Science & Wellbeing

Despite numerous speculations to the contrary, Earth’s population is likely to decrease in all scenarios across the next century and will peak nowhere near the 11 billion previously forecast.

Population growth could grind to a halt by 2050, before decreasing to as little as six billion humans on Earth in 2100, a new analysis of birth trends has disclosed.

The study, commissioned by the nonprofit organisation The Club of Rome, predicts that if current trends continue, the world’s population, which is currently 7.96 billion, will peak at 8.6 billion in the middle of the century before declining by nearly two billion before the century’s end.

The forecast is both good and bad news for humanity: A plummeting human population will slightly alleviate Earth’s environmental problems, but it is far from being the most important factor in solving them.

And falling populations will make humanity older as a whole and lower the proportion of working-age people, placing an even greater burden on the young to finance health care and pensions.

The researchers — members of the Earth4All collective, which is made up of environmental scientists and economists — published their findings March 27 in a working paper.

“We know rapid economic development in low-income countries has a huge impact on fertility rates,” Per Espen Stoknes, director of the Centre for Sustainability at Norwegian Business School and the project lead of Earth4All, said in a statement. “Fertility rates fall as girls get access to education and women are economically e fruit of the cocklebur plant, which grows worldwide, has been found to have antioxidant and anti-in ammatory components. e plant that is often considered a noxious weed may hold the key to better skin protection and wound healing, according to new research. In addition, compounds in the fruit appear to in uence the production of collagen, a protein that gives skin its elasticity and prevents wrinkles. e study, conducted by Eunsu Song, a doctoral candidate at Myongji University in South Korea, and Myongji University Professor Jinah Hwang, is the rst to examine the properties of cocklebur fruit extracts as a wound-healing agent and skin protectant. e ndings were presented at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, in Seattle.

Cocklebur is a plant native to Southern Europe, Central Asia, and China that has