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Population
Overpopulation
Every year the pressure from human numbers is increasing by some 90 million (estimates vary). In just a fortnight, the world's population increases by more than the total populations of Birmingham and Liverpool combined. Even in the frequently praised state of Kerala, where there has been genuine social progress and the growth rate of the state's population has been cut to 1.7%, the population will still double on that basis in just 47 years. Contrary to popular perception about the levelling off of population growth in rich countries, on present trends America's population will double to around 520 million in only 63 years.
Despite these alarming pressures, many leading individuals and organisations in the field of 'environment and development', have been deafeningly silent on the issue of population growth or bitter criticised those who raise the issue. Though, in 1994, the United Nations at long last convened an international conference in Cairo on Population, the event scarcely reflected years of hard analysis and campaigning by either mainstream environmentalists or social reformers. Not one of the major environmental lobbies, for example, has produced any substantial books, pamphlets, or policy on the matter. Popular journalism such as the Environment section of The Guardian, also has covered the issue only sporadically.
Others go much further-in the wrong direction. In October, 1987, the British magazine New Internationalist produced an issue on Africa, which argued that the continent is underpopulated and. more generally, there is 'little cause for concern' about the global demographic situation. The well-known American environmentalist Barry Commoner takes a similar line, arguing that 'it is a totally spurious idea to claim that rising population anywhere in the world is responsible for a deteriorating environment'. The 'ecosocialist' academic David Pepper (Green Line, undated.) dismisses overpopulation as 'an issue to be panicked over in the early 70s', before 'a more sophisticated view emerged'.
In fact, population growth exacerbates every environmental and most social problems. Kenya's population increases by over 1600 people every day, thereby intensifying pressure on the land, eating up space for surviving wildlife, overwhelming employment and other social opportunities. Population growth also makes solutions more difficult to achieve. Take, for example, the transition to sustainable energy systems. It has been estimated that the Swiss population would have to be one sixth of its present level if the country were to base itself on its own renewable energy resources and maintain its present living standards.
Contrary to the famous thesis advanced by Barry Commoner that the problem is simply 'flawed technology', all three factors in the 'PAT' equation count together, each magnifying the effects of the other two. For example, according to careful analysis by Professor John Holdren, the biggest single cause of the increased impacts from the USA's transportation system since World War 11 was not just the switch to the private motor car and lorry (technology) nor an increasing volume of travel (affluence). The main cause was actually population growth.
It is true that more frugal lifestyles can reduce the impact of population size. No-one needs the hundreds of shoes apparently owned by the wife of ex-dictator of the Philippines. Yet most people presumably might prefer some consumer choice to, say, the regimentation of Maoist boiler suits. Similarly, more and more people could be squeezed into giant housing blocks but a preferable option might be lower density living, whose environmental impact could only be reduced by lower population levels. Though, as discussed above, the problems caused by consumerism are very real, some degree of material affluence nevertheless can bring genuine benefits.
Conversely, overpopulation can narrow choice and opportunities. In the UK, for example, if everyone decided to go the beach at the same time, they would have to make do with about 10 cm of seaside (of course, in reality, they would never get there since the transport system would be too congested). Even in purely political terms, it can be seen that population growth progressively reduces the political 'weight' exercised by each voter of an expanding electorate. The provision of educational and other services for a growing population requires correspondingly bigger and more burdensome bureaucracies.
Population growth also intensifies the impact of technology which, in turn, can provide only limited relief from the extra demands created by growing human numbers. The limits of alternative technology are discussed below but a couple of examples might illustrate the point now. Exhaustive studies have demonstrated that the difference in environmental impact of washable cotton nappies compared to the more popular plastic disposable ones is not as great as once thought. The significant factor, then, is the number of babys' bottoms to be clothed! A similar story is found in the switch to foodstuffs like free-range eggs. There is increasing evidence that current population levels can only supplied with the same volume of farm produce by resort to the grazing of hens and other livestock at such densities that many of the benefits of the change from intensive animal husbandry are cancelled out.
