NEWS RELEASE

“OVERCROWDED” UK CAN SUPPORT ONLY 17 MILLION PEOPLE

The UK’s sustainable population based on current patterns of resource use is just over 17 million, less than a third of its actual population of 60 million*, according to new research from the Optimum Population Trust.

Using newly released ecological footprinting data**, the OPT puts the world’s sustainable population at below 4.5 billion, a third less than the actual figure of 6.6 billion.

Footprinting measures the demands of a population against the resources the Earth can renewably supply - the planet’s annual “biocapacity”. However, the new calculations are based on current lifestyles, which are highly energy- and resource-intensive and therefore ecologically wasteful. Projections which take account of the potential for greener lifestyles, and also of the need for poverty relief and economic growth in the developing world, produce different sustainable population figures.

For example, if the UK cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent, in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with the British Government’s emissions reduction target for 2050, it could support a larger population - 26 million people, according to the OPT.

If the whole world lived a “modest” Western European lifestyle based on current energy patterns, it could support only 1.9 billion people. If that “Western European” world then managed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent, this sustainable population figure would rise to 2.8 billion. However, this would still only represent 40 per cent of the current world population.***

Currently human demands are exceeding global biocapacity by 25 per cent, a figure projected to grow to 100 per cent by 2050, when the world’s population will need the equivalent of two Earths to support it. ****

Andrew Ferguson, the OPT’s research coordinator and a leading authority on ecological footprinting, said: “Most footprint specialists acknowledge the importance of population in calculations of sustainability but prefer not to highlight it in public because it’s politically incorrect. They tend to stress greener consumption or renewable technologies as the way we can lessen our impact on the environment, for example. The new calculations underscore the key role of human numbers in reducing and stabilising our demands on the planet. They show you can’t take population out of the sustainability equation.”

Prof. John Guillebaud, co-chair of the OPT, said: “These figures reinforce OPT’s call for population policies, both at national and international level. Britain is living way beyond its environmental means. A recent on-line poll found that 87 per cent of people responding thought the UK was overcrowded.***** Living sustainably, within the UK’s biocapacity, is a huge challenge and the Government needs to give equal importance both to population and to reducing consumption.”

Prof Guillebaud called for “far better funding for the world’s reproductive health services” in the light of recent World Health Organisation estimates that 80 million women have unintended or unwanted pregnancies every year.

The estimates were released ahead of a major conference on population at the Royal Geographical Society in London on Wednesday (December 6), part of a series organised by the Population and Sustainability Network. Wednesday’s meeting, Population Increase – the Greatest Challenge?, will hear contributions from Lord (Adair) Turner of Ecchinswell, formerly director-general of the CBI and chair of the Pensions Commission, John Simpson, BBC world affairs editor, and Richard Ottaway MP, chairman of the 2006 Parliamentary hearings on the global impact of population increase. ******

NOTES

*The UK’s population was 60.2 million in mid-2005 (Office of National Statistics). It is currently estimated at about 60.5 million.

**Data from the Living Planet Report 2006, published by WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network (October 24, 2006). This measures the resources the Earth can supply each year (its biocapacity) against human demand on those resources (the footprint). For example. each Briton requires 5.6 global hectares of biocapacity per year but the UK can only supply 1.6 global hectares. The world’s biocapacity is 1.8 global hectares per person against an average global footprint of over 2.2 global hectares.

OPT sustainable population calculations include allowing 12 per cent of the Earth’s biocapacity to preserve land for biodiversity.

***The world’s population will rise to 9.1 billion by 2050, according to the UN’s medium variant projection. It is currently increasing by over 70 million a year. Greener lifestyles and renewable technologies increase the sustainable population level; more global economic growth tends to reduce it.

****See Living Planet Report 2006.

*****Poll conducted by AOL.

******For more information on this conference contact Catherine Budgett-Meakin, chair and coordinator, Population and Sustainability Network, 020 8673 8963.