Cav's Place

A recent study showing that the rural population in the analyzed areas has been massively underestimated was reflected in the media as meaning that the world’s population could be billions higher than currently reported, this assessment seeming to have originated in The Independent and then snowballed from there. However, the study mainly focuses on how such wrong estimates affect decisions and are likely to lead to far fewer resources directed to rural areas than necessary, the effect on global population estimates barely being mentioned in passing, even in the press release. Plus that the study does state that more recent estimates appear to be far more accurate than those that the study is based on and that the findings from the studies areas can’t be applied globally.
Looking at it from that perspective, the main conclusion is just the one that the study’s authors also point out, that rural populations, especially in less developed areas, have been receiving far less resources and attention than necessary… Not that a study was needed to know that, since it’s something that pretty much goes without saying. And the fact that those populations haven’t been counted correctly and that the estimates have been lower than the real values is also a logical assumption. And, while these errors definitely can’t be applied globally, they have been proven to exist in some of the most populous regions, and it seems logical to assume that errors found in China or Brazil would be reflected in pretty much the whole rest of Asia and South America, as well as in Africa, and in fact that they are likely to be even worse in most of those areas.
However, since the study uses data for the 1975 to 2010 period and makes comparisons between the different datasets using data from 2000, and since such estimates have greatly improved recently, the improvements being particularly massive in those less developed regions, plus that the percentage of people living in rural areas keeps dropping anyway, any extrapolation of these results even when it comes to those particular regions, not to mention the world as a whole, is certain to be a gross exaggeration. It doesn’t mean that the world’s population isn’t underestimated, which remains probable, but that the error is much lower… Not that any additional number of people wouldn’t still be another pile of rocks on an already breaking camel’s back, and when those people are in the poor regions that will, and definitely should, see a massive improvement in living standards, which will also result in greater resource consumption, it spells even more problems in the future.
On the other hand, for those looking for any tiny sliver of a silver lining, it may actually be found by looking at the findings in another way. If those populations have been underestimated so massively in the past, it may mean that the population growth rate has slowed more than the current reports show. Once again, when the world has been terribly overpopulated for several decades and the rate of destruction and depletion is only at its current levels because the large majority of people have been living, and many still live, in awful conditions, a massive reduction of the population is the first necessary, albeit nowhere near sufficient in itself, condition to even having a future on this planet in the long term, not to mention actually repairing the damage done and also allowing the other species we share, or should be sharing, it with to live their lives and thrive. But if the rate of growth has, in fact, slowed more than reported, and if that happened most notably in the areas where the growth has been most pronounced and where consumption should also, entirely justifiably, increase the most, it may mean that things will worsen slightly more slowly than expected and the ultimate disaster will come slightly later… And that, for entirely natural causes, some more of us will be spared of living to see it.