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1. Which German dog was bred for digging out Badgers?

2. What weight is another name for the Snow Leopard?

3. What animal did the lions share of farmwork during the Middle Ages?

4. What is thr favourite food of the Death Watch Beetle?

5. What name is given to chicken under 1 year of age?

6. What is the lifespan of a Mayfly?

7. How many wings has a Bee ?

8. From which country does the Wombat come?

9. From which part of a cow does silverside come?

10. Why does a Glow Fly Glow?

11.   What colour is copper sulphate?

12.   Where was the first British nuclear power station?

13.   Which element is used to make the rod found inside an ordinary electric battery?

14.   Which two elements are alloyed to make brass?

15.   What instrument is used to detect radiation?

16.   Where is a bird's patella?

17.   Pulmonary refers to which part of the body?

18.   If a person has myopia what problem does he or she have?

19.   What is the chemical symbol of tin?

20.   .What did Jacques Cousteau invent? 

Answers

1. Dachshund

2. Ounce

3. The Ox

4. Wood

5. Pullet

6. 1 day

7. 4

8. Australia

9. Top of rear leg

10. To attract mates

11.   Blue

12.   Calder Hall

13.   Carbon

14.   Copper and tin

15.   Geiger counter

16.   Knee

17.   Lungs

18.   Short sighted

19.   Sn

20.   Aqualung

The most violent time in history, measured by the number of people killed by collective violence as a proportion of a) total number of deaths and b) total number of people who lived, was the 1st half of the 20th Century. See this answer for details.

The 119,515,000 deaths caused by war and oppression between 1900 and 1945, according to my calculations based on Matthew White’s list of man-made calamities, make up 4.72 % of the (1,656,000,000 + 3,390,198, 215 �" 2,516,000,000 =) 2,530,198,215 people who died between 1900 and 1950, and 2.37 % of the (1,656,000,000 + 3,390,198,215 =) 5,046,198,215 people who lived in that period according to the chart in Carl Haub, How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?.

The current era is comparatively very peaceful. From by blog article Germs vs. guns, or death from mass violence in perspective:

However, as the 21st Century is into its fifteenth year, and despite the horrors of local conflicts that make international press headlines (like the "Islamic State" insurgency in Iraq and Syria) or do not (like the ongoing armed conflict in my native Colombia), war ranks low �" some say lower than ever �" as a worldwide cause of mortality, According to the WHO’s World Health Report 2004, "Annex Table 2 Deaths by cause, sex and mortality stratum in WHO Regions, estimates for 2002", in 2002 war was responsible for a total of about 172,000 deaths representing 0.3 % of the ca. 57,029,000 deaths in that year (about 1 in 333 deaths), vs. violence other than war (ca. 559,000, 0.98% or about 1 in 102), self-inflicted deaths (873,000, 1.53 % or about 1 in 65), unintentional injuries (ca. 3,551,000, 6.23 % or about 1 in 16), communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal conditions and nutritional deficiencies (18,324,000, 32.1 % or about 1 in 3) and non-communicable conditions (33,537,000, 58.81 % or about 1 in 2). The WHO’s Global status report on violence prevention 2014 mentions war in the following context:

Since 2000, about 6 million people globally have been killed in acts of interpersonal violence, making homicide a more frequent cause of death than all wars combined during this period. Non-fatal interpersonal violence is more common than homicide and has serious and lifelong health and social consequences.

An online algorithm based on WHO data shows war ranking way after each of traffic accidents, falls, drowning, poisonings, fires, other accidents, suicide and non-war violence as a cause of death from injuries.

The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

LEGEND OF THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
The area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, or Devil’s Triangle, covers about 500,000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north lined up.

Did You Know?
After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Though it’s unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.

William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest,” which some scholars claim was based on a real-life Bermuda shipwreck, may have enhanced the area’s aura of mystery. Nonetheless, reports of unexplained disappearances did not really capture the public’s attention until the 20th century. An especially infamous tragedy occurred in March 1918 when the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. “Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship,” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops’ sister ships similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.

