Population and sustainability: the most
inconvenient truth
Aubrey Manning
Aubrey Manning is Professor Emeritus
of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh. Always involved with
conservation and the environment in the broad sense, he is a patron of
Population Matters, was president of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts 2006-2010
and Goodwill Ambassador for UN International Year of Planet Earth 2008-2010. In
2011 he was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Senior Beltane prize for
Public Engagement.
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2016.1.1.15
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Manning, A. 2016. 'Population and sustainability: the most inconvenient truth'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 1(1): 15–26.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2016.1.1.15
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Sustainability is applied
anywhere and everywhere now but rarely has a term been used with such imprecise
understanding of what is implied. However vague on the details, seeking
‘sustainability’ in so many aspects of human activity represents an important
shift in the way we look at the world and our place in it. We may not know what
is needed but the very fact that we talk about it reveals a recognition that
current trends in how we operate are not going to yield it. We are beginning to
accept that human activity is having global effects and impinges on the natural
resources available to all of us. International action is beginning and
currently climate change is the most prominent issue. Whatever the shortcomings
of the recent Paris summit and those that preceded it, they represent a
remarkable and consistent global consensus that if we go on as we have there
will be severe penalties.
Way back in 1966 I joined the
recently founded Conservation Society because as a biologist I was attracted by
its slogan: ‘Population, Resources, Environment.’ Public concerns
about ‘the environment’ were beginning to grow rapidly, especially around the
pollution of soil and water, deforestation and the spread of urbanisation with
all its associated infrastructure. So far as I could see, the Conservation
Society was the only group which recognised explicitly that the number of
humans was a key factor in all these problems. Then, populations were growing
rapidly, especially in the poorer, so-called ‘developing nations’ and various
initiatives were beginning to attract attention. In Britain the problems were
seen almost exclusively as being ‘out there’ in the poor countries, although to
its great credit the Conservation Society from its inception argued that the
rich nations also had a population growth problem.
The message remained, but gradually
the emphasis began to shift away from human numbers per se and towards the impact we were having on
the planet. Some of the gloomier predictions, such as the Paddock brothers’ Famine 1975! (1967) and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) could be regarded as
over dramatized. This was a period of sustained economic growth in the rich
world bringing dramatic rises in the standard of living in Europe and North
America. The effects soon became obvious, both in the damage caused to the
environment and in the gross inequalities in consumption of all natural
resources which were developing between the rich and poor nations. Even so, for
most it seemed that, as always, the Earth could provide!
In 1972 came the UN Conference on the
Human Environment in Stockholm, perhaps the first global recognition of that un-sustainability I mentioned at the outset. This
meeting led to the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) being set up. Twenty years
later the meeting was in Rio de Janeiro and further meetings have followed at
intervals since. Trawling the web will yield a whole range of reports from the
UN and its branches and various development ‘think tanks’ across the years.
There were a number of aspirational statements timed around the Millennium. The
UN’s Millennial Development Goals (MDG) are from 2000:
1.Eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger.
2.Achieve universal primary
education.
3.Promote gender equality and empower
women.
4.Reduce child mortality.
5.Improve maternal health.
6.Combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other
diseases.
7.Ensure environmental
sustainability.
8.Global partnership for development.
Each nation has particular targets
and is expected to report on progress. There can be no question that the UN and
its agencies accept the scale of the problems we face, and that in these
aspirations they have ‘hitched their wagon to a star.’ The requirements are
gigantic.
We must note that there is no direct
mention of human numbers here. There is certainly some mention of family
planning provision, but although it is obvious that advances in MDGs 1, 2 and 3
will be most likely to reduce birth rates, we do not find this result
identified as an aim in itself. Indeed, population per se was rigorously kept off the agenda in
earlier UN meetings under pressure from several powerful religious lobbies. It
would not be addressed directly, and even then only in muted terms, until 22
years after Stockholm at the UN Cairo conference in 1994.
Biologists are likely to emphasize
that without achieving MDG 7 on the environment the rest will become impossible.
