peopleandplanet.net, May 15, 2006
Population
hearings open in UK parliament
By Cynthia Dailard
Parliamentary Hearings have opened in
London into how population growth is effecting
the UN Millennium Development Goals. This
is widely seen as significant in view
of the fact that neither Population nor
Reproductive Health were listed in the
seven goals set out by the United Nations
at the turn of the century. Indeed population
has been an almost taboo subject in international
discussions since 1994 when the Cairo
Conference on Population and Development
put the emphasis on reproductive health
and rights.
Planet 21 is one of 55 agencies and individuals
making submissions.The hearings are being
held by the UK All Party Parliamentary
Group on Population, Development and Reproductive
Health and will continue until July, with
verbal statements and questions to experts
from UK and around the world.
Among those who are due to speak are Klaus
Toepfer, former Executive Director of
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Thoraya
Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, Steven
Sinding, Director General of the International
Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF),
Francis Kissling, President of Catholics
for a Free Choice, Sir David King, Chief
Scientific Adviser to the UK Government,
and senior spokespeople from WHO, the
World Bank and the IMF.
Other speakers will include representatives
from both China and Africa and leading
academics, including Michael Lipton, from
Sussex University, John Cleland from the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine and Malcolm Potts from Berkeley
in California.
The seven MGD goals relate to poverty and
hunger, universal primary education, gender
equality and empowerment of women, child
mortality, maternal health, HIV/Aids,
malaria and other diseases and environmental
sustainabilty.
This last goal, and how population growth
relates to environmental sustainability,
is the subject of Planet 21's submission
by John Rowley, which is reproduced in
full below. All the written submissions
are available on the parliamentary group's
website, given below.
Population growth and environmental sustainability:
DEFINING THE QUESTION
The United Nations defines environmental
sustainability as “using natural
resources wisely and protecting the complex
ecosystems on which our survival depends.”
The question at hand is how far has population
growth made that aim more difficult –
and how far will slowing and stabilising
future growth make it easier to achieve?
It is not a simple question to answer
because there are many other interacting
factors at work, including social, environmental
and technological changes – and because
the question needs to be answered in local
and regional terms as well as global ones.
Commenting on Goal 7, the UN Millennium
Development Report 2005 says bluntly:
“sustainability will not be achieved
with current patterns of resource consumption
and use. Land is becoming degraded at
an alarming rate. Plant and animal species
are being lost in record numbers. The
climate is changing, bringing with it
threats of rising sea levels and worsening
droughts and floods. Fisheries and other
marine resources are being overexploited.”
But in the same document few references
are made to how population growth is at
least partly responsible for driving these
disastrous changes. The required action
is framed in very general terms, calling
for ‘policies that integrate the
principles of sustainable development
into country policies and programmes’
and which ‘pay greater attention
to the plight of the poor and [which involve]
an unprecedented level of global co-operation’.
There are no references to population
policies as such.
The fact that resources are consumed and
used by people, and that the numbers doing
the consuming matter, is not given more
than passing attention. The few references
to population are, however, significant.
Referring to the fact that 1.1 billion
people are still using water ‘from
unimproved sources [often carried in buckets
from polluted ponds and streams]’
including 42 per cent of the population
of sub-Saharan Africa, it comments that
the obstacles to progress ‘are especially
daunting given the high population growth
rates’ in that region.
Moreover, it states that ‘close to
2.4 billion people worldwide will still
be without improved sanitation in 2015,
that is almost as many as there are today
[because the numbers continue to grow
at a very fast rate in many countries]’.
Again, it points out that 100 million people
are added to the urban communities of
the developing world each year, which
are growing three times faster than rural
areas – or by three per cent a year.
As a result “Nearly one in three
city dwellers – almost 1 billion
people – live in slums in conditions
characterised by overcrowding, little
employment or security of tenure, poor
water, sanitation and health services,
and widespread insecurity…”
There has, it seems, been a reluctance to
grapple with such population factors in
a systematic way ever since the UN Conference
on Population and Development, held in
Cairo in 1994. This global meeting usefully
redefined the problem in terms of sexual
and reproductive health and the status
of women, but rather overlooked the environmental
imperatives of population stabilisation,
both globally and, more particularly,
in the least developed parts of Africa
and South Asia. The important question
of migration was left on one side to be
dealt with at a future conference that
has not yet materialised.
This submission will attempt to highlight
some of these omissions, especially in
the world’s poorest countries.
