Researchers urge united nations to reject growth-driven framework in favor of lower population and consumption

In a new peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Population and Sustainability, demographic experts are urging the United Nations to reject the current “‘growth’ paradigm which treats Earth and its nonhuman inhabitants as mere resources” and to take the lead in “contracting the large-scale variables of the human enterprise” in order to “forge a path out of multiple environmental and social crises,” and “reverse our advanced state of ecological overshoot.” 

Earth Overshoot Day, the date when humanity’s demand on nature’s resources surpasses Earth’s capacity to regenerate them for the given year, fell on August 1 in the United States.  Earth Overshoot Day is calculated annually by Global Footprint Network as a measure of unsustainability. Falling on August 1 this year indicates we would need 1.75 Earths to meet human consumption demands and absorb other human impacts year-round.

August 1 is also the date The Journal of Population and Sustainability article appeared. “Overshoot is the underlying driver of climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, global toxification and aggravation of social conflicts and war,” its authors state. Citing an extensive body of existing research, they argue that lowering population and consumption growth and upholding reproductive rights and autonomy for women and girls are on the critical path to redressing these crises, reversing overshoot, and advancing social and ecological justice.

The authors pinpoint the 1994 Cairo conference on Population and Development as “a sharp turn away from the earlier emphasis on population concerns and their link to environmental protection,” and they cite the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 2023 State of World Population (SWOP) report, glibly titled “8 Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities,” as evidence of continued UN reluctance to reckon with population growth as a driver of today’s environmental and social crises.

“The [SWOP] report dismisses numerous studies by reputable scientists that draw conclusive  links between growth in human numbers and climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, species  extinctions, resource scarcity, conflict, poverty, food insecurity and more,” the authors write.  They call for a return to centering population and environmental concerns and enjoin the UN to lead the way “to move beyond the failed approaches of our current politics…to abandon the incessant pursuit of growth, and to embrace a sense of our shared humanity embedded within the larger web of life.”