The world population bomb may never go off, as the world population is likely to peak in the middle of this century and then gradually decline.
We have now just reached 8 billion globally, an event that should be seen as a positive but could bring much more strain on essential resources for years to come.
The study commissioned by the Club of Rome, via the guardian, projects that with current trends the world population it will peak at 8.8 billion in the middle of this century and then decline.
Once the population increase is over, the pressure on resources and the climate should begin to ease.
But the decrease in population it can cause new problems such as a shrinking workforce, increased stress on health care, the latter associated with aging society increasing life expectancy and declining birth rate.
Existing policies would be sufficient to limit population growth
One of the authors of the report Ben Callegaristates that these findings are optimistic but that there is a catch: “this gives us evidence to believe that the population bomb will not go off, but we will still face significant challenges from an environmental perspective”.
This new projection was made by the Earth4All collective of leading economic and environmental science institutions, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Center and the BI Norwegian Business School.
This report is based on a methodology that incorporates social economic factors that have an impact on the birth rate such as education levels.
They comment that with existing policies it would be enough to limit population growth and bring it below 9 billion in 2046, to then decrease to 7.3 billion in 2100.
“Although the scenario does not result in total ecological or climatic collapse, the likelihood of regional societal collapses nevertheless increases over the decades up to 2050, as a result of deepening social divisions both within and between societies. . The risk is particularly acute in the most vulnerable, poorly governed and ecologically vulnerable economies.”, they affirm.