In History there have always been regions more attractive to the life of
the peoples and others that repelled them, due to different constraints. The
dimension of humanity and the deep inequalities in its territorial distribution
are not so much related to the conditions of habitability and resources but to
the model of social organization that dramatically accentuates them.
In the specific case of Europe, the existing and worsening demographic
inequalities correspond to the failure of the model of coexistence and
(absence) of solidarity among its peoples.
summary
1 - The world population is increasingly Asian or African
2 - Europe's geopolitical areas and their demographic profiles
2.1 - Eastern Mediterranean
2.2 - Western Mediterranean
2.3 - Central Europe
2.4 - Western Europe
2.5 - Eastern Europe
2.6 - Conclusion
0000000000 |||||
0000000000
1 - The world
population is increasingly Asian or African
First of all, we
will proceed to the very general distribution of the world population by
continent, before separating it by geopolitical areas built around history,
cultural, ethnic and economic affinities; and then applying that same
classification to other approaches to each of these geopolitical areas.
Primary source: CNUCED / UNCTAD
Underlying the graph we have to underline:
·
The African population is the only one whose
representativeness grows in a century, considering the predictions for 2050.
This figure rises from 9% to 16.4% in 2016, allowing a doubling of its
population between 2016 and 2050. By 2016 the African population was more of
the quintuple of the registered one in 1950 hoping that, in one century,
multiplies by eleven. Comparatively high fertility rates as well as substantial
gains in life expectancy will justify this evolution.
·
Asia is always the most populous continent, with more
than half of the human population, rising from 54.3% in 1950 to 59.8% of the
total in 2016, maintaining stable indicators at that level since 1980 and
expecting a decrease in its weight relative to the large population growth
forecast for Africa.
·
Europe emerges as a negative image of Africa. With
about a quarter of the world's population in 1950 (22.7 per cent), it declined
steadily, even in terms of the projections for 2050. The decline was more
abrupt in 2000 since after the breakup of the USSR, the Asian republics that
incorporated it became integrated in Asia and not in Europe, where the whole
population of the USSR was incorporated into the bloc; so, between 1990 and
2000 the population of Europe fell from 790 M to 730 M. This, however, only
accentuates the declining trend of the weight of the European population
throughout the period; leading to an expectation of absolute loss by 2050. The
very low birth rate is not significantly offset by migratory influxes; a
population that does not reproduce and is obliged to resort to immigration
shows a diseased political, economic and cultural system.
·
The population of the American continent peaked in the
world total in 1970 (14%), declining slowly in the following decades to reach
13.3% in 2016. The projection for 2050 points to a decline to 12.4% of the
total, with a loss also referred to Asia and Europe.
·
As for Oceania, its population is small compared to
other continents - 13 M and 40 M, respectively in 1950 and 2016 - showing a
growth similar to that observed for Asia. After Africa is the macro-region
where it is predicted a greater population growth between 2016 and 2050 (42%).
·
The average annual growth for each period and on each
continent shows a general reduction, with exceptions for Africa in the period
1970-2010. On the other hand, the beginning of the present century reveals much
more modest rates of population growth, the forecasts for 2050 being much more
optimistic, except for Europe.
%
|
|
1970/1950
|
1990/1970
|
2010/1990
|
2016/2010
|
2050/2016
|
|
AFRICA
|
3.0
|
3.7
|
3.3
|
1.0
|
3.1
|
|
ASIA
|
2.6
|
2.6
|
1.6
|
0.4
|
0.5
|
|
EUROPE
|
1.1
|
0.6
|
-0.3
|
0.0
|
-0.1
|
|
AMERICA
|
2.6
|
2.0
|
1.5
|
0.4
|
0.6
|
|
OCEANIA
|
2.8
|
1.9
|
1.8
|
0.6
|
1.2
|
|
total
|
2,3
|
2.2
|
1.5
|
0.5
|
0.9
|
Primary source:
CNUCED / UNCTAD
This profile of the territorial distribution of the world's population, as
early as 1950, revealed the enormous imbalances arising from the historical
dominance of Europe in the world in a process begun in the sixteenth century;
but was moving to the United States as the process of decolonization and the
affirmation of the dollar advanced. The transition from the sceptre of power to
the US led to the creation of the OECD in 1948 with only European countries and
Turkey to manage the Marshall Plan which would become, under the OECD
designation the club of rich countries, in 1961, 1964 and 1971/73,
respectively, from the USA and Canada, Japan and Australia and New Zealand,
among other European countries, Asian and Latin American integrated later on.
