Earth’s nature is being ravaged by population growth

Malte Andersson and Frank Götmark - In 1800, the world’s population was 1 billion, but in 2022 we exceeded 8 billion and are now growing by about 80 million a year. At the same time species and ecosystems are declining and disappearing through our overexploitation: more than one in four of 150,000 reviewed species are threatened, half of which are vascular plants. Among 71,000 animal species studied, almost half are decreasing, only 3 percent are increasing. And it goes fast. Since 1970, populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish have declined on average about 70 percent. The reasons are many. Overexploitation in forestry, hunting and fishing. Agriculture and livestock farming over expanding areas. Infrastructure and buildings such as housing, industries, roads and mines. Our spread of invasive organisms.

Species usually decline because we take over and wipe out their habitats – natural ecosystems and environments to which they have long adapted through evolution. These days habitat destruction happens mainly in the tropics, but also in Europe. There, plants and animals are decreasing in parallel with increasing population density and consumption, as the ecologist Trevor Beebee shows in his current book “Impacts of Human Population on Wildlife” (2023).

Another threat to biological diversity is climate change, its two main driving forces being increasing population and consumption, according to the IPCC’s major report of 2022. The rich world’s high consumption of course needs to be reduced, which is often highlighted in the environmental debate (see for example wwf.se, Sustainable consumption). On the other hand, the extremely destructive consequences of population growth for biological diversity and sustainability are rarely or never discussed, whether by media such as SR or SVT, by politicians, the UN or the environmental movement (for example WWF and the Nature Conservation Association). Has the topic become taboo?