Earth Heading For 5 Billion Overpopulation?

A conference next week will attempt to answer a question that has fascinated scientists for centuries but has now taken on a new urgency – how many human beings can the Earth support?

With the earth’s population growing by around 80 million - a new Germany - each year, the Optimum Population Trust has assembled a distinguished group of experts to discuss the scientific case for lowering global and national populations to environmentally sustainable levels.

Climate change, growing food shortages, the projected peaking of oil and gas supplies and the growth of international migration have focused renewed attention on population growth, with senior figures from both Labour and Conservative parties speaking recently of the need for population policies and leading figures in the green movement, including James Lovelock, author of the Gaia theory, warning of the dangers of overpopulation.

Lovelock agrees with many other commentators that the environmental crises facing humanity in the 21st century will significantly reduce the earth’s carrying capacity. He has said this could shrink the world’s sustainable population to 500 million - 1 billion, compared with a current total of 6.8 billion.

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High Incidence of Child Marriage in India

A large proportion of women in India were married when they were still children, a study has found, and researchers warned that such unions carried higher risks of unwanted pregnancies and female sterilization.

Nearly all the women who were married before they reached the legal age of 18 reported that they used no contraception before they had their first child, according to the study, which was published in The Lancet.

Marriage at a very young age carries grave health consequences for both the girl and her children and it is well documented that adolescent mothers are more likely to experience complications such as obstetric fistula.

“Women who were married as children remained significantly more likely to have had three or more childbirths, a repeat childbirth in less than 24 months, multiple unwanted pregnancies, pregnancy termination, and sterilization,” wrote the researchers, led by Anita Raj at the Boston University School of Public Health.