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As birth rates fall, animals prowl in our abandoned 'ghost villages'
Human populations are set to decline in countries from Asia to Europe – and an unusual form of rewilding is taking placeFor many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement – fears that were recently given voice on David Attenborough’s documentary Life on our Planet.At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion. Continue reading...
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How Rising Education for Women Is Shaping the Global Population
We need a global debate on the best way to respond to these demographic changes.Photo illustration...
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As Eastern Europe shrinks, rural Bulgaria is becoming a ghostland
Since the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Bulgaria has lost more than one-fifth of its population...
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World Population Could Peak Decades Ahead of U.N. Forecast, Study Asserts
The study, published in The Lancet, said an accelerated decline in fertility rates means the global...
