million births annually, the need for family planning programs is obvious.
World hot spots. When stories appear about poverty, strife and genocide in certain nations, consider population for 1950, for today, and for 2050. In quick succession, here are a few: Afghanistan 8, 21, and 74 million; Pakistan 41, 148, and 335 million; Somalia 2, 9, and 24 million; Sudan 9, 35 and 76 million; Yemen 4, 18, and 54 million, and our neighbor, Haiti – 3, 9, 15 million. Africa as a whole: 227 million, 819 million and just under 2 billion. How can these 2050 numbers materialize peacefully? What are the implications for the US economy and security?
India and China. India’s 1950 population was 372 million. The 2050 projection is 1.6 billion. However, last summer the India experts at the Population Reference Bureau issued a caveat that the 2050 population might surpass two billion. China’s 1950 population was 545 million with a UN 2008 projection at 1.4 billion. Say what you will about China’s one-child policy, but without it both China and the world would be 400 million larger.
The United States. In August of 2008 the Census Bureau released a new projection for the US population in 2050 – 439 million. Compared to our current population of 305 million, this is a 44 percent increase. Traffic jams anyone?
Population Aging, the Youth Bulge, Jobs and Migration. Consider the remarkable reversal of the relative population sizes of Europe (Russia excluded) with the 25 adjacent Muslim nations (stretching from Mauritania across North Africa and to Pakistan in Western Asia.) In 1950 Europe held 445,000,000 – more than double the 165,000,000 in the Muslim countries. For 2050 the positions are completely reversed. It is the 1,211,000,000 total for the Muslims that is double the projected 574,000,000 for Europe. In the EU the portion of the population aged 60 or over will be 35%, with pensions and health care benefits being the major economic and social problems. For the Muslim nations the 2050 projection is for two-thirds being young. Their job prospects will be the major economic problem and lack of employment an emigration driver. How will these massive but massively different neighbors handle the migration and other tensions between them? Or will they?
Urbanization. In 1960 there were 111 cities with populations of a million. Today there are more than 300. Cities with ten million have jumped upwards from 5 in 1975 to a projected 26 by 2015. With half of the world’s 6.8 billion now living in urban rather than rural areas, think of the food that must be transported to keep these people alive and, with energy prices rising, at what costs? Urban infrastructures for water, sanitation, education and health are unprepared for the numbers.
Unmet Need and Ultimate Results. A March 2009 policy brief from the UN’s Population Division reports that the very high unmet need for family planning remains a major factor in the slow rates at which fertility is falling in many African nations and that for every dollar spent in family planning between 2 and 6 dollars can be saved in efforts to reach health, education and other Millennium Development Goal targets. Comparisons of Egypt and Ethiopia illustrate the importance of strong rather than weak birth control programs, as well as the phenomenon that the population benefits of birth control efforts may take a generation or more to bear fruit. In 1965 Egypt had a population of 22 million with a fertility rate of 6.4 children per woman. Ethiopia had 25 million and a 6.9 fertility rate. Egypt started family planning clinics in the 1960s; Ethiopia only recently. Today the populations are Egypt 82 million and Ethiopia also 82 million but Egypt with a much lower number of young. Hence the major difference is yet to come – Egypt at 129 million and barely growing in 2050 but Ethiopia at 173 million and still growing by over 2 million each year. Meeting needs early on prevents enormous population ballooning later on.
Urgency. In February 2009 the new director of national intelligence told Congress that global economic turmoil and instability had outpaced terrorism as the most urgent threat facing the United States. Economic turmoil and instability generated can only increase if overpopulation remains unchecked.

Bits and pieces like these should be used regularly as wakeup calls to Congress, the media, and the public. Next comes the persuasion about the many different types of family planning programs that work, including women’s health—but first things first. The time has come to recognize that the health of the Earth is the overarching issue of the 21st Century and that overpopulation of the Earth means that all humanity will suffer, including millions upon millions of women. Numbers, numbers, numbers… and urgency… Let’s get the matter of overpopulation back on the radar screen.

John R. Bermingham is a long-time population activist. Upon being elected to the Colorado State Senate in 1964 his first action was a birth control bill. In 1967 he was the Senate sponsor for Colorado's liberalized abortion law, the first such law in the nation. He has worked with population NGOs and traveled with them to many developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He has served on the board of ZPG (now Population Connection), and was the founder of the Colorado Population Coalition with a mission "to educate, activate, and coordinate people and organizations in Colorado about population issues, both national and global."