Bixby Forum: The World in 2050

Participants of the Bixby Sponsored forum, "The World in 2050: A Scientific Investigation of the Impact of Global Population Changes on a Divided Planet" Photo by Yana Edwin Murphy

Population growth will be a major force shaping the next half century with 99% of this growth happening in developing world.   90% in the poorest countries. Today’s 6.7 billion people will have expanded by 2050 to between 7.8 to 10.8 billion; the UN’s medium level projection for 2050 is now 9.2 billion – the number recently increased because of stalled fertility decline in many fast-growing countries.  This situation presents major challenges for economic and social development, health, natural resources, and social conflict. To address these issues, Berkeley’s Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability hosted, in collaboration with the Bixby centers at UCLA and UCSF, an international forum titled The World in 2050: A Scientific Investigation of the Impact of Global Population Changes on a Divided Planet. In addition to the implications of the projected population growth, the participating experts from the US, Africa, Asia and Europe recognized the vast and well documented unmet need for voluntary family planning in all of the countries with high average family size and rapid population growth. The papers presented at the forum are  published as a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions B (Biological Sciences): The Impact of Population Growth on Tomorrow’s World, a publication of the Royal Society, London with a forward by Malcolm Potts, Bixby Professor in the School of Public Health at Berkeley, and Professor Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, Australia.

The Forum concluded: 

“Increased access to family planning will make it easier for countries with rapidly growing population to expand education. Education, in turn, particularly of women, makes an important contribution to fertility decline and a crucial contribution to development. However, rapidly growing countries cannot always expand education fast enough to keep pace with the growing number of children each year.” 

The full proceedings of the Forum are webcast by the Population Reference Bureau at Fred H. Bixby Forum: The World in 2050 

In addition to the webcast we are making the powerpoints used by the presenters accessible. Some are self explanatory, although others will require the webcast to be fully understood. 

View the complete list of presentations here 

You can read the Summary Statement  from the Bixby Forum here