Population projections

Don’t panic !
A UN study sparks fears of a population
explosion. The alarm is misplaced
Sep 24th 2014

“BOOM! Earth’s population could hit 12 billion by 2100”. That was the
headline on Wired.com which greeted research by Patrick Gerland and others
of the United Nations’ population division looking at the UN’s population
projections to 2100. Britain’s Guardian newspaper said the study, published
recently in the journal Science, “overturns 20 years of consensus on peak
projection of 9 billion and gradual decline.” Climate News Network, a non-
governmental organisation that tracks and summarises environmental
articles, reckoned the study “has profound and alarming implications for
political stability, food security and, of course, climate change.”

But hang on a second. The UN’s population division is the outfit that much of
the world relies on for basic demographic information. If it had changed its
forecasts and overturned 20 years of consensus, that would be a very big deal
indeed. So has it? The answer is no. The headline projection in the Science
study says the world’s population is likely to grow from 7.2 billion now to 9.6
billion in 2050 and to 10.9 billion in 2100 (not 12 billion). This projection is
not new. It was first made by the UN itself in its 2012 estimates. (Before that,
the UN had projected a population of 9.3 billion for 2050.) The Science study
confirms, rather than changes it. The UN (and many other demographers)
have already stopped projecting a peak population of 9 billion.

It is true, as the article says, that “these projections indicate that there is little
prospect of an end to world population growth this century”. But that, too, has
been apparent for a while. Global population growth is slowing down, not
stopping. The rise in the total from 5 billion to 6 billion took 12 years; so did
the rise from 6 billion to 7 billion. But the rise from 9 billion to 10 billion looks
likely to take 25 years and from 10 billion to 11 billion, roughly 45 years. That
of course is not population stability, but is a move towards, rather than away
from it.