Too many people

According to the US Census Bureau as of 8.09 UTC on the 2nd of April 2010 the world's population reached six billion, eight hundred and twelve million, two-hundred thousand.

To put that in perspective, in 1950 the population was less than 3 billion, and by 2050 it is estimated rise to over 9 billion.

If something is going to make the hair rise on the back of your neck - that should.



Every single one of the Millennium Development Goals is fundamentally impacted by population levels. Access to food, water, sanitation, education, environmental sustainability - the more there are of us, the more stress it places on access to and distribution of resources.

Interestingly, the level of births has actually leveled out at 134 million per year since the 1990's, but the absolute number of people keeps going up because only around 54 million people per year die.

The major reason for this is because the world's population is aging. A report released by the US Census Bureau, An Ageing Population, predicts that within 10 years the number of people over 65 will surpass the number of children. Over the next thirty years the number of old people will double, from 506 million in 2008 to 1.3 billion.

Two main factors are behind this increase:

1) the delayed effect of higher fertility levels after WW2
2) improvements in health.

The first of these is now a mute point since fertility levels have now decreased. The second point however, poses some complex moral challenges. It is very clear that over-population poses one of the most serious and most complex challenges to global development. Yet how do you reduce the number of people on this planet without infringing on their human rights?

- enforce a world-wide one child policy?
- make people use contraception whether it's against their values or not?
- introduce sterilisation?
- stop providing life-saving medical care?
- let disease and famine do its work?
- stop aid and intervention after natural disasters?

Clearly, it's a fraught subject. On one hand we're trying to save lives through improved sanitation, health care, access to water and better food distribution. On the other, by intervening to prevent deaths we're adding to population increases which in turn complicate the provision of these same things.

Assessment of over-population, and an action plan for managing growth needs to be a central part of achieving the MDGs in both the short-term and long-term. Education of women, access to contraception, improved life-chances are all important to reducing family size, but with an aging population it goes far beyond reducing the number of births. As long as fewer people die than are born the world's population will inevitably increase - yet how are we ever going to justify a knowing increase in the number of deaths?