National Geographic USA April 2023

04.
2023
THE POPULATION PARADOX

With some countries expanding and others declining,
are we nearing peak population?
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FURTHER APRIL 2023
On the Cover
C O N T E N T S The number of people on
Earth continues to climb,
reaching eight billion last
November. But the future
population trajectory may
hold some big surprises.
ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN METZ
P R O O F E X P L O R E
THE BIG IDEA
Patriarchy Is
Not Destiny
Many cultures may be
dominated by men—
but neither biology nor
history is the reason.
BY A N G E L A S A I N I
DATA SHEET
Living Large
Animal size, which
28
ARTIFACT
Behind the Mask

often correlates to life Used in Balinese dance
span, may hold clues dramas, the hand-
to human longevity. carved tapel brings tra-
BY F E R N A N D O G .
ditional stories to life.
B A P T I STA A N D
BY N A R I N A E X E L BY
L AW S O N PA R K E R
THROUGH THE LENS
When Memory
Meets Change
Still Stepping Out Population variations
For over 10 years, take on extra meaning
a photographer has to photographers who
documented a com- know the lands well.
munity of retirees— BY J U ST I N J I N A N D
and been inspired by YAGA Z I E E M E Z I
their undiminished
ALSO ALSO
enthusiasm for life.
P H OTO G R A P H S BY Power From Plants Herons Throw Shade
KENDRICK BRINSON Mummy Portraits Galvanizing Young People
A P R I L | CONTENTS
F E AT U R E S EIGHT BILLION:
A Growing Nigeria Out of Sync
A SPECIAL REPORT
Africa’s most populous Warming temperatures
Earth’s Exploding, country faces food and are wreaking havoc
Shifting Population employment scarcities. on nature’s timing,
As child mortality BY A DAO B I T R I C I A including the seasons.
has fallen and life NWAUBANI BY CRAIG WELCH
expectancy has risen, P H OTO G RA P H S BY P H OTO G RA P H S BY
the number of peo- YA G A Z I E E M E Z I . . . . . . . . . . P. 46 E L L I O T R O S S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 92
ple on the planet has
doubled in less than A Shrinking China In Awe of Ants
50 years. It’s a trend The plunging birth rate They are just about
that might yet reverse, of a global superpower everywhere, but do
experts say, depending reshapes its future. you really see them?
on variables such as BY BROOK LARMER AND BY HICKS WOGAN
finite resources and a JANE ZHANG P H OTO G RA P H S BY
changing climate. P H OTO G RA P H S BY EDUARD FLORIN NIGA
B Y C R A I G W E L C H . . . . . . . . P. 34 J U S T I N J I N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 68 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 118
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A P R I L | FROM THE EDITOR
B Y N AT H A N LU M P PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN JIN
the 2018 book The

R E C E N T LY I R E A D fewer people. So our stories consider the Crowned with a headband
Wizard and the Prophet, by Charles C. issue of population in two very different of pink tulle and lace, a
baby is photographed at
Mann. Through the lens of the lives of places: Nigeria, which is experiencing a postnatal care center in
20th-century scientists Norman Bor- explosive growth, and China, which is Hangzhou, China. Though
laug and William Vogt, it explores two coping with population decline. the nation’s population is
declining, the center’s direc-
contrasting visions of how humanity In the coming decades those nations, tor says business is good
can meet the challenges we face as our and others with similar trends, will face because many mothers with
population grows and our impact on disparate challenges. But the overall infants seek assistance from
professionals, to speed
the planet increases. impact of rapid population growth—on their return to work.
On the one hand is Vogt’s embrace of matters from climate change and biodi-
limits: We should restrict ourselves to versity loss to the availability of food and
what Earth can handle. On the other is clean water—has implications for us all.
Borlaug’s belief in innovation’s promise: While reading our coverage, I thought
We can invent solutions. Many, includ- a lot about Mann’s book. Certainly we
ing me, don’t see these two notions as humans are ingenious at devising
binary but rather believe a combination solutions—but will we rein ourselves
is our way forward. Still, there’s no con- in enough that those solutions can get
sensus on the best approach. ahead of the problems we create as we
This month National Geographic tax the planet’s resources more and
explores the ramifications of a mile- more? The answers won’t be easy. But
stone reached late last year, when the for our collective future to be a bright
United Nations projected the world one, it’s clear we must devote ourselves
population had reached eight billion. to finding them.
Though the number of people on the We hope you enjoy the issue.
planet has grown exponentially over the
past century, that growth hasn’t been
uniform, and some nations now have
MERMAIDS ARE REAL
| S Y LV I A E A R L E |
With over 7,000 hours spent underwater as part of a lifetime of research, exploration, and
conservation efforts, Sylvia Earle isn’t just oceanic royalty. She’s the closest thing we’ve got
to a real-life mermaid. Explore the world alongside National Geographic Experts like Sylvia
when you make your next trip an expedition.
N ATG E O E X P E D I T I O N S .C O M | 1 - 8 8 8 -3 51 -3 274
P R O O F
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KENDRICK BRINSON
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C LO O K I N G AT T H E E A RT H F RO M E V E RY P O S S I B L E A N G L E
The Sun City Poms stride

in formation at a holiday
parade in nearby Litchfield
Park in 2021. The squad
presently ranges in age
from 61 to 90. “It feels great
to be together, put on our
costumes, and perform,”
says member Kathy Villa.
6 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
STILL STEPPING OUT
In Sun City, Arizona, retirement community residents march to the beat of their own vitality.
VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 4
APRIL 2023 7
P R O O F
In 2017, Curtis Hay, 87, shows off his vintage golf cart after shooting pool at one of Sun City’s recreation centers. “There’s
enough activity to keep people our age busy,” says Hay, a retired engineer.
Jean Woods, 77, poses for a portrait at the 2020 Sun City Senior Prom at Sundial Auditorium. When she moved to Sun City,
she began calling herself Purple because she loves the color. Last year she had her house painted lavender.
APRIL 2023 9
P R O O F
Swimmers from the Aqua Suns synchronized team form a star shape while rehearsing for a 2013 holiday show at the
Lakeview Recreation Center. Although the team disbanded as an official club in 2020, some of the women continue to
gather each week, practicing routines and swimming together. Sun City has around 120 chartered clubs, including groups
dedicated to square dancing, ukulele playing, fitness, woodworking, and yoga.
APRIL 2023 11
P R O O F
THE BACKSTORY
A S A P H OTO G RA P H E R D O C U M E N TS A S O C I E T Y O F
O L D E R A D U LT S , S H E G E T S A L E S S O N I N L I V I N G .
I T WA S W H I L E WAT C H I N G the movie across the country to cater to growing

The Savages in 2009 that photogra- numbers of graying baby boomers,
pher Kendrick Brinson caught her first Sun City remains one of the largest.
glimpse of Sun City, Arizona, a sprawl- Its 14 square miles of palm tree–lined
ing retirement community northwest streets feature eight golf courses, eight
of Phoenix. The film scene—with recreation centers with seven aquatic
bright desert light, cacti, golf carts, and facilities, multiple strip malls, two
tidy rows of ranch-style homes—“had libraries, a hospital, and one cemetery.
this really strange, very visually inter- The average age of the nearly 40,000
esting look to it,” she says. residents is 73. Sun City has been over-
Since then, Brinson, 40, has gone whelmingly white, but Brinson says the
every year to photograph Sun City’s res- community is starting to focus more on
idents, some of whom have become her diversity and inclusiveness and now has
close friends. Observing the enthusi- an LGBT club. On each visit, she finds
asm people have for the many activities herself reenergized. “It’s this purposeful
there, the self-described perfectionist learning, socializing, playfulness that I
says she learned something about her- find super fascinating,” she says.
self: “I realized that I don’t have to be As with any group of aging people,
great,
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life at Sun
just like the way it feels.” She’s taken up City; some of Brinson’s friends have
hobbies such as watercolor painting. passed away. But residents say they
Opened in 1960, Sun City bills itself don’t dwell on death. “This is not
as the Original Fun City, designed for God’s waiting room,” one told her.
residents 55 and older. While retire- “Everyone is active and doing some-
ment communities have proliferated thing.” — JAC Q U E L I N E S A L M O N
Larry and Jeannie Klein, here in 2018, first met in second grade; Jeannie died last year.
“Ninety- eight percent of the people [in Sun City] are open and kind and good,” says Larry.
IN THIS SECTION
Heron Hunting Trick
E X P L O R E Mummies and Portraits

Long-Lived Animals
Balinese Masks
I L L U M I N AT I N G T H E M Y S T E R I E S — A N D W O N D E R S — A L L A R O U N D U S E V E R Y D AY
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 4
Patriarchy Is
Not Destiny
M A L E - D O M I N A N T S O C I E T I E S M AY B E T H E N O R M T O D AY— B U T B I O L O G Y
D O E S N ’ T D I C TAT E T H AT, A N D H I S T O R Y S H O W S U S O T H E R O P T I O N S .
BY ANGELA SAINI
THE PHILOSOPHER Kwame Anthony Appiah once

asked why some people feel the need to believe in
a more equal past to picture a more equal future.
Many of us look at the stranglehold that gender-
based oppression has on our societies and wonder
if there was a time when men didn’t have this much
power, when femininity and masculinity didn’t mean
what they do now. When we search for powerful
women in ancient history, when we try to identify
precedents for equality in the distant past, perhaps
we also betray our longing for an alternative in a
world in which we fear there may be none.
Patriarchy—giving all power and authority to the
father—can sometimes seem like a vast conspiracy
stretching into deep time. The word itself has become
devastatingly monolithic, encompassing all the ways
in which the world’s women, girls, and nonbinary
people are abused and unfairly treated, from domestic
violence and rape to the gender pay gap and moral
E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
MALE DOMINATION
IS NOT UNIVERSAL. THERE
ARE MANY MATRILINEAL
SOCIETIES, ORGANIZED
THROUGH MOTHERS RATHER
THAN FATHERS, DOT TED
ALL OVER THE WORLD.
double standards. The sheer scale of it feels out of our

control. But how old and how universal is it really?
Historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and
feminists have been fascinated by this question—and
as a science journalist, I’ve been preoccupied with it
for years. In 1973 sociologist Steven Goldberg pub-
lished The Inevitability of Patriarchy, a book arguing
that fundamental biological differences between
men and women run so deep that in every iteration
of human society, a patriarchal system would always
win out. Whichever way the pie was cut, men—in his
view naturally more powerful and aggressive—would
When Matriliny
end up with the bigger slice. Thrived in India
The problem with this is, male domination isn’t
universal. There are many matrilineal societies— In India, where I once lived, the
organized through mothers rather than fathers, with Nairs of the southern state of Ker-
name and property passed from mother to daugh- ala had powerful matrilineal families
ter—around the world. In some regions, matrilineal until relatively recently. They were
traditions are thought to date back thousands of years. ruled over by@LBSNEWSPAPER
This PDF was uploade To Teligram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) an influential aristoc-
racy, with people living in grand
F O R D E C A D E S Western scholars have invented theories extended households.
to explain why these societies exist. Some claim that “Nair women always had the
matriliny survives only among hunter-gatherers or security of the homes they were
simple agriculturists, not in large-scale societies. born in throughout their lives
Others say it works best when men are often away at and were not dependent on their
war, leaving women in charge at home. Still others husbands,” writes historian Manu
argue that matriliny ends as soon as people start Pillai. “And they were effectively
keeping cattle, because men want to control these at par with men when it came
resources—linking patriarchy to property and land. to sexual rights.”
Always, though, matrilineal societies are framed No single theory can explain
as unusual cases, “beset by special strains, as fragile why matriliny in Kerala declined.
and rare, possibly even doomed to extinction,” as It was a gradual shift, driven by
Washington State University anthropologist Linda British colonialists and Christian
Stone puts it. In academic circles, the problem is missionaries shocked at the power
known as the matrilineal puzzle. Patriliny, on the and freedom that women had,
other hand, is seen to need no explanation. It just is. combined with changing social
In 2019 researchers at Vanderbilt University norms as people traveled more
attempted to solve this puzzle, analyzing matrilin- widely in the 19th century.
eal communities to see if they did have anything in Remnants of matriliny did sur-
common. Globally 590 societies were known to be vive. Kerala is still recognized as
traditionally patrilineal, 362 were bilateral, meaning being far more gender equal than
they acknowledged descent through both parents, and other parts of India. — A S
another 160 were recognized as matrilineal. Biologist
Nicole Creanza, who worked on the research, says the
team tested popular theories about matriliny like those
above—but none held true in every case.
that did seem to affect a society’s move

O N E FAC TO R
away from matriliny, says Creanza, was “when
ILLUSTRATION: SOPHY HOLLINGTON APRIL 2023 17

E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA
populations had property, not in terms of land but

movable, transmissible wealth, where if your offspring NOWHERE DO WOMEN DEFER
inherited this thing that you have, they would be
TO MEN WITHOUT STRUGGLE.
potentially better off.” But even this wasn’t consistent.
Each society was just too complicated to reduce to FOR CENTURIES, FROM THE
simple factors, be they biological, environmental, or UNITED STATES TO IRAN,
anything else. “As far in as you can zoom,” she says, THEY’VE FOUGHT FOR MORE
“you can find more and more complexity.” RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES.
Anthropologists insist there are no female-led
matriarchies, if by matriarchy we mean the direct
opposite of patriarchy. In his 1680 text Patriarcha,
the English political theorist Sir Robert Filmer defined way, we might ask why matrilineal societies are still
patriarchy as the natural rule of a father over his fam- thought of as unusually unstable. Globally, impas-
ily and a king over his state. But what we usually see sioned movements for gender equality—sometimes
in matrilineal societies is women and men sharing tipping into violent protest—indicate that patriar-
power. Even if significant authority lies with broth- chy is not as stable as it seems either. Perhaps the
ers or uncles, it’s often authority that depends upon real matrilineal puzzle isn’t the existence of some
circumstances, or diffuse power more than absolute. female-focused societies but the bizarre preponder-
What characterizes matrilineal societies, as Stone ance of male-focused ones.
has written, is “considerable variation” in “author- “I consider the oppression of women to be a
ity, power, and influence among both males and system,” sociologist Christine Delphy says. “An
females.” There would have been even more vari- institution which exists today cannot be explained
ation in the past. In prehistory, social norms were by the simple fact that it existed in the past ... even
constantly moving. What can appear from one point if this past is recent.”
of view to be an instability resolving itself—a shift If we resign ourselves to accepting our lot as part of
from matriliny to patriliny, for instance—may from who we are by nature, we give up on understanding
another point of view be a move from one relatively how it might have come about. When we settle the
stable state to another, Creanza explains. case for patriarchy on something as simple as bio-
logical difference, even though the evidence points
E V E R Y W H E R E , P E O P L E H AV E always pushed for to a reality that’s far more complex and contingent,
their societies to be structured differently, for the we lose the capacity to recognize just how fragile it
oppressed to have more freedoms or privileges. “Any- might be. We stop asking how inequality works or
one, given half a chance, will prefer equality and the ways in which it is being reinvented.
justice to inequality and injustice,” writes political The most dangerous part of any form of human
theorist Anne Phillips. “Subservience does not, on oppression is that it can make people believe that
the whole, come naturally to people.” there are no alternatives. We see this in the old fal-
Sociologist Goldberg’s argument was that if a lacies of race, caste, and class. The question for any
pattern of behavior is universal, it probably has a theory of male domination is why this one form of
biological basis, and that given how little political inequality should be treated as the exception. j
power women have, they must feel themselves to
Science journalist Angela Saini is author of the books Superior and
be naturally subordinate. But as Phillips explains, Inferior, on sexism and racism in science. This essay is drawn from
nowhere do women defer to men without struggle. her new book, The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule.
For centuries, from the United States to Iran, they’ve
fought for more rights and privileges. Viewed this EUROPE
IA
AS
GHANA
AFRICA
Power, Balanced
If the only way of thinking about gender and power is through binary
opposition between women and men, it becomes impossible to imagine
men sharing status with women, or the balance of power changing with
circumstance. But this often occurs in matrilineal societies. For instance,
the Asante in Ghana divide leadership between the queen mother (a
position she holds in her own right, not because she’s anyone’s mother
or wife) and the male chief. It was the Asante ruler Nana Yaa Asantewaa
(left) who led an army to rebel against British colonial rule in 1900. “If
you, the men of Asante, will not go forward, then we will,” she told the
chiefs. “I shall call upon my fellow women.” Though her forces besieged
a British fort for several months, Yaa Asantewaa ultimately was captured
and exiled to the Seychelles, where she died in 1921. — A S
NGM MAPS. PHOTO: ALAMY