Even with the current maldistribution of resources, population problems will
not end when growth stops as the Earth is already over-populated. We are
grossly out of balance with the life support systems of the planet and
effectively living off natural capital of soils, water and biodiversity
systems. The balance would be far worse if every MDG were to be achieved and
the poor of the world were to achieve living standards even approaching those
of a middling rich country.
Whatever the concerns of biologists,
progress has to begin from where we are now. While there is persistent
recognition that much of human activity across our world is un-sustainable population growth has continued. In
the 40 years between Stockholm 72 and Rio+20 in 2012, population grew from just
under 4 billion to over 7 billion. However, despite this gigantic change,
public emphasis had shifted from population itself to progress on all those
other issues listed in the MDGs. There are obvious barriers to our success in
achieving the environmental sustainability aspired to in MDG 7, with concern
over climate change and the rapid loss of biodiversity currently two of the
most prominent.
Why has population growth itself had
a reduced profile since the scares of the 1970s? In part it must be accepted
that some of the earlier calls for birth control were not well-handled and were
easily vulnerable to accusations of neo-colonialism and racism. There were
major advances in agricultural productivity involving new food plant varieties,
increased nitrogen from cheap fossil fuels, and more irrigation. We did not
experience famine in 1975 – at least not all over the world. Nor was there a
perceptible explosion from the population bomb. Malthus was dismissed as
obviously wrong. In this optimistic mood discussion about human numbers became
awkward and seen as harsh and unattractive. Governments in the rich world
developed overseas aid programmes and public opinion was generally enthusiastic
about helping poor nations emerge from poverty.
In Britain a number of new and highly
successful charities became prominent. Friends of the Earth (FoE) rapidly took over from the middle-aged, middle-class
Conservation Society which vanished. It retains the earlier body’s emphasis on
resources and environment, population is recognised as a factor, but is not
directly part of its campaigning. Other fund-raising charities such
as OXFAM, Save the Children and CAFOD, stress only the most directly
human-centred MDGs and never mention rising numbers as a problem. Of course,
there remain groups which do continue to emphasise the problems associated with
population growth and, like the Conservation Society, include the rich world in
their considerations. Notable amongst these is the Optimum Population Trust, which metamorphosed into Population Matters, and has become increasingly effective in raising
issues in a British and European context.
We are now well into the 21st Century
and moving inexorably towards our 8th billion, with UN estimates of future
population growth mostly being revised in an upward direction. In Britain,
those of us who try to link human numbers to the actions required to achieve
the Millennial Goals have come across a new barrier: there is a persistent and
powerful dichotomy of views within what we might call ‘the environmental
movement’ in the broad sense. If we engage activists in various groups, ranging
from popular to academic, to express our concern about numbers, then the
commonest response is: ‘It’s not population! It’s poverty, greed, inequality,
the position of women etc….’. Such responses often carry the implication that
to stress human numbers is somehow offensive, almost as if we blame the
countries which are growing for their own predicament. There is an imbalance here
which I experience personally, for if somebody approaches me and, for example,
speaks of their concern about poverty in Africa, I do not respond: ‘It isn’t poverty, it’s population
growth!’. Of course poverty is a huge problem requiring immediate direct action
on many fronts. Reduction of the birth rate will offer no immediate relief – it
would manifestly not be sufficient –
but failing to recognise it as necessary is to
pursue an illusion.
Africa is the most relevant example
here because birth rates remain so high in comparison with other areas which
have seen some remarkable declines. More and more African governments now
accept that their population growth is too high and cripples their economic
development. There are heroic efforts based locally and supported by outside
aid groups and the UN, but they still lack sufficient funding or priority.
Infrastructure development, food production and health attract the main
attention. ‘Death control’ must always have a high priority, but reducing the
birth rate will benefit development in every area and should be linked to
overseas aid. Nor is this coercive since every survey shows that there is a huge
unmet demand for contraception even before there has been sufficient progress
on the empowerment of women. Providing the one will help to accelerate the
other and offers extraordinarily good long-term value for money.
However diverse and complicated the
contexts in which population growth occurs, it should be recognised as a truly
global phenomenon. With every day that passes we add – net – about 200,000 more humans and because of the
global age structure (with a great preponderance of young people) there is
built-in growth momentum. None of the UN estimates predict stabilisation
anytime soon. Could there be a more inconvenient truth?
