Human Population and the Biosphere

The neglect of population in national and international discourses on environment and development has led to a misleading picture of policy options. This article reconstructs the language in which extreme poverty and economic development are discussed by deploying recent advances in our understanding of the population–consumption–biosphere nexus. The new perspective is applied to examine both the global environmental impact and the effects on local ecosystems of individual choices over consumption and reproduction. The analytical apparatus developed here is then used on wide‐ranging evidence to explain and measure humanity's ecological overreach. The authors study the pressures people impose on their local ecosystems to show why persistently high population growth in the world's poorest regions is undermining their ecosystems, in some cases trapping communities in poverty.