A pattern allegedly began forming in which vessels traversing the Bermuda Triangle would either disappear or be found abandoned. Then, in December 1945, five Navy bombers carrying 14 men took off from a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airfield in order to conduct practice bombing runs over some nearby shoals. But with his compasses apparently malfunctioning, the leader of the mission, known as Flight 19, got severely lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence, the official Navy report declared that it was “as if they had flown to Mars.”

BERMUDA TRIANGLE THEORIES AND COUNTER-THEORIES
By the time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a 1964 magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent “all’s well” messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend. Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle’s supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor.

In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona. Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd’s of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. Neither does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: “In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified.”

HE Queen's right to the throne came under question today after scientists made a staggering genetic discovery surrounding King Richard III - which threatens to shake the foundations of the royal dynasty.

Experts are almost 100 per cent sure that the skeleton with a twisted spine found in a Leicester car park in 2012 is that of the last Plantagenet king.

Now new research has found a chink in the Tudor ancestry of Queen Elizabeth II whose right to the throne can be traced all the way back to King Henry VII, via James I and Mary Queen of Scots.

Previous DNA analysis had determined two female-line relatives of King Richard III still living and five other male-line relatives that have little royal significance.

But new evidence released today shows a break in the male 'Y chromosome' line - a newly discovered illegitimacy -  which brings into question the entire history of the British monarchy since the reign of Henry IV.

The research questions the historic legitimacy concerning the descent of Edward III to his son John of Gaunt and also his two grandsons, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset and Henry IV, the first Lancastrian King.

It centres around John of Gaunt, who was Tudor King Henry VII's great great grandfather and ancestor of the Queen.

Richard III was connected to these lineages through his great grandfather Edmund, Duke of York - John of Gaunt’s brother.

Prof Schurer, pro-vice chancellor of the University of Leicester, said: “We don’t know where the break is, but if there’s one particular link that has more significance than any other, it has to be the link between Edward III and his son John of Gaunt.

“John of Gaunt was the father of Henry IV, so if John of Gaunt was not actually the child of Edward III, arguably Henry IV had no legitimate right to the throne, and therefore neither did Henry V, Henry VI, and, indirectly, the Tudors.”

THE QUEEN IN PICTURES

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists said the claim to the crown of the “entire Tudor dynasty” partly rested on its members’ descent from John of Gaunt.

They added: “The claim of the Tudor dynasty would also be brought into question if the false paternity occurred between John of Gaunt and his son, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset.”

Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the last significant clash between the forces of the Houses of Lancaster and York in the War of the Roses.

According to historical records he was buried in Grey Friars Church, Leicester, which once stood on the site of the car park where his bones were found.

Examination of the skeleton showed that it had a twisted spine rather than the hunchback for which Richard III was famous. Although he would have walked with one shoulder higher than the other, his deformity could easily have been concealed beneath clothing and armour.

The genetic analysis showed a 96 per cent probability that Richard had blue eyes and a 77 per cent likelihood that he was blond, at least in childhood. It was possible that his hair colour may have darkened with age, said the scientists.

His appearance was probably similar to that depicted in an early portrait held by the Society of Antiquaries in London.

In their paper, the researchers compared the investigation to a missing person case that becomes more difficult over time - in this case, 527 years.

Geneticist Dr Turi King, from the University of Leicester, said: “What we have concluded is that there is, at its most conservative, a 99.999 per cent probability that these are indeed the remains of Richard III. The evidence is overwhelming.

The first adoption of a standard time was on December 1, 1847, in Great Britain by railway companies using GMT kept by portable chronometers. The first of these companies to adopt standard time was the Great Western Railway (GWR) in November 1840. This quickly became known as Railway Time. About August 23, 1852, time signals were first transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Even though 98% of Great Britain's public clocks were using GMT by 1855, it was not made Britain's legal time until August 2, 1880. Some old British clocks from this period have two minute hands�"one for the local time, one for GMT.