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CREATE YOUR LEGACY

E X P L O R E | BREAKTHROUGHS
Green (and growing) energy

Scientists now can obtain elec-
tricity from a living plant. During
D I S PAT C H E S photosynthesis, light drives
the flow of electrons from
FROM THE FRONT LINES water. By attaching elec-
OF SCIENCE trical conductors to the
A N D I N N OVAT I O N leaf of an ice plant, a variety of
succulent, scientists are able to
harness this electron flow and
convert it into electricity. — A R
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR
This bird has

a built-in
umbrella
The black heron
(Egretta ardesiaca),
which is found in
sub-Saharan Africa,
has a clever way to
catch prey. When
hunting for small
fish in shallow
water, this jet-black
bird deploys its
wings like a feath-
ered umbrella,
creating a patch of
shade that attracts
fish looking for
ARCHAEOLOGY
cover. The cloak
of darkness also
PICTURE THE DECEASED seems to make the

heron harder for fish
E G Y P T I A N S B U R I E D P O R T R A I T S — S O M E P O S S I B LY to see and the fish
E N H A N C E D —A LO N G W I T H M U M M I F I E D R E M A I N S . easier for the heron
to spot.
During three millennia in Egypt, tens of millions of people and
—A N N I E ROT H
animals are thought to have been mummified. Far rarer are mummy
portraits—detailed paintings of the living, buried with their mum-
mies when they died. Several mummy portraits discovered since
2019 at the burial site of the ancient Egyptian city of Philadelphia
were the first to be found there in more than a century.
Egyptians went to great expense—often a year’s wages—to arrange
funeral ceremonies and goods, including portraits, says Lorelei
Corcoran, director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology
at the University of Memphis, in Tennessee. Painted with natural
pigments mixed with beeswax or animal glue, the portraits are
prized for their lifelike qualities, though some subjects may have
been embellished—for example, wearing jewelry they didn’t own.
Roughly 1,300 mummy portraits are known to exist, though less Scan this code with
than one in 10 is still attached to a mummy. Many more may be your smartphone
to watch the black
waiting to be discovered, perhaps with other items the deceased heron’s shady way
would have hoped to possess in the afterlife. — DA N I E L S TO N E of hunting.
PHOTOS (FROM TOP): FABRIZIO TROIANI, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BASEM GEHAD,
20 DIRECTOR OF ANCIENT PHILADELPHIA NECROPOLIS EXCAVATION MISSION; HEMIS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
E X P L O R E
INNOVATOR
INEZA UMUHOZA
GRACE
BY NINA STROCHLIC
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK THIESSEN
She inspires young

people to take action
on climate change.
A few years ago as Ineza Umuhoza

Grace watched news footage of fam-
ilies in Rwanda evacuating their
flooded homes, a memory surfaced:
her mother waking her up at night
and dragging her out of the house as
torrential rains crashed through the
ceiling and water rose from the floor.
“I remembered the sense of being
powerless,” she says. “And I could
G
not believe that other children could
be living that same fear.”
What Umuhoza had experienced
as a child is the type of natural disas-
ter that’s getting more frequent and
severe in Rwanda. So she shelved her
dream of becoming a pilot, and today
the 27-year-old National Geographic
Explorer leads two climate change
education and advocacy organiza-
tions, working within Rwanda and
internationally. In 2022 Umuhoza
helped present a demand from dozens
of youth activists to COP27, the United 1
Nations global summit on climate
change, for a fund to cover loss and
damages. The effort paid off. World
leaders agreed to make contributions
to begin offsetting the effects on the
most vulnerable nations.
“We’re all in one boat,” she says. A.
“COVID-19 made it clear that what-
ever is going to happen in Belgium
is going to happen in Rwanda. Just as
COVID knew no boundaries, neither
does climate change impact.” j
The National Geographic Society has
funded Ineza Umuhoza Grace’s work
since 2020. Learn more about its support
of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact.
E X P L O R E | DATA S H E E T
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A N D L AW S O N PA R K E R
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Human
Some animals live for spans once World’s oldest known The Wright
thought impossible, others die off person, Jeanne Louise brothers took
Calment (1875-1997) their first flight
fast, and a handful appear to age
hardly at all. The bowhead whale, for
example, can survive more than 200
years despite the risk of predation,
famine, and disease. Scientists are
8 weeks
trying to figure out how these ageless Pygmy goby
animals do it—and if their longevity Actual
Shortest-lived
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E X P L O R E | DATA S H E E T
320
THE AGE OF ANIMALS With fewer predators, bigger animals tend to live longer. Smalle
grow and breed quickly to pass on their genes during shorter li
norms often live in niche habitats and have evolved to ward off
160
205
Rougheye
MAXIMUM rockfish 149
KNOWN
LONGEVITY
138 Orange
roughy
Eastern
(YEARS) box turtle
102 years Birds live three times as 83 10

Olm Ame
long as similarly sized Pink
80
mammals. Flying helps cockatoo 71 lob
As a group, bats have remarkably them avoid predation. Laysan albatross
long lives. Brandt’s bats live Cold environments can slow
aging, drastically affecting
longer for their size than
any other mammal. longevity outcomes, even 59
Greater
among closely related species. 60 flamingo
Kakapo
54
40 White-faced
41 39 40 capuchin 40
Brandt’s Whooping
Naked Senegal 38
bat mole rat parrot 34 Gray heron
crane
Barn owl 30
Domestic
24 26 cat
House Blue jay 25 21
canary Cane toad
20 Meerkat
20 21 22
Naked mole rats settle in American
protective burrows and crow 18 Red fox Koala
live up to 10 times as long Flag rockfish
as similarly sized mice. 15
Common 12
quail Guinea 13
10
11 pig Brush 13
Buff-bellied turkey Tasmanian devil
hummingbird 9.8 8.4 Marsupials, even la
9.3 Red ones such as kanga
Townsend’s European
squirrel mink generally have sho
live short
chipmunk lives than other ma
The three colored lines represent

7.4
each group’s expected longevity for
Mountain 7
6.3 cottontail White
5 body size. Animals above the line Desert perch
live longer than expected for their hedgehog
body size. Those below, shorter. 4.8 5
Vole Atlantic
bonito
4 3.8
House mouse
Norway
rat
2.5
3.1 3
Water opossum Pink
(yapock) salmon
Sample size
MAMMALS - 999 BIRDS - 1 ,088 FISH - 427 OTHER - 51

Longevity data Most data Data from ear Longevity outliers,
collected mostly from collected from bone rings and including reptiles
mammals in captivity wild animals radiocarbon dating and crustaceans
This graphic is based on longevity and body mass data in the AnAge Database of Animal Ageing and Longevity.
1 0 AVERAGE WEIGHT 2 oz 2 lb 20 lb
FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER SOURCES: STEVEN AUSTAD, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM; JOÃO PEDRO DE MAGALHÃES, UNIVERSIT
er creatures, typically prey, must 320
fe spans. Animal outliers to these
both external and biological perils. 392 years These cold-water, cold- Elephants’ powerful
Greenland shark blooded sharks far outlive
the energy-hungry, endo-
genes can eliminate
potentially cancerous
211
Bowhead
thermic great whites. cells in the early stages. whale
Thanks in part to having

large brains for their body
size, primates live longer
175
than most other mammals. 122 Aldabra
tortoise
Human
00 118 90 110
Beluga
erican Killer whale Blue whale
sturgeon
bster 70 77 80
West African American
69 Asian
dwarf crocodile West Indian elephant
alligator manatee
68 50
60 Great white shark 70
Chimpanzee Gorilla Southern
right whale
52
Bottlenose dolphin
37 37
Panda 40 Northern
Giraffe
27 27
bottlenose whale
King
penguin Domestic
dog
26
20
Tiger 20 20
Domestic
Giant
Thomson’s 21 cattle
manta ray
gazelle Cheetah
Longevity data are

15 limited for many marine
Giant 11 mammals. These species
armadillo Bigeye might have even longer 10
rger tuna SPECIES IN APPROXIMATELY life spans.
RELATIVE SCALE
aroos,
rterlives
ter
mmals.
7.8
Snook
DETERMINANTS OF LONGEVITY
4 Two factors place powerful evolutionary Those factors, in turn, can alter the aging
Common pressures on animals to adapt: process on a genetic and cellular level.
dolphinfish
Environment Cellular function 2.5
Cold temperatures, for Smaller animals
example, can slow down are more prone
the aging process. to predation. Cellular defenses
Body size Cellular rejuvenation
A larger body size typically

leads to a longer life span.
200 lb 2,000 lb 20,000 lb 200,000 lb
TY OF BIRMINGHAM APRIL 2023 27

E X P L O R E | ARTIFACT
BEHIND
W E A R I N G T H E FAC E of Patih Manis (below), a character in Bali’s
dance dramas, means more than simply putting on a tapel, or mask.
“When you dance with a tapel and perform its character, you
THE MASK
undergo a transformation,” says I Made Bandem, a scholar and
teacher of Balinese arts—and a dancer for seven decades. “You
must ‘marry’ that mask and make ritual offerings to create unity
between yourself and the tapel. Many dancers will sleep with the
mask beside them, so that they can learn its true character.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY
Hand-carved tapel are integral to Topeng Pajegan and Topeng
Panca, dance dramas often held at temple festivals and fam-
FRANCESCO LASTRUCCI
ily rituals across this Indonesian island. The masks, along with
elaborate costumes, hypnotic music, and staccato movements—
sometimes only of the fingers—have enchanted Balinese audiences
since the 17th century. The stories staged in Pajegan and Panca tell
the history of the Balinese people, and the characters never change:
Their appearance, movements, roles, and even the order in which
they emerge remain the same. Yet in spite of this structure, topeng
leave room for a great deal of artistic freedom. With no script and
no prescribed musical arrangement, the entire performance (which
ASIA
can last around four hours) will be an improvisation—dancers and
INDONESIA
musicians drawing cues from one another.
It’s believed that every mask used for performance has a spirit.
Bali And if the correct offerings and taboos have been observed and
I N DI A N AUS.
the dancers have devoted themselves to mental, physical,
O CE A N
and spiritual training, then during a dance drama their bodies
will become a medium for the tapel’s spirit.
“A dancer strives to achieve taksu, which is a combination of
The maker of the mask presence, power, and passion,” says Bandem. “This is what we
shown here comes from
the Balinese village pray for before we perform; it is through taksu that we bring the
This of
PDFMas,
was uploade To Teligram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
known for wood carving. ancestors and their stories to life.” — N A R I N A E X E L B Y
This Balinese mask of the character Patih Manis was carved from lightweight pule wood by a sixth-generation maskmaker.
28 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C NGM MAPS
E X P L O R E | THROUGH THE LENS
In the 1990s, when I began as a journalist, train
Memory
tickets took hours to queue for, and a ride from Bei-
jing to Shanghai took 24 hours; today you order a
ticket in seconds on your phone, and the high-speed
train makes the trip in about four hours. But COVID
controls put a brake on that, causing huge delays and
disruptions. When I finally arrived, I often found my
photo shoots canceled because of sudden lockdowns.
Meets
Friends and colleagues from Chongqing to Hang-
zhou kept me updated in real time about which
neighborhoods had outbreaks so I could avoid getting
stuck. I had always tested negative—but one day my
code inexplicably turned red, and I was unable to go
anywhere or do anything. Within two days, the code
Change
changed back to green without giving a reason.
Some 1.4 billion Chinese lived with these controls
every day. Yet most I met tolerated them, believing
the sacrifice was for the greater good. Perhaps it’s not
unlike an earlier generation’s stoic acceptance of the
one-child policy to jump-start economic growth.
I finished my work and returned to Europe. Within
weeks, it was clear that people’s patience had worn
thin. China responded to widespread discontent
over its COVID measures by getting rid of the PCR
AS T WO PHOTO GRAPHERS
booths, color codes, and quarantine centers. After
C O V E R E A RT H ’S E I G H T
three years of national isolation, Beijing pivoted to
B I L L I O N, T H E Y G A T H E R herd immunity. When I called the persons I’d pho-
IMAGES AND INSIGHTS FROM tographed to update their stories, I found many of
LANDS THEY KNOW WELL. them sick or caring for sick relatives.
I scrambled
This PDF was uploade To Teligram channel_ LBS Newspaper platform to get my elderly
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) father in Shanghai
@LBSNEWSPAPER
out of harm’s way but was too late: He got infected.
Fortunately, he has since recovered. — J J
BY JUSTIN JIN AND
YAG A Z I E E M E Z I
NIGERIA: She returned to discover that her
hometown had ‘never stopped growing.’
It’s a bitter feeling to realize that home doesn’t always
CHINA: He saw COVID policy appeal to ‘the remain in one place. I left home not old enough to
greater good’ as family size limits once did. know that my parents were renters. In my head, our
Boarding a flight to China from Europe, where I house was ours forever. I still have dreams that I’m
live, I usually feel excited. But heading out on an in Aba, in our three-bedroom bungalow where white
assignment last year, passing a phalanx of airport lace curtains brush against glass louvers. I dream
crews in PPE gear, I felt some dread. of our yard: the pawpaw tree that never produced
The jet cabin had become an air lock, separating enough fruit, the mango tree we’d run to in rainy
a then largely COVID-free China from the rest of the season and load fallen mangoes into our shirts. In
world it deemed contagious. the dreams, I see the patch of farmland, the cassava
In 2022, as I set out to spend five weeks shooting this and maize we grew—and in the center of it all, our
issue’s “Eight Billion” story, China’s strict “COVID zero” large frangipani tree, always in bloom.
rules allowed the government to lock down cities and The Aba where I grew up, in southeastern Nigeria,
isolate anyone infected. As a result, my flight to Beijing was a commercial hub rowdy with crowded market
was diverted to Xian, a far less strategic city 750 miles spaces, bad roads, and people yelling and smiling at the
away, where I started my 10-day isolation in a room same time. It was also violent—but when you’re
with a camera watching my door and a loudspeaker in slow-boiling water, you don’t feel the heat at first. In
that boomed a warning if I opened it. my memories, down my street, one man is beaten by
After release, I roamed freely but had to make sure others, his cries unheeded. My father tells me to stay
the health code on my phone stayed green. This was indoors as the riots spread. Stench rises from burnt
determined by almost daily PCR tests and tracking bodies left in the open, and young boys dangle off pass-
apps that logged whether I had been near an infected ing trucks, waving machetes and vowing to fight crime.
person. I traveled swiftly across China at any hint of These were the signs of a Nigeria I didn’t understand.
an outbreak, for fear of getting grounded. But woven into the grimness were peaceful streets
TOP
A veteran photojour-
nalist born in Hong
Kong and now based
in Brussels, Justin Jin
was on assignment in
China for this issue’s
Eight Billion coverage.
In central Shanghai,
where an increasing
number of young
urbanites are opting
for pets instead of chil-
dren, Jin photographed
a woman taking her
dog for a swim at a
premium pet spa.
GONG YIHAN
BOTTOM
A Lagos-based artist
and photojournalist,
Yagazie Emezi photo-
graphed Nigeria for
the Eight Billion cov-
erage. This photo from
the early 1990s shows
(from left) young Yag-
azie with older siblings
Akwaeke and Jamike
dressed for an event
in their village located
in Old Umuahia, Abia
state, Nigeria.
COURTESY EMEZI FAMILY
where wooden convenience stalls sold soap and my cats goodbye and whispered to my dog that I’d
sweets. Where groundnut and frozen yogurt sellers be back soon.
sometimes visited, touting their wares in a melodious I returned home in 2012. My pets were dead, my
chant; where the evenings came slowly, almost as if sweet bungalow was falling apart, and the large fran-
time wanted to do everyone a favor. It was on a street gipani tree had no flowers. Our landlord was hoping
like this that I spent my childhood. that the worsening state of the house would eventu-
If I close my eyes just right, it was a picturesque ally chase my father away. Then he could break down
and comfortable upbringing. Many days it would the walls and build smaller rooms to house more
be safe to play beyond our gates, to have bike chases people. Aba never stopped growing, and with that,
and wheelbarrow races. One night the moon was so the demand for housing and business space grew too.
bright and blue that we all ran outside, squealing with The last time I was in Aba, in 2020, many of our
delight at the orb’s audacity, adults giggling with us as neighbors’ houses had been converted into churches,
we chased one another and our shadows. I remember schools, hotels, and nightclubs. Cars constantly
looking around at the dancing figures of my neigh- cruised up and down the once peaceful street. The
bors, knowing I’d never forget. landlord had given my father one more year to
Before I left home in 2005, at age 15, I ran my fin- remain in the bungalow. And in the yard, the large
gertips over the walls, each crack familiar. I kissed frangipani tree had been cut down. —Y E
APRIL 2023 31
I W E L OV E O U R N AT I O N A L PA R K S
AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D
NatGeoBooks @NatGeoBooks
© 2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C APRIL 2023
Population Trends . . . . . P. 34
Rising in Nigeria . . . . . P. 46
Falling in China . . . . . . . P. 68
Shifting Seasons . . . . . . . . . P. 92
Impressive Insects . . . . . P. 118
F EAT U R E S
THROUGH PAINSTAKING,
118 CLOSE-UP PORTRAITS OF ANTS,

