Every decade or so the debate about the size of world population resumes. It is a crucial debate which can have major consequences for millions of people. But it is also a difficult debate, since the issues are complex, emotive and easily sensationalised.
The damaging and ongoing consequences of the global financial crisis make our current situation still more urgent. Before, many development specialists and economists were quietly confident the world had the resources to feed its growing population until population size levelled off at about 9 billion people in 2050, although this would require skill and effort on a global scale.
This commitment was evident in the UN Millennium Development Goals, which aimed to rapidly reduce hunger and the grossest poverty within decades. Importantly, the Goals included improved health outcomes for children and women, and increased educational opportunities for girls and young women. These aims were seen to be critical in curtailing excessive population growth rates.
While there has been major progress, particularly in Africa, the GFC has severely handicapped results. The economic crisis in developed countries savaged credit for developing countries, and resulted in perhaps 100 million people being pushed down into the most severe deprivation and hunger. The crisis reversed the steady progress that many countries had been making to reduce severe poverty.
The task of reducing global poverty suddenly became much harder.
To make matters worse, the threats arising from global warming and climate change challenged the assumptions agricultural experts had made about how to increase world food production at affordable prices. Droughts, floods and more extreme weather patterns were causing unexpected shortages, resulting in higher food prices and increased hunger for the poorest people.
No wonder some people are alarmed. Australian entrepreneur, Dick Smith, wrote recently that the world 'is already hitting against' its limits to growth. 'On a finite planet, we are ... literally exhausting the environment on which we rely for our survival.'
Even the eminent economist, Jeffrey Sachs, coordinator of the large group of economists who devised the details of the UN Millennium Development Goals, called for a cap on population of 8 billion in 2050. In his 2008 book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Sachs nevertheless insisted that measures to reduce population growth