In an attempt to deny the realities of overpopulation, many people take refuge in what has been called the Netherlands fallacy ('Holland is densely populated but no-one starve there'). Such countries can only survive by drawing down on the resources that will be needed by future generations or by taking over those by other peoples, especially in economically vulnerable lands, and by other species. For example, the old EEC, prior to enlargement, imported over 50% of its raw materials from the 'Third World'. One Dutch study suggests that a sustainable and globally equitable level of aluminium consumption would require an 80% drop in the current usage of the Netherlands. This country is also the world's largest per capita importer of timber products. Using the same definition of sustainability , timber usage there would have to drop by some 60%. In terms of food, the exchange of resources with 'Third World' countries is 4 to 1 in favour of the tables of west European consumers. A study of the origins of items on sale in many 'wholefood' shops will underline the point.
The impact of population growth in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe has also devastated the continent's flora and fauna. The once vast European wildwood is now confined to a few surviving patches in eastern Poland while whole populations of wildlife, ranging from bears to bison, have been wiped out. Due largely to the intensification of land use required by Europe's population density, the destruction of other lifeforms accelerates. 108 species of European flowering plants, for example, are threatened with immediate extinction and 1,400 have become very rare.
However, most political tendencies treat the crisis of overpopulation as either a non-issue, something that will solve itself, or as a matter of possible concern only in some 'Third World' countries. Symptomatic of this process of evasion and denial is the regular disinterring and retrial of the Reverend Thomas Malthus for his allegedly erroneous warnings about population and food supply. Malthus argued that human numbers would not-could not-grow over the next 200 years or so to more than seven and half times than of his own time, the 1800s. The increase was actually some 5.5. times the population of 1800, a remarkably accurate prediction from someone widely reviled for getting his sums wrong.
Of course, that growth has not been halted by the dramatic collapse he predicted due to food shortages. Malthus did not anticipate the exploitation of the food baskets of North America and Australasia nor technologies like refrigeration. However, today, there are no New Worlds and many food producing regions are being overexploited by mechanised farming and by intensive irrigation. Fisheries are suffering similarly from overexploitation.
Demographic Transition?
Then there is the highly influential Demographic Transition Theory. It suggests that, as people become healthier and wealthier, they will parent fewer children. This, it is argued, explains the decrease in family size in Europe over the last two hundred years. Poverty produces large families, not the other way round. It might be noted, however, that:
The global demographic situation today is different to that in Europe two hundred years ago. For example, the population 'doubling times' are much shorter in many Third World countries now than they were in the first industrialised countries.
1. The environment could not supply the volume of resources nor assimilative the attendant pollution required to generalise the kind of affluence characteristic of materially richer countries.
2. The post war baby boom took place at a time of an unprecedented increases in per capita consumption, the period when cars and all kinds of consumer gods became commonplace, not during the poorer years of the Depression. A switch to smaller families took place as opportunities for easily accessible education, careers and wealth decreased. In Britain, the switch to smaller families in recent decades was more pronounced amongst working class rather than more affluent middle class couples.
3. This pattern seems common, contrary to the Demographic Transition Theory. In Africa, fertility rose post-1945 to an average of six children plus per woman at the same time that infant survival, health care and literacy improved. In Cuba, fertility also increased after the overthrow of the corrupt Batista régime and the first social reforms of the Castro government. By contrast, periods of pessimism seem to act as contraceptives. In Mexico, the fertility rate fell from 3.8 to 3.2 during the 1980s when unemployment rose from 40% to 50%.
4. More generally, there are no automatic links. Recently, France has gone from nongrowing to a growing demographic situation while population growth in Bangla Desh has begun to fall even though there has been no rise in general well-being.
5. Other factors may be at work: life in the smaller properties on newer housing estates can make it difficult to raise large families. Similarly increased income may be the product of both adults working which may be the underlying reason for a desire not to proceed to a larger family size.
6. In the short term i.e. two generations, improved health and income in countries such as India and Turkey led to faster population growth. It may then level off but, in the meantime, it will have quadrupled the size of the population in a 'less developed' country and therefore quadrupled every problem it faces. As Garrett Hardin and other scientists argue, increased supply of resources tends to increase human numbers.
