Seven Billion

Seven Billion

The surge in human population is one of the defining crucibles of our era. If in 1900 we numbered but 1.6 billion people on the planet, we would a hundred years later in the year 2000 surpass 6.1 billion, a nearly 300 percent increase. This past October 31st, United Nations demographers suggest that the world has likely passed another demographic milestone, the seven billion mark. In light of this, the Whole Earth Library at Thoreau Center for Sustainability would like to highlight some of the numerous titles on population issues that we have in the collection.

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Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil editors. Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge. (1999)

For those interested in an introductory overview of the challenges of population growth, this short, concise primer examines the impacts of population growth on 19 global resources and services, including food, fresh water, fisheries, jobs, education, income and health.With the planet in danger of outstripping its carrying capacity,  Beyond Malthus examines methods such as the expansion of international family planning, investment in educating young people in the developing world and promotion of a shift towards smaller families which will represent the most humane response to the possible ravages of the population explosion.

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Bob van der Zwaan and Arthur Petersem, editors. Sharing the Planet: Population - Consumption - Species - Science and Ethics for a Sustainable and Equitable World. (2003)

This volume is the final report presented the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 by the Dutch Chapter of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. The internationally renowned scholars contributing to this volume conclude that immense endeavors by the international community are required over the first few decades of the new millennium to effectively deal with the challenge ahead of establishing sustainable development. They also conclude that a renewed public awareness is needed of the inescapable limits of our planet's resources and focus on what scholars and activists can do to raise the necessary awareness.

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Wolfgang Lutz, Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov editors. The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century: New Challenges for Human Capital Formation and Sustainable Development. (2004)

This edition looks at the problem of demographic transitions. While most countries will continue to add population in the coming decades, a number of countries, primarily in Europe, are facing negative population growth which of course presents a different set of challenges. The volume addresses these challenges in a number of ways. It produces probabilistic population forecasts for the world and 13 major regions and introduces new ways of analyzing the uncertainty of these forecasts. It integrates human capital and sustainable development with population change and shows how combining the three provides a new way of unifying our understanding of demographic developments in the 21st century. The book contains chapters on probabilistic population forecasting; integrated forecasts of population and education changes in world regions; the use of literate life expectancy as an indicator of social development; the interactions between population, the environment, and agriculture in Ethiopia; the effects of education on trends in HIV prevalence in Botswana, a country that has had greater success in tackling AIDS than most; China’s future rural and urban population by education; population, greenhouse gases, and global climate change; and a new conceptual framework that combines considerations of population growth, age structure, human capital, and the environment and shows that the problems of rapid economic growth and rapid aging can be formulated and analyzed within a unified framework.

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Elizabeth Leahy with Robert Engelman, Carolyn Gibb Vogel, Sarah Haddock and Tod Preston. The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to a Safer, More Equitable World. (2007)

Seven Billion
A wonky detailed analysis of the various projected demographic trends for various countries around the world. Based on more than two years of research and analysis, the authors conclude that population age structure can have a significant impact on countries' stability, governance, economic development and the well-being of its people. Most importantly, they find that age structures are dynamic and can be influenced—and shaped—through policies that affect the demographic forces (i.e. births, deaths and migration) that determine these age structures. The authors also find that in looking to the future and the shape of things to come, aid and assistance programs that promote the demographic transition—family planning, female education, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment--must be an integral part of development assistance.