To address our overconsumption of resources, we must work to achieve a sustainable population by addressing gender inequality, improving education and tackling poverty, says Chris Packham.
TODAY, there are more humans on Earth than ever and nature is in freefall. In just 50 years, wildlife populations have dropped on average by 69 per cent. In the same period, our population has doubled, and demand for non-living and living material from Earth has grown six times. The biggest culprits of biodiversity loss are habitat destruction and overexploitation of species, both driven by wholly unsustainable consumption and exacerbated by increasing human numbers. It is critical we address this overconsumption, and that means evaluating the impact our species’ population growth is having on the collapse of the natural world.
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| Simone Rotella |
December’s biodiversity summit in Montreal, Canada, didn’t meet the challenges we face. Two of the 23 targets are intended to address consumption and speak of “significantly reducing overconsumption”. But the concept is vaguely defined and unquantified, lacking mechanisms for any real delivery. Given all the goals of the previous biodiversity protection plan were missed, it is frankly impossible to imagine that governments will summon the bravery to grasp this nettle. We are thus precipitating the sixth mass extermination event of the world’s wildlife, and staring down the barrel of our own extinction too.
The global north, which has benefited most from industrialisation, is driving that unsustainable consumption and is the most responsible for global warming, deforestation and the destruction of species. So it is essential that those of us in the global north fundamentally change our lifestyles and challenge the economic principles that drive us to consume ever more. But can I? Will you? What if we fail? And is it ethically tolerable that we super-consumers survive on the resource poverty of the rest of the world?
No, it isn’t. Globally, equity must lie at the very core of our species’ future. We must urgently address gender inequality, improve education and tackle poverty. We are one species, with one big problem and one last chance to sort it out. And we can only do that together.
In May 2019, the global assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) identified human population growth and dynamics, alongside excess consumption and other factors, to be critical indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. In its blunt words, “our increasing numbers drive degradation”. So surely we must consider that achieving a sustainable human population is essential for our survival.
In November last year, our population reached 8 billion and current United Nations projections are that it will peak at 10.4 billion in the 2080s. The goal of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is for us to live “in harmony with nature” by 2050. Let me be emphatically clear: there is no doubt that the 1.7 billion more of us who are predicted by that date will make this significantly harder to achieve. However much we try to reduce our consumption and our impact, every innovation, initiative and regulation that moves us forward will have an incrementally lower impact due to the pressure to meet the needs of each of those extra 1.7 billion people.
And let me again be emphatically clear: it isn’t about any particular humans among those billions, this is about us as a species of resource-consuming organisms.
We must now urgently ensure governments approach their tasks with the commitment and intelligence to go beyond any short-sighted, short-term fixes. Tolerating the genocidal notion that “economic growth” – for which read “growth in consumption” – is the answer to our problems, and totally ignoring unsustainable population growth, must end. Or we all die.
Chris Packham is an author, television presenter and patron of Population Matters.
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This article was originally published by NewScientist Journal. You may read original article here.