Just a few days before World Population Day, the British Society for Population Studies (BSPS) held a meeting to celebrate its 50^th birthday. Population research covers topics – births, deaths, migration, population growth – which are of great personal and political significance. It is not surprising that discussions were sometimes challenging. The issue of population growth generated the most heat. A panel discussing whether we should be more worried about population growth or population decline found consensus that such framing was not helpful, since it puts the emphasis on population levels and trends as the ‘problem’. This implies the solution also needs to focus on population; if we are concerned about population growth, a population solution might be to change fertility levels. But you cannot change demography without changing individual behaviour, so how do you change fertility without interfering with an individual’s reproductive rights?

A focus on reproductive rights and justice instead suggests ample room for policies which may improve population health and wellbeing. For example, almost half of all pregnancies worldwide are unplanned. This means policies need to be focused on ensuring women have good access to high quality reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortion services, so that they can time pregnancies carefully and avoid births when they don’t want them.

While the BSPS panel may have been in consensus that we should not be ‘worried’ about population change, some audience members disagreed, arguing that rapid population growth in lower income countries really was a problem which needed greater discussion and focused solutions. Indeed, a recent YouGov survey of almost 8,000 people from eight countries found the most common population 'concern' was that global population size was 'too high'. This belief also holds considerable sway over government policy, with 69 countries having policies to lower their fertility rates. The supposed paradigm shift at the 1994 International Population Conference in Cairo from an emphasis on population control to a focus on reproductive rights therefore appears to have had little impact on either on the public imagination or policy (see the Cairo Declaration on Population and Development). This is despite the considerable evidence of the human rights abuses associated with the population control agenda, and recent evidence that coercion still exists in family planning programmes in some lower income countries.

Such focus on population also ignores the other side of sustainability equation: consumption. The carbon footprints of those born in lower income contexts are vastly lower than that of individuals, particularly wealthy individuals, in higher income countries. The US, for example produces carbon emissions which are three times the global average. Elon Musk, a single US resident, produces emissions 132 times greater than the average American just from the use of his private jet. Yet Musk has expressed strong opinions that fertility actually needs to be raised in countries such as the US; an opinion shared by a number of policymakers in low fertility countries. While most countries with high carbon footprints are agnostic about their fertility rates; those who do care express the opinion of wanting to raise fertility, thereby introducing more people into the world who will have high carbon footprints.

The climate emergency is making these discussions more urgent. Many of the countries most affected by it are countries that have contributed least to the anthropogenic causes of climate change. These countries face the challenges of rapidly changing climates and increased frequency of climate-related disasters; often while their populations are still growing rapidly. Yet many women in these populations say they would prefer to have smaller families than they end up with; in sub-Saharan Africa, women’s wanted fertility has been reported to be on average two children lower than actual fertility rates in these countries. This is likely related at least partly to continuing poor access to quality family planning services. The climate crisis is also exacerbating gender inequities, which may make it even harder for women to achieve their fertility intentions. It is imperative that high-income, high-polluting countries act urgently to curb their own carbon footprints while actively supporting low-income, low-polluting countries to mitigate the effects of climate change and invest to ensure access to rights-based reproductive healthcare.

The theme of the 2023 World Population Day is “Unleashing the power of gender equality: uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities”. Promoting gender equity and empowerment, and supporting women to achieve their reproductive goals whatever they may be, should be the focus of demographic discussions and policy; not the imposition of fertility targets, which will inevitably lead to the side-lining of reproductive rights.

The panel on population growth at the BSPS event ended with a discussion of how demographers’ voices can become more prominent in these debates. Demographers can provide nuanced understanding of how population trends will play out in the future, and they also understand the history of how badly population control activities went wrong in the past. Narratives of ‘demographic doom’ have been around since Malthus first published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, and were used again the mid 20^th century to create considerable fear of rapid population growth. Yet our human population keeps thriving.

Listen to the experts on demographic trends and you may find the heat disappears from population growth debates, to be replaced with a focus on practical solutions to those challenges which are associated with demographic change.