Environmentalists and demographers increasingly warn of the dire conse-quences of population growth, not only for present generations, but also of the decline of essential biodiversity and the environmental degradation and deterioration in the quality of life for future generations, says South African Institution of Civil Engineering (Saice) president Peter Kleynhans.

“Environmental change has impacted on much of our planet, which includes defore-station, a reduction in fauna and flora, habitat deterioration, pollution and the depletion or extinction of species. These are the conse-quences, albeit unintended, of at least three subfactors – demographics, demand and resource depletion – all of which engineers have influenced and can influence in future.”

About one-third of the world’s population is reported to live in poverty, more than two billion people. In Africa, the number of people living in poverty is thought to be around three hundred million. Unemployment is a global phenomenon. This state of affairs may indicate that the global economy is unable to provide employment for the world’s population, he says.

For many generations to come, young people in many countries will continue to migrate to areas of greater opportunity. Such migration is also recognised in the National Development Plan, which expects urbanisation to increase.

South Africa faces many short-term impera-tives, such as skills shortages and a labour surplus, poor basic education, inadequate service delivery, shortcomings in public health, corruption, difficulty of cost recovery and wasteful expenditure, as well as challenges regarding procurement and the staffing of public bodies.

“The litmus test will be our ability to pay attention to the long-term adaptations, while we are grappling with the short-term imperatives.

Our current resources use can be viewed as a ‘resource ponzi scheme’. A resource ponzi would be one in which we are robbing future generations of resources and the quality of their living environment. This is being done, without sanction, to satisfy the needs of the current population and the excesses of the more affluent members of society.”

Compound increases eventually lead to the collapse of ponzi schemes. The exponential nature of past, current and planned resource use shows the same tendency, emphasises Kleynhans.

“We need to actively promote and support appropriate initiatives to attain a continuous decrease in population growth. Such inter-ventions are in the interest of current and future generations, but they will not address the short-term imperatives facing the existing population,” he adds.

By keeping trained people employed for a longer period, the requirement for postretire-ment funding for pensions, shelter and health care is reduced. For example, the burden on younger people can be relieved through the manner in which postretirement funding is structured. Defined-contribution, rather than defined-benefit pension arrangements, is an example.

“The 2011 South African census results indi- cate that the population growth rate has declined from the widely accepted value of about 2.4% a year in the 1980s to 1.45% a year between 2001 and 2011. The 2011 census age profile, however, indicates that the age group 0 to 5 is notably larger than the age groups 5 to 9 and 10 to 14, which could indicate that the decline in the growth rate might be slowing,” says Kleynhans.

If the mortality rate decreases, which is an objective of the National Development Plan 2030, or immigration increases, this decline could be reversed.

A decline in population growth rates and a change in behaviour regarding consumption will take many decades to materialise. Mean- while, the population will require civil engineer- ing services and products to manage short-term and long-term sustainability challenges.