A PHOTOGRAPHER AIMS
TO INSPIRE APPRECIATION
FOR ONE OF EARTH’S MOST
SUCCESSFUL ANIMALS.
PHOTO: EDUARD FLORIN NIGA

i
t
o
d
y
f
a
m
m
t
M
i
B
i
D
8
A
I
S
9
c
m
e
h
THE HUMAN
POPULATION
EXPLOSION
1 billion
people
1802
1800
JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF

34 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROS
9.7 billion
2050
BY C R A I G W E LC H
9 billion
2036
E ’ V E R E AC H E D A N E W M I L E STO N E
in the human journey. Last November, according
to the United Nations, the number of people 8 billion
2022 14
on Earth hit eight billion. Our population has
doubled in less than 50 years, just since 1974, the
year the UN brought the world’s countries together
for the first intergovernmental conference to 7 billion
address population growth. At the time, only three 2010 12
metro areas were home to 10 million people or
more—New York, Tokyo, and Mexico City. Today
there are more than 30.
The reasons for this explosion are well known: 6 billion
1998 12
Medicine, sanitation, and crop yields continue to
improve dramatically. As a result, child mortal-
ity is plummeting and life expectancy is rising.
Demographers at the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, and the 5 billion
1986 12
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, in
Seattle, see the planet’s human census reaching
9.4 billion and 9.7 billion, respectively, later this

century. UN experts think we might hit 10.4 billion. 4 billion
1974
But those figures mask a curious shift. Between 12
mid-century and the year 2100, our ceaseless

expansion is expected to abruptly stop. We are
headed someplace new. “There is a consensus that
3 billion
1959 15
2 billion
1927
32
125 years
PROJECTED
1850 1900 1950 2000 2050
SPECTS, 2022”; GAPMINDER

THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE ON
THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEN
When fertility rates drop and workers make up more tha
EARTH THAN EVER, BUT THAT

two-thirds of the population, a country with a functionin
economy has a rare opportunity to invest in itself. China
already reaped this dividend; Nigeria’s lies in the near fu
DISGUISES A NEW REALITY.

But if fertility rates drop too far, below 2.1 births per wom
the number of older adults can overwhelm the system.
THIS CENTURY, WE COULD

HIT A PEAK AND BEGIN TO
CHINA
Beginning the decline
20
Fears of overpopulation led to the one-child
policy in 1980; by 2009 the share of the
DECLINE. SOME COUNTRIES

population that was working age had
started its descent.
1950
China’s Great Leap Projected
WILL CONTINUE TO GROW

Forward reforms
(1958–1962) led to
erratic fertility rates
and mass starvation.
1975
RAPIDLY, WHILE OTHERS WILL

1950
NIGERIA
2023
2000 Workforce on the ris
1975
SEE THEIR NUMBERS DROP.

The fertility rate is expect
in the coming decades, yi
higher ratio of workers to
dents and setting the stag
demographic dividend af
8 7 6 5 4 3
Live births
per woman Total fertility rate
U N I T E D S TAT E S INDIA
P. 34 P. 46 P. 68 Treading water Nearing the peak
Immigration has allowed countries Nigeria can look to India as an
INTRODUCTION IN NIGERIA IN CHINA such as the U.S. to mitigate a reduc- example of what to expect; India
As its population Much of the popu- The one-child policy tion in the fertility rate with an influx is projected to reach its peak per-
grows, the world will lation growth in the and developing econ- of economically productive adults. centage of workers in 2032.
face the challenges coming years will be in omy have conspired 80
of feeding millions Africa, where fertility to depress the fertility
more and coping with rates are higher than in rate, causing the popu-
increased migration. most other places. lation to decline.
2023
2000
2050
1950 65
1975 2023
2000
2050 1950
1975
50
8 2.1 0 8 2.1
* Threshold at which population levels, assuming mortality

rates are constant and net migration is zero, remain stable
80% the world’s population will peak probably before
More
working
people
the end of the century,” says Patrick Gerland,
who oversees projections for the UN’s Population
Division. Even as our numbers swell, children
ND and some adults alive today could be the first peo-
an ple in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years to
Percentage
ng of population see Earth’s population plateau or even dip, with
of working
has age (15–64) unfathomable consequences.
uture.
man,
Buried in the demographic data documenting
fertility and longevity are striking contrasts in
2023 how we’ll get there. More than half the population
2000
increase that’s projected for the next quarter cen-
Demographic tury is expected to come from just eight countries
dividend 65%
threshold in Asia and Africa: Pakistan, the Philippines, India,
50 Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and the Demo-
Projected cratic Republic of the Congo. Yet by century’s end,
populations could fall by half in nearly two dozen
others, including Thailand, Spain, and Japan.
2050 What will these changes mean for our ever evolv-
ing human story? Much can be learned from two
countries worlds apart facing diametrically oppo-
site realities: China and Nigeria.
e
ted to fall
T
ielding a
o depen-
ge for a
Fewer HE UNITED NATIONS has pro-
working
fter 2050. people jected that sometime this year, for
50%
3 2 1 0 the first time in hundreds of years,
Replacement
rate* China will no longer be Earth’s
2.1
most populous country; India will
I TA LY
surpass it. Even before China’s one-child policy was
Over the cliff instituted in 1980, its birth rate had been declin-
Countries with older populations pro-
vide a cautionary tale: When the fertil- ing. The country’s incomparable economic growth
- ity rate is too low for too long, the share
of the working population plummets. expanded education and career opportunities for
80 80 women, and more have chosen to delay or forgo
motherhood even as the number of women of
childbearing age has dropped.
Although people in China are living longer, its
0 1950 2000
65 65
population—now about 1.4 billion—has started to
1975 2023
decline. The workforce that made China the world’s
factory has already been shrinking for a decade. By
2050 2050 China could see 500 million people older than
50 50
0 8 2.1 0 60. This imbalance between young and old will be
JASON TREAT, RILEY D. CHAMPINE, AND
China’s great challenge.
EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI
SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS, 2022”;
SAMUEL CLARK, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY; ADRIAN RAFTERY,
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; PATRICK HEUVELINE, UCLA EIGHT BILLION 39
ON TOP OF
THE WORLD
These newborns in
a hospital in Noida,
India, are among the
reasons the country
will overtake China
this year to become
the most populous.
After mid-century,
India’s population may
begin to decline, but it
could remain the larg-
est country through
the turn of the century.
ANINDITO MUKHERJEE,
GETTY IMAGES
41
A continent away, things look different. Nigeria’s
median age is just 17, less than half that of China.
The fertility rate there is falling, too, but remains
about five times as high as in China. The country’s
population, now about 224 million, could more
than triple by the end of the century. About a third
of Nigerians live in extreme poverty, nearly half
the number of people living in extreme poverty in
India, which has a population more than six times
as large. Hunger is already a concern: Millions in
Nigeria are at risk of starvation.
H
OW WILL WE NAVIGATE the
simultaneous booms and busts?
None of these projections ade-
quately account for the potential
strain on Earth’s finite resources.
Fish and wildlife are already disappearing quickly,
and climate change is becoming the greatest threat
in history to biodiversity, food security, and access
This PDFto
waswater
uploade To for drinking
Teligram and farming.
channel_ LBS Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) @LBSNEWSPAPER
Yet as extreme heat, rising seas, and severe

weather promise to increase migration, our popu-
lation trends, too, could initiate more movement
between countries as those with dwindling work-
forces desperately seek labor from outside their bor-
ders. In high-income countries such as the United
States, immigration will drive population growth.
In 1968, when Earth had just 3.5 billion people,
biologist Paul Ehrlich, in his famously dire book
The Population Bomb, fretted about overpopulation
causing hundreds of millions to die from famine.
Instead, a green revolution—the widespread adop-
tion of fertilizers, mechanization, and high-yield
crops—transformed agriculture. We are still hur-
tling toward a future with far more people—but in
some places also far fewer. Will human ingenuity,
and the billions more brains at our disposal, find
ways to cope with this new reality? Nigeria and
China may be our biggest tests. j
Craig Welch is a senior staff writer for National Geographic.
42
POPULATION GROWTH
TAPS THE BRAKES
People in Nigeria and China—and in fact in every country in the
world—are living longer thanks in part to improved health care
and rising standards of living. But falling fertility rates are acting
as a global counterweight to the trend toward longer lives.
100 Life expectancy
China
World
COVID-19
Populations will grow older pandemic
Nigeria
By 2050 the average person will live to
50
be almost 78. Increased longevity adds
to populations. But as people live longer, Range of
they spend more years dependent on the uncertainty
labor force, a drag on economic growth.
Great
Leap
Forward
P ROJ EC T E D
0
1950 2023 2050
Total fertility rate

9
8
7
Fertility rates will fall further 6
The global fertility rate was five births 5

per woman in 1950; by 2021 it had
dropped to 2.3. The rate is projected 4
to decline to 2.1 births by the middle
of the century. 3 Nigeria
2 World
China
1
PROJECTED
0
1950 2023 2050
+4% Population growth rate
3%
Countries will grow more slowly

2%
The worldwide population growth rate
fell below one percent per year in 2020,
the first time since 1950. If this decline Nigeria
continues, the Earth’s population will 1%
peak before 2100.
World
Growing population
0%
Shrinking population
China
–1% PROJECTED
1950 2023 2050
JASON TREAT AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI

SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS, 2022”; SAMUEL CLARK, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY; ADRIAN RAFTERY, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; PATRICK HEUVELINE, UCLA
When women have an average of 2.1
children each, often called the replacement
rate, populations remain stable. More than
two-thirds of countries now have fertility
rates below this benchmark.
Total fertility rate by country

Live births per woman
4 or more
2.1 to 3.9
Less than 2.1 (below replacement rate)
Areas of high population density
A LESS FERTILE WORLD

Improving women’s access to education, employment,
and birth control has helped cut the global fertility rate in
half since 1950. Sub-Saharan Africa, which has not evenly
experienced these social changes and where large families
are the norm, is the world’s last region to sustain a high
fertility rate. As a result, many African populations will
continue to grow while populations will decline elsewhere.
The shape of change CHINA

Population pyramids help illustrate the share of a country’s people—the oldest Fertility rate in 2023: 1.2
and youngest—that depends economically on those of working age. As a A decades-long decline
country’s mortality and fertility rates decline, pyramids can shift from a broad in its fertility rate has left
base (many young people, as in Nigeria) to more uniformly vertical (as in China with a slightly top-
the U.S.). When there are more older people, the shape appears top-heavy. heavy pyramid, which will
continue to widen by 2050.
100+ World
95–99 average
Distribution
1950
90–94
85–89 of the world’s Population of
80–84
population in 2023 working age
by age and sex
75–79
70–74
65–69 World
60–64 average
55–59
2023
50–54 Populations in the Population of
45–49 shaded band are working age
40–44 of working age,
35–39 supporting both
30–34 older populations
25–29 and younger ones. World
average
20–24
2050
15–19
10–14 Population of
working age
5–9
0–4 Male Female
10 5 0 5 10
Percentage of population
I TA LY U N I T E D S TAT E S INDIA NIGERIA

1.3 1.7 2.0 5.1
By 2050, 36 percent of Immigration has kept the The country soon to be the A high fertility rate will
Italy’s population will be country’s pyramid rela- most populous mirrors the keep its pyramid bottom
65 and older, while less tively consistent, offsetting global pyramid. By 2050, heavy. By 2050 more than
than 12 percent will be a gradual decline in the 68 percent of its people will 35 percent of its population
younger than 15. number of births. be working age. will be under 15.
JASON TREAT, RILEY D. CHAMPINE, AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI
SOURCES: “UN WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS, 2022”; SAMUEL CLARK, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY; ADRIAN RAFTERY,
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; PATRICK HEUVELINE, UCLA; EUROPEAN COMMISSION, JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE 45
WHERE
POPULATION IS
GROWING
BY 2050, NIGERIA IS
EXPECTED TO SQUEEZE
377 MILLION PEOPLE
INTO A COUNTRY LESS THAN
ONE-TENTH THE SIZE OF THE
UNITED STATES. WHAT
WILL LIFE LOOK LIKE FOR
A CHILD GROWING UP
IN AFRICA’S MOST
POPULOUS COUNTRY?
BY ADAOBI TRICIA NWAUBANI
PHOTOGRAPHS BY YAGAZIE EMEZI
47
BABIES
MAKE SEVEN
After years of trying
to conceive, Foyeke
Omage and her hus-
band, Ewanle, wel-
comed quintuplets as
a miracle. But raising
three girls and two
boys has left them in
debt. The nation these
children will inherit
will be very different—
by 2050, when they are
29, Nigeria is expected
to have added 150 mil-
lion people.
MUCH NEEDED people. Despite Nige-
ria’s recent investments
INVESTMENT in infrastructure, the

