On August 13 the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) released an astounding report. A synopsis can be found on the NPR site for All Things Considered on that date. The interview with David Anthony, the lead author, gives a bare-bones picture but it should be enough to catch everyone’s attention.
By the end of this century, 40% of the world’s population will live in Africa, up from 15% today. That would be 4 billion souls, and 1 billion of them will be living in Nigeria alone, a country about twice the size of California. Even more mind-boggling is the prediction that by 2050 there will be 1billion children living in that massive continent. Mr. Anthony says that UNICEF is concerned about that. “Concerned” should be massive understatement. I suspect the entire report may shed more light than his four minute interview; one would hope.
Asked if the rate of growth was unsustainable, he surprisingly said, “I don’t think the unsustainability issue comes into play . . . . I think Africa has a very low population density compared with many other regions.” The birth rate for African women is 4.5/female while worldwide it is 2.5. Fertility rates are falling for Africa but the growth in the number of childbearing women and decreased infant mortality more than offset a decrease in reproduction.
One would hope that somewhere in the report is buried a comprehensive program of birth control, but Anthony gave no hint that suggested it. He believes that education of women and building a skilled, dynamic work force will accommodate the population explosion.
As the report ended my mind hit rewind: In 1793 Thomas Robert Malthus, an English cleric, published a work entitled An Essay on the Principle of Population Growth in which he said, “That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, that population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, that the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.” Restated, when the population surpasses subsistence, then starvation occurs, to say nothing of disease, and war.
While that may have seemed true over 200 hundred years ago, the good reverend had little concept of how large the world was and the massive amount of food that advanced agriculture would be able to provide. That being said, his basic theory is going to be put to the test . . . and soon.
Statistics suggest that 842 million people, or one in eight, do not have enough to eat. Ninety-eight percent live in underdeveloped countries and about 25% live in sub-Saharan Africa. Periodic famine frequently claims a million lives a year, mostly children, in Africa alone. To believe that educating girls and women in these situations is going to reverse this international shame flies in the face of common sense.
Here’s a thought for the future. Malthus could not predict the increased productivity, but there is bound to be a finite amount of food that can be produced unless we learn to grow plants in the ocean; that could happen. Here’s even a more radical idea: Food will no longer be required for survival. Through molecular biology and nanotechnology total nutrition through a weekly pill may be the answer. Eating will be reserved for one meal a month, a truly special occasion. Science is at a point that almost anything is imaginable, but somebody better be thinking about the population explosion and how to feed them or the Right Reverend Malthus may have the last word . . . and it won’t be a laugh.
-Hayden Hollingsworth