Over time
colonization has almost come to an end, although there are small countries,
especially in the Caribbean and Oceania whose independence has little meaning,
serving only as an interface of parking or capital passage, in acts of tax evasion or
laundering of mafia activities .
This
predominance of the US would be evidenced in the military sphere, with NATO
(1949), which, constructed after Soviet extinction, became a tool for Western
military intervention in Western Asia, North Africa and the Sahel in the name
of a "fight against terrorism".
This
"struggle" over Afghanistan has proved to be an obvious failure - as
it had once been with Britain in the nineteenth century and with the USSR in
the 1980s. The US is holding a containment war there in order to avoid a
repetition of Vietnamese humiliation ... while Chinese and Indians settle
economically. Some successes have shown restraint in the fight against
al-Qaeda, but it remains active in the Sahel (AQIM), Somalia (al-Shabaab), Pakistan
and Libya. One of his creatures, the ISIS / Daesh presented as a confessional
(Sunni) instrument, failed to limit Iranian influence in the region and to
bring Syria and Lebanon to Western influence.
There is a
strengthening of Iran's role, Turkey's unstable geopolitical position,
al-Sissi's low profile of Egypt, the protagonist of a coup supported by
Obama against the former president, Morsi, who was elected in the framework of
the sacred principles of market democracy. In this region, the US can rely only
on its Zionist fortress and the Saudi monarchy to play a role in the region;
while the "international community" is silent on the barbarous
intervention of the Arab monarchies in Yemen.
The "fight
against terrorism" subsequently gives way to the direct confrontation with
whom the US perceives itself threatened. China's trade threat is evident; after
the emergence of the euro and gradually the yuan as global currencies, the
dollar tends to reduce its use, causing many countries to withdraw their gold
deposited in Fort Knox (Germany, Turkey, the Netherlands, Venezuela...) knowing
there is no gold there that supports the huge circulation of dollars. Meanwhile
China and Russia increase their reserves and Iran does not accept dollars in
their transactions, which is provoking the US reaction as it had been against
Saddam or Libya from Kadhafi.
Based on its
military logistical device (80 military bases scattered throughout the world),
the United States intends to conclude its strategy by directly confronting its
opponents - Russia and China - with a cordon corresponding to the EU's eastern
border and another in the China Sea involving especially Japan and South Korea.
Since Russia and China meanwhile created the OCX in 2001, there is a dispute,
with the use of ancient enmities, all over South Asia.
The
Europe-America binomial has increased from 36.2% of the global population in
1950 to 23.3% in 2016, even though it is seen in this aggregate form - above
all in America - with a composition that includes many inequalities. This loss
of relevance in the demographic chess indicates that its supremacy, economic,
political and military, is weakening, as seen in the various friction
scenarios, in Western and Eastern Asia or in Europe; such as the US measures to
create customs duties and sanctions in full reprisal for the defense of free
trade, competition, the objectives that the West defended to promote the old
WTO GATT. The traditional values of capitalism, free markets and free
competition are yielding to the conveniences of its main advocates in recent
decades. Is the refusal of major treaties or the relevance of climate change by
the US a denial of capitalist globalization?
2 - Europe's
geopolitical areas and their demographic profiles
The distribution
of the population in a more limited space, taking into account the various
geopolitical areas of the continent[1] ,
presents great divergences as shown in the graph below.
