Opinion Sur
Both population growth and economic development in their projections until the end of the century authorize a modest optimism. But human future will be manageable and sustainable as long as we manage to stem the geopolitical disorder before multiple catastrophes strike.
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Demographic destiny
Every time sociology looks for a firm floor in the figures, it turns to demography. This often happens because figures speak for themselves, but their interpretation and in particular their extrapolation are diverse and open to debate. It all depends on the context.
First, the graph about “population explosion” associated with socio-economic development is spectacular. It can frighten the most serene observer. See:
Sources: UN; World Bank
Until the advent of the industrial age, world population increased slowly (1500-1800). It was subject to an unstable balance between a high birth rate and another high death rate. This balance characterized traditional society, centered on large family groups, with high mortality among children and a short life expectancy for adults. All that changed with economic and social development, driven by technology.
Life expectancy grew and mortality fell sharply – but not the birth rate, which maintained its high rate “by drag” (cultural lag). Habits and customs were slow to adjust to the other variables. The resulting gap produced rapid population growth, especially in the more advanced developing countries. This process is easy to graph, and the result is eloquent. The chart has an inverted S. With the passage of time (i.e., development) population reaches a new, more stable equilibrium. Between one pole and the other in the process (light-blue area of the drawing) the “explosion” occurs.
Modernization and development
Social sciences—the intellectual product of this same process—analyzed change sometimes with alarm (Malthus’s theory[1]) and other times with greater tranquility (sociology of modernization[2]).
Malthus’s theory was simple and blunt: when the population exceeds the available natural resources, a catastrophic “correction” occurs through famines, epidemics, and wars, until a new equilibrium is found. The theory did not take into account the technological advance of productivity, which would feed a constantly increasing number of people – although until when we do not know.
For its part, the sociological theory of modernization proposed a more reassuring perspective. Social change would produce a significant reduction in the family nucleus, a much smaller number of children, and a greater elective rationality in the population. This theory envisaged a new balance between birth and mortality and therefore a social brake on the population explosion in countries from a certain level of development.
With the globalization of the modernizing process[3] and even with a strong planetary inequality, the so-called “Third World” would reach a degree of development similar to that of the first modern countries. In Anglo-Saxon sociology, this theory had its peak in the 50s and 60s. Latin American sociology accompanied her step by step with similar expectations.
The demographic, economic, and sociological projections are not catastrophic, but only if we abstract from geopolitical risk.
With the passage of the 20th to the 21st century and the phenomenon of globalization (very poorly handled by the First World), demographic and social development figures seem to confirm sociological theory, although from time-to-time panic spreads. United Nations data foresee a world population “ceiling” between 10 and 11 billion people by the end of the 21st century, from which the population will begin a gradual decline, at a variable speed not yet determined. [4]
When writing this article, the world’s population has reached 8 billion. From now on 3 billion more are expected and there the growth stops[5], if everything remains the same (ceteris paribus), which of course never happens. As the popular Italian saying goes ‘Tra il dire e il fare c’e di mezzo il mare’ (between saying and doing [between today and tomorrow] there is a sea in between). Why it does not happen? Because a variable not foreseen either by demography or by the sociological theory of modernization intervenes, namely: the geopolitical dimension. The pressing question is what can happen between now and the end of the century? since it is not wise to expect that in the remaining 77 years (a span of 3 generations) things will continue as in the present.[6]
The sea that separates us from a sustainable future
The United Nations itself, in the voice of its General Secretary, has sounded several alarms that we can call neo-Malthusian. If we continue to mistreat the Earth as before, it is likely that in the coming decades nature will give us some big slaps. In the words of Pope Francis, “Nature never forgives. It collects. You use nature and it comes upon you. An overheated world also takes us out of the construction of a just, fraternal society.”[7]
The phenomenon of globalization, as well as development and demographic processes, seems to follow a curve that can also be graphed in different ways. An interesting graph shows, following the shape of a pachyderm, who were the winners and losers of globalization between 1988 and 2008:
Source: World Bank, report by Branco Milanovic; BBC
The elephant curve shows how much the level of income increased in the various social groups of the world over two decades, from the poorest 1% (on the left), to the richest 1% (on the right). Overall, the majority of the world’s population saw their incomes grow. That increase is represented by the top of the curve (equivalent to the elephant’s back and head. The loss of the trunk is due to the great financial crisis of 2008). But the overall income improvement, even if more just and equitable, will continue to increase the pressure on nature, the environment, and resources.