On November 2, 1868, the then-British colony of New Zealand officially adopted a standard time to be observed throughout the colony, and was perhaps the first country to do so. It was based on the longitude 172°30′ East of Greenwich, that is 11 hours 30 minutes ahead of GMT. This standard was known as New Zealand Mean Time.

Charles F. Dowd proposed a system of one-hour standard time zones for American railroads about 1863, although he published nothing on the matter at that time and did not consult railroad officials until 1869. In 1870 he proposed four ideal time zones (having north�"south borders), the first centered on Washington, D.C., but by 1872 the first was centered on the meridian 75° W of Greenwich, with geographic borders (for example, sections of the Appalachian Mountains). Dowd's system was never accepted by American railroads. Instead, U.S. and Canadian railroads implemented a version proposed by William F. Allen, the editor of the Traveler's Official Railway Guide.

In the 1940s and 50s reports of "flying saucers" became an American cultural phenomena. Sightings of strange objects in the sky became the raw materials for Hollywood to present visions of potential threats. Posters for films, like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers from 1956 illustrate these fears.  Connected to ongoing ideas about life on the Moon, the canals on Mars, and ideas about Martian Civilizations, flying saucers have come to represent the hopes and fears of the modern world.

Are these alleged visitors from other worlds peaceful and benevolent or would they attack and destroy humanity? The destructive power of the Atomic bomb called into question the progressive potential of technology. Fear of the possibilities for destruction in the Cold War-era proved fertile ground for terrestrial anxieties to manifest visions of flying saucers and visitors from other worlds who might be hidden among us in plain sight.

Aliens Among us and Fears of the Other

If UFOs were visiting our world, where were these extraterrestrials? Could they be hidden among us? Comic books and television illustrates how the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors reflected anxieties of that era.

The 1962 comic There are Martians Among Us, from Amazing Fantasy #15, illustrates the way fear of extraterrestrials could reflect Cold War anxieties. In the comic, a search party gathers around a landed alien craft, but it can find no sign of alien beings. Radio announcers warn those nearby to stay indoors. The action shifts to a husband and wife as he prepares to leave their home despite a television announcer's warning to remain indoors. As he waves goodbye he reminds his wife to stay inside. The wife however decides to slip out to the store and is attacked and dragged off. The husband returns home and finding it empty runs towards the telephone in a panic. In a twist, the anxious husband reveals that he and his wife are the Martians.

The fear that there might be alien enemies in our midst resonates with fears of Soviets and communists from the McCarthy era. Ultimately, in this story, the humans are the ones who accost and capture the alien woman. The shift in perspective puts the humans in the position of the monsters.

UFOs as Contemporary Folklore

Aside from depictions of UFOs in media, UFOs are also part of American folk culture. Ideas of aliens and flying saucers are a part of the mythology of America. You can find documentation of these kinds of experiences in folk life collections. An interview with Howard Miller about hunting and hound dogs, collected as part of Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia collection, documents an individual's experience with a potential UFO sighting.

In A mysterious light, a segment of an ethnographic interview, Miller describes a strange light he saw once while hunting with his dogs in 1966 "All at once it was daylight, and I looked up to see what happened. There was a light about that big, going up, drifting up the hill. When I looked and seen it just faded out. I've been in the Marines, and know what airplane lights look like, and it was too big for that." When asked if he knew what it was he offered, "I don't know what it was" but went on to explain, "If there is any such thing as a UFO that's what that was." This unexplained light on a walk in the woods is typical of many stories of these kinds of encounters. It's not only the media that tells stories and represents these kinds of ideas, documentation of the experiences and stories Americans tell each other is similarly important for understanding and interpreting what UFOs meant to 20th century America.

