We often forget that at some point in their histories, the populations of all of today’s developed countries went through a transformation from very low development to high development. Consider Iceland, which has an infant mortality rate of less than 3 deaths per 1,000 live births, one of the most favorable in the world. However, conditions were quite different as late as the 19th century. From 1840 to 1890, Iceland’s infant mortality rate was 250 to 300 deaths per 1,000 live births, and in one disastrous year, 1846, Iceland’s infant mortality rate rose to 600 deaths per 1,000 live births. This is more than 3 times the infant mortality rate in any country on Earth today!

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According to an analysis by Icelandic economist Thorvaldur Gylfason, Iceland’s per capita economic output in 1901 was about $2,600, approximately that of Bangladesh in 2011. Since then, Iceland has grown its economic sector by about 2.6% annually, mainly through careful management of productive fishing grounds and renewable energy sources, rising to a per capita GDP of about $42,000 in 2013, according to the World Bank. However, the most important contributor to this growth may come as a surprise: education.

Literacy in Iceland stands at 99.9% of the population. Education is compulsory through age 16 and attendance through that age is estimated at 99%. According to Statistics Iceland, close to 27,000 Icelanders (nearly 10% of the entire population) received university degrees between 1999 and 2008. Of this total, nearly twice as many degrees went to women as men.

Iceland has a democratically elected parliamentary system of government in which all citizens 18 years or older are entitled to vote for president and members of parliament. Empowerment of women extends to the highest levels of involvement in Iceland. Women made up 30% of the Icelandic parliament in 2004, compared with 20% of the U.S. Congress. As a final testament to women’s empowerment, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir was selected as Iceland’s first woman prime minister, the head of the government, in 2010.

Improvements in health, along with high levels of education and literacy, a rich natural resource base, and universal suffrage and empowerment of women, contribute to Iceland’s high level of development. They are also key factors in its movement toward a stabilized population. While we might consider Iceland exceptional in many ways, other countries have also made rapid developmental progress in the recent past. Costa Rica, a tropical Latin American country, is making rapid progress toward population stability. Like Iceland, Costa Rica’s success owes much to heavy investment in education at all levels, universal suffrage, and empowerment of women. In 2014 the percentage of women in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly was 33%, compared with 18.5% in the 113th U.S. Congress. In addition, like Iceland, Costa Rica elected its first woman head of government in 2010: President Laura Chinchilla Miranda.

The challenge for humanity is to invest in human development while reducing demand on Earth’s resources (Figure 5.31). In this chapter, we have focused primarily on the need to reduce human population growth, which may be achieved by providing access to family-planning information and contraceptives and promoting the development of the least developed countries. The second task at hand is to reduce resource demands, which depends on reducing per capita consumption by developing more efficient technologies and management methods. These subjects are the main focus of Chapters 6 through Chapter 14.

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The slowing of world population growth that we’ve already reviewed (Figures 5.3b and 5.3c, page 131) is a good sign of progress. Progress toward curbing explosive population growth is, of course, being played out within individual populations. Bangladesh, the country discussed at the beginning of this chapter, has made dramatic strides toward that goal, with family-planning programs contributing to a reduction in its total fertility rate from 6.6 children in 1981 to 2.4 children in 2015. In addition, concern continues to grow in both developed and developing countries about the environment, including overconsumption of resources and waste. Perhaps most important, there is widespread concern among the people of developed countries about the increasing gap between rich and poor worldwide and strong public support for giving aid to developing countries. Achieving a sustainable relationship with the biosphere is perhaps the most daunting challenge ever faced by our species, and it will take all the intelligence, wisdom, and sensitivity that we can muster.