World Bank estimates
the country will need
Travelers and vendors to spend trillions of
mingle near the Oshodi dollars by 2050 to
bus terminal in Lagos, maximize the poten-
Africa’s largest city with tial of its rapidly
more than 15 million growing population.
SOMEWHERE LAST FALL,
EARTH WELCOMED
ITS EIGHT BILLIONTH
HUMAN, MARKING THE
LARGEST NUMBER OF
OUR SPECIES TO LIVE ON
THE PLANET AT ONCE.
No one knows exactly the time or place

this landmark was reached or who number
8,000,000,000 is.
In November the United Nations bestowed
the honor on an infant born in Manila, but
baby eight billion could have been any one of BIRTHING
the roughly 12 million infants born that month
THE NEXT
GENERATION
around the world. She could’ve arrived in a
hospital in Tokyo, on a farm in Wyoming,
or in a bomb shelter in Kyiv. He could’ve been
Expectant mothers wait
delivered in a refugee camp in Rwanda, a to see Itoko Ebiere (in
village in the Amazon, or an isolated town in lab coat), who’s worked
the Arctic. Number eight billion could even as a midwife for 35
years. Though Nigerian
have been Eziaku Kendra Okonkwo, a six- health care has seen
pound girl born in Abuja, Nigeria, on Novem- some improvement,
ber 12, 2022, the second child of Kenneth and one in 175 mothers
The National still dies in childbirth
Geographic Society, Amara Okonkwo. because of a lack of
committed to illumi- Nigeria is a reasonable guess since, with health facilities and
nating and protecting trained medical staff.
the wonder of our 224 million people, it’s Africa’s most populous
world, has funded country. Thanks in part to modest health-care
Explorer Yagazie advances, infant mortality has decreased to 72
Emezi’s photography
in Africa since 2020. deaths per thousand live births and life expec-
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY tancy has inched up to 53 years (though both
52
these figures still fall far below UN goals). and Southerners, along with every man, woman,
Those and other factors, combined with tra- and child from all the other states, including
ditions favoring large families, have created Hawaii and Alaska—everyone crammed in. Pic-
one of the world’s fastest growing populations. ture it? OK, now add another 39 million people,
By 2050—when Eziaku will be 28 years old— roughly the population of Canada. All these peo-
Nigeria, with just about one-tenth the land of ple will bring their cultural preferences, their
the United States, is projected to hold 377 mil- politics, and their religious practices. They’ll
lion people, becoming the planet’s third most all need food, jobs, transportation, water, san-
populous nation, just ahead of the U.S. and itation, electricity, health care, schools, and so
behind only India and China. forth. That’s what statistics say Nigeria will look
Assuming she stays in Nigeria, what will like halfway through the century.
Eziaku’s country look like? One way to visualize it Statistics are crucial for projecting the future,
is to imagine every American moving into Texas but they’re also detached from the human
and Oklahoma and spilling over into the western beings they’re supposed to represent. So let’s
half of Louisiana. All the Californians and New look into the future of Nigeria, my home coun-
Yorkers, all the New Englanders, Midwesterners, try, through the eyes of Eziaku, who will grow
NIGERIA 53
SIX DECADES OF
FREEDOM
A parade in Lagos com-
memorates Nigeria’s
1960 break from colo-
nial rule. The nation is
Africa’s largest democ-
racy, but leaders have
struggled to build
unity among its more
than 200 ethnic groups.
President Muhammadu
Buhari has emphasized
that “free, fair, credi-
ble, and transparent
elections” are crucial to
Nigeria’s success as its
population grows.
up in a place that will be far different from the attendants are nearer to their homes and are more
one in which her parents and I grew up. affordable. The proportion of Nigerian babies
born in health facilities has increased by over 85
percent since Amara was a child but still accounts
E
ZIAKU RESTS QUIETLY in her for less than half the country’s deliveries.
mother’s arms, her chubby brown Amara gave birth to her first child in a gov-
face several shades darker than her ernment hospital, but after hearing worrisome
mother’s, one of many features the baby shares stories of inadequate care in some government
with her grandmother, whom relatives say hospitals in Abuja, the capital, she decided to
she resembles. Amara named Eziaku after her deliver Eziaku in a private facility. “There was a
mother, a retired primary school teacher, who difference in the care between my first and sec-
died at 71, four months before her granddaughter ond,” she says. “You have better attention when
arrived. She’d suffered from diabetes and kid- you are in private hospitals.” At 140,000 nairas
ney problems and was on dialysis for most of her (about $310), the bill was also five times more, but
daughter’s pregnancy. Despite her ill health, she Amara and Kenneth were willing to pay.
never stopped worrying about her daughter and According to the World Bank, the ratio of doc-
her unborn grandchild. “I found out after she tors to patients in Nigeria is 1 to about 2,500,
died that she had called my aunts and my elder contrasted with 1 to 385 in the U.S. The Nigerian
sister to tell them to make sure that they took government subsidizes the training of physicians
care of me after the baby was born,” Amara says. in the country’s medical schools, but poor work-
“I suspect she knew that she was going to die.” ing conditions and low pay cause many new doc-
Amara and Kenneth are from the Igbo ethnic tors to seek better opportunities in places such as
group of southeastern Nigeria, among whom the United Kingdom, the U.S., and South Africa,
omugwo is a ritual requiring a maternal grand- leaving Nigeria’s medical system with insuffi-
mother to provide postpartum care. During this cient personnel. Between December 2021 and
time she helps take care of the new baby and May 2022, a total of 727 doctors trained in Nige-
eases her daughter intouploade
This PDF was the role of mother,
To Teligram ensur-
channel_ LBS Newspaper ria migrated
platform to the U.K. alone.
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) If current trends
@LBSNEWSPAPER
ing she eats nutritious meals with local spices continue, Eziaku will grow up in a country where
believed to boost milk production and helping more people have access to health facilities than
massage her belly with hot water to flush blood when her parents were children, but there will
clots from the womb. Amara’s sister fulfilled the still be an acute shortage of trained physicians.
tradition in place of their mother. Sitting in the only bedroom of their apartment
Eziaku’s birth in a private hospital marked a in the Kubwa suburb of Abuja, Amara rocks a
change from how her mother arrived. Amara sleeping Eziaku while her two-year-old sister,
was born in a “maternity” in Benin City, in 1988, Ifeyinwa, scampers around. The couple’s dou-
when Nigeria’s population was just 90.4 million. ble bed is neatly covered with a blue bedspread;
Amara’s father was a pastor, and the maternity across the room a pink spread covers a smaller
was a sort of clinic owned by a church and staffed bed for the children. Amara smiles as she touches
by women who were experienced but not pro- Eziaku’s tiny fingers and toes. She takes photos
fessionally trained. “When I was growing up, my and videos of the baby being cuddled by her sis-
mother showed me the woman who helped her ter. For her selfies with Eziaku, she lets down her
deliver me,” Amara says. “I don’t think she was a braids, allowing them to cascade down her full
nurse or midwife or anything. Back then, health cheeks as she faces her baby toward the camera.
care was mostly do-it-yourself. I don’t recall ever But this adoring mother was slightly disturbed
going to hospital when I was a child. My mother when she discovered that she was pregnant again.
would just ask people what to do whenever we “I was wondering how I was going to take care of
were not feeling well and then give us medicine the baby, because I am not working,” she says.
based on what they suggested. ‘If you have a fever, Kenneth was more concerned about whether it
take this. If you have a stomachache, take that.’ ” would be a boy, his dream. “God will always pro-
Many women in Nigeria still choose traditional vide for any child He brings,” he says. “It turned
birth attendants instead of going to hospitals, not out to be a girl, but no problem. I’m going to give
only because they trust the knowledge that these her all the best support she needs.”
experienced women provide but also because the Kenneth has a degree in business management
PROJ ECTE D
1,670 1. India
million
THE RISE
OF AFRICA 1,428
Two-thirds of global population 1,313 2. China
growth between now and 2050

will come from sub-Saharan
Africa. Nigeria is forecast to 377 3. Nigeria
become the world’s third most

375 4. U.S.
populous country by then,
with a median age under 23. 1,426
5. Pakistan
6. Indonesia
7. Brazil
340
8. D.R. Congo
9. Ethiopia
10. Bangladesh
Largest countries in the
224
world by population
Among those projected
to have more than 10 million
people in 2050
Sub-Saharan countries 15. Tanzania
shown in green
20. Uganda
21. Kenya
22. Sudan
544
1. China million
people 26. South Africa
27. Angola
2. India 357 30. Niger

32. Mozambique
3. United 148
States
38. Ghana
40. Madagascar
41. Côte d’Ivoire
42. Cameroon
44. Mali
15. Nigeria 37
52. Burkina Faso
54. Zambia
56. Malawi
57. Somalia
58. Chad
62. Senegal
64. Zimbabwe
67. Benin
69. Burundi
71. Rwanda
78. South Sudan

81. Togo
88. Sierra Leone
93. Central African Rep.
97. Congo
1950 2023 2050
JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF
SOURCES: UNITED NATIONS POPULATION DIVISION; SAMUEL CLARK, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
THE GROWING
ELITE CLASS
Arriving in style at
their wedding recep-
tion, television host
Jimmie Akinsola and
fashion consultant
Kanayo Ebi belong to a
small but growing class
of prosperous younger
adults. Income is a
major factor in Nige-
rians’ marriage plans.
The country’s poor-
est women wed at a
median age of 16, the
richest at 24.
and was working in the government’s science and there aren’t enough opportunities. The World
technology ministry when the couple married Bank estimates the country currently needs to
in 2019. At the time, Amara was studying for a produce 2.5 million jobs every year to meet the
master’s degree in computer science. Kenneth is demand. That number will need to grow by the
still in the same job, where his monthly earnings time Eziaku graduates from college, as her par-
are nearly four times the national minimum wage ents plan, in the 2040s.
of 30,000 nairas ($66) a month, while Amara has Kenneth and Amara live paycheck to paycheck,
struggled to find work since graduating, despite with funds often running out before the month
dozens of online applications. The number of ends. They rarely buy new clothes, often run out
Nigerians without work has risen steadily for the of credit on their prepaid phones, and can’t afford
past decade. Now more than a third of Nigerians a car. Amara’s older brother, who lives in Abuja,
are jobless, with 17 percent of the unemployed had to drive her to the hospital to have Eziaku.
holding advanced degrees. Each year around Kenneth’s parents are dead, and Amara’s 76-year-
two million students gain admission to Nigeria’s old father is retired. “We contribute money with
universities and polytechnical schools, and some my siblings to take care of him,” she says. Still,
600,000 new graduates enter the labor pool, but their situation puts them in Nigeria’s middle class,
lack the kind of large family we used to have.”
Nigeria’s fertility rate was more than seven
births per woman when Kenneth was born in
1983. In 2004 the government launched a 10-year
plan to reduce the fertility rate to just over four
births per woman and increase the use of con-
traceptives to 30 percent of the nation’s sexually
active population. Over the next decade the fertil-
ity rate dipped but only to 5.5 births per woman,
while less than 10 percent of couples used con-
traceptives. The policy’s failure wasn’t that
surprising. From the beginning, many Nigerians
denounced the government’s recommendation
that a woman have no more than four children—
even though it was based in part on research
showing a mother’s health begins to decline after
the fourth pregnancy. “People always misquote
that policy,” says Akanni Akinyemi, a professor
MAKING DO of demography at Obafemi Awolowo University.
WITH LITTLE
“They say that it said we must not have more
than four children, as if it was a law. No, that was
not the case,” he tells me. “It simply said: Have a
Emmanuel and Nwa-
kaego Ewenike live rational decision around family planning.”
with their four children Amara is aware of the government’s family
in a one-room apart- planning initiatives and thinks that they’re a
ment in the city of Aje-
gunle. About 30 people good idea. “Look at the number we are now,
share
This PDF was uploade To the
Teligram building,
channel_ and(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER)
LBS Newspaper platform people are struggling to survive. The rich
@LBSNEWSPAPER
which has no running in Nigeria are crying, the poor are also crying.
water or electricity. The
environment for raising Everyone is having a tough time. Imagine how
kids is “very bad,” says much more difficult it would be when our popu-
Emmanuel. And yet, he lation grows more,” she says. However, she does
and Nwakaego manage
to send them to school not use any modern contraceptives, preferring
and religious classes. natural family planning methods instead, such
as prolonged breastfeeding, which reduces fertil-
ity, and avoiding sex during her ovulation cycle.
“My mother advised me not to put any of these
things people are putting inside their bodies for
ahead of over two-thirds of their fellow citizens. family planning,” Amara says, citing stories she’s
Amara had hoped to get a job before having a heard of side effects from using contraceptives.
second baby. “The pregnancy wasn’t planned,” “She believed that things can happen naturally,
she says. “I don’t think it’s just about having especially when you pray and believe in God. For
money. There are a lot of things needed to cater now, I am still trying to stick to her advice.” Amara
for a child.” Kenneth believes that they will some- chuckles as she admits shyly that she may have
how be able to provide for all Eziaku’s needs, but up to four children, as she does not plan to stop
there’s just one area where he concedes they giving birth until she gets a son. “If I have a girl as
may come up short. Growing up, Amara was the a third child, I will still try for one more,” she says.
youngest of five siblings, while Kenneth’s parents While Amara is not under any particular pres-
had seven children. Kenneth describes his home sure from her husband or extended family to
back then as a beehive of activity, with usually up have a boy, most Nigerian cultures place a higher
to 19 children staying there at a time, including value on male children. “In some cultures, when a
cousins and other extended family. “Because of woman doesn’t have a male child, it is like a prob-
that, going home was always fun,” he says. He lem for her,” says Chidera Benoit of Population
always had people to play with. “My children will Explosion Awareness Initiative, a nonprofit in
NIGERIA 61
FOOD UNDER
PRESSURE
On market day in the
north-central state
of Nasarawa, herd-
ers bring thousands
of cows to Keffi Cat-
tle Market, among
the country’s largest.
More than 70 percent
of Nigerians practice
some type of agricul-
ture, but food suffi-
ciency has declined as
a result of poor farming
conditions and the ris-
ing population. Nigeria
annually imports
$22 billion of food,
notably wheat and fish.
Nigeria that counters beliefs that lead couples to
have many children. In some families, when the
man dies, he says, “they will throw the woman
out, seize all the property of the man, and say that
the woman doesn’t have a male child to continue
the lineage. So you see, a woman who has four
or five girl children, she will continue … to have
more children, hoping for a boy, because that
male child is an insurance for her for the future.”
According to the UN, easy access to family
planning and education, especially for girls, is
a major driver of declining fertility. If Nigeria
were to make both universal by 2030, as some
demographers have suggested, the nation might
cut its population boom in half, meaning that in
2100, when Eziaku is 78, the country would have
400 million people, rather than the nearly 800
million that one estimate predicts.
The attitudes toward male children are similar
in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, but the A PLACE TO
situation is exacerbated by its having the nation’s
lowest percentage of children attending school
BE ONESELF
and nearly half its girls marrying before they Ashley Okoli dances
turn 15. As a child born to Christian parents from at a Lagos nightclub,
southern Nigeria, Eziaku will probably have a life which offers a rare
welcoming space for
far different from that of girls born in the north. people of all sexual ori-
She’s likely toThis
begin formal
PDF was uploadeeducation as a toddler
To Teligram channel_ LBS Newspaper entations.
platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER)
Same-sex @LBSNEWSPAPER
and continue to university. Her parents plan to relationships are illegal