THE GLOBAL PICTURE
In his challenging book, Collapse (Penguin
UK, 2006, £9.99), Jared Diamond
summarises the central dilemma inherent
in discussions of population in relation
to environmental sustainability at a time
at a time of rapid economic development,
especially in Asia:
“What really counts is not the number
of people alone, but their impact on the
environment… the resources consumed,
and the wastes put out by each person”,
he writes. This is a matter that varies
greatly between rich and poor countries
“with on average each citizen of
the US, Western Europe and Japan consuming
32 times more resources such as fossil
fuels, and putting out 32 times more wastes,
than do inhabitants of the Third World.
“The overwhelmingly most important
human population problem for the world
as a whole”, he concludes, is not
the high rate of population increase in
countries such as Kenya or Rwanda, important
though these are to such countries, but
the increase in the total human impact
on the planet as living standards rise
around the world, and migrants to the
industrialised world adopt high consumption
life styles.
“There are many ‘optimists’
who say that the world could support double
its human population, and who consider
only the increase in human numbers and
not the average increase in per capita
impact. But I have not met anyone who
seriously argues that the world could
support 12 times its current impact, though
an increase of that factor would result
from all Third World inhabitants adopting
first World living standards.”
If China alone were to achieve a First World
living standard while the rest of the
world stood still, he estimates that the
impact on the planet’s environmental
resources would double.
It is a concern widely echoed by other commentators
including the WWF, whose annual Living
Planet 2002 report concluded that the
human population would need two planets
within 50 years if natural resources continue
to be exploited at the current rate (see
chart). Already, said the 2004 report,
humans are consuming 20 per cent more
natural resources than the earth can produce,
resulting in declines in terrestrial,
freshwater and marine species by an average
of 40 per cent between 1970 and 2000.
“Rising demand for energy, food, and
raw materials by 2.5 billion Chinese and
Indians is already having ripple effects
worldwide,” says Worldwatch President
Christopher Flavin. "Meanwhile, record-shattering
consumption levels in the US and Europe
leave little room for this projected Asian
growth." He could have added that
the 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians are
projected to grow to 3 billion by 2050.
Worldwatch sees this both as a threat and
an opportunity for such countries to take
a different path towards development.
But that will surely be more difficult
if India grows, as projected, to some
1.8 billion people before stabilising.
In his book, Lester Brown questions whether
the UN median projection of world population
rising from 6.4 billion today to 9.1 billion
by 2050 can actually be possible. “Such
an increase seems highly unlikely, considering
the deterioration in life-support systems
now underway in much of the world. Will
we not reach 9.1 billion because we quickly
eradicate global poverty and lower birth
rates? Or because we fail to do so and
death rates begin to rise, as they are
already doing in many African countries?
We thus face two urgent major challenges:
restructuring the global economy and stabilising
world population.”
But apart from this overall picture, what
evidence is there that population growth
is contributing to specific environmental
problems, from the loss of biodiversity
to climate change, and that stabilising
it can be part of a solution that will
help achieve the MDG goal of environmental
sustainability? The following summary
is necessarily brief and selective.
SOME KEY INTERACTIONS
People and Forests:
Forests are expanding in much of the old
industrialised world, but shrinking in
most of the developing world with a huge
loss of biodiversity. In the last four
decades of the 20th century an area half
the size of the United States was cleared
of tropical forest while the developing
world’s population doubled to 4.7
billion.
It is generally agreed that population growth
is a primary underlying cause of forest
decline, interacting with poverty, corruption,
inequitable access to land, and wasteful
consumption alongside growing demands
for wood products. The dominant force
in forest loss is probably the demand
for farmland for subsistence farming,
but pressure on forestland is also growing
under the twin pressures for food and
fuel, including soya for animal feed and
biofuels as a replacement for oil.
Nearly 3 billion people use wood as a main
source of energy and women and children
are the chief victims of woodfuel scarcity.
Social investments linking education,
health, micro-credit and family planning
with conservation programmes show promise
and could ease these problems and help
sustain the forests, while slowing population
pressures.
People and water:
Global freshwater consumption grew six-fold
in the last century; twice the rate of
population growth, and demand continues
to grow while climate change threatens
to increase areas of low rainfall in Africa
and elsewhere. Already a third of the
world population lives in countries with
moderate to high water stress. Under present
consumption patterns two billion people
will live in high stress areas by 2050.
Agriculture accounts for more than 70 per
cent of water use, and demand is bound
to grow as population and per capita consumption
– including consumption of grain
and meat, which requires large quantities
of water to produce – increases.
Demand for industrial and household use
is expected to double by 2025, and to
increase up to five-fold in China where
cities are already competing with farmers
for the available water. The situation
is made more critical by pumping water
from deeper and deeper drills and from
shrinking aquifers. As Lester Brown has
said we are living in a food bubble, based
on water that cannot be replaced.
