Dr Pria Lals­ingh,

MBBS (Hons)

On Ju­ly 11 every year, we cel­e­brate World Pop­u­la­tion Day – a day ded­i­cat­ed to the recog­ni­tion of a grow­ing and evolv­ing glob­al pop­u­la­tion and its im­pact on hu­man rights, health, and the en­vi­ron­ment.

When we think of the pop­u­la­tion, we should not just ap­ply a sta­tis­ti­cal lens, rather, we ought to con­sid­er the pop­u­la­tion as an en­ti­ty, and con­sid­er how it moves, lives, learns, and re­sponds to glob­al chal­lenges.

In 8000 BC, at the dawn of agri­cul­ture, the es­ti­mat­ed world pop­u­la­tion was 5 mil­lion. By the year 1800, af­ter the ad­vent of In­dus­tri­al Age, the pop­u­la­tion reached 1 bil­lion. Cur­rent­ly, the pop­u­la­tion stands at 8.2 bil­lion with the Unit­ed Na­tions pro­ject­ing that it will reach 10 bil­lion by 2057.

This ex­po­nen­tial in­crease is part­ly due to longer life ex­pectan­cy. In 2021, glob­al av­er­age life ex­pectan­cy was just over 70 years. This is as­ton­ish­ing be­cause a mere two hun­dred years ago, it was less than half that. This ex­tra­or­di­nary rise is the re­sult of a wide range of ad­vances in health – nu­tri­tion, clean wa­ter, san­i­ta­tion, neona­tal health­care, an­tibi­otics, vac­cines, and oth­er pub­lic health ef­forts. How­ev­er, we paid a price for these ben­e­fits.

With an in­creas­ing pop­u­la­tion came ur­ban­i­sa­tion, ex­po­nen­tial in­creas­es in fos­sil fu­el use and green­house gas emis­sions, rais­ing Earth’s tem­per­a­ture and lead­ing to bio­di­ver­si­ty loss and in­creas­ing ex­treme weath­er events. Ur­ban sprawl de­grad­ed the en­vi­ron­ment, ever-ex­pand­ing habi­tat de­struc­tion con­tin­ued to dri­ve plant and an­i­mal species loss, ex­ac­er­bat­ed the ur­ban heat is­land ef­fect and in­creased every form of pol­lu­tion.

How­ev­er, like oth­er large-scale glob­al trends, ur­ban­i­sa­tion has the po­ten­tial to be­come a pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tive force for every as­pect of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. When prop­er­ly planned and man­aged, ur­ban­i­sa­tion can re­duce pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty by im­prov­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and qual­i­ty of life, in­clud­ing through bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion and health.

That said, while to­tal life ex­pectan­cy has in­creased, the num­ber of years lived in “full health” has not kept the same pace, mean­ing a larg­er por­tion of life is be­ing spent man­ag­ing non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) like hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes, as well as age-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es.

NCDs de­plete and strain glob­al re­sources in in­ter­con­nect­ed ways, caus­ing mas­sive eco­nom­ic and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty loss­es from work­place ab­sen­teeism, and hu­man cap­i­tal and per­son­al wealth de­ple­tion. The health sec­tor ac­counts for sev­en per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) due to an in­creas­ing need for all lev­els of health­care. As such, the car­bon foot­print as­so­ci­at­ed with health­care is al­so in­creased.

There is a need, there­fore, to bal­ance so­ci­etal ad­vances and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. De­vel­op­ment should not mean choos­ing be­tween in­no­va­tion and sur­vival.

For ex­am­ple, the evo­lu­tion of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) has shift­ed from mere­ly au­tomat­ing man­u­al, pa­per-based process­es to cre­at­ing hy­per-con­nect­ed, au­tonomous sys­tems. To­day, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion pro­vides the da­ta nec­es­sary to feed AI mod­els, al­low­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions to move from sim­ple da­ta stor­age to in­tel­li­gent, pre­dic­tive de­ci­sion-mak­ing—the era of Gen­er­a­tive AI & Au­tonomous Mod­el­ling, true tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vels.

Age-old folk wis­dom tells us that in life, noth­ing comes for free, and this quan­tum leap in mod­erni­sa­tion is no ex­cep­tion. AI has a large and com­plex car­bon foot­print as AI da­ta cen­tres are most­ly pow­ered by fos­sil fu­els, lead­ing to huge green­house gas re­lease. These emis­sions pol­lute the air, and, in ad­di­tion to fu­elling cli­mate change, can cause health prob­lems like asth­ma and heart dis­ease. AI cen­tres even di­vert large vol­umes of fresh­wa­ter from es­sen­tial needs, like drink­ing and grow­ing crops, to ab­sorb the heat they gen­er­ate de­spite on­go­ing glob­al fresh­wa­ter short­ages.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, AI mod­el­ling could very well help hu­man­i­ty se­cure a sus­tain­able fu­ture, and wean our­selves off fos­sil fu­els, slow­ing, and even­tu­al­ly, re­vers­ing cli­mate change. As we em­brace the era of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and AI, at the na­tion­al lev­el, there is a need to de­vel­op poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions to guide re­spon­si­ble AI use in­clud­ing en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient da­ta sys­tems.

The path for­ward be­gins with peo­ple. We must re­main aware of the bal­anc­ing act be­tween se­cur­ing a sus­tain­able fu­ture in the face of a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion and its con­sump­tion. As in­di­vid­u­als, let us re­duce our elec­tric­i­ty use. Con­sid­er car­pool­ing or us­ing pub­lic trans­port where it is safe and prac­ti­cal. We can eat less and eat more plant-rich foods. Both mea­sures help pre­vent cost­ly NCDs, re­duc­ing pres­sure on fam­i­lies, work­places, and the health sec­tor. These may seem like small acts, but mul­ti­plied across house­holds, they be­come a na­tion­al force for change.

Pow­er­ful changes hap­pen where peo­ple gath­er. Work­places and faith-based groups can lead tree-plant­i­ng dri­ves, re­cy­cling projects, and ad­vo­cate for pro­tec­tion of green spaces.

The Unit­ed Na­tion’s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 11, cre­at­ing safe, re­silient, in­clu­sive hu­man set­tle­ments with green spaces be­ing eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, should re­main a na­tion­al fo­cus.

With wise gov­er­nance, we can use tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove lives while still pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion and the plan­et. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not a dis­tant ide­al. It is a dai­ly de­ci­sion, a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and a hope­ful promise that T&T can grow, progress, and still pre­serve the world we call home.

The fore­go­ing is a week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to help read­ers un­der­stand and ad­dress the cli­mate and health cri­sis.