What Africa’s population boom means for the planet

There’s a subject we’re avoiding: what does an increase in human numbers to 10 billion or more imply for the world’s ecosystems? 

An explanation commonly offered is that the source of humanity’s overreach is not the size of the global population but consumption in the global North.

It’s true – that’s a major factor – but focusing on this alone is misleading. Human numbers matter too.

World population in 1950 was 2.5 billion. Today it is 8 billion. Suppose we take US$20,000 per year as a reasonable standard of living – (it is the average income in today’s middle-income countries). One estimate, based on a simple calculation is that the sustainable global population is approximately 3.2 billion, which was the global population in the early 1960s.

The accompanying figure shows that a great rise in global population took place in Asia from 1950. Rapid declines in mortality rates were not matched by reductions in fertility rates. Population in Asia grew from approximately 1.7 billion in 1950 to 4.6 billion in 2020. In the 1970s several countries in the Far East experienced a transition from high fertility rates (4 and over live births per woman) to the replacement rate (2.1) – that is the rate of live births over a woman’s reproductive years that would stabilise populations. But large young populations relative to the rest carried with them a momentum to keep the population growing. 

The figure also projects that the population in all regions other than sub-Saharan Africa will level off or dip slightly from about 2050. In contrast, the median population projection for sub-Saharan Africa is a continual increase from today’s approximately 1 billion to 3.8 billion in 2100 – a nearly four-fold increase from what it is today.

Per capita GDP in sub-Saharan Africa is only about 25% of the global GDP per capita. The region’s GDP is 3-4% of global GDP. That means sub-Saharan Africa is not responsible for today’s global ecological overshoot. But the region’s demands on its own ecosystems exceeds their ability to meet the demands on a sustainable basis; evidence for which is its deteriorating ecosystems. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from an overshoot in the demands it makes of its own ecosystems. 

High fertility rates in the region can be expected to dampen the prospects of future Africans enjoying flourishing lives, for the region’s ecological footprint would then continue to rise with increasing numbers, while simultaneously attempts are made there to raise incomes by expanding its exports of primary products such as gold, crude oil, coffee and cotton.

To not acknowledge that is to commend policies that work against the interest of the common African citizen.

Demography today has a deeply uneasy relationship with environmental activists, national governments, and international development organisations. I have found it hard to understand. One reason could be that reproductive culture is seen to be a slower changing factor in human behaviour than other aspects of culture, such as, for example, the rapid transition to eating fast food, and wearing jeans that people in poor countries have displayed in recent decades. 

But reproductive culture is not as resistant to change as it is frequently imagined, for it has been known to adapt when people have found it in their interest to adapt and have the facilities to adapt. The rapid fertility transition in Taiwan from a high of 4 in 1970 to the replacement rate of 2.1 in 1984 – a mere 14 years – is an example of how cultural norms can change rapidly in a society previously regarded as traditional.

Only about 50% of women in sub-Saharan Africa who want to avoid pregnancy currently use modern methods, which means some 200 million women there have an unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services. The fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa is 4.6, and the population is projected to grow at 2.6% a year over the coming future. Nigeria’s total fertility rate is 5.4 and the country is expected to grow from a population of 200 million today to some 380 million in 2050.

Much can be gained by bringing forward a fertility transition. A transition in Nigeria, more generally in sub-Saharan Africa, to a replacement rate in, say, 20 years’ time rather than in 50+ years’ time would mean a massive lowering of the projected population size in 2070, which in turn would reduce the pressure population the continent would inflict on their local ecosystems.

I have heard it suggested instead that sub-Saharan Africa’s high fertility rates are a harbinger of a demographic dividend. That is a misleading reading drawn from East Asia’s experience in the 1970s, where fertility rates dropped sharply to below replacement level in a brief number of years. The dividend was a reduced share of non-working age people, enabling saving rates to increase – with resulting investment that helped create jobs. That increase in savings rates was vigorously undertaken by households and the state. 

Sub-Saharan Africa’s situation is entirely different. Continual population growth there sustains an age distribution where an increasing number of youths find themselves in need of employment in an environment where savings rates are low and can be expected to remain low. 

