A warm welcome to the 8 billionth person

According to the UN, it estimates that there were eight billion people alive at once on 15 November. While some have titled our swarming multitudes a “plague on the Earth”, including the British natural historian Sir David Attenborough, the human race which refers to themselves as the custodians of the planet seldom act as such. 

The majority of environmental issues we currently face, including climate change, biodiversity loss, water stress, and land dispute, are directly related to recent history’s rapid reproduction and growth. A group of scientists from Stanford University estimated that the ideal population for our species would be between 1.5 and 2 billion people back in 1994, when there were only 5.5 billion people on the planet. While the efficient population figure itself is a debatable point, the costs of overpopulation remain.

According to Thomas Malthus, the 18th century English cleric, who is famously known for ringing the alarm bell on resource scarcity, the two crucial observations: everyone has to eat, and everyone enjoys the act of reproduction, stands the test of time. He emphasised these truths, when followed to their logical conclusion, will eventually cause humanity’s needs to exceed the planet›s resources. 

These words had an immediate impact, provoking intense dread in some people and rage in others that would have long-lasting effects on society. The former believed that action needed to be taken to prevent an uncontrollable increase in our numbers. The latter claimed that restricting the number of people was foolish or unethical and that more food should be provided. Thankfully these doomsday predictions did not come to pass. Yet.

In 1968, according to Paul and Anne Ehrlich, in their work ‘The Population Bomb’, contemporary worries about world overpopulation began to surface. The city of Delhi served as inspiration. They were stunned by the amount of people on the streets when they drove through a slum on their way back to their hotel one evening. 

Since London’s population at the time was more than twice as large as Delhi’s, their account of the experience has drawn harsh criticism. Now it is approximated that the average family in the United States consumes nearly 16 times that of the average Indian family. Therefore, regardless of where crowding or resource squeezes originate, it is a global phenomenon.  

A rising number of people believe that the global obsession with pursuing economic growth at any costs should now be completely abandoned, or seriously altered to focus on sustainability. The notion of not wanting there to be too many people while also ensuring that there are positive birth rates with a booming economy, is a conflicting point on the overpopulation argument. 

Even Sri Lanka which is facing a rapidly declining birth rate and an aging population, would mean more stress on the economic capacity of the future. The current birth rate for Sri Lanka in 2022 is 14.840 births per 1,000 people, a 1.95% decline from 2021, with a steady downward trend. 

As fewer young people who can enter an economically productive role would mean more people being dependent on health, food and other necessities being subsidised on a smaller taxable income, Sri Lanka along with other governments, would be wise to look at productivity enhancements immediately. 

According to a 2014 study, even in the case of a major global catastrophe like a deadly pandemic, a devastating world war, or the implementation of a strict one-child policy in every nation on the planet – none of which, of course, anyone is hoping for – our population will increase to up to 10 billion people by the year 2100. 

Even a catastrophe of such magnitude that it kills two billion people in a five-year span in the middle of the century would not stop the population from increasing by 8.5 billion by the year 2100. Therefore, while the world welcomes the eighth billion person born, the circumstances and quality of their life should not be abandoned.