What Comes after Seven Billion?

On World Population Day, the world counts itself. Not person by person, and not literally in the form of an international census, but on July 11 the world population takes stock of itself.

Today there are more than six billion people living on Earth. In the course of the last 100 years, the world population has nearly quadrupled. Every year the population grows by about 80 million people, says the German Institute for World Population Studies.

The developing countries are hardest hit by the population explosion. Nearly 99 percent of the entire world population growth occurs in the poorer and less-industrialized countries.

Two hundred years of rapid growth

In just 200 years, the world’s population has increased six-fold. The first billion mark was reached in 1800, the second in 1927. In 1974 the population grew to four billion, and 13 years later in 1987 it topped five billion. Now, 15 years later, the population has climbed to just over six billion. Based on these statistics, analysts say the world population increases another billion every 13 to 17 years.

The question of when the next billion mark will be surpassed depends on the growth rates in India, China and Africa – all regions with rapidly growing populations. But analysts from the United Nations Population Fund and their cooperation partner in Germany, the German Institute for World Population Studies, predict the population will reach seven billion in 2015 and nine billion by 2030.

There are several reasons for the explosive population boom, and most of them are connected to better living standards. Improvements in medicines and basic health services in the less-developed regions of the world, as well as developments in technology and the increase in food production in the last half century, have led to increased life expectancy and a decline in infant mortality rates worldwide.

Dwindling resources

At the same time, however, natural resources such as fossil fuels, wood and clean water, have become more scarce. The U.N. Population Fund says "more people are using more resources with more intensity than at any point in human history."

Fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries and biodiversity all show signs of stress from the increased population, the UN says. "This pressure on the environment is the result of, on the one hand, increasing affluence – that is, more consumption, pollution and waste, and on the other persistent poverty – that is, lack of resources and the technology to use the scarce resources efficiently."

The current situation is alarming. Whereas the population in China is expected to level out by 2050, the growth rate in India and Africa is expected to climb still higher. And it’s in these poorer regions, where the exploding birth rate puts the most pressure on natural resources.

Developing countries

Nearly one-third of the population in developing countries lacks access to clean water supplies, and over one billion people are malnourished. According to the United Nations, 70 percent of the available freshwater supply will be exhausted by 2025. And a chronic water shortage combined with soil erosion also reduces the amount of arable land.

Worldwide, two billion hectares (4.9 billion acres) of cropland – an area larger than the United States and Mexico combined – have been destroyed by faulty farming methods, overuse and soil degradation. A reduction in cropland is especially detrimental to developing countries because it leads to a reduction in available food products on a local level.

Stefanie Ettelt, spokeswoman for the Hanover-based German Population Institute, criticizes the relative lack of international concern over the population explosion in developing countries and its environmental impact.

In an interview with DW-WORLD, Ettelt said that the "Cairo Action Program", which was founded at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), has not been successfully implemented.

When the international community met in Cairo to draw up guidelines for dealing with global population growth, 180 countries agreed to establish programs for improving family planning, education for AIDS protection and prenatal health care. Eight years down the road, however, the signing countries haven’t made much headway, says Ettelt.

Of the $17 billion (€17.11 billion) required annually for implementing these programs, only about two billion have actually been invested, she says. And considerably more needs to be done to effectively combat the problems associated with uncontrolled population growth.

European population decline

In Germany, as in the rest of Western Europe, the population is experiencing the reverse effect: a declining population growth. On average, each German couple has only 1.3 children. For every 1,000 German citizens, there are nine births and ten deaths. "We can’t speak of growth here any more," says Ettelt. According to U.N. statistics, the current population of 82 million Germans could drop to 70 million by 2050.

Germany is not alone in its low birth rate. The trend applies to all of Europe. In France, couples have an average of 1.8 children. And in Spain and Italy, the rate is even lower at 1.1 children per couple. Stefanie Ettelt says social factors are primarily to blame for the declining birth rates.

As an example, she points to the fact that more women are delaying starting a family until they are older and have gained career experience. Children and family are not necessarily a high priority for them. The generation of 30-year olds have a different life plan than previous generations, she says.

"This development needs to be taken seriously, especially because it concerns the future of the country’s retirement plans. And politicians need to do something about this," Ettelt told DW-WORLD.

But politicians need to do more than just concern themselves with their own country’s population. If the world’s population growth continues to increase as rapidly as analysts expect it to, politicians and citizens in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world will have more to worry about than their own retirement plans. An exploding population in developing countries will have long-term consequences for the global environment.