What is the population problem? Claire Melamed
September 14, 2011 | More on Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development | 20 comments
Just before I went off on my long summer break (very nice thank you), I did a podcast on the Guardian website about population. It’s well worth listening to – there’s more than just me on there, including some clips from a family in Uganda which set out very clearly the pros and cons of having lots of children from the individuals’ point of view. But these were my main points for the discussion:
- Even if you do think that population growth is a problem (which I don’t necessarily), then it’s one that is quietly solving itself. In 1960 the average woman had about 5 children, while in 2005 she had less than 3 (data from UN). Nearly half the world’s population now live in countries where the population is steady.
- There’s absolutely no evidence that future population growth will be a problem for humanity as a whole. Of course collecting evidence about things that haven’t happened yet is problematic. to say the least. But, unusually, history is on the side of the optimists here. People have been regularly predicting doom and gloom from population growth since Thomas Malthus first wrote about it in 1798. They have all been proved conclusively wrong. People today are healthier, happier and longer lived than Malthus could possibly have imagined. There is no reason to think that today’s doom-mongers on population will fare any better.
- Climate change is not a population problem. It’s a consumption problem. People in rich countries, where population is static or falling, consume many hundreds of times more carbon than people in the poor countries where population is still rising. Let’s start with the problem we have now – consumption in rich countries - rather than worrying about some hypothetical future when everyone in Mali has a washing machine and two cars. I can’t wait for that day. But I am also sure by then that the technological landscape will look quite different (driven partly by changing market incentives resulting from high oil prices). Really, if you’re worried about climate change there’s quite enough real problems to tackle now rather than agonising about hypotheticals long into the future.
- Population growth doesn’t cause famines. Lack of food is a political problem – it’s not too many people in Somalia that’s causing the famine, it’s apalling government, violence and corruption. In fact, globally per capita food production has been rising steadily since the 1960s, and in Africa since the 1980s (according to the FAO’s data). It’s true that sometimes individual regions become unable to support their populations – because of drought or even, sometimes, local population pressures. But then people up sticks and move, as they have always done through many centuries. Global population policies really aren’t the point here.
- Population growth doesn’t cause poverty. All the talk about rapid population growth in poor countries might make you think that they are more populated than rich countries. In fact, most poorer countries have much lower population densities than rich ones (World Bank data), even if their population might be growing more rapidly. And it’s when people move to cities, to areas of high population density, that development really takes off. Changing demographics do affect development – but not necessarily negatively. In some countries falling fertility rates are potentially allowing for a boost in growth as there’s a large number of young adults without too many dependent children to care for, while in others falling population is a problem, leaving large numbers of old people with too few younger relatives to care for them. It all depends.
This debate makes me pretty angry. Arguments that go on and on in the complete absence of any evidence or data have that effect. And sometimes there’s a nasty tinge of blaming people for their own poverty. But – there is a huge problem with population growth, and that’s if it’s not wanted by the people who are actually having the children. Population is a women’s rights issue. If women don’t have access to contraception and abortion to control their fertility then individual lives can be limited and blighted by unwanted and dangerous pregancies and by the financial and practical difficulties of caring for a big family. So there are some very good reasons to worry about population, and to scale up aid for family planning – but, really, a coming population apocalypse is not one of them.
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Twitter - David Steven
Well Claire, this "debate" makes me more than "pretty" angry, it makes me very, very angry.
You write that "Climate change is not a population problem. It’s a consumption problem"
This is a fallacious argument. It's not either/or, it's both. We have both a population problem AND a consumption problem.
"People in rich countries, where population is static or falling, consume many hundreds of times more carbon than people in the poor countries where population is still rising."
There is no causal relationship such that population growth rate affects per head consumption, as you assert here, so this is also fallacious.