in Nigeria, yet in the
send her to private schools to avoid the turmoil past four years LGBTQ
of Nigeria’s government-run schools, where class- activists have cele-
rooms are often overcrowded and many teachers brated Pride month
with performances and
are poorly trained and regularly strike in pro- protests in some parts
test over not being paid. Eziaku’s sister already of the country.
attends a private preschool, which costs 48,000
nairas ($105) a term. “If you want good education,
you need to have good money in your pocket,”
Amara says. “We’ve been taught that education
is key, even though in our country now, whether are not among them, but they keep a careful eye
or not you are educated doesn’t determine how on their budget. “We buy food first, then save for
successful you are. But I think education is the other bills,” Amara says. And yet, an ongoing cri-
basic thing every parent should give their child. sis in Nigeria’s agricultural sector may mean that
Give them a good education, and hopefully they when Eziaku is an adult, groceries will take up a
can find a better path and better opportunities.” much larger part of her family’s budget. Last fall,
Nigerians saw food prices increase by 20 percent
over the previous year, the highest increase in 17
E
V E N A S A H I G H LY educated years. Even if Eziaku has the money, there may
adult, Eziaku will likely face one not be enough food to buy.
of her country ’s starkest chal- Nigeria’s former president and one of the
lenges: finding enough to eat. Nigeria spends country’s most famous farmers, Olusegun
$22 billion a year on food imports, yet it’s one of Obasanjo, alluded to this during a 2021 event in
the hungriest countries in the world, with more Lagos. “My heart sinks with the sea of heads that
than 19 million people experiencing critical levels flit across my eyes in parks, marketplaces, and
of food insecurity in 2022. Kenneth and Amara under bridges,” he declared. “How are we going
to feed this exploding population?” back to agriculture during his first stint in power,
Last fall, I traveled to the town of Abeokuta to which lasted until 1979. He launched Operation
see Obasanjo, who’s been obsessed with Nigeria’s Feed the Nation, which encouraged every Nige-
food supply for nearly 50 years. I met him at the rian to farm. “The idea was that even at the back
penthouse of the building that houses both his of your house, just grow vegetables,” he says. “We
private residence and his presidential library. cannot all be farmers, but we can all be produc-
Prior to the discovery of oil in 1956, Nigeria ers.” However, the project lost steam after he
was famous for a long list of cash crops, such as handed over power to a civilian administration
palm oil, cacao, and groundnuts, but the govern- and retired to a private life of full-time farming.
ment’s hyperfocus on crude oil led to the neglect As I chat with him about those ideas, a line of
of other sectors, and a once thriving agricultural guests waits patiently outside the parlor for their
economy petered out. Obasanjo is a recurring turn. Obasanjo, even at 86, remains a very busy
figure in Nigeria’s postcolonial history. He rose man, consulting with aspiring politicians, gov-
to power in 1975, during a decade of successive ernment agencies, and African heads of state,
military governments, and later was elected to but his passion for agriculture gets the better of
two terms as president. He tried to steer Nigeria him. When my 30-minute slot is over, he asks
NIGERIA 65
me to wait for a few hours so that he can show husks to enhance soil, which boosts water reten-
me some of his farms on the outskirts of town. tion among other advantages. “Our population is
He takes me to a greenhouse roughly the size increasing. We need to ensure that our produc-
of a soccer field, where I dip my shoe soles in dis- tivity also keeps increasing.”
infectant and put on a white lab coat. Obasanjo Obasanjo made another policy push to revive
plucks a ripe tomato and takes a bite, then offers agriculture when he returned to office in 1999.
me a fresh one to taste. “A diet of just this and Momentum carried over into subsequent admin-
some vegetables, and your body will shine!” he istrations, and young people rallied to join the
says. During his four decades in professional national effort to reinvent Nigerian agriculture.
farming, his Obasanjo Farms conglomerate has Then came the pandemic, along with wide-
spread across the country, including not just spread violence, and things went awry.
greenhouses but also granaries, aquaculture, During the COVID-19 lockdowns, people
poultry, and processing plants. “This is what began robbing trucks hauling food, says Mezuo
science and technology has done,” he says, Nwuneli, co-founder of Sahel Capital, an agri-
explaining some of the latest advancements culture investment firm. “Hunger spiked,
his farms employ, such as using ground coconut kidnapping spiked … That spike in crime has
and from farms his company invests in. Under
such a specter of fear, he tells me, “you cannot
run a company’s operations.”
As Nigeria’s population grows, the rising
insecurity, especially in the north, is Kenneth’s
greatest concern for his family. It’s also the rea-
son he’s usually away from home, leaving Eziaku
alone with her mother and sister. About a year
after the couple got married, he was transferred
from the southern city of Enugu farther north to
Jos, the scene of several violent incidents over
the past two decades. Kenneth was reluctant to
move his family there with him. The nearest
safe place he could think of was Abuja, more
than 150 miles away. “I’m not saying Abuja is
totally safe, but it is safer than anywhere else
in the north,” Kenneth says. “So I decided that
they should stay here while I stay in Jos, so that
whenever it is time to run from danger, I know
COMBINING that I am running alone instead of carrying my
EDUCATION AND family with me.”
RELIGION
A
MARA SPENDS A LOT of time
In the town of Ifako, whispering prayers over Eziaku, Bible
outside Lagos, students
at Taqwa Private School passages she has memorized. “The
This PDF was uploade To Teligram
get channel_ LBS
a modern Lord
Newspaper platform
educa- will cause His face@LBSNEWSPAPER
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) to shine upon you,” she
tion with a foundation says. “You shall continually lie in green pastures.”
of Islamic principles. In
Nigeria’s predominantly She holds the baby’s tiny hands and feet and talks
Muslim north, where to her. “You will not be like me. You will not strug-
conflict has shuttered gle,” she says, believing in the power of positive
many schools, only
around half the children words to shape a child’s future. Eziaku is Igbo for
receive an education. “good wealth,” and among Amara’s prayers is that
her daughter’s name ends up being prophetic.
“I know we work hard and there is dignity in
labor, but there are still times when favor super-
sedes your hard work,” Amara says. “My prayer
made it harder to farm.” for her is that she will not struggle in this life,
In the past two years, armed gunmen on whether in Nigeria or anywhere. Anywhere she
motorbikes have kidnapped thousands of people finds herself, her hands will not struggle to open
in Nigeria for ransom. The staff of prosperous doors. She will just meet open doors.”
agricultural enterprises have been particularly When Eziaku turns 34, her mother’s age
targeted, forcing many farms to abandon or when she was born, the world’s nine billionth
reduce operations. Many of Nigeria’s largest baby will have long since arrived, and number
farms are in the fertile northern region. 10 billion will be just a few years away. “Will there
In March 2022, in the northwest state of Kebbi, be enough food for everybody by that time? I
several people were killed in an exchange of gun- wonder,” Amara says. “But I believe that Eziaku
fire between security agents and bandits who will be outstanding, no matter the number of
attacked the premises of GB Foods, the country’s persons in the world.” j
second largest tomato-processing plant. Nation-
wide, more than 350 farmers were kidnapped or Born in Enugu, Nigeria, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
is an award-winning journalist based in Abuja and
killed in the 12 months up to June 2022 alone. London. Yagazie Emezi photographed Rwanda’s
Nwuneli says guards must escort workers to women of impact for the November 2019 issue.
NIGERIA 67
CHINA HAS BEEN THE
MOST POPULOUS COUNTRY
FOR CENTURIES. BUT INDIA
WILL SURGE TO THE TOP
THIS YEAR AS CHINA’S
POPULATION BEGINS
A PERILOUS DECLINE.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
A NATION PASSES
THE TIPPING POINT?
BY B R O O K L A R M E R A N D JA N E Z H A N G
P H OTO G R A P H S BY J U S T I N J I N
WHERE
POPULATION IS
SHRINKING
BUNDLES
OF JOY
At a postnatal center
in Hangzhou, care-
givers tend to babies
while their mothers
recuperate. Private
centers like this one
offer new mothers who
can afford it the time
needed to recover,
known as zuo yuezi
in traditional Chinese
medicine. The cost
of raising children in
modern China is a key
factor in the country’s
declining population.
MILLIONS
ON THE MOVE
Chongqing, a sprawl-
ing industrial city in
southwestern China,
grew rapidly for many
decades, spawning a
still vibrant tradition
of eating hot pot in
crowded outdoor ven-
ues. The dense urban
area’s population is
estimated to be more
than 17 million. As the
region developed, sub-
ways were built above-
and belowground to
ease congestion.
IT’S EARLY AUTUMN IN
CENTRAL CHINA, AND
THE STREETS OF DING
QINGZI’S VILLAGE ARE
TURNING INTO GOLD.
Thousands of husked corncobs lie in orderly rect-

angles in front of homes, their kernels drying in
the sun. The harvest is one of the heartbeats of
rural life in Anhui Province, a constant that Ding,
35, has known since childhood. Yet few other
rhythms remain. Except for the corn, the streets
THE ONE
are almost empty. Houses have been abandoned. AND ONLY
The sounds of children have faded. And for years,
Ding struggled to find a wife. Few young women Five-year-old Kong
Niling visits her great-
still live in the village. Fewer still would marry a grandfather Lu Jinfu
welder unable to buy a house or pay a bride-price. and great-grand-
“My family is not rich,” Ding says. mother Zhou Yafen in
Shanghai. The couple
Standing in her yard shucking corn, Ding’s had three children who
aunt bemoans the plight of what she calls “left- each had one child in
over men.” The village has dozens of bachelors in accordance with the
one-child policy, but
their 30s and 40s, she says, lonely men like Ding, Niling is their only
whose hopes for love and family collided with an great-grandchild.
unrelenting force: China’s demographic upheaval.
After decades of a plunging birth rate, the
country has begun an irreversible population
decline that will reverberate throughout China
and around the world for decades to come.
Repercussions can already be felt in places like
Anhui, where Ding’s search for a wife was also cost roughly $29,000. Even meeting a prospect’s
hindered by an acute gender imbalance. Around parents can run $2,500. Over the years, a match-
the time of his birth, 131 boys were born for every maker was able to coax only a handful of women
hundred girls in Anhui—a reflection of a tradi- to go on blind dates with Ding. Humiliated by his
tional bias for sons exacerbated by Beijing’s now failure, Ding began avoiding family gatherings.
discarded one-child policy. Today China has a “They were unbearable,” he says. His relatives
surplus of about 30 million men, more than half fixated on one topic: his lamentable status as a
of marrying age. “bare branch,” the Chinese expression for a man
The brutal mathematics threatened to squeeze who adds no fruit to the family tree.
Ding out of the marriage market. When he pro-
posed to his first girlfriend, her parents balked
A
because he couldn’t afford a new house. Ding’s POPULATION SHORTAGE in a
parents scrounged for loans to buy a car and country of more than 1.4 billion peo-
renovate an apartment in a nearby city—for ple may seem paradoxical. China’s
the sole purpose of attracting a wife. The bride- sense of identity and strength has been tied
price, a dowry paid to the wife’s family, would throughout its history to the staggering size of
CHINA 75
KEEP AN EYE
ON THE BALL
Li Guangyu and Pixie
Lim take their dogs for
a swim at a pet activity
center in Shanghai.
Li has a dog and three
cats. He doesn’t want
the responsibility
of caring for children
but dotes on his pets.
“I am their father,”
Li says. “I’m ready to
sacrifice for them and
give them time.”
its population. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang by the government’s own reckoning, its popu-
ordered a million laborers to build the Great Wall lation shrank last year—the beginning of a long
in the year 221 B.C., the grandiose endeavor befit- fall that demographers predict will persist for
ted a dynasty that made up more than a quarter the rest of the century. The main reason: China’s
of the world’s people. Two millennia later, Chi- birth rate has plummeted to its lowest level since
na’s emergence as a 21st-century superpower the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
has been fueled by its seemingly limitless supply Over the past seven years alone, the number of
of workers, hundreds of millions of whom have births has fallen by almost half, from 18 million
migrated to cities. (China now has 153 urban in 2016 to 9.6 million in 2022. Even if the birth
areas with a population estimated at more than rate stabilizes, experts say, China’s population
a million; the United States has 50.) Four decades will still fall 50 percent or more by 2100, when
of dizzying economic growth has given China it might be only half as big as India’s and com-
the aura of an unstoppable juggernaut powered parable in size to Nigeria’s.
by a population roughly equal in size to seven The last time China’s population fell was
Nigerias, 42 Perus, or 140 Swedens. during the cataclysmic famine of the Great Leap
But China has reached a tipping point. Even Forward, Mao Zedong’s ill-fated industrialization
workforce support an elderly population that is
expected to nearly double over the next quarter
century? And how will Beijing encourage births
after suppressing them for more than three and
a half decades? “This is an unprecedented, his-
torical decline,” says Wang Feng, a sociologist at
the University of California, Irvine. “By the end of
the century, China will be quite unrecognizable
in terms of what we know about China’s history
and position in the world.”
China is not the only nation teetering on the
population precipice. Falling birth rates and ris-
ing life expectancies have become hallmarks of
industrialized urban economies, a combination
that has turned demographic pyramids upside
down from East Asia to Western Europe. China
is roaring down a path being forged by its aging
neighbors, Japan and South Korea. In 2021 South
Korea had the world’s lowest fertility rate, at 0.81
children per woman. China was not far behind at
1.16—barely half the “replacement rate” needed
SHAPING to maintain a stable population.
THE FUTURE
China’s predicament, though, is uniquely
daunting, not just by dint of its size and global
influence but also by an unwelcome distinction:
At the after-school
center she founded It will likely become the first country to grow old
This PDF was uploade To
inTeligram
Shexian channel_ before
LBS Newspaper platform
in Anhui it gets rich. Despite
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) its emergence as the
@LBSNEWSPAPER
Province, Mei Shuyun world’s second largest economy, China’s gross