Skepticism of UFOs and Alien Encounters

Scientists and astronomers express varying degrees of enthusiasm for the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. However, scientists generally dismiss the idea that there are aliens visiting Earth. In Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan reviews the possibilities of alien visitors to Earth, and suggests that there is good reason to be skeptical of them. Much of Sagan's work focuses on debunking folk stories and beliefs and tries to encourage more rigorous and skeptical thought. He similarly discussed criticism of beliefs in alien visitors in his earlier book, Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

This zealous criticism of belief in UFOs from Sagan, who was well known for his speculative ideas about the likelihood of alien civilizations, might seem to be a contradiction. Sagan himself had even speculated on the possibilities of visits by ancient aliens in his essay from the early 60s Direct Contact among Galactic Civilizations by Relativistic Interstellar Spaceflight.

How do we reconcile Sagan the skeptic with the imaginative Sagan? Far from a contradiction, these two parts of Sagan's perspective offer a framework for understanding him and the interchange between science and myth about life on other worlds. Skepticism and speculative imagination come together as two halves of the whole. It's essential to entertain and explore new ideas, however strange, while at the same time testing and evaluating the validity of those ideas.

We face years of austerity and as incomes and tax revenues are declining, charitable giving is either falling or stalling. Inequality in Britain is increasing faster than most rich nations �" it is no coincidence that the most unequal societies are also the most dysfunctional. More tax cannot be the solution without international agreement and while we continue to vote for parties who are against increasing tax and for maintaining non-dom status for UK citizens.

What has this got to do with charitable giving and why should we be bothered if it is falling? We have been giving since the beginning of time. We are programmed to be altruistic as well as competitive; just as the need to eat and procreate is rewarded by feeling good, the same applies to giving. Philanthropy helped us to establish the civil society we enjoy today and enabled law, education, hospitals, welfare and culture to flourish long before the industrial revolution required the state to address growing poverty. Today, perhaps because of the unprecedented material prosperity and massive debt created in the past 60 years, we are losing the plot. Just over half of us give to charities regularly but we seem to be giving less; the poor give proportionately more than the rich and only a small minority of the very rich are being philanthropic.

As austerity bites and some become even more selfish, we risk compromising our humanity as well as civil society. Tax cannot pay for everything; we need a strong voluntary sector. The challenge then is this: while the richest increase their wealth and the remainder grow poorer, how do we reverse the decline in charitable giving and persuade the rich to commit to civil society, both by paying tax and giving? What should the government do to encourage more philanthropy? How do we create a better society if not a big one, while the state is in retreat?

As research for my book Giving Is Good For You, I put these questions to 80 people who give or receive. Many believe that all UK passport holders should pay British taxes wherever they live; national honours should not be given to those who do not pay tax; business leaders should not be given honours unless they can prove they are charitable; there should be more honours for those who volunteer and give. Tax relief should be extended and simplified to motivate more donors, underpinning the principle that tax is not paid on money that is donated. However, to justify spending more public money to stimulate private giving, tax relief should be limited by a much stricter definition of public benefit.

The government and voluntary sector must learn what motivates donors, who are free to choose whether to spend their money on private pleasure or for public gain, although there should not be the expectation that philanthropy can
compensate for reduced public expenditure. A national philanthropy strategy for the voluntary sector should have all party backing to ensure long-term planning by charities and commitment by donors.

Both the private and public sectors have hit the buffers and this gives us the opportunity to create a new social contract if politicians are up to the challenge. Philanthropists believe we should teach our children empathy as well as the virtues of a civil society and the role we should all play in sustaining it. There should be a national diploma for those at school who show commitment to the needs of others, an award that is valued by higher education and employers.

The "big society" may be a fantasy, made toxic by being politicised, but we can create a "better society", in which all should pay tax and everyone, whether giving time or money, can be a philanthropist.

Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall �" we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters �" because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information.
Thomasine, Sweden

Yesterday's earthquake struck in a region where, a fortnight ago, a University of Ulster professor predicted a new tsunami might be born.
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake which created the waves that claimed around 300,000 lives last December was likely to trigger more devastation, said a paper published in the journal Nature by Prof John McCloskey and colleagues.
In the light of the preliminary data on yesterday's magnitude 8.7 quake, he said: "It looks like one of our concerns has been realised. We'll have to wait to see how bad the damage has been this time." With colleagues, he calculated that the jolt in the Earth's crust at the end of last year, which led to a vast movement of the sea bed, significantly boosted seismic stresses and increased the risk of another large earthquake on the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra.
When his paper came out, Prof McCloskey said: "Our results indicate unambiguously that there is a real danger of another earthquake in the region. It is vital that disaster fatigue does not delay the implementation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System."
The Boxing Day earthquake which generated the massive tsunami that hit Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka also increased the stress on two other fault zones, one running directly under the remains of the city of Banda Aceh, the other under the sea off the west coast of Sumatra.
Stresses in the latter, the Sunda Trench, could generate another tsunami, said Prof McCloskey and Dr Suleyman Nalbant and Dr Sandy Steacy, also of the University of Ulster. Last night Prof McCloskey said the preliminary indications were that the new quake was "at the northern end of the Sunda Trench".
The team analysed data from the Boxing Day earthquake to look at its impact on other faults and whether it has raised the risk of more earthquakes. First, the team used calculations made by a group of seismologists at the California Institute of technology which give the exact displacements of crust during the earthquake.
This is done by repeatedly modelling the waves that were detected by seismic stations around the world. When these synthetic waves have a very similar form to the observed waves, then scientists know that their model of the earthquake closely resembles what actually happened.
The team then estimated the effect of the earthquake in the Indonesian region by calculating the amount of stress at any point which is caused by the movements triggered by an earthquake, then studied geological maps to identify nearby active faults.
Two zones showed significantly increased levels of stress. One was in the Sunda Trench, a 30-mile-long underwater zone adjacent to the 2004 earthquake rupture. The other was in the Sumatra fault, which runs for 190 miles along the centre of Sumatra. These levels of seismic stress indicated significantly increased risk of an earthquake, said Prof McCloskey.

In 1800 the world’s population was around 1 billion people. Since then it has increased more than sevenfold to reach over 7.5 billion in 2017 (see figure 1), and is forecast to top 10 billion by 2050. Will population growth inevitably continue? Will it level off over the long term? Should we try to reduce or stop this growth?

Simply put, the world’s population is increasing because the number of births outnumber deaths by three to one. A surplus of births first occurred two centuries ago in Europe and North America, when mortality started to decline. This marked the beginning of what scientists call the demographic transition. This transition subsequently spread to the rest of the planet as social and economic progress, combined with advances in hygiene and medicine, began to reduce mortality rates.

Rapid population growth in Africa


Figure 2: World population growth rates1700-2100. Gilles Pison, based on United Nations data, CC BY
Still, the annual population growth rate actually peaked half a century ago at more than 2%, and has fallen by half since then, to 1.1% in 2017 (see figure 2). This trend should continue in coming decades because fertility is decreasing at global level, from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today. In 2017, the regions where fertility remains high (above 3 children per woman) include most countries of intertropical Africa and an area stretching from Afghanistan to northern India and Pakistan (see map below). These are the regions that will drive future world population growth.

A key trend in future decades will be population growth in Africa. Including North Africa, the continent’s population could quadruple over the next century, rising from 1 billion inhabitants in 2010 to an estimated 2.5 billion in 2050 and more than 4 billion in 2100, despite the negative impact of the AIDS epidemic and other factors. While, globally speaking, one person in six currently lives in Africa, the proportion will probably be more than one in three a century from now. Growth should be especially rapid in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population may rise from just over 800 million in 2010 to 4 billion in 2100.

World fertility (2017), average number of children per woman


Figure 3: World fertility (2017), average number of children per woman. Gilles Pison, based on United Nations data., CC BY
What will happen in the coming decades?