I will add to the above the following: Globalization itself (coordinate integration) is by no means an endless upward curve. After reaching a “ceiling” two decades ago, it has entered an apparent decline. Globalization is a curve of birth, boom, and decline.[8]
Geopolitical risk
If we now leave the previous curves, enter geopolitics, and follow the multiplication of conflicts and the breakdown of the world into blocs (de-globalization), the downward geopolitical curve (from coordination to anarchy) apparently does not recover[9]. This is the other curve that stands in the way of population growth and economic development. The fall of globalization here means the deterioration of common and concerted action in favor of sectoral and national egoism.
The formula behind this second process is well known. It is known as “the tragedy of the commons” that accompanies the development process in its different modalities. The tragedy of the commons reflects a social conflict over the use of common resources (such as fish from the sea, pastures, forests, etc.) where personal interests (in geopolitics read national) conflict with the common interest. To the rationality of the different parts (i.e., countries) corresponds the irrationality of the whole. The temporary sectoral or national gain leads to the loss of all in the long or medium term. The overexploitation of a common resource by a group or a country often ends up reducing social welfare and even harming the very sector that is causing that overexploitation. To date, no practical solution to this dilemma has been found.
Globalization in crisis and without replacement
With the fall of the previous (unjust) model of globalization, the world is witnessing the resurgence of misunderstood “sovereignties”, of struggle between established and emerging powers, and the abandonment of rules that previously disciplined international relations, not in favor of more rational ones, but in favor of an anarchic “multi-polarity”. In other words, previous globalization is now followed by an “every man for himself” and “the law of the strongest.” This situation can seriously affect all demographic and sociological forecasts of development.
In short, the great demographic and environmental challenges are only manageable by an international consensus (or at least by a civilized coexistence) of a humanity that has less impact on the destruction of nature, that does not divert resources in armed conflicts and arms races, and that embarks on a long-term program to distribute income and organize future societies in which the elderly will predominate. Production will be increasingly automated, and in which young people, who will be a minority, do not feel overwhelmed with tasks replaceable by machines and artificial brains and, on the contrary, feel liberated to perform solidarity and creative tasks. If, on the other hand, current geopolitical trends are accentuated, the diagnoses of Sigmund Freud[10] (civilizational malaise [Unbehagen der Kultur] with self-destructive drive), and Jean-Paul Sartre (“l’Homme est une passion inutile” or, extrapolating: humanity would be subject to a series of useless and violent passions) must be fulfilled.[11]
To put it bluntly: humanity is capable of destroying itself before reaching a sustainable demographic balance and realizing its enormous positive scientific and technological potential.
[1]
British economist Thomas Malthus stated, in 1798, that while human population grows according to a geometric progression, the ability to take advantage of the planet’s resources grows at the rate of an arithmetic progression, much more slowly. Therefore, the planet’s resources would be depleted until reaching an unprecedented collapse or catastrophes. Malthus’s theory did not take into account the capacity of science and technology to increase and generate the production of new resources, although these are not infinite.
[2] The theory of modernization (circa 1960) states that for developing countries to achieve a level of industrialization and economic prosperity worthy of a modern society, it is necessary that they change their values and social structures. The observations presented by the proponents of this theory are based largely on the historical development of the countries of the North and bet on the convergence of all societies in the same model. In Latin America, the main exponent of this theory was Gino Germani. The most exaggerated (and wrong) expression of this theory is that of Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992).
[3] By globalization I mean a phenomenon based on the continuous increase in the interconnection between the different nations of the world at the economic, political, social and technological levels.
[4] The Total Fertility Rate (steadily declining) is defined as the total number of births to mothers in a given setting in one year per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-49 years of age). The minimum maintenance figure for a population is 2.1 as an average number of births. With the temporary exception of some large African countries and others in the Middle East, almost all others fall below that figure.
[5] See Nguyen Ba Than’s essay, The Demogra-fate Hypothesis (2021). In such humanity in the process of numerical reduction, the geographical, ethnic, racial, and age composition will be very different from what we have today, but without altering the decrease of the whole.
[6] See David Miliband’s article. “The World Beyond Ukraine,” in Foreign Affairs, April 21, 2023.
[7] Interview with the Pope published in Opinión Sur, Iniciativas, April 2023.
[8] The first contemporary attempt to formulate this cycle is due to the famous physicist Enrico Fermi, with his probabilistic projections about other civilizations in the universe (1945). His conclusions are known as “the Fermi paradox.”
[9] Globalization seems to follow a bell-type “normal” distribution statistical curve.
[10] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1930); Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943).
[11] The country that today presents the image of that future and that is a stylized social laboratory, is Japan. It is a laboratory-country because of its insularity and its compact ethnic-cultural matrix. In almost all other countries, the matrix is much more complex.
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