teaches children to
write Chinese charac- domestic product (GDP) per capita is still less than
ters. Eight-year-old Jin 40 percent of Japan’s and 20 percent of the U.S.’s.
Zixuan’s parents both The breakneck speed of China’s transforma-
have jobs and aren’t
able to watch her tion pushed it toward the tipping point faster
during the workday. than other countries. But the one-child policy
also proved to be an accelerant. Launched in
1980 to stave off a population boom, the program
ended up hastening the arrival of the opposite
result. Beijing dropped the policy in 2016, but
campaign of the early 1960s, when some 30 mil- the birth rate has continued to plummet.
lion people died of starvation. This time, the drop On a planet whose population has doubled in
has been triggered not by famine, war, or catastro- the past 50 years, the burning question for China
phe but by rapid social and economic changes, and more developed nations may seem strange:
the rising costs of getting married and raising How can they avert a demographic collapse? Bei-
children, and the restrictive one-child policy. As jing is scrambling for answers. China’s supreme
if to mark the moment, China’s centuries-long leader, Xi Jinping, has vowed to “improve the
reign as the world’s most populous nation will population development strategy” and “estab-
come to an end this year, with India surging past lish a policy system to boost birth rates.” Dealing
it into the top position. with a demographic implosion will require more
The fallout goes far beyond a symbolic chang- than another bout of social engineering. In China
ing of the guard. China’s shrinking population will it could even force a reckoning on such thorny
likely slow, or even halt, the country’s seemingly issues as gender equality, immigration, eldercare,
inexorable march to global economic preemi- and the limits of high technology. “No country
nence, even as it eases pressure on the planet’s has ever solved this problem,” says Yong Cai, a
environment. How will an already contracting demographer at the University of North Carolina
CHINA 79
A WAY OF LIFE
TRANSFORMS
Tian Siguo, 80, and his
wife, Hu Zhongzi, 77,
tend a plot on the out-
skirts of Chongqing. In
exchange for an apart-
ment in a new high-
rise, millions of farmers
like them have surren-
dered their ancestral
lands. The Chinese
government is rapidly
developing farmland
on the edge of cities.
at Chapel Hill. “This is a new chapter yet to be Among the first in her family to graduate from
written for the human race.” college, Yu rode the crest of China’s economic
boom, landing a lucrative banking job and paying
off her parents’ crippling loans. It was not enough.
S
HASHA YU’S PARENTS, both When Yu reached her late 20s, her mother berated
farmers, cursed her for being a girl. her for bringing shame on the family by not being
“I never should have given birth to married and having children. Ever dutiful, Yu
you,” she says her mother told her. Yu’s only found a suitable boyfriend, a fellow banker with
happy memory from growing up in rural Shan- money and manners. “All I wanted was to prove
dong Province was the time she fell off a horse myself to my parents,” she says.
cart and woke up in the hospital to find her But China’s economic transformation—and
mother gently fanning her. So rare was that Yu’s own—changed her attitude toward mar-
moment of tenderness, she says, “I was reluc- riage and children, as it has for millions of edu-
tant to open my eyes.” cated, upwardly mobile Chinese women (and
Despite her dismal childhood, Yu did every- many men). “I broke the tether of my parents’
thing she could to win her parents’ approval. traditional values,” Yu says.
2013 peak—and the eighth consecutive year of
decline. The change is driven partly by the gen-
der imbalance and soaring marriage costs that
thwarted Ding. But social scientists say it also
reflects China’s fast-rising levels of education,
wealth, and urbanization—along with, as in Yu’s
case, the assertion of women’s rights and auton-
omy. The COVID-19 pandemic and recurring lock-
downs pushed the numbers down even further.
In late 2021 China’s Communist Youth League
conducted a survey of 18- to 26-year-olds and
found that 44 percent of women and 25 percent
of men were unsure if they would marry. The
percentages were highest for young women who,
like Yu, live in China’s most modern cities. So
disconcerting were the numbers to China’s lead-
ers that the youth league has taken on the role
of Cupid, staging ice-breakers and “love train”
journeys to help single comrades find a spouse.
PRACTICE Yu almost got married twice. But now, at 35,
MAKES she hangs out mostly with other professional

women like herself: strong, independent, single.
PERFECT It took Yu years of self-exploration to get over
the shame of not being married and to gain, she
Former concert violin- says, “a broader vision of the possibilities in life.”
ist Song Xinxia teaches
children in Shanghai. Her parents, however, still haven’t accepted that
This PDF was uploade To Teligram channel_
Well-off Chinese LBS par- neither
Newspaper platform Yu nor her older
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) sister is married. Back
@LBSNEWSPAPER
ents with only one child in Shandong, neighbors shamed the couple so
often pay for extra-
curricular activities to much that they, too, felt compelled to move out
ensure future success of their home village.
for their son or daugh-
ter, adding to the
expense of raising a
T
child in today’s China. O UNDERSTAND the sheer speed
of China’s population reversal, it
helps to turn the clock back to the
1970s, when much of the world was gripped
by a Malthusian panic over the looming pop-
Moving to Shanghai, she joined one of the fast- ulation explosion. The sense of peril was espe-
est urbanizations in human history. (Sixty-five cially strong in China, where Mao for years had
percent of Chinese now live in cities, up from exhorted his people to produce more babies
20 percent in 1980.) She split up with her boy- to make the motherland strong. China’s new
friend, rented and renovated an apartment, and leaders, under Deng Xiaoping, feared the fast-
began living on her own. The idea of marriage expanding population would destroy the tendrils
and children no longer seemed inevitable but of economic growth and lead to another famine.
rather a potential barrier to freedom and success. “China was so poor in the 1970s that the leaders
“I look at my parents’ and friends’ marriages,” Yu worried, ‘How are we going to feed the masses?
says dryly, “and I see nothing to envy.” How are we going to make the economy grow
Shasha Yu and Ding Qingzi are on oppo- 7 percent per year?’ ” UNC’s Cai says. “The fastest
site ends of China’s socioeconomic spectrum. way was to limit the number of mouths to feed.”
Together, though, they help reveal why China’s That logic led to the social engineering exper-
marriage and birth rates have tumbled to their iment that for 36 years would impinge on the
lowest levels in decades. In 2021 China registered most intimate decisions of Chinese families.
7.6 million marriages, a 43 percent drop from its China’s leaders have claimed (without clear
CHINA 83
MAKING
STRIDES
Wan Liping (center),
a retired doctor, prac-
tices with other older
women in Nanjing for
a show billed as Beau-
tiful Mother Fashion
Week. The women say
they had little oppor-
tunity to express
themselves or cele-
brate their beauty
growing up in a more
tradition-bound China.
NO STRINGS
ATTACHED
In a vivid display of
how gender roles are
shifting in urban areas,
women at a Shanghai
karaoke bar enjoy the
company of Liu Yujia,
a male escort hired for
their night out. Young
professional women in
China are increasingly
choosing their careers
and social lives over
settling down to marry
and have children.
evidence) that the one-child policy prevented uptick, the number of births continued to nose-
more than 400 million births, sparing the planet dive. Pandemic lockdowns and the economic
an enormous environmental burden and spark- slowdown only accelerated the fall—as Cai says,
ing the sustained economic boom that would “adding snow to frost.”
lift more than 750 million Chinese out of pov- In 2021, just weeks after new census figures
erty, according to the World Bank. The policy’s revealed another steep drop in the birth rate,
legion of critics, meanwhile, point to evidence Beijing unveiled a new approach. “The Three-
Child Policy Is Here!” trumpeted a state-
DEMOGRAPHERS RAISE
media headline. “Would You Like to
Give Birth?” An online poll conducted
by the state-run Xinhua news service
ANOTHER QUESTION:
did not bode well. Of the first 30,500
respondents, 28,000 reportedly said
they would “never consider” having
WAS THE ONE-CHILD POLICY three children. The poll quickly dis-
appeared from the website, but the
EVEN NECESSARY?
skepticism that greeted the patriotic
campaign could no longer be hidden.
“If people can’t afford one or two chil-
dren,” asks demographer Xiujian Peng
of Australia’s Victoria University, “how
that its intrusive restrictions resulted in millions could they afford to have three?”
of forced sterilizations, sex-selective abortions,
and infanticides—and created an unbalanced
S
population with too many men, too many older CARLETT CAI and her husband
adults, and too few young people. might seem like ideal candidates for
Demographers
This PDF raise another
was uploade question:
To Teligram channel_ LBS Was the next baby@LBSNEWSPAPER
Newspaper platform (https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) boom. In their sleek
the one-child policy even necessary? China’s Shanghai apartment, the affluent young couple
fertility rate had already been falling sharply, already dote on three dependents—of the feline
from almost six children per woman in 1970 to variety—as they dance around the question of
less than three in 1980, the year the policy was children. Over the years Cai’s mother has warned
implemented. “Nearly 75 percent of China’s fer- her about dual-income, no-kids couples (DINKs,
tility decline came before the one-child policy in the parlance) who tried to have children too
went into effect,” says Wang, of UC Irvine. late. The last time her mother nagged her, Cai,
China, moreover, was primed for an economic who is now 36, erupted: “I’m not living my life
explosion once it opened to the world. Powered only to give birth to a child!”
by an enormous young workforce—a dividend Still, the couple have weighed the pros and
of the Mao-era baby boom—the country raced cons. Spiraling costs are one obstacle in a com-
to become, in a single generation, the world’s petitive environment where parents feel pres-
factory. Even without the one-child policy, sure to spend lavishly on their children. An
Wang says, the economic boom and population estimate from 2019 put the average price tag for
decline would have come—albeit more slowly, raising a child at $76,000, seven times China’s
more manageably, and without the gender ineq- GDP per capita. In Shanghai the cost was twice
uities that deepen the crisis today. China’s lead- that. The expense doesn’t trouble Cai as much
ers, however, stuck with the program until long as the investment of time and energy—and the
after warning signals started flashing. “China invasion of privacy. “I can’t adapt to a living
reached below-replacement fertility rates in the space with an extra person,” she says.
early 1990s,” Wang explains, “so this has been For a long time, Cai saw the decision not to
getting worse for decades.” have children as a sort of feminist rebellion.
When Beijing finally jettisoned the one-child Growing up, she saw many women marry young,
policy in 2016, there was an expectation that quit their jobs, and lose their identities in chil-
pent-up desires for larger families would spark dren and chores. “Since I was a girl, I’ve seen
a new baby boom. No such luck. After a slight too many invisible women,” she says. “I always
wondered, Why does it have to be this way?” She The ranks of the elderly, meanwhile, are
read Simone de Beauvoir, studied philosophy, expected to grow by more than 200 million, from
and found in her husband a kindred spirit. “Over 13 percent of the population today to nearly a
the years, my husband and I reached a consen- third by 2050. It’s not just the bubble of baby
sus,” she says. “Human beings don’t have an boomers hitting retirement age. China’s older
absolute need to reproduce.” adults, as the Shanghai parkgoers show, are stay-
But last autumn, Cai felt, unbidden, a vague ing healthier and living longer. Life expectancy
longing for a child. Moved by the especially hard in China has risen from 55 in 1970 to about 78
toll the long zero-COVID lockdowns took on today—even higher than in the U.S. It’s a sign
the elderly, she found comfort in the thought of great progress but creates a conundrum: How
of growing older with a son or daughter, “some- can China support a “super aging” society?
one close to us.” That feeling disappeared in China’s once sprawling families have tele-
December, though, when the government’s scoped into “4-2-1” structures: four grandparents
sudden lifting of the lockdown policy led to and two parents with a single child. Though well
the lightning-fast spread of COVID and chaos suited for raising a child and building wealth,
at hospitals. “If we try to have a baby now, the this arrangement becomes a top-heavy burden
risk would be too big, the pressure too great,” she as family members grow old—a microcosm of
says. “For the good of the child, it’s better not to the country’s broader challenge. China’s esti-
bring him or her into the world.” mated 150 million only children, raised by six
caregivers, will suddenly be responsible for
supporting some or all of them. This dynamic
T
HE PENSIONERS gather every is dragging down the economy, as a smaller
morning under sycamore trees in workforce struggles to prop up the pension and
a Shanghai park. A circle of gray- health-care systems required by the expanding
haired women often dances in unison to a older population.
tinny song emanating from a portable speaker. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Another group
This PDFmoves silently
was uploade through
To Teligram theNewspaper
channel_ LBS estimates
flow- platform that the social
(https://t.me/LBSNEWSPAPER) pension for urban
@LBSNEWSPAPER
ing motions of tai chi. A man with a large cal- employees could run out by 2035. Even if policies
ligraphy brush sometimes writes poems on the change, the academy warns, the demographic
paving stones with water, his masterful strokes deficit is “bound to bring very unfavorable
visible only briefly before they disappear. socioeconomic consequences.” What has long
One recent day a 69-year-old retiree sat on a seemed inevitable—China surpassing the U.S.
park bench, watching her fellow seniors finish as the world’s largest economy—is receding into
their exercises. The woman, who said her sur- the future. It may never happen at all.
name was Dong but declined to provide her given
name, had toiled for decades in a plastic manu-
W
facturing plant, one of the workers who powered HAT CAN CHINA DO? Given
the early years of China’s industrial expansion. the demographic forces already
She now spends most of her time caring for her in motion, there will be no way to
granddaughter, bringing her to and from school avoid a sharp population drop. That is not all bad
and cooking her dinner every day. “If I don’t help for the planet: It could help in the fight against
my daughter look after the kid,” Dong says, “she climate change and ease pressure on China’s
won’t be able to work.” As a token of gratitude, environment and overcrowded cities. Even so,
her daughter pays her $300 a month. Beijing is desperate to mitigate the economic
Dong represents the convergence of two of impacts that could prevent China from achiev-
China’s most disturbing trend lines: the shrinking Xi’s goal of “common prosperity.”
ing labor pool and the exploding elderly popu- The simplest remedy—one that helps the
lation. Because of the declining birth rate, there United States avoid its own demographic peril—
are fewer and fewer young workers to replace is immigration. China, however, has one of the
people like Dong, who retired at 50. China’s lowest immigration rates in the world. It has
workforce started contracting nearly a decade fewer than a million foreign-born people—just
ago, and demographers predict it will lose nearly 0.06 percent of its population—and offers no
150 million workers by 2040. viable path to citizenship. (The U.S., by contrast,
CHINA 89
has 45 million foreign-born residents, around was barely half of what it is today—are among
14 percent of the population.) The barriers to the youngest in the world: 50 for women, except
immigration in China’s largely homogeneous those working in offices, who retire at 55, and 60
society are so high that there is only one place for men. Moving that threshold to 65 for both men
where non-Chinese immigration occurs: in the and women would help, immediately shifting
countryside, where thousands of women from the balance of workers and retirees. “Raising the
Vietnam, Myanmar, and North Korea have been retirement age is an effective policy in the short to
brought in, many illicitly, to become the brides medium term,” says Peng, the Victoria University
of rural bachelors. demographer. One problem: It’s deeply unpopu-
Ruling out immigration, Beijing is pursuing lar. When Beijing floated the idea in 2008, it fiz-
three options that could be called, in Commu- zled because of public resistance. China’s leaders
nist Party fashion, the Three Raises: raising the now see no choice but to try again.
retirement age, raising productivity, and raising Raising productivity may prove even trickier.
the birth rate. To counteract a dwindling workforce, Beijing
China’s mandatory retirement ages—set more is banking not only on its decades of invest-
than seven decades ago when life expectancy ment in education to produce higher quality
provinces, cash bonuses. So far, none of it seems
to have worked. The birth rate fell further last
year as the pandemic and economic downturn
made planning for the future more fraught. Con-
ditioned by the one-child policy—and confronted
by ever rising costs—families seem unwilling to
have more than one child, if they want any at all.
“The financial pressure is too big,” says Dong, the
retiree taking care of her granddaughter. “To raise
one child well is enough.”
D
ING QINGZI had all but given up
on marriage when he received a call
in late 2021 from his matchmaker.
She had found a woman in Anhui Province who
was willing to meet him. There was only one—
well, two—hitches: The woman was divorced,
THREE’S and she had a six-year-old daughter. Ding was
A CROWD
wary. A few years earlier, a divorced woman had
feigned romantic interest only to scam him out
of thousands of dollars. Still, after struggling on
The rising cost of
child-rearing has led the marriage market for so many years, what
newlyweds Shi Lin and choice did he have?
Guo Huanhuan, who When they met, Ding—normally shy and
live in Chongqing, to
plan on having just one taciturn—found himself conversing easily. His
child,
This PDF was uploade To orchannel_
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none. platform
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he says, and she seemed
Raising children, Guo honest. It didn’t take him long to ask her to “set-
thinks, is too demand-
ing. “I want to give tle down.” “I made up my mind that this was
my child the best,” going to be my last blind date,” he says. “If it
she says, “but I also didn’t work out this time, I’d drop the marriage
want to have my own
life and not be tied issue.” The woman felt rushed, but her family
to childcare.” figured it would be hard for a divorced mother
to find a reliable man. And besides, Ding’s family
had gone into debt to pay the full bride-price.
When the couple got married last year, Ding
says he couldn’t stop thinking, I finally have this
workers—but also on high technology. China big life thing figured out! The introvert made a
is the fastest growing market for industrial long speech at the reception, and his parents,
robots and one of the world’s leaders in artifi- he says, “cried their eyes out.” Since then, Ding’s
cial intelligence. The government predicts that life has been transformed. He has gained weight,
robots could eventually perform the tasks of 240 and he has started attending family gatherings
million workers. But high tech is no panacea. again, now accompanied by his wife and step-
“Robots and automation will mitigate the nega- daughter. And he is proud he will no longer be a
tive effect of a declining population,” Peng says. bare branch subject to gossip and ridicule: Ding
“But they can’t replace workers in all areas.” and his wife are preparing to have a child of their
The hardest task will be to raise the birth rate. own—a tiny heartbeat of hope in a land of miss-
Making China “a fertility-friendly society,” as the ing children. j
state-run Global Times puts it, would be a long-
term solution. Local governments have been Brook Larmer has reported on China for two
pushing new incentives for the three-child pol- decades and lived there for 12 years. Freelance
writer Jane Zhang is based in Shanghai. Justin Jin
icy: tax cuts, housing subsidies, longer maternity was born in Hong Kong and has been document-
leave, expanded childcare services, even, in some ing the rapid changes in China for 25 years.
CHINA 91
A snowbank lingers is upending nature’s

