The Perils of Population Boom

The global population explosion we expect is largely missing in discussions of the planet’s future. Yet the ramifications of population growth are so far reaching that they could well render irrelevant efforts to curtail climate change, increase resource security, and ensure sustainable development.

The UN predicts that by the year 2050 the world population will have increased by a third, from 6.8 to 9.1 billion people. Ninety-seven percent of this increase will occur in the world’s poor and poorest countries. According to projections, the populations of developing and newly industrialized countries will rise from 5.4 billion to 7.9 billion. The greatest burden will be borne by the least developed countries. Their population will double and remain extremely young. Although the median age will also rise globally, in 2050 the population of countries such as Burundi, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Yemen will still have a median age of less than 24.

By contrast, population figures in the industrialized countries will initially stagnate. Above all in the European countries (Germany, Italy, and Spain) but also in Japan, Russia, and South Korea, population will actually have decreased by 2050. The median age in these countries will be significantly higher. After Japan, Germany and Italy—with an average age of 42—are the second and third oldest societies in the world. In Europe the working-age population will decrease as a whole by one quarter while the number of people over 60 will double.

The result of these regionally varied patterns of fertility (the average number of children born to women of child-bearing age), mortality, and migration—the division of the world into regions with a growing, young population and those with a shrinking, aging population—is referred to by scholars as “demographic divide.” Although these trends have been empirically verified and evident for a long time, they are still receiving inadequate political attention both in the industrialized nations and developing countries.

Ignoring Population Policy

In the case of the industrialized countries, there are two fundamental reasons for this lack of political focus. On the one hand, there is a widespread conception that the growth of the global population is a temporary phenomenon. In a very long-term perspective this assessment is actually correct. Fertility rates have dropped sharply over recent decades (worldwide from an average of 5 to 2.6 children per woman since 1950) and from 2050 onwards this decline will be reflected in a slowdown in world population growth. However until this time—and this is the politically important point—the world’s population will continue to grow rapidly. As a result, the coming decades will be profoundly shaped by an unprecedented expansion of the global population. On the other hand, many people in the industrialized countries are convinced that population policy is a blunt political instrument and that birth rates cannot be influenced by political means. In view of failed attempts by industrialized countries to increase their low birth rates (in the short term) via family policies and other means, this argument may well have some cogency. However, it simply does not apply when it comes to the reduction of high birth rates in the developing countries, as shown by the recent decrease in global fertility. Obviously, high birth rates can indeed be reduced through improved economic and social conditions and through access to education, healthcare, and family planning.

There is also skepticism toward population policy in developing nations. In many countries population growth is recognized as a threat to development and internal stability. At the same time, a large and increasing population is often regarded in classical power-political terms as a boon to regional or international influence. From this perspective, the efforts by industrialized countries to reduced birth rates in developing nations is viewed as a neo-colonial intervention with the aim of further weakening the political power of the poorer states. The result of such disinterest or rejection of political measures against population growth has been to distract attention from the influence of population development on resource scarcity.

Which Development Path?

The global demographic divide will have different consequences with regard to the availability of resources. The outlook for the developing countries is obvious. These countries will have to provide for a rapidly growing number of people and integrate them into labor markets. Moreover, these nations need to ensure that competition for scarce resources does not lead to internal conflict. Dealing with the problem of resource scarcity is dependent on how consumption patterns develop. If the populations of developing nations remained constant, an adoption of the consumption patterns characteristic of industrial countries would still mean an immense increase in the demand for resources and energy. However, if as expected developing nations double their population size by 2050 while adopting “industrial” consumption patterns, the result will be an eight-fold increase in the global demand for resources.1

For the industrialized countries the aging and shrinking of their populations raises different questions. Given the decline in population figures, should costly infrastructures be maintained? How should states react to the depopulation of structurally weak regions and to growing spatial disparities? And how is international competitiveness to be maintained with a rapidly aging population?

In theory the demographic development of the industrialized countries could represent an opportunity as a decrease in resource consumption in these countries could compensate for the increasing demand for resources in the developing nations. However, as yet there is no convincing evidence that this will be the case. Above all it is difficult to predict the influence of demographic aging on consumption patterns. It might well be that population aging in the industrialized countries will lead to a rise rather than a decrease in resource consumption. We can see this trend in the demand for living space that is actually increasing in industrialized nations despite the prevailing demographic tendency.

With regard to resource consumption the question thus remains for all, what developmental path should be pursued and to what degree it should be oriented toward growth? A number of experts have concluded that a reduction in global resource consumption is only possible on the basis of a radical reduction of materials consumption. However, apart from the practical political question of establishing and implementing such self-restraint, such proposals raise numerous normative questions, not least of which concerns the “right to development.”

No Simple Explanatory Model

Since the early 1990s linear models have been developed in connection with the debate around environment and conflict that imply direct causalities between resource scarcity and political violence. The basic argument is that the combination of environmental destruction and the overuse of natural resources can trigger destabilizing internal and cross-border migrations, which in turn can lead to violent conflicts. However, empirically verifying such direct connections has proved difficult and this has given rise to a search for more complex, non-linear models. These newer models assume that conflicts are based on numerous economic, political, and social factors and are not driven solely by resource scarcity.

Political demographers have long emphasized the significance of the prevailing political framework for the outbreak of conflicts. In particular, the capacity of a government to mediate between rival groups is generally decisive. A frequently cited example of such complex causes leading to the outbreak of violence is the 1994 Rwanda genocide that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing into neighboring countries. Recent analyses identify the causes of this genocide as involving a combination of land scarcity, unequal land distribution, extreme poverty, a division of labor based on ethnic distinctions, a lack of economic prospects, and political mobilization by extremists.

