The ultimate aim is for mankind to be living sustainably in harmony with other species on our planet.
“One element is present at all of the Climate issues today – the human race.” ( David Attenborough) When we consider living sustainably, we must include the population problem.
The good news is that we already have the means to do this: we don’t have to reinvent anything. Fertility rates can be reduced, given political will. In many parts of the world, remarkable results have been achieved simply by educating and empowering women. Measures such as health care and education lead to smaller families. Reducing population growth helps lift people from poverty.
“Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.” UNICEF report, 1992
There are various different estimates of future population size, depending on what assumptions are made. The graph shows that the difference between the highest and lowest projection by the end of the century is around 3.5 billion people.
If every other family had one fewer child then we would be on the trajectory of the lower dotted orange line, meaning better lives for everyone.
If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, then we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.
A crucial step in slowing world population growth would be to ensure that all women who want it have access to family planning information and services. Unfortunately, it is estimated that there are currently about 280 million women -- that is about one in eight women of childbearing age -- who do not have access to family planning who would like it. These women and their families represent roughly one billion of the earth’s poorest residents, for whom unintended pregnancies and unwanted births are an enormous burden.
Studies show that the education of women and their consequent understanding and empowerment, combined with approved availability of contraception, bring about smaller families.
A 2023 report by Population Matters, Power to the People, examines the elements of successful, effective choice. It shows how several countries, for example Costa Rica, Rwanda and Thailand, have achieved dramatic falls in fertility entirely without coercion.
Rwanda, Bangladesh and Costa Rica are three examples of countries which have achieved dramatic falls in fertility through non-coercive family planning schemes. Others include Ethiopia, Thailand and Kerala, India.
Rwanda In 1960 Rwanda had a population of about 2.1 million which has grown to around 14.5 million today. The birth rate in the 1960s was extremely high, around 8.4 births per woman.
Population declined during the terrible genocide of 1994, and then quickly bounced back, partly due to exodus and then return of refugees.
In 2003, the government introduced a National Policy for Sustainable Development which identified the importance of addressing population growth as part of a programme for sustainable development. As a result of the government's commitment to this policy, between 2005 and 2024 contraceptive use among married women has increased from 17% to 64% and the average number of births per woman has decreased to 3.7 in 2024, one of the lowest rates in the region.
"Family planning in Rwanda is not seen as population control, but rather as a way to empower the people." Dr Dieudonee Muhoza, University of Rwanda.
Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, has one of the highest population densities in the world. With free modern family planning methods, Bangladesh has worked hard to reduce its population growth rate from a total fertility rate of 6.87 at independence in 1971 to 1.9 in 2024.
In 1977, a landmark experiment by the MATLAB field research centre of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research near Dhaka demonstrated the success of high-quality voluntary family planning programs. This success led the Bangladeshi government to adopt the Matlab model as its national family planning strategy.
The Matlab population of 173,000 people was divided into an experimental area, where access to high-quality family planning services was greatly expanded to include home visits, a wide array of contraceptive choices, and follow-up care; and a control area, which received the standard set of less-intensive services that were available country-wide. Research by the Population Council, which had begun work in Bangladesh in the mid-1960s, showed that the impact in the experimental area was large and immediate: contraceptive use increased markedly, fertility declined rapidly, and women’s health, household earnings, and use of preventive health care improved. Children living in households that received family planning outreach were more likely to survive to the age of five and to attend school than were children from households that did not participate.
Bangladesh's population is expected to soon reach a stage where it neither grows nor shrinks. Notably, the educational attainment of women of reproductive age has increased roughly in parallel with a decline in the birth rate. For an in-depth article about the relative importance of family planning versus girls' education, see here and for recent Population Council research in Bangladesh see here.
It is interesting to compare Bangladesh and Pakistan. When the two countries separated in 1971, Bangladesh had a population of about 68 million compared to Pakistan's 60 million. As of 2023, Bangladesh's population is about 173 million while Pakistan's has ballooned to 240 million.
Costa Rica is a small country with a population of 4.9 million. Half of the country is covered by tropical forest. This represents remarkable transformation since the 1960s, when uncontrolled logging had reduced the original 75% of forest cover to just 17%.
In the 1960s, Czech born forestry professor Henry Tschinkel noticed a link between deforestation and the exceptionally high population growth: women had an average of 6 or 7 children and population was increasing at around 3.8% per year. He wrote: "At the time the country had the highest rates of demographic growth in the world. Everywhere you could see the destruction of the forests by cattle and agriculture. It was obvious that there wasn’t any forest future without controlling such very rapid growth.” Convinced that slowing population growth would simultaneously lift families out of poverty while also relieving pressure on Costa Rica’s natural resources, in 1966 various of the main activists founded the Costa Rican Demographic Association to start promoting and providing family planning services.
An interesting feature of this work was the strong involvement of various churches. The Evangelical Costa Rican Alliance organized “Good Will Caravans“ and offered contraceptive advice and vasectomies to residents in remote rural areas. Local churches helped distribute contraceptives while Episcopalian minister Padre Carlo hosted a radio show called Dialogo, in which he challenged the cultural hesitancy to discuss sex and promoted contraceptive usage.
Through mass communication and home visits, nurses, social workers, and priests explained to couples that having fewer children would enable them to save more money and enjoy more leisure time. The focused FP efforts induced steep fertility decline, compared with much more gradual decline without FP in nearby Guatemala. After the fertility decline, economic advancement accelerated more rapidly in Costa Rica, with GDP per capita growing from $380 to over $12,000 and life expectancy climbing from 60 to 80 years.
Costa Ricans now enjoy higher standards of education than previously and have one of the world’s most effective primary healthcare systems. Nature, too, is flourishing: after years of intensive logging, Costa Rica became the first country to reverse deforestation, and won a 2021 Earthshot Prize for its efforts to protect and restore nature. Read more about Costa Rica's remarkable story here and here.
Where women and girls are empowered to choose what happens to their bodies and lives, fertility rates plummet. Empowerment means freedom to pursue education and a career, economic independence, easy access to sexual and reproductive health services, and ending horrific injustices like child marriage and gender-based violence.
If girls can stay in school longer, they are more likely to have fewer children, who in turn are likely to be better educated. According to one study, African women with no education have, on average, 5.6 children; women who have completed primary 4.3; women who have completed secondary school have 2.7 and those who have a college education have 2.2. When family sizes are smaller, that also empowers women to gain education, take work and improve their economic opportunities.
Achieving gender equality will make the world a healthier, happier place and is crucial to making lasting environmental progress.
You may like this article `Women and Population' written by QCOP founder members Cherry Foster and Roger Plenty for our previous website. It talks about how women are at the heart of the solution to the global population crisis, but their social standing remains generally low in many countries. Not to mention how early Quakers managed to retain the concept and belief in the equality of the sexes.
“If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family (nation)” Old African proverb
“Family planning has played such an important role in conservation. I wish that all people working in conservation would understand the importance of working with local communities.” Dr Jane Goodall
Conservation work usually takes place in remote areas which are typically inhabited by poor populations who have limited access to health services and family planning. People struggle for food, water, fuel and building materials. Increased numbers mean using natural resources unsustainably, damaging the local ecosystems and biodiversity.
The close connection between population, family planning and the environment is being increasingly recognised. One such example is the example work on deforestation and family planning in Costa Rica explained above. Another is the work of Chase Africa which began with efforts to plant trees in Kenya and which now offers mobile health care and family planning advice.
This approach to conservation is called PHE -- Population, Health and the Environment. You can read about lots of successful examples here.
In 2024, Population Matters ran a campaign for the UK government to fund PHE projects. You can see the somewhat disappointing Government response and a detailed commentary from PM here.
One of the aims of QCOP is to raise awareness amongst Quakers of the impact global over-population has on the world. We also need to raise awareness amongst the general public, so that it becomes a known issue rather than an unpalatable truth. We have to become personally more comfortable mentioning it, and will achieve this through becoming more informed. Of great help is hearing about what works.
There are many examples of how Quakers have been involved with changing how people think, for example on slavery, war, and more recently same sex marriage. Persuading people to adjust their thinking is daunting, especially if they are family or our local community, but it has been done successfully since time immemorial and is probably one of the secrets of mankind’s success. Large organisations and those in a position of power have also effected changes in people’s mind-set through advertising and legislation, for example quite recently over reducing smoking.
To change perceptions on population we need to work on it at all levels, from close family to local community, on up to national parliament and further to international organisations and religious groups. Starting at a very individual level, we soon find that Population is seen as a feared, boring, or just over-complex topic. A common reaction to realising that it is a fundamental problem is often initially panic, anger and a feeling of helplessness. As Quakers we are often good at calm steady optimism. Above all else, people need to have good news stories leading to hope, and ideas of the words to use.
You can find some recent statements of Quakerly concern here.