David Meana GonzĂĄlez
1 Introduction After different work experiences in some of the most populated countries around the world, I started wondering about the overpopulation problem. It will be one of the biggest challenges for human kind in the next century. There is a lack of consciousness about this “population crisis� around the world. Hopefully, with the proper education and a coordinated effort this problem could be tackled more effectively.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victim."1 Is true that along the next hundred years we will have to deal with this problem and its derivates, but I would like to think that we can face it. I would like to think, we have already started.
Since the Stone Age until 1800 the world population remained under 1 billion. Everything was under control. Naturally, the planet ressources were enough for feeding everyone. Were they properly distributed? Well, that is another question. After the industrial revolution, something happened. The world population started increasing with a new rhythm. The new technology and knowledge allowed us to produce more food, feeding more people this way. This along with the sanitary improvements increased the birth rate while the new more comfortable life style decreased the death rate. This difference between the birth and death rate is the root of overpopulation. In less than two hundred years, we doubled the amount of people hosted by the planet, in 1930 we reached the two billions. We did just in a few years what we could not in thousands. It did not stop there, when we reached the third billion, in 1970, the experts said that we could not host more people, that we should find a solution. Nowadays, seven billion people are living in the earth. It already seems to be crowded in some places, and according to the experts we will be more than 1 Martin Luther King, Jr., acceptance speech, Margaret Sanger award in human rights 1966; Lamont
Hempil Sustainable communities.
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The big challenge of overpopulation.
eleven billion in less than a hundred years. Is overpopulation an actual problem? Has it been already solved?
Against all predictions, I would say that we have almost stopped this population growth. Now, all our efforts should be focused on the long term. How can eleven billion people inhabit this planet without destroying it?
Clearly, we cannot continue behaving how we are doing if we all want to survive. We have to control the way our planet is being so rapidly urbanized. The whole community should have a discussion about the land and resources management and this should involve local and global decision-makers. There is a need of finding out a way of redistribute the resources among everyone. We all have to stop fighting for more resources and focus in solving the social need/demands. All our investments and efforts ought to be focusing in the long term, in order to improve the future global situation. The only way of hosting 4 more billion people in this planet is by “changing from the individual to the global point of view�. (Jenkins, 2007)
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2 Population Growth and related problems. It is easy to understand that overpopulation becomes a problem when there is a lack of resources or space in one area. We could affirm that the planet’s carrying capability is limited, apparently, for hunter-gatherers it is not bigger than 100 million. When we reached that number, we avoided the overpopulation by inventing the agriculture. The rise of this activity enabled us to produce more food from the same plot of old land. After this huge discovery, the population kept growing without any problem. The carrying capability was much bigger than the world’s population again. (Tomocik, 2012)
If we keep watching at this growth as a result of the different human improvements, we can understand how industrial revolution triggered a big increase in the growth rhythm. At that point, most common family all over the world was two adults and six children. A big number of children were born in each family, although less than half of them reached adult age. The new technical and sanitary improvements changed this situation, and a bigger number of kids were able to become adults, changing the entire global situation. After a few decades, this growth became a big problem again. The global population was growing too fast, and all the different countries started thinking about how to solve this problem. All the experts predicted the worst for the future, famine, disease and other catastrophes, like Thomas Robert Malthus in his famous 1798 forecast or Paul Ehrlinch in his bestseller “The Population Bomb” written in 1968.
Obviously, this big increase in the world population has been unbalancing the system, but it could become even worse. If today we are not in the best case scenario, we can imagine how it could be in a few years. Problems like, famines, wars and revolutions may be caused by this “demographic crisis”.
We already have a problem in the urban areas. Everyone is moving from the countryside to the cities in order to find better opportunities. There is a significant lack of space and order in the main cities around the world. Currently, about 1 in 8 people is living in slums. Assuming that we would just be 9 billion people, in
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The big challenge of overpopulation.
2050 slum population ratio would be 1 in 3, and that is not the worst possible case scenario. (Weiss, 2012 B).
Africa, Asia and Latin America will host 97% of the two more billion people added by mid-century. Nigeria, for example, in less than fifty years will surpass the U.S. as the third most populated country. Just around 8% of reproductive-age women, married or in relationships, use contraception. It seams ridiculous if you compare it with the 72% of the United States. So, are the developed countries helping to improve this situation around the world? Definitely, not as much as is needed. (Weiss, 2012 A). We could compare how India, China and Bangladesh have reduced their birth rates. India and China have solved the problem by pressing their population. India has been sterilizing his own population and China has imposed huge taxes for families with more than one child. Both had proved to be really productive decisions, but have the countries the right to press their populations that way? Bangladesh has shown us another way of reaching the same result. Just by teaching his population shorter families’ profits whit a good family planning system, they have also reduced the birth rate in the same levels. (Weiss, 2012 B). India’s slums are still growing constantly. A huge effort has been put in the metropolitan areas, where they have reduced their fertility rates. Despite this, most of the population growth is in the poor. Most of the villages and rural areas do not have paved roads or clinics, so how could they afford contraceptive methods.
Gopi Gopalakrishnan, president of World Health Partners, affirmed in 2012 that women are desperate for family planning services to take control of their lives. It is a tough affirmation, although it is a big reality as well.
The Philippines’ 96 million population is an example of how birth control is not fully available around the world. The U.S. Agency for international development stopped his contraceptives donation program in 2008. After that, Contraceptives are mostly limited to those who can afford buying it. According to local government statistics, 39% of married Philippine women wanted to avoid pregnancy but they were not using modern contraceptive methods. The most
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David Meana González
common reasons were religion, husband’s opposition, cost and lack of availability. The Philippine bishops, following Vatican’s view, preach against any contraception method. Eight out of ten Philippines are Catholic, so there is a big church influence in this country at every level. This is one example of how religion and political forces affect women’s control over childbearing. (Weiss, 2012 E).
