Since 1950 lifespan and healthspan have increased on every continent. In every continent bar Africa wealth per person has increased as has education level. Seems to be working well enough so far.
Many consume very little and a few consume far too much. You can't say the average/sum is the problem when a minority is ruining everything.
It's obvious that a 10x smaller human population would have a 10x smaller environmental impact (assuming the same behaviors and lifestyle)
However, what is killing us is overproduction, overconsumption and a whole economic model devoid of sustainability goals.
"Overpopulation" is used by some people as a diversion tactic.
As far as I know, people in dense cities also pollute far less than other (less heating per capital, smaller households, less commute, more walking/biking...).
I remember reading that Africa had some decent economic growth more recently. But yeah, the time before 2000 was rather bleak.
From 1961 to 2015 (http://www.worldeconomics.com/papers/Global%20Growth%20Monit...), real GDP per capita in Africa grew by 1.1% annually (!), compared to 3.9% for Asia, 1.7% for the Americas, and 2.2% for Europe. Growth from 2001 to 2010 of 2.9% is included in that figure; it was the first decade in that period in which Africa outgrew any other continent.
GDP per capita in US 1990 dollars (http://www.worldeconomics.com/Data/MadisonHistoricalGDP/Madi...) for several African countries:
Country | 1980 | 2008
-------------|------|------
Algeria | 3152 | 3520
Botswana | 1765 | 4769
Cameroon | 1192 | 1212
Gabon | 6777 | 3811
Ivory Coast | 2041 | 1095
Kenya | 1051 | 1098
Liberia | 1162 | 802
Madagacar | 1054 | 730
Malawi | 630 | 744
Mauritius | 4367 | 14529
Niger | 810 | 514
Nigeria | 1305 | 1524
Seychelles | 4444 | 6109
South Africa | 4390 | 4793
Zimbabwe | 1295 | 779
But why do you agree with the comment saying real GDP per capita in Africa hasn't increased in the same sentence that you say it has increased (by 1.1% annually)?
(Though a slight wrinkle is that your sentence talks about GDP and the original comment was about wealth.)
And I know that 1.1% isn't great. But it's bigger than zero. And compared to humanities historical average before the industrial revolution of basically 0%, 1.1% is enormous.
The much vaunted industrial revolution had Britain at not more than 1.25%. Boring by today's standards, but absolutely game changing compared to what came before.
Because:
* 1.1% annual growth is a) terrible at any point after c. 1800, and b) sustained over decades (during which bien-pensant commentators repeatedly proclaimed that Africa was about to/already had/surely would grow at enormous speed and soon catch up with the developed world). Comparing it to the industrial revolution-era statistics is meaningless unless the rest of the world is also at that level.
* The data shows that multiple countries within Africa have regressed. Like, full on collapsed. Zimbabwe was not invaded by an outside enemy. A volcano did not destroy Madagascar's markets. Gabon's political disruptions are not unusual compared to what has happened elsewhere on the continent and in the developing world. And yet their economies have collapsed, and not in a Western-style "country x's economy is in recession" meaning of 'collapse'. Outside Africa this has not happened in such scale across multiple countries in a region/continent without some discrete factor, such as the imposition of Communism in Eastern Europe and Cuba, or the Maoist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. And even Eastern Europe and Cuba, while far poorer than they would be without Communism in their history, are better off than the Ivory Coast.
I'm just more pedantic and count a terrible increase still as an increase.
Mostly just to be precise, so that we have words left for the situation when there's an actual decrease. Like the collapses in individual countries you mention.
If you want an illustration of this look at this graph of the cost of 66 technologies dropping over the 1951-2013 period. That’s people getting richer.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/costs-of-66-different-tec...
This is increases in broad based prosperity, the same kind of thing we think about when we consider how antibiotics went from cutting edge technology to ho hum, or how air conditioning made large parts of the world amenable to industrial civilization. You know the kind that reduces poverty.