8 BILLION PEOPLE – A LIVING CATASTROPHE

(‘If the world is to save any part of its resources for the future, it must reduce not only consumption but the number of consumers.’ - ?B.F. Skinner, psychologist, and author)

The current population of the World in 2023 is?8,045,311,447, a 0.88% increase from 2022. The population of the World in 2022 was 7,975,105,156, a 0.83% increase from 2021. The population of the World in 2021 was 7,909,295,151, a 0.87% increase from 2020.

That’s eight billion people who require, at the very least, fresh water, food, shelter, medicine, and education. In some parts of the world, they will also have a car, an iPod, a suburban house and yard, pets, computers, a lawnmower, a microwave, and perhaps a swimming pool. The issue of overpopulation is central to environmental sustainability and human welfare.

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The Earth is a finite planet; it has limits and thresholds; and according to many scientists and experts, we are already passing several of those.

To understand the impact of humanity on the world’s ecosystems, one needs to keep in mind it is made up of two factors. The first is population, the other, though, is consumption: the more resources we each consume, the further we move away from true sustainability.

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This article highlights the issues and should serve as an eye-opener for all of us to understand and do something about it.

Global issues – 8 million people

1.??FOOD

How do we feed 8 billion people, let alone the 9 billion projected by 2050? According to the UN, a billion people in the world today don’t have enough food. The Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that food production will need to rise by 70 percent to supply the anticipated 9 billion. But how do we grow so much food?

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2.??WATER

Like food, access to fresh unpolluted water is becoming a rising concern on our crowded planet. Over 800 million people currently don’t have access to clean drinking water, while one in three people suffer from water scarcity, reports the WHO. In the face of water issues, some nations are turning to desalination plants and taking their water from the sea. However, desalination is still prohibitively expensive for many, while climate change is expected to add greater pressure on water-scarce regions.

3.??OCEANS

In 2008 a report predicted that all wild fish stocks would collapse by 2048. This year, a landmark study predicted mass extinction in the oceans due to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Once believed to be superabundant, the world’s oceans are being plundered of wildlife (or overfished) at a rate never seen in human history.

4.??DEFORESTATION

Every year over 10 million hectares of forest are lost according to the FAO, and another 10 million hectares are degraded. By some estimates, half of the world’s intact tropical forests have been lost, and every year sees more destroyed.

5.??CLIMATE CHANGE

The 21st Century will be the century of climate change: a recent study predicted that regions in Canada, Asia, Europe, and North Africa will already see a rise of 2 degrees Celsius by 2030. Our warmer world will see rising sea levels, more extreme weather, higher frequency of droughts and floods, desertification, and biodiversity loss, generally creating a less stable and more unpredictable world.

6.??DISEASE

More humans could mean more disease. Crowded conditions, especially as the world’s mega-cities continue to grow, and rising pressures surrounding sanitation and health care, may increase or worsen outbreaks of disease.

7.??POVERTY & WEALTH

Currently, over a third of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day, while the top 1 percent globally holds 43 percent of the world’s wealth. Hundreds of millions don’t have access to enough food or clean water daily, while according to Forbes this year there are a record 1,210 billionaires possessing accumulated wealth of $4.5 trillion.

8.??EXTINCTION

More people consuming more resources means less and less for the millions of other species inhabiting our world. ?The IUCN Red Lists says that 869 species have gone extinct since 1500 AD, yet this is a vast underestimation, considering the bulk of the world’s species has probably never been named, let alone evaluated.

There is, of course, no easy solution to the problem.

We need to reorient our way of thinking.

The goal is to focus not so much on sacrifice, but on how to provide a higher quality of life using the lowest number of raw materials.

We need to change the way we produce goods and the way we consume them.

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