China has a knack for world-changing policy shifts, whether it’s devaluing its currency, launching a national carbon cap-and-trade system or, most recently, changing its decades-old restriction on how many children its citizens can have.

The country’s decision to ease its one-child decree has raised some serious questions about sustainability. Right now, China consumes about half the cement, steel, aluminum and pork produced in the world. If it allows its citizens to have more children – and presumably use more resources – what will that mean for humanity’s collective wellbeing and its pressing quest for sustainability?

The number of people in the world isn’t the only driver of humanity’s total impact, but it’s the most influential. While debates have raged for decades over how many people the planet can support comfortably, it’s reasonable to assume that we’re going to have to keep coming to terms with increasingly numbers of people.

This summer, before China’s big announcement, the United Nations revised its human population estimates upward from 9 billion to 9.7 billion by 2050. By 2100, it estimates, we’ll hit 11.2 billion. It’s impossible to predict how China’s new two-child policy change will affect population growth. The country’s population was slowing down even before the one-child commandment, but at the same time, many wealthier Chinese have flouted the rules and paid fines. The previous rules skewed the country’s demographics: in 2004, for example, China had 121 boys for every 100 girls.

There’s also an economic consideration: many families can’t afford more than one child. In fact, when China relaxed its policy last year, only about 12% of eligible families applied to have a second child. Regardless of the percentages, however, the country is likely to see an uptick in the number of kids.

Even before the UN’s upward revisions and China’s policy change, we knew that, by some estimates, the world would need 30% more water, 40% more energy and 50% more food by 2030. The harsh reality is that we can’t possibly fulfill those demands if we continue to operate the way we do now.



The fundamental challenge is to find a way to sustain 10 billion people by the mid-21st century without destroying the planet’s ability to support us. Several megatrends – including climate change, resource pressures, increased connectivity, rising transparency and deep demographic shifts – could greatly complicate the problem. China’s changing child policy, for example, is a reaction to these trends: because of its need to support an aging, healthier population, it is laying the groundwork for more workers.

With the addition of more people, China’s efforts to green its economy will have to accelerate. The threat to its citizens’ health from air quality is dire: air pollution kills 1.6 million Chinese every year. And even with China’s torrid economic growth, it’s been clear that pollution is damaging the country’s economy. In 2007, the World Bank estimated that air and water pollution cost China up to 8% of its gross domestic product. Given the record levels of air pollution lately, that toll is surely growing.

In response, China has committed to capping carbon emissions by 2030. But bold promises aside, it has sent mixed signals on carbon management. On one hand, it plans to implement a national carbon cap and trade system, and continues to set and meet very large renewable energy investment goals. For example, it built more solar in the first quarter than exists in France, and its coal imports have plummeted.

But China is also planning to build a vast number of coal plants, and it now admits that it has been burning 17% more coal than previously thought. That additional coal has produced about 1bn more tons of CO2, more than all of Germany’s emissions from fossil fuels. While China is undoubtedly serious about managing carbon, it also needs economic growth – and more people will likely make one of these goals harder and one easier.

As China’s balancing act demonstrates, megatrends are creating a profound need for shifts in how we power our world, travel, clothe ourselves, eat, consume and live our lives in general. Businesses are facing unprecedented change in how to source, produce, distribute, use and reuse all products and services.

The business case for acting on our megatrends only grows stronger. Cutting carbon, for example, is now a no-brainer – eco-efficiency saves money, the cost of renewable energy is falling quickly, and companies are finding that managing their whole value chain to reduce carbon is helping them cut costs and reduce risks.

On a broader, international scale, the argument that reducing emissions will slow economic growth has not proved out over the last decade. The GDP of Organization and Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries grew 16% while their greenhouse gas production fell. As more countries separate their economic growth from their environmental impact, they’re demolishing many of the myths and arguments against climate action.

Many key elements of a more sustainable economy can grow without increasing stress on resources. Initiatives like renewable energy, circular, closed-loop models that use and reuse materials, markets that price the true impacts of our actions and choices, equitable wages, and safe workplaces can all help us grow economies while increasing sustainability. These are principles are widely understood in the sustainability community, but are gaining traction in the business community at large.

An inclusive, decoupled, circular and even regenerative economy should be able to support a very large number of people. And the opportunity to build multi trillion-dollar industries and technologies around these new imperatives should be irresistible to business.

This shift toward sustainable economic growth – which I call the big pivot – has already begun. According to a new report from the International Energy Agency, “renewables contributed almost half of the world’s new power generation capacity in 2014 and have already become the second-largest source of electricity (after coal)”. China’s massive renewables buildout is a core contributor to this trend.

And it’s a good thing the sustainability train is moving. The prospect of more Chinese people does not change the destination, but does change how fast we need to get there.



