Defusing the population timebomb

Across the world, population policy has been ignored in framing natural resources and environmental strategy.

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For three days last week 60 international experts met in Abu Dhabi to discuss tactics in the war against global warming. The forum held at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research looked at the issues at the centre of negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol and, most importantly, how the estimated US$100 billion needed to limit the increase in global mean temperatures to 2°C would be met.

The conference, organised by the NYU School of Law, is symptomatic of just how seriously climate change and the devastating effects it threatens are being taken. Many countries, not least the UAE, are making valiant efforts to reduce their carbon footprint yet an important part of the environmental equation continues unchecked - the incessant rise in the number of people occupying the planet. Fast-forward to the future and one can see a point at which climate change and population growth trends will collide with devastating results.

Human demands on the planet's biological resources are already outstripping its capacity to regenerate them, and with greenhouse gas concentrations heading rapidly towards dangerous levels, it appears unlikely that the world will be able to support projected world population growth of 2.3 billion by 2050 at even modest levels of consumption. Ecological footprinting studies show that 6.8 billion of us are draining natural capital such as forests and fresh water now in what seems like a suicidal rush to extinction.

Even the UAE, with 4.5 million inhabitants, is living at nearly nine times above self-sufficiency in "green" resources. And the population of the Emirates is expected to nearly double in the next 50 years. For the world as a whole, and for the Emirates, wouldn't fewer people mean better lives? Paradoxically, the UAE might be partly rescued by the sun. As one of the richest countries in the world, it can afford to green its economy and move rapidly into a low-carbon age.

In Abu Dhabi the planned carbon-neutral city of Masdar, if successful, will be a beacon of sustainability, and the Emirate is well aware of the difficulties it has to overcome. "Over the last two decades, rapid economic development coupled with sharp population increases and a strive for agricultural development to achieve self-sufficiency in food supplies - irrigation for agriculture now uses about 50 per cent of all water supplies - has meant an increasing reliance on unconventional water resources, such as desalination," Abu Dhabi's Environment Agency has pointed out.

With a $15 billion commitment to renewable energy, including up to 2,000 megawatts of concentrated solar power plant, Abu Dhabi may be able to keep more of its massive oil reserves underground and earn export revenues from clean energy instead. In doing so, it will also reduce the carbon footprint of its population - the impact of Abu Dhabi lifestyles on the rest of the world. But globally the supply of healthy croplands and water resources is shrinking, and as more than 90 per cent of Abu Dhabi's territory is arid or desert land, the Emirate is already in short supply.

Self-sufficiency in food supplies has risen to the top of the agenda in many countries since the surge in food prices in 2007-08 following controversial attempts by food-poor countries to buy up arable land overseas to feed their own populations. Solar energy may power desalination plants, but will it turn desert into rich, deep soil? And if everyone in the UAE succeeded in halving his or her own ecological footprint, the benefit would be wiped out by a doubling of population - to twice the number of "feet".

Given the simple truth that growth cannot grow indefinitely, national policies to stabilise populations and allow gradual decrease to more sustainable levels seem more urgent than ever before. As in so many other countries, including Britain, population policy has been ignored in framing natural resources and environmental strategy. Debate was effectively silenced after the controversial attempts by China and India to curb population growth in the 1970s, and it is only recently that rational discussion about what must be one of the world's biggest environmental problems has begun to re-emerge.

Human numbers are still growing by nearly 80 million a year, and with more than a third of the people on the planet now under the age of 25 - young and fertile - it will take radical improvements in contraception provision and efforts to change attitudes to family size to make a difference soon. Over the past two decades the UAE has had one of the highest population growth rates in the world, faster even than in some areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Population density, at just over 54 people per square kilometre, looks comfortable but is rising fast.

The current 1.3 per cent annual rate of natural increase - the difference between annual birth and deaths - is partly due to rising life expectancy and partly to a high proportion of young people in the population: although they are expected to have small families - only two children per woman on average - the number of potential parents in the UAE has been expanding. As in Britain, recent growth is mainly due to high inward migration levels, a trend that complicates population issues because the younger average age of inward migrants tends also to raise fertility levels.

Greater understanding may point the way to sustainable population policies. There has at last been recognition of the flaw in arguments for perpetual population growth to improve age-dependency ratios - by increasing the number of young people to support ageing populations. Simply put, young people also grow old, so a growing population will produce even more elderly people to support in the long term.

Climate change scenarios, which include the possible desertification of large parts of southern Europe, have tempered enthusiasm for mass inward migration or incentives to raise birth rates, though in the short term policy is being shaped by rising unemployment across the EU. With the possibility of about 200 million environmental refugees being displaced worldwide by the middle of the century, it looks as if each continental bloc will have enough to cope with in accommodating its own displaced peoples. This may bring home sharply to individual nations the need to think about their own long-term population sustainability.

At the end of 2008, Britain became the first country in the EU to set a cap on population growth, with a ministerial pledge not to allow it to grow beyond 70 million. With 61 million inhabitants, the UK has a population density twice that of China and five times as much as the UAE. Like the UAE, it is trying to move towards a low-carbon economy, and it has the advantage of a temperate climate and near self-sufficiency in food and water.

But damp, grey and crowded Britain depends on oil, fertilisers and intensive farming for its high agricultural yields. It is surrounded by wind and waves for offshore green energy production, with little land free for onshore wind and biomass. Intermittent and weak sunshine rules out being rescued by the sun - yet. Renewables contribute less than five per cent to energy supply, North Sea oil has been nearly exhausted, energy supplies from other countries look increasingly unstable and unless ageing power stations are replaced soon, the lights may start going out by 2020.

Meanwhile, its population is being added to by about 400,000 a year and there's no firm evidence of a turnaround yet. Against this background the pro-growth policies of a series of British governments look like a catastrophic environmental error. It is hard to see how the country will be able to sustain 70 million people in 2050. The Optimum Population Trust is a think tank that covers population and environment issues. Sir David Attenborough, the renowned naturalist and film-maker, recently joined a distinguished list of patrons.

The Trust's recommended population policies for Britain are awareness-raising of the impacts of family size decisions on population growth and the environment, with encouragement to couples to think about stopping at two children - alongside numerically balanced migration. A combination of these two measures could reduce our numbers to a more sustainable 55 million by mid-century instead of adding 16 million more people as projected - two whole Londons - to an already environmentally stressed country. A decrease of seven million, though it might worsen age-dependency ratios, could re-green an area the size of Wales.

This would make the task of reducing our own impacts on the rest of the world easier, and defuse some of the political pressures caused by the widening gap between rising expectations and dwindling resources. Rosamund McDougall, is policy director and former co-chair of the Optimum Population Trust