Primary source: CNUCED
/ UNCTAD
In the period 1970-90 there has been a steady growth in all areas, albeit
with some differences, which are not very pronounced but which have been
brutally accentuated ever since, far beyond the political changes - break-up of
the USSR and Czechoslovakia in addition to that in Yugoslavia , following
conflicts, war and massive population movements.
2.1 - Eastern
Mediterranean
In this case,
during the 1990s, the Yugoslav separatist wars, animated initially by Germany
and the Vatican and, in the final part, by the US bombings, led to a
demographic regression that continued in the following decades, with no
prospect for 2050, despite the integration of a number of countries in the
region into the EU and NATO. As a sequel to these actions, Bosnia and
Herzegovina remain in limbo as a composite unit; and Kosovo is something that
resembles a "thing" that serves as the basis for the Boldsteen
American base - aimed at military oversight of the Balkans - and as a platform
for various Mafia trades, still receiving the EU's essential financial support.
In summary, we
register the population variations among the various national entities of the
area:
·
Albania reached its peak population in 1990, declining
since then by 2050 reaching the population of ... 1980. All the countries of
the former Yugoslavia had a maximum reached in 1990, lost 16% of the population
then, until 2016 and the outlook for 2050 is that the combined population
should be at the same level as a century ago;
·
Compared with 2000, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia
and Serbia / Montenegro, which have since become autonomous, have lost between
5% and 7% of their population by 2016. Only Slovenia and Macedonia increase
their population in the former Yugoslavia, in the same period, respectively 4.5
and 2.3%. However, the outlook for 2050 is negative for all countries, with
extreme figures for Croatia (-18%) and Serbia (-16%) and less dramatic cases
for Slovenia and Macedonia (-7% for both countries). At the end of this text, a
map of Europe contemplates the global situation, individualizing each country;
·
Lastly, it should be noted that Cyprus is the only
country in the region whose population has grown uniformly since the 1980s, as
well as the only one where, throughout the Eastern European Mediterranean
region, population growth is projected to reach in 2050. Greece had a
population growth in all the decades of 1950 to 2010 but has lost about 240
thousand inhabitants until 2016, immolated in the salvation of the global
financial system; and, of course, by 2050, a fall of 11% compared to 2016 is
allowed;
·
If population dynamics are seen as central to
mirroring a community's level of well-being, it is not excessive to say that
the wars in the Balkans, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the integration in the EU
of most of the Balkan countries were not a happiness factor of the people.
Happy people do not reduce birth rates, nor do they migrate; on the contrary, they
fraternize and make children.
2.2 - Western
Mediterranean
As can be seen
in the description of the composition of the European geopolitical areas that
accompany the chart, in this area there are four countries and four territories
that are essentially offshores, referring to one of these being a neighborhood
of Rome that serves as the headquarters of one religious institution and the other one is an English colony.
In this area,
population growth is above the global average in the period that ended in 2010.
In the present decade, the effects of the crisis of the financial system fell heavily
on Spain, Italy and Portugal, leading to the exit of immigrants, in some cases
or entry of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees in Italy; and also
a strong emigration of people fleeing unemployment and the degradation of the
quality of life that went to Central or Western Europe. The outlook for 2050,
with emigration, low birth rates, a greater precariousness in life, more
financial crises and the obvious fascization of the so-called market
democracies is quite probable; in this area as in other European geopolitical
areas.
·
Offshore residents have grown in the
period, except in Andorra after 2010 and the Vatican, whose small number of
residents (you cannot call a population that does not contain women, children
and families) has remained stable. For Gibraltar and S. Marino population
growth is forecast for 2050. The flow of capital from Portugal to offshore has
recently been treated here;
·
There has been a steady population growth in all
countries in the period 1950/2010, which ceased to occur in 2010/16 except in
Malta. For the four countries, in those sixty years the population has grown
67% in Spain, 28% in Italy, 33% in Malta and 27% in Portugal, in the latter
case, as a sign of the growing peripheralization and relative impoverishment
within the peninsula. we have recently observed, here and here ;
·
In the last hexennium, the inhabitants decreased
300,000 in Italy, 280,000 in Portugal and 440,000 in Spain. These figures,
which are not very far apart in absolute terms, have a different meaning in
relative terms - 3% of the population in Portugal and 1% for the other two
countries in just six years. The violence of the action of the Portuguese
political class, as a performer of the impositions of the troika, is
evidenced in demographic terms , in an action in reducing the purchasing power
and the rights of the plebs, in taming the protests, in order to safeguard the
interests of the financial capital;
·
Under the CNUCED / UNCTAD 2050 forecast, population
declines of 7 per cent for Italy, 13 per cent for Portugal and 4 per cent for
Spain, attesting the demographic
regression in the Western Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on Portugal.
In the same vein, the Portuguese INE has projections of a population of 8.6 M in 2060 and 7.5 M in 2080 , although the temporal
distance for these epochs allows for all political, economic and demographic
changes.
2.3 - Central
Europe
This area, the
old Mittel Europe, roughly encompasses, besides the Swiss treasure chest, the
territories of the former Prussian and Austro-Hungarian empires; in the most
up-to-date way, we have Switzerland, Germany, and its ever-desired Drang
nach Osten, as near land for the installation of large German industry,
working cheaply, without the import of Gastarbeiter; a process
that began well before German reunification, both in the Federal Republic and
in the former DDR / GDR.
As it is known,
the impact of the crisis that began in 2008 was not dramatic, as in southern Europe,
and therefore it has not been reflected in demography, since the influx of
immigrants compensated for the low birth rate. The population, although
stagnant, does not fall back until 2016, although future prospects are
declining.
·
There is a clear distinction between the demographic
increase in Switzerland in 1950/2010 (68%) or Poland (54%) and the remaining,
much more modest, with the highlight being Hungary (6%) and Germany (16%).
Restricting this analysis to the hexennium ended in 2016, it shows a
substantial annual increase in population in Austria (0.6% vs. 0.35% in the 60
years initially considered), small breaks in Germany and Switzerland, and
population reductions in Poland and Hungary ;
·
As in other geopolitical areas, there are great
differences in demographic dynamics, revealing economic and social fractures
that are not in line with the discourses of the Brussels or national mandarins
on European cohesion. Thus the predictions for 2050 point to population
declines of 15% for Hungary and Poland, 9% for Slovakia and 3% for Germany,
which may change with the policy of Angela Merkel to accept hundreds of
thousands of refugees of the Middle East, disregarding a large segment of the
population that surrendered to AfD's xenophobic charms. Only Austria and
especially Switzerland (18%) are expected to increase population by 2050.
2.4 - Western
Europe
This area
encompasses almost the entire Atlantic coastline, from the Bidasoa to the
Arctic, beyond Sweden and Iceland. Its anchor are the ancient colonial empires,
especially France and the United Kingdom, still little understood by their
regional profile, when they disguise this situation by offering themselves as
bridesmaids from the USA (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria). France tries to
stay in the Sahel to forget the defeats in Indochina and Algeria, and Britain
maintains the policy set by Harold Wilson, to settle west of the Suez, although
it has the well-populated planet of offshores, certainly involved in
business of the City.
They all have a
high standard of living and the Long Depression, which comes from 2008, touched
them much more lightly than the Mediterranean countries. Its consistent
homogeneity and well-being, together with some policies to support refugees and
immigrants, show the regular and strong population growth throughout the period
and still in expectations for 2050.
·
Population growth is constant for all countries in the
period 1950/2010, with the dynamism of Iceland (125%) or Luxembourg (72%) and
lower in Great Britain (25%) and Belgium ( 30%);
·
The situation is different if only the six years
ending in 2016 are considered. Luxembourg has a rate of 2.2% annual population
growth, followed by Sweden (0.8%), Great Britain and Belgium (0.65% 0.64%).