In fact, a more accurate description of this century in particular would not be demographic transition. What actually has been happening is a demographic take-over as just one species, humanity, appropriates for itself an enormous and still growing slice of the Earth's physical space and its biological production. At the time of the first time Earth Day in 1970, there was considerable concern about population increase, largely due to the writings of ecologist Paul Ehrlich. Since then the global population has shot up by 1,600 million more people 43% increase yet during the 1990 Earth Day week as well as at the subsequent Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 there was virtually silence on the subject. Whether anything substantive has resulted from the 1994 UN Cairo Conference on population remains to be seen.
Abernethy, V. Population Pressures & Cultural Adjustment. Human Sciences Pr., 1979.
Abernethy, V. Population Politics: The Choices That Shape Our Future. Plenum Pr., 1993
Abernethy, V. How Population Growth Discourages Environmentally Sound Behaviour. Wild Earth, 7(2), Summer, 1997: 88-90
Bartlett, A.A. Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth & the Environment. Pop. Environ., 16(10, 1994: 5-35.
Barlett, A.A. Is there a Population Problem? Wild Earth, 7(3), Fall, 1997:
Brown L. & H. Kane. Full House: Reassessing the Earth's Population Carrying Capacity. Norton, 1994.
Catton, W. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1980
Catton, W. Can Irrupting Man Remain Human? Focus, 3 2, 1993: 19-25. Argues that population density and sudden surges in population growth produce decline in behavioural standards.
Cohen, J. How Many People Can the Earth Support? Norton, 1995.
Crosby, A. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. CUP, 1986.
Gupte, P. The Crowded Earth: People & the Politics of Population. Norton, 1984.
Ehrlich, P. & A. The Population Explosion. Hutchinson, 1990. Demonstrates with overwhelming evidence and argument that human overpopulation is the critical pressure on environmental, economic and social systems, the one which automatically intensifies the effects from other pressures, and the one that similarly makes solutions harder to achieve. Brilliant.
Ehrich, P, A. Ehrlich & G. Daily. The Stork & the Plow. Putnam, 1995. Further evidence on the population crunch.
Ehrlich, P. & A. Ecosystem Risks Associated with the Population Explosion. In Adv. in Modern Environ. Toxicology: Predicting Ecosystem Risk. Princeton Scientific, 1992.
Ehrlich, P. & Holdren, J. The Human Population and the Global Environment. American Scientist, May-June, 62, 1974: 282-292
Galle, O. R., et al. Population Density and Pathology; What are the Relations for Man? Science, 176, 1972: 23-30. Links between overcrowding and anti-social behaviour.
Grant, L. Juggernaut: Growth on a Finite Planet. Seven Locks Pr., 1996.
Hern, W. Why Are There So Many of Us? Description & Diagnosis of a Plantary Ecopathological Process. Population & Environment, 12, Fall, 1990: 9-39.
Kyllonen, R. L. Crime Rates versus Population Density in United States Cities: A Model. General Systems, 12, 1967: 137-145. Connects crime and overcrowding.
Luten, D. Population & Resources. Population and Environment, 12(3), 1991: 311-329.
MacDougall, A.K. Humans as Cancer. Wild Earth, Fall, 1996: 61-88.
McGraw, E. Population: The Human Race. Bishopsgate Press, 1990.
Moffett, G. Critical Masses: The Global Population Challenge. Viking, 1994. Graphic picture of the population crisis, though the author's endorsement of the demographic transition model seems contradicted by his own data, which suggests that throughout the developing world, couples are opting for delayed marriage/parenthood and smaller family size because of their perception of decreasing job opportunities, housing constraints etc.
Parsons, J. Population Versus Liberty. Pemberton Books, 1971. Argues that there is an inverse relationship betwen the two.
Smith, T. The Population Bomb Has Exploded Already. British Medical Jnl, 310, 3/1090: 681-682
Weigel, Van B. Earth Cancer. Praegar, 1995.