into July in Colorado’s timing, bringing early
West Maroon Basin, melt to the snows
home to rolling fields that propel summer
of larkspur, columbine, wildflower seasons
paintbrush, and fire- and rearranging life in
weed. Climate change unpredictable ways.
BY CRAIG WELCH
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELLIOT ROSS
W H AT B I R D S A N D B E E S A R E T E L L I N G
S C I E N T I S T S A B O U T N AT U R E ’ S S H I F T I N G C L O C K—
A N D W H AT T H AT M E A N S F O R U S
OUT
OF
93
Scientist David Inouye,

at far right, in beige
shirt, has spent 50 sum-
mers tracking flowers,
hummingbirds, and
insects in high-alpine
meadows at the Rocky
Mountain Biological
Laboratory in Gothic,
Colorado, just outside
Crested Butte. Here,
Inouye and his scien-
tist son, Brian Inouye,
stretch a measuring
tape across a research
plot while other scien-
tists catalog a field of
aspen sunflowers.
Everything in nature
responds to timing
cues—from seasonal
shifts in the vegetatio
that pikas drag into
their dens, to summe
flowers, to the snows
of Mount Bellview an
the turning of aspen
leaves in autumn.
Even the first emer-
gence of green shoots
from the monument
on plant, whose flowering
is linked to precipita-
er tion that fell four
s years earlier, lives by
nd the clock. Climate
change is contorting
these rhythms.
ANCHOR
THE MARMOT WAS
SURPRISINGLY
CALM, CONSIDERING
A STRANGER
HAD JUST SWABBED
HIS CHEEK.
IT WAS A COOL,
CRISP EVENING
IN WEST-CENTRAL
COLORADO, The Elk Mountains, carved by glaciers, so ove
AND THE
in summer that this region is known as Colorado
Flowers bloom four weeks earlier than they
11-MONTH-OLD MALE Now a coup
YELLOW-BELLIED measure ho
Since 196
MARMOT
meadow h
lives. But l
their attent
HAD WANDERED
is shifting n
ing marmo
Each spr
INTO A
The National slumber. Th
Geographic Society, mers chowi
committed to illuminating
“It’s get fat
METAL CAGE TRAP.

and protecting the
wonder of our world, has didate at U
funded Explorer Elliot dark Kevlar
Ross’s photography work
around climate since 2019. ger with his
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MC KENDRY of foam th
erflow with flowers

o’s wildflower capital.
did 30 years ago.
ple of scientists sampled his DNA to samples, Philson’s colleague, UCLA master’s stu- Timing is everything in nature. From the
ow fast this fur ball was growing. dent Mackenzie Scurka, used calipers to measure opening notes of a songbird’s spring chorus to
62, scientists in this high mountain one tiny paw. Then Philson thanked his subject the seasonal percussion of snapping shrimp,
ave been mapping marmots’ social for not dousing us in feces. “It’s much nicer when every important ecological process lives and
lately researchers have also turned they poop in the trap and not on us,” he said. dies by a clock. Flowering. Egg laying. Breeding.
tion to tracking how a warming planet Marmots’ behavior is changing. Because of cli- Migration. It’s as true on the Mongolian steppe as
nature’s schedule and, perhaps, affect- mate change, they now emerge from winter about it is in the Arabian Sea or a Costa Rican rainfor-
ot health. a month earlier, which forces them to scrounge est. Centuries of evolution honed these patterns.
ring marmots rise from their winter for food sooner. Yet most marmots, as researchers Now climate change is recalibrating them.
hey mate, give birth, and spend sum- also would learn with Anchor, actually still wind And that is reshaping life for almost everything.
ing down before they hibernate again. up big and healthy. Early emergence gives them In every ocean and across every continent, sea-
or die,” Conner Philson, a Ph.D. can- extra time to eat, which lets them get fatter and sons are in flux. Earlier warmth, delayed cold, and
UCLA, told me as he held Anchor in a helps them produce more offspring. shifts in the frequency and fierceness of precipita-
r bag so the animal couldn’t slice a fin- Nature’s shifting calendar for marmots thus tion are toying with established rhythms in both
s huge incisors. After she ran a square far seems to have been an asset. But that’s almost predictable and unexpected ways.
rough the marmot’s mouth for cell certainly the exception, not the norm. So researchers the world over are straining to
SEASONS OUT OF SYNC 101

A team led by
ecologist Rebecca
Irwin (at left, with
Jade McLaughlin)
tracks the flight times
and shifting demo-
graphics of pollinators
in a meadow. Many
types of bees are
netted, nudged into
plastic vials, identi-
fied, and then marked
with color to help
prevent recapture.
David Inouye has

caught and banded
thousands of hum-
mingbirds to track
migrations and behav-
ior. He learned that the
arrival of broad-tailed
hummingbirds from
Mexico once coincided
with blooms of glacier
lilies, whose nectar
they require. Today
lilies often begin to
bloom before the hum-
mingbirds show up.
document the timing of life cycle events, a scien- than Inouye. “Study any species in isolation, and
tific discipline known as phenology. That timing you may know if they’re changing,” he told me
is being upended by our fossil fuel emissions. one June morning as we stood in a meadow in
Changes are discovered almost everywhere thin air near 10,000 feet. But to understand why
scientists look. The timing of leaf appearance that change is happening—and what it means—
and leaf dropping has already shifted dramati- scientists must cast a wider net. “No species lives
cally across more than half the planet. Hump- in isolation.”
back whales in the Gulf of Maine are gathering 19 Inouye and I strolled through cool green fields
days later than they once did, while jack mack- of wild parsnip and false skunk cabbage as we
erel, hake, and rockfish are spawning earlier in toured the nearly century-old Rocky Mountain
the North Pacific. In North Dakota’s Red River Biological Laboratory, one of the most impor-
Valley, scientists found 65 of 83 bird species tant phenology research sites in the world.
arriving earlier, some by as much as 31 days. It’s no ordinary field station: Science labs and
South Carolina’s dwarf salamanders are arriving housing are tucked into aging buildings—all that
at breeding grounds 76 days later. remains of board-and-batten Gothic, an aban-
What’s harder to grasp is the severity of the doned 19th- century mining town eight miles
consequences—for plants, animals, and us. If north of Crested Butte. Around us, humming-
everything shifted in the same direction and birds wing-whistled among the lupines, aspen
by roughly the same amount, our new calen- sunflowers, and dwarf larkspurs.
dar might prove insignificant. As with daylight “Try this,” he said, handing me the green
saving time, we’d muddle through together. But leaf from a glacier lily. He popped a strand into
that’s not how nature works. “Species are not his mouth, and I did the same, tasting earthy
FROM A SONGBIRD’S SPRING CHORUS TO A

SNAPPING SHRIMP’S SEASONAL PERCUSSION, EVERY IMPORTANT
ECOLOGICAL PROCESS LIVES AND DIES BY A CLOCK.

responding identically,” said David Inouye, a sweetness, like spinach. Inouye warned me
University of Maryland professor emeritus and with a sly smile to avoid the corn lilies, which
leading phenology researcher. contain toxic alkaloids that can make ewes birth
Too many patterns are shifting at the same lambs with a single centered eye, like a Cyclops.
time, each influenced by countless others, which (I looked it up; he’s right.) Nearby, graduate stu-
are themselves also in motion. It’s everything, dents counted bumblebees by netting and load-
everywhere, all at once. Even beings that don’t ing them into plastic vials. To avoid tallying any
appear to be changing are seeing their world bee twice, they dotted each fuzzy thorax with a
change around them. Snowshoe hares, Siberian marker, then set the insect free.
hamsters, collared lemmings, and long-tailed Inouye has tracked biological cycles here for 50
weasels all turn white in winter as a form of pro- years. He speaks in the tranquil, measured tones
tective camouflage in snow. Now they’re often of someone who has spent a lifetime counting
out of sync with their surroundings. Many are flowers. Thin, tall, with a bearded angular face
increasingly seen with halogen-bright white reminiscent of Abe Lincoln’s, Inouye, 73, can
bodies crouched in green forests or brown brush name on sight 150 or so of the valley’s wildflower
or on yellow tundra. That’s because snow is species. He can identify which bird, wasp, bee,
arriving later and melting earlier, but their color or fly spreads their nectar. He knows this place
transition is triggered by seasonal shifts in day- better than I know my living room.
light, which, of course, isn’t changing at all. Inouye arrived in the early 1970s to take field
So what happens then, when we revamp courses, returning in 1972 to study humming-
nature’s schedule in every wild system on Earth birds. Then he discovered “hummingbirds get
at once, altering timing for some things but not up very early,” he said. In 1973, he and other
others? Few understand the implications better young scientists decided instead to track which

In her lab in Gothic,
Irwin hovers over
boxes of bees her
team has collected
and pinned. Irwin
has helped identify
about 200 species
of native bees, each
an important polli-
nator with a specific
biological clock and
seasonal pattern.
CHANGE
Across much of the United States rising average temperatures
are pushing spring to speed up its arrival. Plants and pollinators
found at high elevations in the western U.S. are especially
affected. To better understand how species are interacting
OF PACE and responding to these changes, scientists are tracking

the timing of biological events—a field known as phenology.
Change in date of leaf emergence

1981-2010, 1991-2020
14 days no 4 days
R
earlier change later

O
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Seasonal shifting
Earlier snowmelt in high-altitude
meadows has caused many
Approximate snowmelt species to adjust to earlier springs.
2016-2021 1975-1980 For 50 years researchers at the
23 days earlier Rocky Mountain Biological
Laboratory have collected data
May 4 May 27 showing that plants such as the
First bloom, western spring beauty* glacier lily are flowering sooner,
and some of their pollinators,
including hummingbirds migrat-
Broad-tailed hummingbird
ing from Mexico, have sped up
12 days earlier their arrival schedules.
Glacier lily
May 5 May 17
17 days earlier
First arrival
May 21 June 7
First bloom
May 4 31 June 1 15
*THE WESTERN SPRING BEAUTY IS USED BY RESEARCHERS AS A PROXY FOR SNOWMELT.

108
Casper
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The southern Rocky Moun-
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tains host an array of plants WYOM ING
Mo
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and animals that are adapted
ie
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Shorter winters
tai
elevations. These pockets Most snow-monitoring
stations in the region
of biodiversity are acutely
ns
have recorded earlier
Me
susceptible to climate change: peak snowpack (indi-
cating earlier melting)
dici
High elevations warm faster Laramie than in the 1980s.
n e B o te
than surrounding regions, N Cheyenne Snow telemetry stations
.P
and alpine species have More than 14 days earlier
e
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ra
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KATIE ARMSTRONG, LUCAS PETRIN, AND RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF. KELSEY NOWAKOWSKI. SOURCES: BRIAN D. INOUYE, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY;
BILLY BARR; ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY; USA NATIONAL PHENOLOGY NETWORK; EPA; GLENN E. GRIFFITH, USGS; USDA
Stands of aspen, like those along Ruby Anthracite Trail,

are so common across Colorado’s Rocky Mountains that leaf-change
observations can offer scientists insights on climate change.
plants were available for each pollinator. Inouye of the longest continuous detailed accounts of
would start with flowers and bumblebees. Bum- subalpine change on Earth—data so influential
blebees, he’d learned, keep reasonable hours. that it has become a sort of foundational text.
Every other day all summer, he walked with Few can top their firsthand observations of
pencil and paper, noting bloom times and the ways planet warming is contorting nature’s
chronicling floral visitors. Colleagues eventu- timing. In 2000, before anything like it had been
ally drifted away, but each summer, Inouye and done in North America, the group, which by then
his wife, Bonnie, returned. They adored Colo- included his ecologist son, Brian, showed migrat-
rado’s beauty and how different each summer ing American robins were arriving 14 days ear-
felt. “There was always a sense of anticipation, lier. In 2008, Inouye found that climate-driven
wanting to know what the new season would changes to the growing season have paradoxi-
bring,” he said. He came back, decade after cally increased frost events, killing more sun-
decade, raising two sons along the way. flowers and lavender-hued daisies. (Rather
Initially, climate change played no part in his than staying continuously cold until June, the
thinking. Over time, without intending to, Inouye ground now warms and refreezes and repeats
and his colleagues in Gothic would compile one that pattern several times before summer.) By
2013, having documented by hand two million blooms often started 17 days earlier, while hum-
flowers over 39 years, Inouye and others showed mingbirds generally arrived 12 days earlier. “At
blooming can start roughly four weeks earlier, some point, if trends continue, the flowers may
even as flowering across the landscape, from first be done by the time the birds arrive,” Inouye said.
bud to last, can take 36 days longer. The discoveries in Colorado come amid bud-
This intimate view of one small place gave ding global interest in timing as researchers start
them insight into the sometimes surprising ways cataloging profound costs. For example, from
climate change strains interactions between spe- 2015 to 2016, up to a million common murres,
cies. By killing daisies, those climate-driven frosts large seabirds sometimes dubbed flying pen-
reduce nectar needed by Mormon fritillary but- guins, starved to death along the United States’
terflies, driving down the tawny winged creatures’ West Coast, their emaciated carcasses washing
populations. In the 1970s, first blooms of that up on beaches. A severe ocean heat wave made
drooping, yellow glacier lily once coincided with more likely by climate change had altered tim-
the arrival from Central America of broad-tailed ing cycles for their food. Musk oxen in Alaska
hummingbirds, which depend on the lily’s nectar. are increasingly born smaller as melting snow
By the time I showed up in Gothic, however, those refreezes, coating in ice the vegetation pregnant