Immigration of people from South Europe, Africa and Asia, many of them
refugees, will not be uncommon. These influxes have reinforced the audience of
the xenophobic Farage or Boris Johnson speeches that led to the English
referendum that led to Brexit, producing similar drifts in other countries. The
situations of lower demographic dynamism are observed in the Netherlands (0.3%)
and in Ireland;
·
When facing a scenario by 2050, the best outlook for
population growth vis-a-vis 2016 lies in Luxembourg (38%), Norway (29%) and
Ireland (23%) and the lowest in the Netherlands (3%) and Belgium or France
(10%).
2.5 - Eastern
Europe
It encompasses,
in addition to Finland, the most western of the former Soviet republics, the
present Russian Federation and Romania. In demographic terms these former Soviet
republics have their population contained in all the years considered in this
geopolitical area, isolated since 2000 or in the USSR total before that year.
From 2000 onwards the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus,
integrated into the total population of the USSR, are no longer in the Russian
Federation, thus justifying the great fall of the population of this
geopolitical area between 1990 and 2000; but little affecting the huge
population of the Asian continent.
As for 2010, its
demographic evolution is similar to that verified and expected for the Western
Mediterranean. This reveals the accentuation of the peripheral character of the
whole of the Mediterranean basin of Europe and of the East, compared to the
western strip of the continent as we have pointed out in greater detail here, here and here.
·
Finland and Romania are the only cases in which
demographic developments can be assessed from 1950; and show a population
growth of 34 and 26% respectively. There is, however, a striking difference;
the evolution observed in Finland is observed throughout the period and, on the
contrary, in Romania the population begins to decrease from 2000 (700 thousand
people compared to ten years before), 1.7 M in the following decade and 660
thousand in the completed hexennium in 2016. The change of regime and
integration in the EU were not a factor of well-being for Romanians, well
represented in the emigration destinations in Western, Central and Western
Europe:
·
For the 2000/16 period for which data are compatible
for all countries, all show population declines except for Finland with a 3%
increase. For the remainder, there are population declines in the period
ranging from 1% and 2% for Estonia and the Russian Federation to 11% for Latvia
and Lithuania, which joined the EU in 2004;
·
Projections for 2050 are very negative compared to
2016. Finland again emerges as the only country with a population growth
forecast (7%). On the other hand, the forecast for demographic losses for
Latvia (23%) and around 17/19% for Lithuania, Moldova, Romania and Ukraine is
very marked;
·
Finally, the Russian Federation itself is likely to
reduce its population by 8%, which is undoubtedly a fragility for a power that
intends to take a leading role in Eastern Europe and Central and Western Asia
and will not want to increase the degree of subalternity towards China, within
the Euro-Asian continent. It is recalled that in these data, do not consider
the 2 M of people who became members of the Russian Federation and not Ukraine.
2.6 - Conclusion
What has been mentioned above, in the chapter of expectations for 2050 can
be seen, graphically below:
Evolution of the European population in 2050 compared
to 2016
From a political
point of view, it is a continent where the anti-democratic tendency in the EU,
in forming a center and several peripheries, promotes enormous inequalities,
accentuates xenophobia and falls far short of an internationalist and
solidarity project as a union of peoples from Europe which, of course, the political classes and the oligarchies
of capital do not subscribe to. The geopolitical decline of a fragmented
Europe, politically, economically and socially, with enormous areas of poverty,
tends to make it, in the global context, an Asian peninsula of a tricontinental
space, like a return from Gondwana, where the role of China, with its economic
and demographic power will impose itself. Is Rotterdam in the future only the
final station of the Silk Road railway line, led by China?
This
fragmentation, as Brexit demonstrates, exacerbates the most radical logic
within NATO, linked to the imperial and fastidious drift of the United States,
by countries on the Atlantic coast, such as Norway, the Netherlands and
Portugal, to beyond the already captured Great Britain; or, in Eastern Europe,
where anti-Russian phobia is evident in the Baltic States or Poland, happy
harbouring NATO troops on its borders.
