First online: 10 June 2019
Empty planet: the shock of global population
decline.
by
Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. London: Robinson 2019. £14.99 (GBP). 288pp.
ISBN 978-1-47214-296-2.
David
Samways – editor
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2019.3.2.87
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Samways, D. 2016. 'Empty planet: the shock of global population decline by Darell Bricker and John Ibbitson'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 3(2): 87–90.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2019.3.2.87
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Unless
written by academics or leading figures in their field, books aimed squarely at
the popular market are usually not considered for academic review. However, Empty Planet by
Darell Bricker and John Ibbitson certainly warrants critical examination as it
articulates many of the discourses of population disavowal (Coole, 2013). In
particular, Bricker and Ibbitson’s use of demographic transition theory to
further a sanguine view of population growth, especially in relation to environmental
impact, is notable.
Demographic
transition theory (DTT) will be familiar to the majority of readers of this
review, but it is worth giving a brief summary. According to classical DTT,
prior to economic development (Stage 1) a country’s demographic structure will
be characterised by high, and roughly equal, mortality and fertility rates
leading to largely stable populations. As economic development takes place,
improvements in the food supply, sanitation, etc. produce DTT’s second stage of
rapid population growth as mortality rates fall while fertility rates remain
unchanged. DTT’s third stage is characterised by a fall in fertility rates due
to factors including: urbanisation and the decline of subsistence agriculture;
increases in wages; increases in the general level of education, and in
particular the education of women; increasing social and economic participation
of women; the use of contraception, and so on. During this stage population
continues to grow due to demographic momentum due to its age structure.
However, stage 3 eventually gives way to Stage 4: as the demographic structure
shifts, births once again equal deaths, and population stabilises – albeit a
higher level.
Bricker
and Ibbitson’s take on DTT places an emphasis on the role of urbanisation
leading to greater levels of female education. They argue that due to the
unrecognised accelerating pace of urbanisation, the UN’s projection of
continuing global population growth peaking at 11 billion by the end of the
century is a massive overestimate. While Bricker and Ibbitson are right to
point out that there is debate and discussion concerning the accuracy of UN’s
population projections, they fail to adequately explore this issue or the
reasons why the UN has consistently revised the figures in an upward direction.
Their argument is inadequately supported and researched, with the authors
preferring to draw on interviews, newspaper reports and a Youtube TedX talk
rather than conduct a review of the demographic literature. The figure at which
Bricker and Ibbitson believe population is likely to peak is unstated, but
figures of between 8 and 9 billion by mid century are mentioned.
The
book’s title, Empty Planet: The Shock of
Global Population Decline is
obviously deliberately sensationalist and provocative. Yet it’s worth pointing
out that even the most optimistic sources drawn upon by Bricker and Ibbitson
forecast that global population will not cease growing until the middle of this
century at the earliest. While only indirectly citing their research, Bricker
and Ibbitson’s thesis has clearly been influenced by the work of the World
Population Programme at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA) who have produced perhaps the most well respected alternative to the UN
projections. Working in collaboration with the Wittgenstein Centre for
Demography and Global Human Capital (WCDGHC) the IIASA’s 2014 population
projections differ from the UN’s in that they model the effect of education on
fertility rates. While indeed lower than the UN’s figures, the IIASA/WCDGHC
medium projection still gives a peak of 9.4 billion in 2070 (Lutz et al.,
2014). However, more importantly for the titular claim of Empty Planet, research from contributors to the
IIASA/WCDGHC project showed that at a world average total fertility rate (TFR)
of just 1.5, somewhat below the current European average of 1.58, it would take
around 200 years for the population to fall back to around 3 billion (Basten et
al., 2013). A population of 3 billion was last seen in the 1960s and is
believed by many to be the level compatible with ecological sustainability (see
Daily et al. 1994). Neither of these population projections is suggestive of a
very much emptier planet any time soon!
The
most problematic aspect of Bricker and Ibbitson’s use of DTT is their tendency
to present the outcome of transition, driven by a logic of convergent
modernisation toward a cultural and demographic homogeneity, as autonomous and
inevitable. Indeed, Bricker and Ibbitson lament this inevitable loss of
cultural diversity. DTT is frequently mobilised as a critique by those
sceptical about population growth as a problem, the argument being that once
the transition is completed growth will cease (Coole, 2013). However, while
Bricker and Ibbitson are clearly aligned with such a position, they go further
in arguing that a fifth stage of transition, where fertility rates fall below
replacement levels and population declines, is also an inevitable outcome of
the same forces. Indeed, such trends have been observed in most of the
developed world (Myrskylä, et al., 2009).
However,
as Coole (2018) has noted, the question for those concerned with population
growth has never pivoted around whether or not the rate of growth is declining
(or even becoming negative), but whether the pace of decline is fast enough to
keep us within ecological boundaries. It is Bricker and Ibbitson’s apparent
environmental ignorance that is most problematic here. Notwithstanding the fact
that little mention of the environment is made before page 227, they seem
unaware that humanity has already breached sustainable ecological boundaries
(McBain et al. 2017). Moreover, they fail to acknowledge that, without a change
from business-as-usual economics coupled with a reduction of total resource
consumption along with a shift from north to south in their distribution,
irreversible ecological damage could result (Hickel, 2018). Like other forms of
population disavowal, Bricker and Ibbitson’s faith in the autonomous forces of
DTT to bring about population reduction risks contributing to a climate of
complacency and inaction that may find its way into the policies of governments
and NGOs. As Bricker and Ibbitson themselves acknowledge, in many parts of the
world it has been active government policy that has achieved huge and rapid
reductions in fertility. Iran, Bangladesh, South Korea and China have all
successfully reduced fertility in pursuit of improved welfare. However, changes
in government policy and the priorities of NGOs have already been shown as a
cause of stalling fertility decline (see Sinding, 2009; Kebede et al. 2019).
Reducing population as part of tackling ecological overshoot requires more than
a reliance on the supposedly autonomous logic of demographic transition. If we
fail to address this challenge the only kind of empty planet we will experience
is one empty of ever-greater numbers of species crushed beneath the juggernaut
of the Anthropocene.
Coole,
D., 2013. Too many bodies? The return and disavowal of the population question. Environmental Politics, [e-journal] 22:2, 195-215,
DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2012.730268
Coole,
D., 2018. Should we control world
population? Cambridge:
Polity
Basten,
S., Lutz, W. and Scherbov, S. 2013. Very long range global population scenarios
to 2300 and the implications of sustained low fertility. Demographic Research. [e-journal] Volume 28,
Article 39, pp. 1145-1166. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2013.28.39
Daily,
G., Ehrlich, A.H., Ehrlich, P.R. 1994. Optimum human population size. Population and Environment, 15 (6), pp.469-475.
Hickel,
J., 2018. Is it possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary
boundaries? Third World Quarterly.
[e-journal] https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1535895
Kebede,
E., Goujon, A., and Lutz, W., 2019. Stalls in Africa’s fertility decline partly
result from disruptions in female education. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
[e-journal] www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1717288116
Lutz,
W., Butz, W.P., and KC, S. eds., 2014. World population and human
capital in the Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press
McBain,
B., Lenzen, M., Wackernagel, M., Albrecht, G., 2017. How long can global
ecological overshoot last? Global and Planetary Change.
[e-journal] doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.06.002
Myrskylä,
M. Kohler, H-P. & Billari, F.C. 2009. Advances in development reverse
fertility declines. Nature.
[e-journal] Vol. 460 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08230
Sinding,
S.W., 2009. Population, poverty and economic development. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B [e-journal] 364: 3023-3030.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0145