Global estimates conceal diversity:
predictions are that whilst Africa will continue to grow rapidly for decades,
Europe will slow and soon begin to decline with birth rates below replacement
level. But again there is diversity within Europe, and I want to argue that
Britain’s population deserves close attention.
In 1969 the then Institute of Biology
ran a symposium and published The Optimum Population for
Britain (Taylor, 1970). Over 40 years on I believe it should be
remembered as a significant event. Here was a distinguished group including
demographers, biologists, medical scientists and economists discussing the
future in relation to the number of people in a wealthy, developed Western
country. It is no surprise that there was considerable disagreement and several
argued that the idea of identifying an optimum population was meaningless: how
could any generation decide an optimum for a Britain in which they would not be
living? Again, no surprise that the biologists took a more pragmatic approach
based around our natural resources in relation to the rest of the world. A poll
of the speakers and their audience (mostly biologists) revealed 90% believed
Britain, then at 55.6 million, was already overpopulated.
Since then we have added well over 9
million and, whilst population growth slowed during the 70s, it has risen again
and is higher now than it was 50 years ago. We are adding nearly 500,000 extra
people each year, about half from so-called ‘natural growth’ (the surplus of
births over deaths) and half from net immigration. There is certainly no
shortage of discussion about immigration, but what I find amazing is that there
is no discussion or comment about the actual numbers of people: our population. Even if there were no net immigration
Britain would grow by a million every 4 years; is that a good thing or a bad
thing? Is it sustainable or are there limits?
Almost invariably when there is any
report of some symposium or discussion on a sustainable path for Britain’s
future then our population is mentioned but with no further comment: it is
taken as ‘a given.’ There may be much advocacy of switching to renewable
energy, accelerating house building, increasing food production etc., but no
suggestion that we might also limit numbers.
There are always two obvious
questions about population growth: first, should we take action at all, and
second what could we do? There are many who oppose any attempt to influence
numbers directly here or abroad. They argue that pushing for the MDGs will lead
to falling birth rates as they already have in parts of south-east Asia and the
Middle East. This is all we can or ought to promote, it is politically
acceptable and few would dissent even if we do not regard it as sufficient.
When we turn attention to a wealthy
country like Britain, densely populated by world standards, the issues are more
complex. ‘Growth’ is sought always and everywhere. Of course it is economic growth to which we refer, but
historically population growth has gone with it as part of the phenomenal
success of the rich world since the industrial revolution. Increased production
and consumption by a growing work force has led to increased wealth and living
standards with it. Its advantages have gone unquestioned until recently, but
the strains are now becoming obvious. However, those of us who criticise the
continued pursuit of growth are duty bound to acknowledge the enormous benefits
our fortunate part of the human race owes to the growth we have experienced
until now.
The rich world continues the pursuit
of what we might call ‘Plan-A’ economics as the only way to develop and bring
prosperity to all. For all the gross inequalities which persist and the failure
of growth alone to address them, it is easy to understand why so many still
hold to the faith in Plan-A.
Some 50 years ago the economist and
philosopher Kenneth Boulding was reported to have remarked:
Anyone who believes exponential
growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.[1] (United States. Congress. House
(1973) p. 248)
Nevertheless there are still many who
simply do not accept that there are any constraints on growth that innovation
cannot overcome[2]. Population growth fits so easily into
such a mind-set especially as it will yield more young producers to offset the
ageing populations requiring wealth generation to support them in the future.
But then these young will also age and require support from more young, and so
on. Such population growth represents an economic Ponzi scheme with no closure.
To get beyond this we shall be forced to accept that other things beyond
economic growth must be encouraged. The distribution of wealth within the rich societies
is the most obvious. If we can reduce inequality then there are many indicators
that beyond a certain level material prosperity and quality of life are not
closely linked. The measures we have to examine such quality are not yet
precise, but surely they must form part of our search for sustainability.
