SUSTAINABLE POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN A NEW ERA

This conference, held in conjunction with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the NUS Centre for Family and Population Research (CFPR), frames trends in population and development as unfolding against the backdrop of larger era-level changes in the world today: the rise of traversal technologies such as AI and robotics, the move towards a super-aged world, the rise and persistence of between- and within-country inequalities, increasing migration, and not least, the climate crisis itself.

In this new era, what are the effects on population, in Singapore, in Asia, and beyond? On one hand, some imagine AI will lead to job disruptions including job losses that impact upon families to support children and ageing parents; yet others point more optimistically to the potential of AI to pave breakthroughs in education, healthcare, and social innovations.

This new era will see older adults outnumber younger population in many countries. It has also precipitated a rise in the chronic disease burden across societies, and alongside that, the still reverberating effects of a global COVID-19 pandemic; yet there also occurs among seniors a growing aspiration to be able to age in ways that add life to years (and not just years to life).

The growth of social inequalities has also a significant impact upon the young and old alike, shaping opportunities and constraints that affect educational attainment in the former and the ability to age with grace and peace of mind in the latter. With growing inequalities there too arises the need for societies to stay cohesive amidst polarizing forces that threaten to pull social groups and inter-generational cohorts apart.

Finally, the climate crisis, the very sustainability of population is called into question. For the young, what does climate change mean for a sustainable life on planet earth, and for older generations, what dangers might the climate crisis pose to their aspirations for health and livability? For populations to be at all sustainable, the question of TFR looms large. Will and can societies reproduce themselves to make a future possible at all?

Recognising the realities and challenges of these major shifts today, the conference aims generatively to construct a narrative and discourse around optimism and hope for the future through social scientific research that explores possibilities of changing in positive directions.

Propitiously, the conference also marks an important milestone for policymakers and population researchers as 2024 is the 30th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), first held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. Back then, 179 governments across the globe ratified a commitment to a people-centric approach to population and development policies stressing the respect for human rights and the importance of environmental sustainability. In 2019, a UN report further called for policies and programmes for sustainable development to be grounded in an understanding of population dynamics, including changes in population size or age structure and processes of migration or urbanization. This great vision of ICPD continues to resonate into the present with a clarion call towards urgent actions to attain sustainable population and development for all.