Wisniewski, R. L. Carrying Capacity: Understanding Our Biological Limitations. Humboldt Jnl Soc. Relations, 7(2), 1980: 55-70
Population Movement
Outside of extremist right-wing circles, there is an even greater taboo topic than population levels per se, , that of population movement and particularly the issue of immigration controls. Most 'green' parties , for example, campaign as well as human rights groupings against restrictions on population movement while none of the 'green your lifestyle' guides suggests that one of the best things that people might do is to stay put and improve where they live. To some extent, such stances are quite contradictory since the same organisations claim, for example, to support threatened tribal peoples whose only chance of survival depends in fact upon land rights and controls over those now invading their lands. Indeed there are many other instances where the need to limit access is uncontested.
Many buildings, for example, have controls over the number of people they can admit for health and safety reasons while frequently nature reserves are put out of bounds, particularly during breeding periods. More and more footpaths are being closed to allow them to be repaired and to recover from the erosion caused by too many walkers. But when it comes to the right to settle somewhere else, any suggestion that similar limits might be necessary is greeted with cries of ecofascism. Yet migration is directly threatening the ecological viability of many regions.
In the USA, for example, current immigration policy has led to the largest inflow of immigrants in its entire history It accounts for almost 50% of US population growth which overall increases by an extra 7,469 persons each day! California's population growth rate is higher than that of India and again immigration is responsible for half that growth. Population movement has doubled the number of people living along the US-Mexico border since 1980. It has spawned a host of air and water pollution problems.
Internal population movements can be equally unsustainable. Southern England provides a salutary lesson. Swindon in the 1980 was the fastest growing urban area in Europe. The Chippenham area's population grew from 22,000 to 25,000 in 5 years during the 80s. Meanwhile, more of Berkshire was covered in concrete as the population of Bracknell and Wokingham expanded by 27%. Further north, Milton Keynes suffered from a 45% population increase between 1981 and 1989. As a region, East Anglia grew fastest, its population burden rising by 8% over the same period.
War, famine and the expulsion of communities to make way for developments like hydro-electricity schemes have pushed involuntary population movements to record heights. In 1993, 1 in every 130 people had been forced to leave his or her home. There were 17 million refugees at the start of 1992 and 18.9 at the end. The influx of Palestinian refugees from Kuwait into Jordan in 1991 meant that the country suddenly had to find water and sewerage for an extra 275-300,000 people.
In general, migration is spreading and intensifying environmental and social problems across many parts of the planet. Ecologically, it can be understood as an invasion of other parts of the 'Earth' body, for example by the deforestation caused by incoming settlers. It is also a process of 'dedifferentiation' (loss of structure and identifying characteristics) creating greater cultural homogenisation and economic integration.
Again from an ecological perspective, it constitutes an inherently dangerous tendency towards economic and cultural as well as environmental monoculture. Unlimited migration contains within the capacity to spread everywhere to point where host organism is killed.
Population movements have changed settlement patterns, often covering the countryside in suburban sprawl, necessitating in turn more transport per person of goods and people. In some instances, particularly movement to warmer climes, it has required the increased use of resource-intensive and polluting technologies like air conditioning and vast water infrastructures to make possible the settlement of areas such as the semi-arid south-west of the USA.
The issue of cultural change caused by population movement is more complex and controversial. Certainly, an influx of 'new blood' and fresh thinking has benefited many a community. Today, however, the scale of those movements as well as the bloated size of existing populations has made any lessons from the past rather redundant. Furthermore, while a certain degree of exchange might be healthy, the conservation of a community's basic character might be even more important. Paul Kennedy, for example, claims in his study, Preparing for the 21st Century, that the countries best placed to cope with the challenges of tomorrow are those with a degree of cultural homogeneity and ethnic coherence e.g. Scandinavia, Switzerland, Japan & Korea.