Billy barr, who spells geek, he began mea-

his name without cap- suring his environment,
ital letters, has lived in including snow depth
Gothic since the early and temperature. While
1970s—much of that his cabin is now solar
time without electricity powered and his gear
or running water and more sophisticated,
sometimes as the only barr still regularly
winter resident. A data documents nature.
cows need. (Previously, winters stayed so cold they do. The following day, Mary Caswell Stod-
and dry they could paw through snow to eat dard, a Princeton University associate professor,
greenery below it.) With sea ice melting earlier, led me through meadows above Colorado’s East
polar bears spend more time on land. Grizzly River. A few years earlier, she’d found that broad-
bears already are venturing farther north. The tailed hummingbirds see a far wider color array
two species have occasionally mated in the past, than humans, which probably influences which
but hybrid “pizzly” bears, while still rare, are now blossoms they visit. She showed me where she
expected to become more common. set up camera traps to see how climate change’s
reorganization of flowering may alter humming-
Globally, markets
T H E R E A R E R I S K S F O R U S TO O. birds’ “sensory perception”—and behavior.
for insect-pollinated crops, such as cacao, water- Of course, one Inouye collaborator stands out:
melon, cumin, and coriander, are worth up to billy barr. A Colorado legend, barr (who does not
$577 billion annually. Changes to nature’s clock capitalize his name) has been profiled on televi-
also may influence agriculture in dozens of hid- sion, in newspapers, books, and films. He visited
den ways, not all of which can be addressed by Gothic as a Rutgers University student and came
shifting planting or harvest seasons. Farms may back for good in 1973—and holed up in a mining
be exposed to more frosts or previously unseen shack without electricity or running water. In the
crop-killing pathogens. summer there were scientists, including Inouye,
There is much we don’t yet know: Can tim- but through spring and fall and the bitter, blus-
ing changes alone drive significant extinctions? tery winter, he lived in the Elk Mountains alone.
What is nature’s capacity for adaptation? And So barr measured things—temperature and
why is it so hard to see what’s coming next? snowfall and snow depth. He tracked moisture
WE’RE ALL PART OF A GIANT EXPERIMENT.

THE POTENTIAL FOR NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES IS MAGNIFIED.
BUT THE WORLD MAY ALSO SURPRISE US.
Teasing apart so many disparate changes takes content and noted in spring when snow melted.
an incredible amount of work. Documenting (He used a yardstick and a scale.) He heard each
what influences the schedule of each organism year’s first birdsong and recorded his first mar-
in a single ecosystem requires countless stud- mot spotting. He jotted it all in notebooks. “I was
ies of a wide variety of nearby life. Through the just there, and I just wrote down what I saw,” he
years, Inouye has joined up or shared insights told me. “I mean, I had all day long.”
with hundreds of scientists. During my week in Less modern-day Thoreau than restless data
the valley, I witnessed a delightful cross section geek, barr enjoyed comparing year-to-year
of their research, which merely highlighted the observations. And while barr and Inouye knew
difficulty of predicting the future. one another, it wasn’t until the late 1980s that
Below the granite of Gothic Mountain, the two chatted in depth about barr’s records.
Rebecca Irwin, a North Carolina State Univer- Inouye, intrigued, asked to take a look.
sity ecologist, pointed out a parasitic cuckoo bee. The notebooks astounded Inouye. They could
When spring comes early, it seems, bumblebee show, in detail, reductions in snow seasons. It was
queens grow weaker, and cuckoo bees have more barr who first noticed robins arriving early, barr
luck stinging them to death and usurping their who provided data that helped others link mar-
worker bees. “In these early snowmelt years, mot emergence with early spring. As far back as
the queens are just more stressed,” Irwin told 1991—just three years after NASA scientist James
me. “They need more food. They have to forage Hansen told Congress that greenhouse gases are
more often.” But after 13 years working with bees warming the planet—Inouye and a colleague
in Gothic, she sees no clear long-term survival used barr’s notebooks to show how reduced
trend among the region’s 200 bee species. snows could change flowering in the mountains,
We’re also still learning why animals do what potentially harming bees and hummingbirds.
Five decades of data,

painstakingly kept
by barr in a series of
handwritten journals,
are now critical to
our understanding of
climate-driven changes
in Colorado’s snowfall
and temperature. They
affect everything from
wildflower seasons to
the first appearance of
American robins and
yellow-bellied marmots.
First light hits Gothic Mountain in early February, when much of

life hibernates. What happens next as nature’s schedule continues
to shift in every wild system? We’re about to find out.
“I started working on his data, plotting his of hand-collected details documenting 10,812
first-sighting data against his snowmelt data timing events for 30 plants, 13 types of insects, 16
and snowpack data,” Inouye said. The rela- bird species, two mammals, and one amphibian.
tionship was clear. Snowmelt was a key trigger The results were idiosyncratic, contradictory—
in alpine systems, kicking off an avalanche of and unexpected. While most birds arrive earlier
timing changes. And it was a link discovered as snow melts earlier, red-winged blackbirds
by happenstance—because a bored barr was a and Steller’s jays show up later. (Many migratory
stickler for details and happened to live where species’ journeys are triggered by environmental
Inouye was working. cues thousands of miles away.) A wet summer
a year before can help delay spring activity for
may reshape
I N O U Y E ’ S N E W E S T C O L L A B O R AT I O N some burying beetles while advancing it for some
the field of phenology even more. Along with son butterflies; a warm summer the year before may
Brian and daughter-in-law Nora Underwood, help postpone flowering for tall bluebells. Warm
both biologists at Florida State University, and fall temperatures slow spring egg laying for tiger
one of their students, the team synthesized salamanders, but their spring activity may also be
decades of data from Gothic. They took 45 years influenced by rain and snow the fall before that.
It’s a riotous, mixed-up world, with species can diminish the cocoon effect that insulates
colliding in new ways. Far more forces influence their burrows. Some have actually frozen to
the timing of events than even Inouye had imag- death while hibernating.
ined. Too many factors are at play. How timing mismatches may reorganize sys-
We’re all now part of a giant experiment, with tems remains unclear, even in Gothic, where
everything that is familiar in motion. The poten- scientists have now tracked nearly six million
tial for negative consequences is magnified. But flowers. In most ecosystems on Earth, we’ve only
the world may also surprise us. just begun to look closely enough to notice.
As long as birds have insects and nectar to “We’ve forgotten what we used to do, which is
eat, maybe they won’t care if the smorgasbord watch—just observe things,” Nora Underwood told
changes. Some pollinators may simply switch me. “I hear it at meetings: Everybody now wishes
to different plants, while others may not. Then they started counting things 50 years ago.” j
again, insects too are in stark decline, even in
Gothic. And although marmots are mostly win- Senior writer Craig Welch wrote about the future
of forests in the May 2022 magazine. Elliot Ross
ning, staying fat with plenty of food during lon- took photographs for a story about the value of
ger, warmer summers, ever lighter winter snows shade in a warming world for the June 2021 issue.

IN AWE
OF ANTS
EXTREME CLOSE-UPS REVEAL
THE UNCOMMON TRAITS
OF ONE OF OUR PLANET’S
MOST COMMON INSECTS.
BY HICKS WOGAN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
EDUARD FLORIN NIGA
119
Cornfield ants (Lasius
alienus) maintain a mutu-
alistic relationship with
aphids. The ants tend
to the smaller insects,
guarding against pred-
ators, and in return are
allowed to sip honeydew
off the aphids’ bodies.
PREVIOUS PHOTO
A portrait of a male
Dorylus mayri ant from
West Africa
can be infectious. Walking to a park in their Lon-

A TO D D L E R’ S C U R I O S I T Y
don neighborhood a few years ago, Eduard Florin Niga and his young
daughter met an ant on the pavement. The girl stopped to examine it.
“Where are the ant’s eyes, Dad?” she asked. Her father, a teacher—and a
former police officer in his native Romania, where he documented crime
scenes—knew photography would provide the answer.
Ants are one of Earth’s most abundant and successful animals. Fos-
sils indicate they arose between 168 million and 140 million years ago.
Today more than 15,000 species may exist. Some 12,000 of them have
been described, and dozens have portraits in Niga’s debut book, Ants:
Workers of the World.
Niga’s mode of macrophotography is painstaking, whether he’s magnify-
ing a thing to 10 times its size or a thousand. He works alone at night in the
back of his house, where vibrations from passing vehicles won’t disturb his
setup. The room’s only illumination is the light he trains on his subjects.
Collaborators send Niga specimens of ants and other insects, or he
orders them online. Some arrive alive; they’re returned to the sender
after the photo shoot or live out their days in colonies Niga keeps. Other
specimens arrive preserved, often in ethanol. To ready a dead specimen The ants go marching:
for its close-up, Niga carefully rehydrates it, cleans it, pries open its jaws, Above, some black
garden ants (Lasius
and pins it in a lifelike position. (“It’s a little world,” he says, “so every niger) proceed in a line
little thing matters.”) He then takes hundreds of magnified images of the as others pause to sip
insect’s parts. To make the final portrait, Niga combines 150 to 500 of the from a drop of sugar
water the photogra-
images using a process called focus stacking, in which similar images pher left for them.
with different focal points are blended to achieve a more profound depth
of field. Completing one of these portraits can require a week or longer.
Combining images doesn’t work with live models—movement can
make an ant look, for example, as if it has several heads—so capturing a
satisfactory photo of a live insect can take Niga a couple of days. He says
he isn’t a patient person in most situations, “but with this, I don’t know
where the patience comes from. It’s probably because I absolutely love
it.” Niga hopes his images foster a greater appreciation of the world’s tiny
creatures—eyes and all. j
A freelance writer and researcher, Hicks Wogan recently wrote for National
Geographic about a New Zealand government plan to tax farmers for their
herds’ greenhouse gas emissions.
I N AW E O F A N T S 123
Each marigold-colored
hair stands out on
the abdomen of Cam-
ponotus fulvopilosus,
a carpenter ant from
southern Africa.
‘THOUGH ANTS ARE TINY, WE CAN’T HELP
BUT BE AWARE OF THEM. THEY ARE AMONG
THE MOST UBIQUITOUS AND SUCCESSFUL
CREATURES ON EARTH.’
—ELEANOR SPICER RICE , ENTOMOLOGIST
Ants undergo a four-
stage metamorphosis
as they grow from
eggs to adults. Here,
a yellow meadow ant
(Lasius flavus, found
in Europe and Asia)
carries a larva that’s
in the second stage
of development.
Next the larva will
become a pupa.
Ants, whole and parts. Above: Camponotus singularis from South-

east Asia. Opposite, clockwise from top left: Cataglyphis bicolor,
North Africa; a Dorylus species, Africa and Asia; Cataulacus granulatus,
Southeast Asia; an abdomen of Myrmecia gulosa, eastern Australia;
Dorylus mayri, West Africa; Diacamma rugosum, Southeast Asia.
Depending on her diet
as a larva, a female
ant can mature into a
queen, a major worker
(at right), or a minor
worker (at left). Major
workers defend the col-
ony, carry heavy items,
and chew tough food.
Minor workers do tasks
like feeding others
and cleaning the nest.
These two sip a sugary
treat that Niga left.
CRISTINA MITTERMEIER
INSTAGRAM
FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS
WHO The waters around the Galápagos Islands, a well-

A National Geographic known biodiversity hot spot, may soon grow richer.
Explorer who focuses on In 2021 Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica
conservation photography
agreed to join their marine reserves to create a more
WHERE
than 200,000-square-mile protected zone along
Cousins Rock, Galápagos
Islands, Ecuador migratory routes for whales, sharks, and sea turtles.
WHAT Mittermeier spent three months in the eastern Pacific
Sony Alpha 1 with a photographing diverse species, including these
28-60mm lens in water- cardinalfish darting past a Galápagos sea lion. “Diving
proof housing
here makes me believe in a better future,” she says.
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04.

THE POPULATION PARADOX

THE BIG IDEA

Behind the Mask

THROUGH THE LENS

If You Want to get these Newspapers Daily at earliest

अमर उजाला, जनस�ा, द पायोनीर, राष्ट्र�य सहारा, प्रभातखबर, लोकस�ा

Type in Search box of Telegram English_Newspaper_platform And

the 2018 book The

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KENDRICK BRINSON

The Sun City Poms stride

I T WA S W H I L E WAT C H I N G the movie across the country to cater to growing

Heron Hunting Trick

E X P L O R E Mummies and Portraits

THE PHILOSOPHER Kwame Anthony Appiah once

double standards. The sheer scale of it feels out of our

that did seem to affect a society’s move

ILLUSTRATION: SOPHY HOLLINGTON APRIL 2023 17

populations had property, not in terms of land but

NGM MAPS. PHOTO: ALAMY

Need a will? We believe all people deserve

are offering this free resource to our supporters.

CREATE YOUR LEGACY

Green (and growing) energy

This bird has

PICTURE THE DECEASED seems to make the

She inspires young

A few years ago as Ineza Umuhoza

Over 2 carats of Verdant Peridot in

† $39 Save $260

102 years Birds live three times as 83 10

The three colored lines represent

MAMMALS - 999 BIRDS - 1 ,088 FISH - 427 OTHER - 51

Thanks in part to having

Longevity data are

Body size Cellular rejuvenation

A larger body size typically

200 lb 2,000 lb 20,000 lb 200,000 lb

TY OF BIRMINGHAM APRIL 2023 27

In the 1990s, when I began as a journalist, train

118 CLOSE-UP PORTRAITS OF ANTS,

PHOTO: EDUARD FLORIN NIGA

JASON TREAT, NGM STAFF

9.4 billion and 9.7 billion, respectively, later this

mid-century and the year 2100, our ceaseless

1850 1900 1950 2000 2050

SPECTS, 2022”; GAPMINDER

EARTH THAN EVER, BUT THAT

DISGUISES A NEW REALITY.

THIS CENTURY, WE COULD

DECLINE. SOME COUNTRIES

WILL CONTINUE TO GROW

RAPIDLY, WHILE OTHERS WILL

SEE THEIR NUMBERS DROP.

* Threshold at which population levels, assuming mortality

Yet as extreme heat, rising seas, and severe

Craig Welch is a senior staff writer for National Geographic.

100 Life expectancy

Total fertility rate

Fertility rates will fall further 6

The global fertility rate was five births 5

+4% Population growth rate

Countries will grow more slowly

JASON TREAT AND EVE CONANT, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI