World population hits eight billion: why the milestone matters

On 31 October 2011, the human population hit 7 billion. Today, the world passed another significant milestone as we add another billion people to that tally.

The chosen date is an approximation based on modelling by the United Nations, but the symbolism is important. The figure of 8 billion people is precisely double what the world’s population was just 48 years ago.

And there are more of us on the way too. According to the UN’s projections the world will be home to about 9.7 billion humans in 2050 and around 10.4 billion by the 2080s.

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These statistics raise questions that are “profoundly worrying”, said population and environmental health scientist Maureen Lichtveld in The Conversation, central among which is “will we have enough food for a growing global population?”

This question is not easy to answer, said Michael Le Page in New Scientist. Estimates on how many people can live sustainably on the planet “vary widely”. One 2020 study found that current food systems can properly sustain only 3 billion. But others have suggested that simply by reducing meat consumption and food waste we could feed up to 10 billion.

Many experts believe that our concerns about the demands on resources based on simple population figures slightly miss the point, said The Japan Times. Instead of a fear of overpopulation, we should be worried about overconsumption by the wealthiest among us.

“Our impact on the planet is driven far more by our behaviour than by our numbers,” Jennifer Sciubba, a researcher at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington told the newspaper. “It’s lazy and damaging to keep going back to overpopulation,” she added, because it allows people in wealthier nations to blame the world’s problems on developing countries where population growth is highest.

A burgeoning global population is not all doom and gloom, according to Dr Elin Charles-Edwards, ​​a population geographer and demographer at the University of Queensland.

“As a demographer, we’re really optimistic people because we’ve seen massive change over the past 100 years,” Charles-Edwards told Australia’s national broadcaster ABC. “Everyone’s living longer, fewer babies are dying, fewer women are dying. Across a whole range of metrics, we’re doing better than we did. We’ve seen lots of small actions creating massive change for people.”

Indeed it is important to keep our fears about overpopulation in check, agreed Frank Jacobs in Big Think. There may be 8 billion of us, but “let’s correct the navel-gazing so typical of our species and appreciate the wider perspective”.

Most of Earth’s biomass is made up of plants (82.5%). The second largest is bacteria (12.8%), and then fungi (2.2%). Humans, meanwhile, account for no more than 0.01% of total biomass.

“That’s less than half compared to all the world’s mollusks,” Jacobs said. “But then again, those mollusks don’t all want a car, a fridge, and a million other things all wrapped in plastic.”

This article first appeared in The Week’s Global Digest newsletter. Sign up for a preview of the international news agenda, sent to your inbox every Monday.