External migration certainly can ease some problems back at home. If it had not been for the number of people who left for the New Worlds of North America and Australasia, the population of the UK would have reached a catastrophic 70 million by 1900 (or, more probably, there would have been a collapse by then). But the price is paid by the lands and communities on the receiving end of that migration-by the indigenous peoples and wildlife which were all but wiped out. The incoming settlers to Australia, for example, halved the amount of topsoil within 150 years. At other times, however, the drain of skilled and energetic people outwards can cripple the community left behind. Many rural areas in particular, have suffered from the loss of their younger citizens.
Clearly there are terribly difficult problems in balancing rights and responsibilities in the whole issue of migration. In the search for solutions, kind hearts have to be married to hard heads. The fact that many immigration controls have been racist in intent and operation in the past does not mean that they necessarily must be so. Perhaps the safest and most humane policy is to address those factors that are forcing so many people to leave their homesteads in the first place.
Abernethy, V. Immigration Increases Suffering. Pop. & Enviro, 11, Summer, 1990: 241-243.
Beck, R. The Case Against Immigration/ Norton, 1996.
Beck, R. Immigration-Driven Population Pressures Threaten America's Natural Environments. Wild Earth, Winter, 1997/98: 78-80.
Bouvier, L. Peaceful Invasions: Immigration and Chnaging America. Centre for Immigration Studies (Wash. DC), 1991.
Briggs, V. Despair Behind the Riots: The Impediment of Mass Immigration to Los Angeles Blacks. Carrying Capacity Bulletin, 10, 1992: 3-4. Claims that the Los Angles rioting had its roots not just in inequality but also excessive immigration which exacerbated unemployment and other social ills in the area,
Briggs, Vernon. Mass Immigration & the National Interest. M. E. Sharpe, 1993.
Brimelow, P. Alien Nation: Common Sense About Ameica's Immigration Disaster. Random House, 1995.
Esman, M. Ethnic Politics. Cornell UP, 1994. Academic study of the conflicts between majority & minority groups, one often exacerbated by population movements which undermine the cohesion of local societies.
Estrada, R. The Impact of Immigration on Hispanic-Americans. Focus, 3(2), 1993: 26-30. Hispanic immigration is the latest wave of incomers to the USA &, contrary to received wisdom, Estrada argues that the newcomers have been losers rather than beneficiaries.
Irvine, S. Going, GoingAre We Trampling the Earth to Death? Real World, 7, 1994: 4-5.
Kane, H. What's Driving Migration. Worldwatch, 8(1), 1995: 23-33.
Newland, K. Refugees: The Rising Flood. Worldwatch, 7(3), 1994: 10-20.
Tanton, J. International Migration as an Obstacle to Achieving World Stability. The Ecologist, 6(6), 1976: 221-228
Teitelbaum, M. Right versus Right. Foreign Affairs, 51(1), 1980: 21-59.
Wilk, A. & N. Hildyard. Evicted! The World Bank and Forced Settlement. The Ecologist, 24(6), 1994: 225-229. Today, millions of people are not being 'pulled' by greener grass on the other side of the hill but forcibly pushed out, often with aid from the coffers of the World Bank.
Overpopulation in Specific Regions
Bouvier, L. & L. Grant. How Many Americans? Population, Immigration and the Environment. Sierra Books, 1994.
Gatewood, S. Trouble and Opportunity in Paradise: Population Growth and Conservation in Florida. Wild Earth, 1997/98, Winter: 46-51.
Grant, L., ed. Elephants in the Volkswagen. Freeman, 1992. This collection addresses overpopulation in a rich country-the USA
Hall, C.A.S., et al. The Environmental Consequences of Having a Baby in the US. Wild Earth, 5(2), Summer, 1995:
Harris, C. Canada's Phantom Population. Wild Earth, Winter, 1991: 25-26. Debunks the nonsense of "we've-got-lots of-space" and its ilk with respect to Canada.
Immerwahr, G. World Population Growth: What You Should Know About It. What We Can Do About It. Peanut Butter Publishing, 1995. Central focus is on the USA.
Irvine, S. An Overcrowded Continent. In Parkin, S, ed.. Green Light on Europe. Heretic, 1990.
