Human population is 8 billion strong: Where does it leave space and resources for animals and other species?

Even on a slowing basis, the world has generated a population of 8 billion human beings as of the middle of November 2022. It will continue to grow to an estimated 10.4 billion people by 2100.

With so many people teeming about, in India and China alone, some 3 billion of the present total, knowing that they will most likely survive and enjoy unprecedented longevity, a big item of fact is on the table, and nobody can do anything much about it. But where will the animals, birds, fishes, bees, butterflies, and other species go? What about the trees and plants being slaughtered with forests being cleared?

In the last 60 years, the human population has doubled and the wildlife population has not halved, but dropped by 70 per cent. We are likely to lose one million species to extinction in the next few years unless accelerated conservation and repopulation programmes are adopted. Nearly 20 plant and animal species are becoming extinct every hour according to a National Wildlife Federation report from the US.

And yet, as the human population expands, deforestation takes place, the air and water bodies are degraded, oceans are over exploited and polluted.

One of the to-do things is reforestation programming on degraded, semi-desert land. This has a knock-on favourable effect on the climate, and provides replacement habitat for animal and bird species, inclusive of water bodies, artificially created if necessary. Many countries have their own programmes.

India currently has just under 25 per cent of its land under forest cover, with 60 per cent of it being cultivated. At one time, shortly after Independence, some 58 per cent of land in India was classified as wasteland. It is no wonder we had to ask for food aid instead of being food surplus today. India now wants to increase forest cover to 33 per cent of the land by 2030. That leaves just 5-7 percent for the snowy reaches and high deserts.

China too has a massive tree plantation drive on over 100,00 hectares to arrest desertification in Xinjiang and other northern provinces and has the largest tree plantation statistics in the world.

Nevertheless, there is still an approaching global apocalypse. If, of no other kind, then natural disasters like avalanches, tsunamis, typhoons and earthquakes by which the earth rights itself when it is sick.

Each generation of humans that fails to address such concerns, makes it worse for future generations of people and other species alike.

And yet, most global climate change talks turn into useless blame games with attempts to evade responsibility. It is of course true that the developed West continues to be the greatest polluters and agents of global warming, a great killer of wildlife and plant species, with America leading the tables.

The US is followed by Europe. China and India bring up the rear, despite their huge populations and many polluting industries, the extensive use of fossil fuels and coal.

The West apparently won’t change its lifestyle of massive carbon footprint consumption beyond the introduction of electric cars. Neither will it pay for, or even subsidise, cleaner technologies to be employed in India, China, and other parts of the world. It is a cacophony of unctuous verbal, written, visual and graphic concern, but with Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 built into it.

On the matter of our feathered, finned, leafy and furry friends, even without mindless and greedy hunting and fishing, ruthless timber-logging, many species are going extinct because of destruction of their natural habitat -along with its accompanying flora and fauna.

Toxic air, land, and water, plastic infestation, chemical pollution, poisonous, sometimes secretive dumping of waste material, oil spills, climate change brought about by rampant human consumption and carbon emitting machines and engines, are the global norm today.

Glaciers are melting, temperatures are rising, deforestation is laying great areas to waste and denudation. Mangrove forests are gone.

Over-exploitation of natural resources without putting much back is cancer. Floods, forest fires, droughts are the result.

The earth’s resources of land, water, space, minerals and consumables are limited. Human beings have shared nature’s bounty with animals, birds, fishes and so on for aeons. But now, the sheer density of population in certain areas and countries, has shrunk the habitat of animals and other species. This is going to get worse before it gets better. Overall population growth will begin to eventually decline in the next century.

The irony of population distribution is that the poorest and least educated tend to have the largest number of children, sometimes aided by religious and cultural sanctions.

But the pressure of inflation and rising aspirations in a largely urbanised world is inexorable. People are now perched on the information highway, and this is changing outlooks. The world is much better informed and connected, even in its remote corners, due to the reach of digitisation and the Internet.

Attitudes, beyond socio-cultural dictation, are changing against having large, unaffordable families. A decent standard of living is becoming not just a middle-class desire, but a universal phenomenon that everyone aspires to.

In contrast with a slowing of birth rates amongst the most fertile, there are countries and large parts of the developed world that suffer from declining birth rates, below replacement rate, alongside unproductive and ageing populations. The obvious and easy solution is not the favoured one however.

Countries short on labour and skills are reluctant to open themselves up for massive immigration. Those who have are suffering for it. So now most fear loss of privileged lifestyles, attacks on manners and mores, law and order problems, intrusion of alien cultures and religions.

These can, and often do spark civilian unrest. So, it is a problem of too much in some places, and not enough in others, with no easy answers.

In the past, wars and pestilence were the methods by which populations were restricted. Today, wars tend to be localised, and the threat of nuclear Armageddon keeps them contained.

Medical science and pharmaceuticals have greatly advanced and alleviate problems in most conditions. Only unprecedented Black Swan events and disasters can wipe out tens of millions of people now.

The result of what ought to be a civilisational plus however, is too many people gobbling up resources meant for both man and beast.

Still, the world population is growing at the slowest rate since 1950, having fallen on an average to less than one percent in 2020. Replacement population growth is at 2 per cent.

The pity is that the less useful are breeding away and the others are not. Most of the projected increase in population till 2050 are concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tanzania. Countries with the highest fertility rates almost always have the lowest per capita incomes. But then it is the high per capita income countries that are damaging the environment the most.

Globally life expectancy was at 72.8 years in 2019 and will most likely rise to 77.2 years by 2050. But just as the possibilities for mankind have improved vastly from centuries past, they must do so for all the other species we share the earth with. The consciousness for this has come. Some work to save the other species has begun, but this will have to be accelerated, and be accomplished in less space, and by keeping natural predators at bay. We will need managed and monitored forests, mountains, rivers, lakes and oceans. In a highly technological world, it is probably in the fitness of things to avert threats and hazards to our mutual survival. Darwinian survival of the fittest has to be substituted with survival for the weakest.

There is an ongoing project to revive the extinct, flightless Dodo from its fully sequenced DNA for the first time. It should fill our hearts with immense hope.

The author is a Delhi-based writer. Views expressed are personal.

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