Against all prediction, we can find good news as well. Looking at Hans Rosling’s current works, (Don’t Panic, 2014) he exposes that between 1963 and 2012, the average amount of children per family around the world has decreased from 5 to 2,5. This shows that the entire population has been working hard and in the right direction. But what is more impressive is how the Asiatic countries have gone from 7 or 8 children per family to 2. They have definitely made a bigger effort than us, for example Spain went in the same time from 3 to 1,5. If the worldwide average birthrate remains in 2,5 children per family, the population will rise to eleven billion by 2050. In the best case scenario, United Nations think that this average could decline to 2,1 rising the global population to 9,1 billion people. Population would continue growing, but more slowly. Having reached the children peak in 2000 is another probe of the good work we have been doing. (UN Population Division, 2016).
Income per person - Children per woman in the world [1963]
Income per person - Children per woman in the world [2012]
Source: Gapminder World App, UN Population Division
Source: Gapminder World App, UN Population Division
Geographic regions Color code.
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The big challenge of overpopulation.
If we keep working on this way, by the end of this century we could have a stable world population. All the changes and goals already reached give us a real image of how the world is worried about overpopulation and how hard we are trying to solve it. This reveals that it is not only a matter of income, knowledge is also involved. But, are we doing enough?
3 Possible solutions. People and the planet, a study published for the Royal Society a few years ago, addresses problems we need to face for solving the overpopulation. “Bringing the 1,3 billion people living on less than 1,25 USD per day out of the absolute poverty; stabilize and reduce material consumption levels; provide sound political leadership and financial commitment to reproductive health and voluntary family planning programs; and stop thinking as population and environment as two different issues.” (The Royal Society Science Policy Centre report 01/12).
We apparently have a clear perspective of what we should do to solve the problem. Are we working hard enough? The answer is quite clear, No.
Jack Goldstone, a known expert on demography and revolutions, worried everyone at George Mason University by saying “We are literally going to see 1 billion people come into the populations in the arc of instability over the next two decades”, but instead trying to frighten the audience, he was tried to advise them; “We can’t fight them. We have to figure a better way to help them.” (Weiss, 2012 B).
We cannot just try to help by giving them money. Sometimes the solution is not just distributing some contraceptives, it would be better if we teach them the benefit of using them. The family planning services have to become accessible to everyone, everywhere. You should know how much easier your life would be if you just have two or three children instead of having seven. Whenever you are,
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David Meana GonzĂĄlez
you should be able to choose freely, but you should have the necessary knowledge and means to do it.
Everyone around the world should do their best in order to solve this problem. From politicians to bakers and farmers, all of us should work together. I definitely believe that architects will play a big role in this global change. The actual situation is demanding a new revolution which will change the world’s carrying capability again. We need to figure out a new way of organize the entire system, and we as architects could help from our field.
The role of the architect From resources management, city planning, housing development to more sustainable buildings are areas where architects can figure out new techniques for helping the entire society. The design of new facades, building systems or other new technical solutions, could help to solve partially the problem. Adapting our designs to the new challenges, will surely help us to face the entire problem. That is why being well informed is so important for the architects all over the world. They have to be conscious of the problem in order to find the best possible solutions. Since education is so important, as has been probed in Bangladesh, at all different levels, we as architects while working on projects at all the different scales we should take up this education question. Suggesting and including these educational and training spaces would make a difference in the long term of those communities. And the most important thing, we should stop just wondering in a local way, we must start thinking in global terms. Sharing our knowledge and involving ourselves in developing programs will get us closer to the solution of over population and to a fairer planet.
Hopefully, not just architects will be aware of this problem and new solutions and discoveries from all the different fields start becoming global solutions. I completely trust human beings, we have changed our behaviors several times in order to survive. We will do it again, I just hope that this change will come as soon as possible. The sooner, the better.
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The big challenge of overpopulation.
References Mr. Condorcet, Mr. Godwin, and Other Writers, 1978, “An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations”, London: St. Paul’s Church-Yard. Ellis, Erle, 2013, “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem”, New York Times. Malthus, Thomas Robert, 1999, “An Essay one the Principle of Population”, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Paul, 2007 “Planning and Housing in the Rapidly Urbanizing World”. London: Routledge. Rosling, Hans, 2014, Don’t Panic, BBC2. The Royal Society Science Policy Centre report 01/12, “People and the planet”, Issued: April 2012 DES2470, (https://royalsociety.org/~/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/peopleplanet/2012-04-25-PeoplePlanet.pdf) Tomocik, Ann-Margaret, 2012, “A scientific perspective on global overpopulation”, The Tribe, St Andrews Student Magazine. UN Population Division, 2016, “World Population Prospect: The 2015 revision”, (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm). Weiss, Kenneth R, 2012 A, “Beyond 7 billion: The biggest generation”, Los Angeles Times. Weiss, Kenneth R, 2012 B, “Beyond 7 billion: Tinderbox of youth”, Los Angeles Times. Weiss, Kenneth R, 2012 C, “Beyond 7 billion: Hunger without end”, Los Angeles Times. Weiss, Kenneth R, 2012 D, Beyond 7 billion: The China effect”, Los Angeles Times. Weiss, Kenneth R, 2012 E, “Beyond 7 billion: Dream out of reach”, Los Angeles Times.
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