Prospects for stabilising the world’s soaring population have taken a blow. This development, if not reversed, will have huge economic, environmental, and political impacts on most people alive today. Two years ago, the United Nations projected that the number of people on this planet would reach 8.9 billion by 2050. In March, the UN Population Division revised that projection to 9.2 billion. If UN demographers are right, in 43 years the world’s population will increase by 2.5 billion, up from 6.7 billion today. That growth is equivalent to how many people lived on Earth in 1950. The difference in the two UN projections, separated by two years, equals today’s population of the US.

Talk of a “birth dearth” remains true for most industrial countries. The US, with a high rate of immigration, legal and illegal, is an exception. But the population “explosion” is not over in many developing countries. “The rate of progress has come down,” warns Stanley Bernstein, a senior policy adviser for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). His boss, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of UNFPA, points to a steep decline in world foreign aid for family planning, from $723 million in 1955 to $442 million in 2004 (in constant dollars).

Adding to the worry, there is a correlation between countries with very young populations and those experiencing civic conflict, says Elizabeth Leahy, author of a report for Population Action International (PAI), a Washington advocacy group. This is relevant to the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur (Sudan), and Gaza, for example.

Between 1970 and 1999, 80 per cent of all civil conflicts that caused at least 25 deaths occurred in countries in which 60 per cent or more of the population was under age 30, her study finds. “It’s a very complex issue,” Leahy says. “There are multiple factors at play.” Nonetheless, her thesis is that governments and businesses in countries with young populations have a difficult time providing so many youths with education and “meaningful employment.” The result can feed unrest and conflict.

Women in Iraq, where 69 per cent of the population is under 30, have an average of 4.2 children. Afghan women have seven children. There, some 73 per cent of the people are under 30. In Sudan, where women have an average of four children, 68 per cent of the population is under 30. Other nations with high birth rates include Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad, Niger, and Yemen.

Hania Zlotnik of UN Population Division says the Leahy study is “a bit of an exaggeration.” She notes that the world’s most destructive and deadly wars have occurred in rich nations with older populations. But the PAI study points out that the eight new civil conflicts between 2000 and 2004 have risen in nations with very young populations. Key remedies, according to Leahy, include improving access in poor nations to family planning and reproductive health services plus more equitable access to education and economic opportunities for women. — The Christian Science Monitor