Global depopulation: saving the Earth while killing the economy?

Right now, human population growth is doing something long thought impossible – it’s wavering. It’s now possible global population could peak much earlier than expected, topping 10 billion in the 2060s. Then, it would begin to fall.

In wealthier countries, it’s already happening. Japan’s population is falling sharply, with a net loss of 100 people every hour. In Europe, America and East Asia, fertility rates have fallen sharply. Many middle or lower income countries are about to drop too.

This is an extraordinary change. It was only ten years ago demographers were forecasting our numbers could reach as high as 12.3 billion, up from around 8 billion today.

For 50 years, some environmentalists have tried to save the environment by cutting global population growth. In 1968, The Population Bomb forecast massive famines and called for large-scale birth control.

Now we face a very different reality – population growth is slowing without population control, and wealthy country populations are falling, triggering frantic but largely ineffective efforts to encourage more children. What might a falling global population mean for the environment?

Depopulation is already happening

For much of Europe, North America, and some of Northern Asia, depopulation has been underway for decades. Fertility rates have fallen steadily over the past 70 years and have stayed low, while longer life expectancies mean numbers of very old people (over 80) will double in these regions within 25 years.

China was until recently the world’s most populous nation, accounting for a sixth of the global population. But China, too, is now declining, with the fall expected to rapidly accelerate.

By the end of the century, China is projected to have two-thirds