The Ecological Citizen: Confronting human supremacy

What is overpopulation? (A definition)

Overpopulation is an ecological term describing populations of organisms, including humans, exceeding the carrying capacity of their ecosystems.

What does it mean to say that our species has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet? The most telling criterion is that today humanity, one species among millions, uses half of Earth's ice-free surface to grow food and has demolished marine life abundance by over-extraction of sea life and destruction of habitats. As a result, Earth's ecosystems and wildlife are in freefall, while contamination by industrial civilization burgeons. Both these woes, ecological devastation and global toxification, continue to spiral planetary health out of bounds. Overpopulation – sheer numbers of people – is a major factor behind them.

Exceeding carrying capacity is not only connected to human numbers but to how much humanity chooses to consume. For the most part, humanity has opted for a modern lifestyle, which is inherently hyper-consumptive, what with its burgeoning commodities, amenities, technologies, mobility, and interconnectivity. While the excesses and inequality of this lifestyle need to be corrected, human numbers must also be lowered if we want to preempt the modern way of life from causing ecocide, which commits flagrant injustice to the nonhuman world and will bequeath all posterity with an impoverished planet. A number of environmental scientists have argued that a sustainable global human population is in the ballpark of 2 to 3 billion people living equitably with each other and with all life on Earth.

In recent decades, however, the subject of human overpopulation has become taboo. The stigma around the subject arose following the association of overpopulation with perspectives that disproportionately blamed the world's high-fertility poor regions for the ecological crisis, some of which also led to coercive policies that violated human rights. While such perspectives and policies must be denounced, the scientific and ecological basis of the fact that we are overpopulated cannot be denied.

Population degrowth is achievable within a human-rights framework. Indeed, the term "overpopulation" can be reclaimed as a feminist concept. Seen through a lens of social justice, overpopulation is the result of pronatalism, driven by patriarchal forces that compel people, especially girls and women, to have children and large families regardless of their authentic preference. Pronatalism not only undermines reproductive choice but also the rights of children to be born into conditions conducive to their wellbeing – socially, materially, and ecologically. By countering pronatalism and empowering reproductive choice, motherhood (and parenthood) can be uplifted into a deliberate and mindful decision. We need to transform sociocultural norms worldwide, so that to have a child or children, or to remain childfree, are equally valid decisions, freely chosen. We also need to create a global community with zero tolerance for "child brides," and the egregious abuse and stunting of prospects that cultural practice perpetrates against girls.

Decades of demographic research show that when women achieve reproductive freedom and the means to regulate their fertility, they tend to have few or no children. Empowering girls and women, specifically by confronting harmful patriarchal and pronatalist norms, is the main pathway to a smaller global population that can enjoy a high quality life within an ecologically flourishing planet.

Overpopulation is a term describing excessive human presence that damages the natural world through overdraw and through enormous waste flows. Overpopulation is thus ecologically unjust. But it is also founded on social injustice, for it is driven by patriarchal pronatalist forces that pressure, or even coerce, girls and women to reproduce.

In brief, achieving a lower human population promises enormous existential benefits to nonhuman and human worlds alike.

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For further reading, see the following:

Bajaj N and Stade K (2023) Challenging pronatalism is key to advancing reproductive rights and a sustainable population. Journal of Population and Sustainability 7(1): 39–70.

Rees W (2020) Ecological economics for humanity's plague phase. Ecological Economics 169: 106519.

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The Ecological Citizen: Confronting human supremacy

What is overpopulation? (A definition)

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