As the Kenneth Boulding quote
suggests, it is physical things which cannot grow indefinitely. Ideas certainly
can and we shall need much innovation there. We cannot turn around Plan-A
economics quickly, but after decades of neglect there are now some prominent
economists contemplating an end to material growth and thinking about how to
develop economies with a slowly declining population. For the present this is a
rich world issue. Economic growth decoupled from population growth is essential
for the developing world if any kind of equity is to be achieved.
Britain, already rich (the 5th
largest economy worldwide) and densely populated, continues to add people. As Migration Watch (2016) points out, a high
proportion of this growth is due to net immigration, a highly contentious
topic. I suggest that this does not reflect an inherent xenophobia. We do not
resent immigration because it makes us feel crowded, it is because we feel
crowded already that immigration is resented. Several opinion surveys
over the past decade suggest strongly that people are indeed concerned about
population growth here and abroad. References to ‘these crowded islands’ are
common with a number of surveys revealing that a large majority believe Britain
would be better with fewer people (Migration Watch 2016a). Now I concede that
these may be snap judgements, the implications of which are not thought
through, but surely it could be the basis for some new thinking. Yet although
our large population is almost invariably mentioned when Britain’s future
development is discussed, it remains part of the ‘predict and provide’ policies
of our planning agencies. There is never a hint that we might try to influence
population as a matter of policy. In part this is because our numbers are
supposedly linked to our economic growth (Plan-A will not accept that there are
limits), but it goes far deeper than this.
To follow through from that YouGov
survey implies that too many children are being born, but such a suggestion
remains totally unacceptable. The obvious benefits offered by a Britain with a
stable or slowly declining population are familiar (they are well set out on
the Population Matterswebsite)
but to link them explicitly to family size seems taboo. Universally this is
regarded as a matter of intimate personal choice and hence untouchable.[3] Even groups who emphasise
sustainability are evasive. Euphemisms creep in. One of the commonest is talk
of ‘reproductive health’, which on one definition (derived from various UN
declarations) implies, that people, ‘…have the capability to reproduce and the
freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so’ (World Health Organization
2015).
This freedom is taken as one of the
universal human rights. It is adopted by all shades of politics. However
admirable its intent, I believe in the modern world this is a dangerous
illusion and in a country like Britain it is downright wrong. Deciding to have
a child is not just a personal choice
because the state (i.e. all of us) effectively underwrites every such decision.
It undertakes to provide an environment in which each child has reasonable life
prospects and if things go wrong it will step in with direct help. Thus
government has every right to try to influence the birth rate when seeking
sustainability.
How could we translate this
conclusion into an acceptable policy? After 50 years of concern about
population growth I have learnt to suppress any radical thoughts about control.
I would regard it as a major advance if government at all levels takes just the
first very modest step to accept – explicitly – that numbers count. For example, the Office for
National Statistics (ONS) (2016) predicts that by mid-2027 Britain’s population
will pass 70 million. What are the implications for our future? Nothing could
be more important, for while population growth is a global issue, if a rich
developed nation begins to question its own growth it could become a powerful
influence. It would really mean that Britain thinks globally and acts locally.
Yet we seem unwilling even to discuss
possibilities. It would be easily possible to push for smaller families in an
acceptable way if we were open about it. The state supports parenthood and it
is right to do so, but from 2017 it will not do so beyond a second child[4]. Why not link this policy explicitly to our growth and to people’s sense of
a crowded and unsustainable Britain? This link is particularly important
because otherwise restriction of child allowances could suggest a 2-child
policy for the poor while larger families for wealthier people are of no
account.
For all the concerns about ever
growing requirements we have to recognise that our culture remains strongly
pro-natalist. Childless couples may, grotesquely, be called selfish and
recently a woman who wished to be sterilized as she was sure she did not want
children was bombarded by abusive messages (Gee 2015). Children are marvellous,
essential and not going to go away anytime soon, but childbirth fills the popular
media with perpetual sentimental chatter with so-called celebrity women and
their ‘bumps’ displayed for adulation. At the other end of the market, in The Timeswe find a
wealthy middle-class columnist agonising about her coming ‘empty nest’ and whether
she was foolish not to have had a third child like some of her friends (Turner
2016). All of this gossipy stuff leaves the impression that one more child is
neither here nor there and is alwayswonderful. We need to move to a mind-set
which retains that wonder but acknowledges the truly global impact of growing
ever more Britons. ‘Two will do’ and ‘every child a wanted child’ are slogans
from the old days of family planning. In contrast a recent study suggests 40%
of pregnancies are unplanned (Sedgh et al, 2014)
(which of course is not to say that all the resulting children remain
unwanted). In Britain these ideas will now have to be shared with the new
immigrants who, because they are young and often from cultures which have
traditionally larger families, contribute substantially to our rising numbers.