Similarly, the danger of “water wars” is often referred to in connection with population growth and climate change. However, empirical observation suggests that a shortage of water tends to contribute more to (interstate) cooperation than conflict.2

Nevertheless, it is obvious that due to global population growth the amount of water available per capita will significantly decrease. Regions already experiencing low rainfall and with a high population density will be particularly affected by water shortages. These regions include above all the Middle East and Northern, Eastern and Southern Africa.

Furthermore, in many places farming yields will decline. Population growth tends to lead to the extensive farming and overuse of agricultural land, which results in a substantial and lasting reduction in yields. Whether the per-capita decrease of cultivated land and declining land productivity can be offset by new production methods is a matter of dispute, particularly in light of the fact that the use of fertilizers in grain production over recent decades has resulted in lower yield gains.3 In the foreseeable future many countries with high rates of population growth will no longer have adequate land for subsistence agriculture. One consequence of such shortages can be migration to other areas or into neighboring countries, where migrants hope to find better opportunities.

Migration As a Way Out

Migration needs to be taken into account when considering the consequences of population growth and resource scarcity. Along with fertility and mortality, it constitutes the third component of population development.

As in the case of research into the causes of conflict, there is now widespread agreement in the field of migration research that no direct connection can be made between resource scarcity, migration, and violent conflicts. Most researchers agree that the effects of migration are indirect and result from an interplay with other factors—poor agricultural conditions, a failure of governance, or the absence of mechanisms to regulate conflict—with migration playing an intermediate role.

However, rather than as a problem, migration can also be considered as a way out of a local, competitive situation, as an exit option that can help contain conflicts over resources. Ibrahim Sirkeci in Transnational Mobility and Conflict has recently presented a model that explains migration in terms of the individual’s aspiration to security. On the one hand, migrations can trigger conflicts in multiple ways and at different levels. At the level of states, conflicts can develop between countries of origin, transit, and destination when the country of origin forces parts of its population to migrate although neighboring countries are reluctant to immigration. At the level of group relationships, conflicts can result when locals regard immigrants as competitors for scarce resources. And at the individual level, conflicts can be triggered when migrants are subjected to xenophobic or racist violence. On the other hand, migrations out of areas affected by resource scarcity can also help to ease local tensions, as in the case of the Sahel region of Africa.

At least for regions from which migrants originate, the risk of violent conflict is greater when the “migration option” is blocked.

Three conclusions

First, global population growth will increase current resource scarcity, and this will affect above all the rapidly growing developing nations. It remains unclear whether the demographic aging and shrinking of the industrialized countries will ameliorate or increase resource scarcity.

Second, even if there is still no empirical evidence for a direct and linear connection between resource scarcity and violent conflict, it is to be expected that poorer states will find it increasingly difficult to deal peacefully with conflicts over resources intensified by demographic changes.

Third, one reaction to sustained resource scarcity can be migration, the consequences of which are ambivalent. While migration has the potential to trigger conflicts in regions of destination, it can also ameliorate resource scarcity in the regions of origin and thus, at least in these regions, reduce conflict.

What Next

Against this backdrop, industrialized countries urgently need to take action. Efforts to promote family planning and reproductive health should be significantly and rapidly strengthened. It is precisely the poorer countries that need support in their efforts toward sustainable population development. As it is, contributions by Western industrialized countries family planning have decreased rather than increased over the last fifteen years. In 2007 the industrialized countries provided less than a quarter of the funding agreed upon at the 1994 World Population Conference. According to figures compiled by the Bixby Center for Population, there are 80 million unintentional pregnancies annually across the world. The institute estimates that 200 million women would prefer to postpone or prevent their next pregnancy and that 100 million women do not use any contraception because they have no access to it. It is also estimated that the number of couples in developing countries who use contraception will rise from 525 million in 2005 to 742 million in 2015.4 

Industrialized countries should therefore provide a much larger amount of aid to the poor and poorest countries targeted at allowing women in particular to decide when and how many children they will have. Family planning alone can certainly not prevent violent conflict, but foregoing aid for family planning will increase the potential for such conflicts in the long term.

Moreover, industrialized countries should reevaluate migration movements from countries suffering from resource scarcity, taking into account that such migrations can reduce the potential for conflict and contribute to stability. Given that the majority of migrations from such countries remain confined to the affected regions (south-south migration), the industrialized countries should increase their efforts to ensure that receiving regions are in a position to deal with these additional challenges. Such efforts can take many forms: targeted use of development policy and other political instruments, nationally or internationally coordinated humanitarian aid programs, or adequate funding of international organizations, in particular the United Nations Refugee Agency—but also through a greater preparedness on the part of industrialized countries to accept more refugees in crisis situations and thereby to ease the burden on receiving countries in the south.

1) See Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek: Nutzen wir die Erde richtig? Frankfurt/Main, 2007, 29–50.
2) See, for example, Dirk Messner: Klimawandel und Wasserkrisen der Zukunft, Entwicklung und Frieden, No. 3, 2009, 167–173
3) See FAO: How to Feed the World in 2050, Rome 2009; Klaus Hahlbrock: Kann unsere Erde die Menschen noch ernähren?, Frankfurt 2007.
4) See Philosophical Transactions B, No. 364, October 2009, 2977 f.