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How Many People Can Earth Sustain

    • Dheeraj.Jangra@timesgroup.com
    • Publish Date: May 27 2016 6:12PM
      • |
    • Updated Date: Aug 5 2016 4:47PM
How Many People Can Earth Sustain

No species has altered Earth’s natural landscape the way humans have. Growing population, coupled with rising pollution levels, has taken a hefty toll on our planet. As it stands now, the world’s population is over 7.3 billion. According to United Nations’ predictions it could reach 9.7 billion by 2050, and over 11 billion by 2100. But researchers warn that planet Earth can’t sustain a population of 11 billion. Is that true? Is there a limit on how many people can sustainably live on our planet and if so, what is that number? It’s time to take stock of the situation...

Population Explosion   
In the last 50 years, human population has increased manifold. Consider this: it took homo sapiens around 1,50,000 years to reach the one-billion mark in 1810. Just 120 years later, this doubled to 2 billion people (1930); then 4 billion in 1975 (45 years). And it just took just 40 years to breach the 7-billion mark.  This phenomenal growth is prominently due to one factor: advances in medical sciences. Common diseases that were fatal are now mostly eradicated. In addition, because of the rapid strides made by science, people are aware about food combinations that are healthy and those that are not.

Glaring Disparity: If the whole world lives according to European standards we will need 3.5 earths to sustain everyone. If, however, the entire world population adopts the American lifestyle, we will need five earths.
 

Scarcity Of Resources

It is quite obvious that scarcity of resources like food, water and energy is inevitable as the population soars. A staggering 40 per cent of Earth’s surface is now farmed. That’s a lot when you consider that the estimate in the 1700s was around 7 per cent Today, more than a billion people around the world lack access to regular food and clean drinking water. If we can’t look after our basic needs at the present, then the future portents a bleak picture.  

 
So what is the number we are looking at?
Well, about one-third less than it currently is. The real concern will be if people living in poor and developing countries decide to demand better lifestyles and consumption rates — currently considered normal in developed countries. If this happens then the pressure on Earth will increase exponentially. Currently, one-third of all food produced is wasted. It gets spoilt or is just thrown away. If we can ensure that there is zero wastage of food, Earth could easily support up to 10 billion people. But there is a catch here – even after preventing the food loss we have to dramatically alter our lifestyle of piling up our plates. Or we just end up replicating the mistakes of the past!  

The Solution  
According to estimates, by 2050 world population will reach 10 billion. So what can we do? First, reduce population; second, vastly reduce our consumption of resources; third, leverage technology to get more yield per acre of land. The last option seems the most feasible. It may not sound appetising at the moment, but there is every possibility we have to resort to eating synthesised food grown in labs. Let’s heed Gandhiji’s advice: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Silver Lining 
Don’t despair! There is a silver lining, after all. Given the shrinking size of families in many parts of the world today, many experts are optimistic that Earth’s population will never touch the 11-billion mark. They believe that the population will stabilise at around 9 billion by 2300 – this is a number that can be sustained by Earth’s resources, proovided we modify our habits. So how many children should one have to stop the worldwide population spiralling out of control in the next 30 years?  2.1 children per family, say experts. That’s what is known as the ‘Fertility Replacement Level.’ If the average number of children every family had in the world would drop to 2.1 then the population would never increase. Because two children are enough to replace their parents when they pass away...

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