Jensen, D. B., et al.. In Our Hand: A Strategy for Conserving California's Biological Diversity. Univ. Calif. Pr., 1994. Includes strong account of how population growth in California has damaged, amongst many other things, local biodiversty.
Miller, M. Has the United States Exceeded Its Carying Capacity. Wild Earth, Fall, 1992: 81.
Overpopulation: Evasions, Misconceptions and Fantasies
Catton, W. The Problem of Denial. Human Ecology Review, 3, Winter, 1996: 53-62.
Davoll, J. Population Growth and Conservation Organisations. Population and Environment, 10(2), 1988: 107114. Critique of the widespread tendency amongst many supposedly progressive organisations in environmental, development and other fields to sweep population problems under the carpet. Looks particularly at the stance of International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Ehrlich P. & A. Ehrlich. Betrayal of Science and Reason. Island Pr., 1996
Hardin, G. Population Skeletons in the Environmental Closet. Bulletin Atomic Scientists, 28(6), 1972: 37-41. An early look at the common tendency amongst many political currents to evade or deny the population dimension to environmental problems.
Hardin, G. From Shortage to Longage: Forty Years in the Population Vineyards. Population & Environment, 12(3), 1991: 339-349. A look at key concepts concerning overpopulation and the taboos that prevent people from seeing the issue clearly.
Hertsgaard, M. Hands that Rock the Cradle. Independent on Sunday, 25/4/93. The malign role of the Vatican in population matters.
Irvine, S. The Great Denial: Puncturing Pro-Natelist Myths. Wild Earth, 1997/98, Winter: 8-17.
Luten, D. et al. Immigration Commentary. Wild Earth, Summer, 1998: 90-96. A series of articles addressing failure of the leadership of the American Sierra Club to face the threat from immigration to local carrying capacity.
Lyon, L. Right to Life or Loving the Population Bomb. Wild Earth, Spring, 1992: 67-68. The weird coalition of orthodox Christians with sections of the feminist movement for the 'right to life' i.e. for the very trends that is obliterating life-support systems.
McCormick, B. Reproductive Sanity, so Long. Wild Earth, Winter 1996/97: 84-87.
McGraw, E. Population Misconceptions. Population Concern, 1984. Short pamphlet that demolishes many of the complacent myths on this issue.
Tobias, M. World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium. Bear & Co. Publishing, 1994. Includes useful discussion of assorted myths and taboos on the issue of overpopulation, including a look at Kerala, often hailed as a model of the 'demographic transition at work
Population Policies
Abernethy, V. Population Policies. Plenum Pr., 1993.
Abernethy, V. Population Planning in a Premodern Context. Wild Earth, Winter, 1997/98: 71-77.
Davis, K. Zero Population Growth: The Goal & The Means. Daedalus, 102, 1973: 15-39
Formos, W.. Gaining People, Losing Ground: A Blueprint for Stabilising World Population. Population Institute, 1987.
Hardaway, R.M. Population, Law, and the Environment. Praegar, 1994.
Hardin, G. Mandatory Motherhood: The True Meaning of Right To Life. Beacon Press, 1974.
Hollingsworth, W. Ending the Explosion: Population Policies and Ethics for a Human Future. Seven Locks Pr., 1996.
Jacobsen, J. Planning the Global Family. WorldWatch Institute, 1987.
Jacobsen, J., 1986. Promoting Population Stabilisation: Incentives for Small Families. WorldWatch Institute, 1986.
McCormick, B. Is Population Control Genocide? Part 1 in Wild Earth, Spring, 1991: 25-27 & Part 2 in Wild Earth, Summer, 1991: 70-72. Refutation of a well-worn argument, now popular in poltically correct circles.
Odum, E. Optimum Population and Environment. Current History, June, 1970: 355-359 & 365.
Wheeler, D. Addressing Population and Immigration Bioregionally. Wild Earth, 7(1), Spring, 1997: 73-75.
Zero Population Growth. The Benefits of Zero Population Growth. Z.P.G., 1977
Family Planning and Lifestyle
Safer, J. Beyond Motherhood. Pocket Books (Simon & Shuster), 1996.
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