In Nigeria, for example, the population in prime working age (20-64 years) is projected to increase from about 90 million to nearly 200 million between 2020 and 2050. The country therefore needs to create nearly 4 million additional jobs a year. 

Battle of the bulge

China was able to absorb its growing youth population because the state took draconian measures to raise the savings rate. There are no signs that Nigeria has the capacity to do that. The unemployment rate in Nigeria is currently about 33%, of which 50% are youths. The ratio of population in age group 20-64 to the total population is expected to rise from a bit over 40% to nearly 60% in the period. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of the population experience modest to severe food insecurity and some 65% of the urban population live in slums.

Indifference toward demography as a factor in sustainable development is reflected in the OECD’s practice of allocating less than 1% of their aid budget to family planning and reproductive health. The UK government in its 2021 last budget reduced its meagre allocation to family planning by 85%.

For international organisations and national governments to seek to empower women while neglecting to offer the services women need to exercise control over their own bodies by spacing pregnancies and choosing their family size, and for development and environmental NGOs to support that neglect, is unconscionable.

Keeping demographic choices out of discussions on sustainable development reflect political sensitivities, presumably born out of a revulsion toward the programs introduced in China and for a brief while in the late 1970s in India. But demographic transitions have been experienced many times over in environments where coercion was not part of government practice.

In recent decades they have instead involved community- based health and family planning programs. Nevertheless, I have encountered only silence at any mention that sub-Saharan Africa’s demographic trajectory may pose enormous problems for future people in that region.

This guest essay was written by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, an economist at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the independent review on the Economics of Biodiversity, commissioned by the UK Treasury. 

Europe’s energy crisis

EU energy ministers are holding an emergency meeting this week to discuss how to cushion consumers from Europe’s deepening energy crisis. Since Russia halted the flow of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline last week, Germany has pledged $65 billion in relief measures. France’s government is asking citizens to prepare for a new era of energy “sobriety”. Sweden is offering $23 billion in handouts to help energy companies until March. Ukraine says it wants to support Germany using its ample supply of nuclear power (since mid-March the country has been exporting between 400 and 700 megawatts of electricity to the European Union and Moldova daily). Meanwhile, the UK awaits an energy plan from Liz Truss, its new Prime Minister.

Sizewell C
Boris Johnson was determined to get one last big ticket infrastructure project over the line before he left office. The development of Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk is going ahead at an estimated cost of £20bn. The government last week announced plans to take a 20 per cent share, with French supplier EDF taking another 20. The remaining 60 is up for grabs. But since Chinese state-backed investors were rejected earlier this year on security concerns, it’s been a struggle generating interest. According to the i., the government has approached investors in the UAE, Australia and Saudi Arabia. Industry experts say that any forthcoming investment will most likely come from a company that already has either existing nuclear interests or a political interest in the UK’s energy security.

Tackle the problem
Research has found six countries are responsible for 90 per cent of identifiable rubbish swirling around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Sampling and testing of 6,000 pieces by the Ocean Cleanup project and Wageningen University found that the largest percentage – 33.6 per cent – came from Japan, followed by China, South Korea, the US, Taiwan and Canada. What do all those countries have in common? Large, industrialised fishing fleets. The biggest source overall of ocean plastic pollution is dumping in rivers, but in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch more than three quarters comes from fishing activity.

Heat survival
In a hotter future, is it possible to reach “zero deaths” from heatstroke? Last year, Japan’s environment ministry set itself that goal, but after a summer when Tokyo experienced nine extremely hot days in a row, and a record number of weather stations in Japan recorded temperatures over 40°C, there are questions about how realistic that is. This feature in the BMJ has some useful learnings from Japan’s frequent battle with extreme heat. One overlooked solution is behavioural change, for example Japan’s “cool biz” programme, which encouraged relaxed office attire during the summer as a way to reduce energy consumption. Another more traditional method: eating eel.

Thanks for reading.

Jeevan Vasagar
@jeevanvasagar

Barney Macintyre
@barneymac

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