These figures are projections, and no one can predict what the future will bring. That said, demographic projections are quite reliable for forecasting population size over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Most of the people who will be alive in 2050 have already been born, their number is known and we can estimate quite accurately the proportion among those currently alive who will die. Likewise, the women who will bear children over the next 20 years are already alive today, and can be counted. By estimating their potential fertility we can determine the number of future births with relative accuracy.

It would be unrealistic to imagine that population trends can be modified over the short term. Depopulation is not an option. Indeed, how could it possibly be achieved? Through increased mortality? No one hopes for that. Through mass emigration to Mars? Unrealistic. Through a drastic and durable decrease in fertility to below replacement level (2.1 children)? This is already taking place in many parts of the world, as couples decide to have fewer children so as to give them the best chances for a long and fulfilling life.

But for reasons of demographic inertia, this does not result in an immediate population decline. Even if world fertility were just 1.6 children per women, as is the case in Europe and China, the population would continue to increase for several more decades; there are still large numbers of adults of childbearing age who were born when fertility was still high, so the number of births also remains high. The proportion of old and very old people is very small, on the other hand, so deaths are far less numerous.

The question of fertility decline

Demographers were taken by surprise in the 1960s and 1970s when surveys revealed the onset of a sharp decline in fertility in many countries of Asia and Latin America, and demographic projections for these regions of the world were revised strongly downward.

Another more recent surprise concerns intertropical Africa. Fertility decline in the region was expected to begin later than in Asia and Latin America because of slower social and economic development. But it was assumed that, while delayed, the transition would follow the standard pattern, with a decline similar to that observed in other regions of the Global South. This is indeed the case in North and southern Africa, but not in intertropical Africa, where the decline is occurring more slowly. This explains the upward revision of projections for Africa, a continent which could be home to more than a third of the world’s population by 2100.


Figure 4: Fertility-rate trends by world region. Gilles Pison, based on United Nations data., CC BY
Fertility is in fact decreasing in intertropical Africa, but among the educated and urban populations and not in rural areas where most of the population still lives. While the fertility decline is still slower than that observed some decades ago in Asia and Latin America (see figure 4), the reason does not lie in an unwillingness to use contraception.

While most rural families have yet to adopt a two-child family model, they would prefer to have fewer children and to space them further apart. They are willing to use contraception for this purpose, but the necessary services are not available to them. National birth-control programmes exist but are ineffective because they lack resources and, above all, because their organisers and the personnel responsible for implementing them are unenthusiastic. Many are not convinced of the advantages of birth control, even at government level, even if this is not the official line adopted with respect to international organisations

This is one of the differences with respect to Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, and one of the obstacles to faster fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa.

Long-term outlook: explosion, implosion or equilibrium?

Beyond the next 50 years, however, the future is much more uncertain and there is no established forecasting model.

The demographic transition, which has served well to predict changes over the last two centuries, will be of little use for this distant future. There is much uncertainty about future fertility. If the small family becomes a dominant model over the long term, with mean fertility of less than two children per women, then the world population, after peaking at 10 billion, will gradually decrease to the point of extinction.

But another scenario is possible, in which fertility recovers in the countries where it is now very low, ultimately stabilising at more than two children per woman worldwide. This would result in continuous growth, and again in the extinction of the human race, this time due to overpopulation. If we cannot resign ourselves to these catastrophic scenarios of extinction through under- or over-population, then we must imagine a scenario of ultimate equilibrium.

It is lifestyle that matters

Of course, humans must start thinking today about the need for long-term equilibrium, but it is the next few decades that are of most urgent concern.

The world population will inevitably increase by 2 to 3 billion between now and 2050 because of demographic inertia that no one can prevent. Nonetheless, we have the power to change yet now our way of living �" and there is an urgent need to do so �" by ensuring greater respect for the environment and more efficient use of natural resources. All in all, the long-term survival of humankind depends more on its choice of lifestyle than on its population size.