A Europe of
solidarity corresponds to the disappearance of nation states, rooted to their
borders and stories of heroes, as if they were not to vanish in time. Instead
of the destruction and construction of nation-states, which reminds us of a
huge flow of war and hatred, wouldn’t it be more interesting a network of
self-managed regional bodies and articulated to the pursuit of common projects
of mutual interest? As a matter of urgency, a broad social movement is required
to form a network of regional entities with autonomous and sovereign
structures, without submission to superior oligarchic bodies , with members
chosen by their inhabitants, without prerogatives of perenniality such as those
in the current classes policies are arrogated , with guaranteed rotation,
without privileges, with functions at any moment ceased by popular will, in a
context of total transparency when the decision processes and their contents.
In the specific
case of the EEC / EU, the evolution of the population (in millions) of the
member countries, in several moments from the time before its creation, is
observed in aggregate form:
|
|
1950
|
1970
|
1980
|
1999
|
2000
|
2010
|
2016
|
2050
|
|
Founders
|
178.2
|
207.2
|
214.5
|
220.2
|
226.9
|
233.9
|
237.3
|
238.6
|
|
A
|
|
|
65.0
|
66.1
|
68.4
|
73.7
|
76.5
|
12.1
|
|
B
|
|
|
|
59.5
|
62.4
|
68.9
|
67.9
|
63.4
|
|
C
|
|
|
|
|
22.1
|
23.2
|
24.1
|
26.4
|
|
D
|
|
|
|
|
|
89.6
|
88.5
|
74.1
|
|
E
|
|
|
|
|
|
27.8
|
26.9
|
21.8
|
|
F
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.2
|
3.5
|
|
Total
|
178.2
|
207.2
|
279.5
|
345.8
|
379.8
|
517.2
|
521.1
|
436.3
|
Founders -
Germany, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy and Luxembourg
A - Denmark, Great Britain and
Ireland, with GB excluded in 2050
B - Spain, Greece and Portugal
C -Austria, Finland, Sweden
D - Cyprus,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Czech
Republic
E
- Bulgaria, Romania
F
- Croatia
·
Generalized population increases are observed for the
various groups of integrated countries by 2010. The crisis of the so-called
Long Depression is revealed in 2016, but in an asymmetrical way, reaching the
peripheral countries on the Mediterranean and the East, which lose population
(groups B , D, E and F). Saving precisely the richest, who were able to impute to the
rest the costs of financial drift and the incapacities of the global capitalist
model
·
As for 2050, there are only population increases
between the founders, the hard core and, in the rich countries of the second enlargement
(C). Large population reductions - 16 to 19% - are to be noted in the Eastern
and Eastern Mediterranean countries, which have been the protagonists of the
last three enlargements. For the second enlargement countries - Spain, Greece
and Portugal - it is considered a possible 7% reduction of the population in
the period 2016/2050. Finally, the departure of Britain, beyond its political
significance, has a significant weight in total, the demographic reduction
admissible.
(to be continued)
This and other
texts in:
[1] Central Europe - Germany, Austria,
Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia (data
up to 1990)
Western Europe - Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Faroer Islands, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, United Kingdom, Sweden
Eastern Europe - Belarus, Estonia, Russian Federation (from 2000), Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and the USSR (data up to 1990)
Western Mediterranean - Andorra, (as of 2010), Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta, Portugal, S. Marino, Vatican City
Western Europe - Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Faroer Islands, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, United Kingdom, Sweden
Eastern Europe - Belarus, Estonia, Russian Federation (from 2000), Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and the USSR (data up to 1990)
Western Mediterranean - Andorra, (as of 2010), Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta, Portugal, S. Marino, Vatican City
Eastern Mediterranean - Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegovina (from 2000), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia (from 2000), Slovenia (from
2000), Greece, Yugoslavia (until 1990), Macedonia (as of 2010), Serbia (as of
2010), Serbia and Montenegro (2000)
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