The number of children born in many countries, including South Korea, is declining.
Jung Young-jae/AFP via Getty Images
If current trends continue, world population will peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 and decline to 7 billion by 2100. This is the projection of the model, developed as part of the Club of Rome non-profit initiative, that in 2100 there will be between He 2 billion and He 3 billion less than other recent projections.
This Earth4All model was created to explore which policies would yield the best results for the majority of people, and if the world invested in a “giant leap” to reduce poverty and inequality, the world would It also suggests that the population will peak at about 8.5 billion in 2019. It will decrease to 6 billion by 2040.
Beniamino Callegari of Christiania University College, Oslo, Norway, one of Earth4All’s authors, said: report.
A drastic decline in the world’s population would help alleviate environmental problems, but it alone would not prevent it from reaching a tipping point that risks destabilizing the planet’s life support systems, says Stockholm University in Sweden. team member David Corste said.
“Population isn’t the only issue,” Corste says. “It’s what people do, how they do it, how much they do it.”
As the population declines, so does the proportion of the working-age population, making it more difficult to finance health care and pensions. “The transition will not be easy as it means a significant aging of the population,” he says Callegari.
Although these latest projections are the lowest ever, all recent global demographic projections suggest that the world population will begin to decline by the end of the century.
“It takes a lot of effort to turn this around,” says Callegari. Countries like South Korea, which is trying to stem population decline, have been unable to do so, he added.
According to the United Nations, the world’s population exceeded 8 billion at some point last year. The world population is projected to grow to over 10 billion people before starting to decline around 2100.
The UN projections are based on estimating existing trends in population numbers and do not take into account the causal relationships that determine the number of children or life expectancy.
An independent group that considers causality behind demographic trends yields lower estimates. For example, his Stein Emil Vollset at the University of Washington, Seattle modeled population growth based on factors such as a woman’s level of education and access to contraception. His team predicts that in 2020 the population will peak below 10 billion around his 2070s and decline to about 9 billion by 2100.
The Earth4All model is more complex and includes environmental, economic and social factors such as food production, income, taxes, energy and inequality, and feedback loops between these factors. We also incorporate the expected effects of global warming and use GDP per capita as a proxy for education level and access to contraceptives.
Earth4All’s projections for business as usual fall far short of the “most likely” projections by Vollset’s team, but the “rapid advances in women’s education scenario” that contraception is accessible to those in need ,” says Vollset. .
To significantly reduce the total population, the Club of Rome initiative calls for action to improve the well-being of everyone on the planet.
This includes: Investing trillions of dollars in green jobs and reducing poverty by canceling debt. Reducing inequality by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Improve gender equality by ensuring more women have access to better education. Promote healthier and more environmentally friendly diets. And electrify everything that can be electrified and generate that power from renewable sources.
topic:
