Population and Consumption must decrease for livable future
Over-consumption in rich countries
and rapid population growth in the poorest both need to be tackled to put
society on a sustainable path, a report says.
An expert group convened by the Royal Society spent nearly two years reading evidence and writing their
report.
Firm recommendations include giving all women access to family planning,
moving beyond GDP as the yardstick of economic health and reducing food
waste.
The report will feed into preparations for the Rio+20 summit in June.
"This is an absolutely critical period for people and the planet, with
profound changes for human health and wellbeing and the natural environment,"
said Sir John Sulston, the report's chairman.
"Where we go is down to human volition - it's not pre-ordained, it's not the
act of anything outside humanity, it's in our hands."
Sir John came to fame through heading the UK part of the Human Genome
Project.
He shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, and now chairs the
Institute for Science Ethics and Innovation at Manchester University.
Back on the table
Although the size of the Earth's human population used to be a main
ingredient of environmental debate, it has fallen off the table in recent
years.
The world at seven billion
In part that was because the Earth appeared able to
support more people than predictions had suggested, and partly because
developing countries came to view the population issue as a smokescreen to hide
Western over-consumption.
However it is now back on the table, largely because of research showing that
women in the poorest nations generally want access to family planning and that
people benefit from it.
The UN's "medium" projection indicates the population peaking at just over 10
billion before the end of the century, and then starting to fall, from a current
level of seven billion.
"Of the three billion extra people we expect to have, most will come from the
least developed countries, and the population of Africa alone will increase by
two billion," said Eliya Zulu, executive director of the African Institute for
Development Policy based in Nairobi.
"We have to invest in family planning in these countries - we empower women,
increase child and maternal health and provide a greater opportunity for the
poorest countries to invest in education."
The report recommends that developed nations support universal access to
family planning, which it estimates would cost $6bn per year.
If the fertility rate in the least developed countries does not come down to
levels seen in the rest of the world, it warns, the year 2100 could see a global
population of 22bn of whom 17bn would be Africans.
Exceeding the planet's boundaries
“The environment is the economy to some
extent”
Prof Jules Pretty Essex University
As well as supporting family planning and universal
education, the Royal Society says a priority must be to lift the poorest 1.3bn
people in the world out of extreme poverty.
If this means increased consumption of food, water and other resources, the
experts conclude, that is simply the right thing to do.
Meanwhile they say that the richest must cut back on the material resources
they consume - though that might not affect living standards.
Eliminating food waste, slashing fossil fuel burning and switching economies
from goods to services are among the simple measures advocated to reduce the
developed world's footprint without reducing the prosperity of its citizens.
"A child in the developed world consumes 30-50 times as much water as in the
developing world; CO2 production, a proxy of energy use, can also be 50 times
higher," noted Sir John.
"We cannot conceive of a world that is going to carry on being as unequal as
it is, or even become more unequal."
A number of developing and middle income countries are beginning to feel the
same impacts of over-consumption as in the west, such as obesity.
Fundamentally, use of GDP as virtually the sole indicator of an economy's
health needs to end, says the Royal Society, with other measures adopted that
value "natural capital", the goods and services that nature provides for free.
"We have to go beyond GDP; and either we can do it voluntarily or we'll have
to do it because pressure on a finite planet will in the end make us," said
Jules Pretty, professor of environment and society at the University of
Essex.
"The environment is the economy to some extent... and you can talk about
running economies in ways that improve peoples' lives but don't damage natural
capital, that even enhance it."
The Rio+20 summit in June is likely to agree on establishing a set of
"sustainable development goals" (SDGs) to follow on from the existing Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) that are helping to reduce poverty and improve health
and education in developing countries.
Whether the SDGs will commit rich countries to curbing consumption is
currently unclear.
Governments may also agree in Rio to develop and use economic indicators
other than GDP.
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