If you have made it this far in the the blog, you will realize that we exceeded our planet’s long term ecological carrying capacity decades ago, and that runaway population growth is leading us to accrue ecological debt at an alarming rate that promises to undermine the viability of our planet and our species.  I argue that there is a clear need to curb this growth, bend the global population curve, and decrease the human population to a level that can live in balance with our planet’s resources.
 
In this context, I would like to share with you my call to achieve a global Total Fertility Rate of 1.5 by 2030, published in a recent article in the Journal of Population and Sustainability.  Thanks to the kind invitation of its editor, Dr. David Samways.  
 
While the global TFR is currently at 2.45, it is important to understand that many urban areas and some nations already have a TFR of 1.5 or below.  These patterns are driven by women’s empowerment, their education and integration in to the workforce, and and access to family planning technologies.  This global TFR is projected to continue to trend downward.  In the Summer of 2020, an article in Lancet determined that investment in women’s education and access to family planning technologies is, in effect, ahead of schedule, projecting that TFR would fall to 2.1 (replacement level) by 2064, with population peaking at 9.7 billion – well ahead of United Nations estimates.  So, why should we not further accelerate this trend, by investing further in women and girls, worldwide?
 
To me, our understanding of the factors driving this inevitable bending of the global population curve is very encouraging.  And, it forces us to ask the question, what investments could be made to accelerate this inevitable trend.  Moreover, what levels of investment would be required to achieve this goal of 1.5TFR by 2030.  These things are knowable, and doable.  They simply have not been the object of our inquiry as we have all been lulled in to assuming that runaway population growth itself is the inevitable trend.
 
I invite all of you to join in this challenge, and to help integrate this goal in to the many complementary activities that are already afoot for the 2020’s.  So many of you are touching one of the levers that could help bend this curve, and you may not even know it.  I look forward to discussing with you how your corner of this very complex world might contribute to achieving this goal, as we all strive to make the world a better place.