…cont
"Let’s start with the problem we have now – consumption in rich countries – rather than worrying about some hypothetical future …"
Well yes, our future may well be only hypothetical on current trajectories. As for reducing consumption in rich countries, well, that just isn't going to happen without either driving most people in the West into dire poverty, forcing them to consume less for lack of means, or War, or both. I live in Britain, and people here will not cut their consumption. Most don't even know how to do it, even if they wanted to, which they don't. Many don't even have the skills to be able to live with much less.
…. cont
You claim that “sometimes there’s a nasty tinge of blaming people for their own poverty”, but that rather seems to me a nasty way of trying to smear your opponents, Claire. No reasonable person blames the poor for poverty. The institutions that are the most likely culprits for consistently preventing poor women from being able to take control of their own fertility in an age of wonderful contraception include: the Roman Catholic Church, US Christian Right, Islamic hierarchs, big business which wants a continually expanding labour and consumption force, and paradoxically, elements of the Greens and Left that want to blame only “Capitalism” and consumerism for our problems, for their own ideological reasons.
… cont
It is noticeable that you barely mention the deadly and rapidly (on a geological scale) worsening toll being taken on the biosphere by the exponential increase in human numbers. Just a fashionable nod to global warming, which is only one of many ecological problems that we are creating, such as massive habitat destruction, degradation and fragmentation, species loss and genetic erosion, soil loss and salination and the many, many problems created by the sheer vast, unprecedented numbers of the human animal consuming, struggling and battling over the earth.
All the over poulation problems are local. It's in every countru different. Everyone ists own problem.
Hmm. Don't think this post is up to the usual GD standard – rather dismissive and unbalanced. According to the Millenium ecosystem assessment 60% of the ecosystems we rely on are degraded – if you really think that the number of people on this planet is not one of the causal factors i would suggest you are rather blinkered. Do you think the planet can sustain 10 billion…20 billion? Perhaps Malthus was right but the feedback is stress not shock (as discussed on global dashboard before).
Quite simplistic. Neglects biodiversity, resource use, global footprint, climate change, future generations. Global consumption is proportional to individual consumption and population.
as i said all the poulation problems are local. It's in every countru different. Everyone ists own problem.
Very poor and simplistic thinking devaluing the GD site. Food security, energy security, climate change, general resource availability (eg water) and population all interact. All exacerbate each other, all have solutions in each other. Put your silo away and get out your matrix
This post is akin to arguing that "Everyone says war is a problem, but there is much less war than last century, so it is solving itself. Let's therefore just not worry about it." I rarely see so many straw men outside of a cornfield.
I can understand other people's frustrations at what might appear to be a belittling of the challenges of growing populations. However, I also completely understand Clare's perspective because highlighting population as a climate-change related problem tends to give Westerners a 'get out clause'. I know this from lots of face to face campaigning for Oxfam. Many people will respond that the 'real' problem is population in the global South (or 'Africa') and that it is therefore not even worth us trying in the West to counteract climate change! So I say bravo to Clare for raising this hot potato!
What we need are sound and wise arguments that accept the breadth of challenges we face globally (biodiversity and food security among them) and don't hide from difficult issues like population. Too many in the development community avoid it because it's a bit of a taboo, but this only enrages those who are convinced it is the only subject!
I totally second Clare's argument about women's rights (to contraception, education, representation) being the real issue behind population growth. But I would, being an ex-Oxfam campaigner – it's the rest of the world we need to convince and we won't do it by setting ourselves in opposing positions and criticising each other.
While I have some sympathy for Claire's arguments it is a huge exaggeration to say that: "People in rich countries, where population is static or falling, consume many hundreds of times more carbon than people in the poor countries where population is still rising." US per capita emissions are about 18 tonnes per person per year, China's are about one quarter of the US's per capita , India about one twelfth that of the US per capita, Nigeria one thirtieth – only the very poorest countries have per capita emissions around one two hundredth that of the US.(CDIAC figures for 2008).