We cannot ignore this, but we can try to change attitudes only if such efforts
are seen, again explicitly, to be addressing the problem of too many births
from all sections of crowded Britain.
I struggle to retain some optimism
against a background of evasion and denial. Discussion of how to reduce
birth-rates seems completely taboo. Amongst many of the public my comments
above will automatically lead to cries of fascist, racist and anti-human. But
it is even worse: over the past year or more I have approached five well
organised academic/business/political ‘think tanks’ whose aims are to consider
all aspects of how Britain should prepare for and adapt to the social and
environmental future. They have covered education, employment, energy, food,
transport and all aspects of the associated infrastructure. As a biologist, I
have suggested in, I trust, moderate and rational terms, that Britain’s
population – just the numbers – should come onto their programme. Two groups,
reasonably enough, claimed other immediate priorities but three, even after
repeated tries, did not reply. I was not even dignified with an
acknowledgement. It is all too embarrassing and contentious – best to deny the
issue altogether and just soldier on, working round the elephant in the room as
best we can.
In conclusion, I have to concede that
my prediction for the future is only one of many and has a biological bias.
Thus I would hope our very limited number of great grandchildren could grow up
in a world that still has elephants and all that their survival implies. There
are alternatives: we could just let things go on as now or even concentrate on
maximising humans (although they would have to accept many compromises in the
way they lived). From a strongly left-wing perspective, in Population and Development (1997) the sociologist
Frank Furedi argues that those in favour of
population control erode the necessary confidence that we can tackle future
problems and fail to accept that human life should always be treated as
precious and special. He asks, ‘How can there possibly be too many of us?’
(2007). Any biologist could provide an answer.
Between the extremes there are an
infinity of intermediates. At least a much lower population would leave our
descendants with some alternatives for their future. As we are set at present
we are trudging up a down escalator and we risk the Earth’s life support
systems slowly being swept down with us. The technological innovations for
recovery which we will need are relatively simple. It is the mindset within us
that we must struggle to change and this will not be easy.
‘Go, go, go, said the bird: human
kind
Cannot bear very much reality.’
T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets
Notes
[1] Attributed to
Kenneth Boulding by John S. Steinhart.
[2] My favourite
quotation here is the title of a piece in The Times some
3 years back by Mark Littlewood, CEO Inst.of Economic Affairs, ‘Triple
the population – we’ll all be better off.’ (2013)
[3] Cynics will
note that throughout history governments have not infrequently exhorted people
to have more children when the
economics seems to require it – as Italy does at the moment (Badshah 2016).
[4] Changes in
Child Tax Credit mean that from April 2017 support will be limited to two
children.
References
Badshah, N. (2016) Italy bribes
families to have babies. The Times 16
May 2016.
Ehrlich, Paul R. (1968) The Population Bomb. Ballantine Books, New York.
Furedi, F. (1997) Population and Development: A Critical Introduction.
Polity, Cambridge.
Furedi, F. (2007) Population Control. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/3503#.VzGl5NfXat8. [Accessed 10
May 2016].
Gee, A., BBC News. (2015) The trouble with saying you don’t want children.
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34916433.
[Accessed 15 April 2016].
Littlewood, M, (2016) Triple The
Population – We’ll All Be Better Off. The Times, 24 June
2013. 0.
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[Accessed 10 May 2016].
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at: http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/249.
[Accessed 10 May 2016].
Paddock, W. and Paddock, P. (1967) Famine 1975! Little Brown & Co., Boston
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Recent Trends. Studies in Family Planning Vol.
45 Issue 3.
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Press, London
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Killed Off My Baby Pangs. The Times, 11
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