We are currently on track to hit a global population of ~10 billion people by 2050. According to the Global Footprint folks we are currently using 1.5 planets worth of renewable resources each year. If per capita consumption levels could keep rising in the way they have been then by the year 2050 in aggregate we would be using around 6 planets worth. That is not, in any way, a trajectory that it is possible for us, as a species, to follow. Varieties of systemic collapse are on the way. The best strategy to reduce human suffering in the 21st century is one of building systemic resilience so that when collapses occur the worst case scenario doesn't unfold.
My goodness there's nothing like a blog about population to get the comments flying. Much of what is up there is rather difficult to respond to, as there's no actual evidence, just vague references to biodiversity, ecosystems, erosion, etc. All incredibly important issues, and if people want to point me in the direction of references with data linking changes in these to changes in the world's population, (while remembering that correlation is not causality), then I'd be really interested to have a look.
But let me respond to the comments where I can:
- ratio of carbon consumption in US to developing countries. Carbon consumption per capita many countries: Tanzania, Nepal, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, for example, are 100 times less than in the USA. These are also the countries in which population is rising most quickly, of course. But there are many countries still classified as developing whose per capita emissions are higher than that, of course – you are absolutely right.
-relationship between global population and consumption. I expect most people who have commented here know the work of Stephen Pacala at Princeton. His figures are useful for separating popuulation and consumption, and they show that the richest 7 per cent of the world's population are responsible for about half of all carbon dioxide emissions, and the poorest 50 per cent for about 7% of emissions. But most of the predicted population growth is of course going to happen in the poorest 50 per cent. So given current projections of population growth, the share of emissions for the poorest countries is predicted to rise from 7% to 11% of the global total. A problem yes, but this does not say to me that population growth in those countries should be the first thing to worry about. No doubt someone will come back and point out, quite rightly, that it's not just about carbon emissions – but in the absence of any hard facts about the other aspects of environmental degradation and the relative weights of population and consumption in causing them to happen, it's hard to have the discussion.
To reiterate – it's not that I don't think that women should have the freedom to chose their family size – I absolutely do. But given the evidence I have seen, I still don't think that population per se is the main villan in the global tragedy that is poverty and environmental degradation. If someone shows me numbers that prove otherwise, I am quite prepared to change my mind.
I've not come across any intelligent population campaigner who 'blames the poor for their own poverty.' That's a straw man. I've not come across any, either, who doesn't believe that womens' rights are, indeed, the key to this problem. That's straw man 2. No evidence offered for either assertion here, by the way.
Neither have I come across anyone honest working on environmental destruction who believes that a rising population is not a factor. 'Show me the numbers' is not an adequate response to these concerns. If you've not done this research already, you shouldn't really be doing podcasts about it. Can you really not find evidence about the impact of population numbers on deforestation, or soil erosion, or water supplies? If so, you can't have been trying very hard.
Population x consumption = environmental degradation. That's a long -established equation, and population denial, in my view, is as silly as climate denial. I live in the Uk – sounds like you do too. Our population is scheduled to increase by 20 million over the next few decades, largely due to immigration. That's the poor getting richer – hurray! – and then contributing massively more to emissions levels, resource consumption and the rest. Like we already do. How shall we square this circle? Or shall we just pretend it isnt circular?
The great shame here is the this issue, like climate, has become politicised. The right don't want to talk about consumption and the left don't want to talk about population. Both responses are feeble. We need better. Let's move this discussion beyond this stuff and into serious territory.
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Paul, please do send over some references on the impact of population (at a global level) on deforestation, soil erosion or water supplies. I just haven't seen anything that makes me as convinced as you clearly are that global population growth is the main culprit. But as I said, I'd be delighted to look at more evidence. So assuming that what I've seen so far hasn't convinced me, but that you have seen enough to convince you, please tell me what I've missed!
thanks, Claire
I agree it is not the "main culprit". It is one of the main culprits.
"I rarely see so many straw men outside of a cornfield. " I've never seen a straw man in a cornfield.