UK Defence Minister, Dr John Reid, echoed
his fears in a speech at Chatham House
on February 27 this year. According to
a report in The Independent newspaper,
he warned of the dangers of violent collision
between rising world population and shrinking
water resources, made more critical by
climate change. “Such changes”
he said, “make the emergence of violent
conflict more rather than less likely…The
blunt truth is that the lack of water
and agricultural land is a significant
contributory factor to the tragic conflict
we see in Darfur. We should see this as
a warning sign.”
Stabilising population sooner rather than
later will help conserve water as a finite
resource, and ease the danger that wars
over water will spread around the world.
It will also contribute to meeting the
problems of access to clean water and
sanitation, lack of which is mainly responsible
for 3 million deaths each year from cholera
and diarrhoea.
People, land and soil:
Human activities, linked to population pressures
and unsustainable agricultural practices,
have destroyed or severely degraded 11
per cent of the world’s arable land:
an area the size of India and China combined.
As a result, every year the world’s
farmers must feed 77 million more people
with 27 million fewer tons of topsoil.
The problem is especially serious in Africa
where farm holdings have shrunk as the
population has grown, and per capita yields
have fallen by as much as 30 per cent
over the last three decades. Some 65 per
cent of the region’s agricultural
land has been degraded. “As land
use intensifies, fallow periods decline
and cultivation spreads into marginal
and ecologically fragile lands”,
FAO explains.
It says that while Africa’s population
grew by 3 per cent a year in the three
decades to 1996, its annual food production
increased by only 1.9 per cent. In these
circumstances it projects that the number
of malnourished children in Africa could
grow from 29 to 41 million between 1980
and 2020 – a prospect not helped
by the spread of HIV/Aids.
Africa, of course, is not alone in facing
population-related pressures on the land.
China has lost arable land equivalent
to all the cropland in Denmark, France,
Germany and the Netherlands combined.
High population growth and low yields have
forced millions of small farmers to clear
forests, overgraze and cultivate marginal
lands, causing soil erosion and deepening
rural poverty. This, along with skewed
land holdings (especially in Latin America),
unsustainable logging, ranching, mining
and plantation farming has added to the
problems of environmental sustainability.
In some cases, as in Machakos in Kenya,
researchers claim that increased population
can stimulate new farming methods. Others
have pointed out, that in this particular
case, the community was aided by its closeness
to a large urban centre and by intensive
outside support. Where such support systems
and markets are not present in a typical
rural setting, such examples are hard
to find.
People and cities:
By 2007, half the world will live in towns
and cities. And by 2030 the urban population
is projected to reach 5 billion –
or 60 per cent of the world’s population.
Nearly all the population growth in those
30 years is expected to take place in
the cities of the less developed world,
whose combined population is on course
to more than double from 1.9 billion in
2000 to nearly 4 billion in 2030.
But in many of these urban centres, especially
in the least developed countries, a high
proportion of the residents live in miserable
conditions. According to the UN Habitat’s
report, The Challenge of the Slums: Global
Report on Human Settlements 2003, nearly
1 billion people (or one in three of the
world’s urban population) live in
slums – a figure which may rise to
2 billion if serious action is not taken.
600,000 of these people, today, cannot
meet their basic needs for shelter, water
or health from their own resources.
The hopeful fact is that urban communities
are generally in a better position to
take part in self-help schemes to improve
their homes, run credit schemes, set up
toilets and so on than in most rural settlements.
They may also be more motivated to plan
smaller families, providing they have
the means to do so.
Cities, specially large urban conglomerations,
put enormous pressure on resources far
beyond their borders and it is all the
more imperative to slow their growth,
before they become dangerously unmanageable.
People and climate change:
Just as past population increases influenced
the composition of the earth’s atmosphere
during the 20th century, the rate of population
increase in this century will influence
the earth’s climate for centuries
to come.
While countries with the most rapid population
growth have very low per capita carbon
emissions (one American may, on average,
emit 70 times as much as one Bangladeshi
farmer), the developing world is fast
becoming a major contributor to climate
change. In China, for example, emissions
of carbon grew from 1.5 to 2.8 metric
tons per capita between 1980 and 1996,
while its population grew from 984 million
to 1.22 billion. (The potential for this
to increase as China develops is clear
from the fact that, on average, each individual
in China emits only one-eighth of the
CO2 emitted by each citizen of the United
States). In 1996, China emitted 15 per
cent of the global emissions, second only
to the United States, and projections
show India and China becoming the major
contributors to climate change.
And if future trading agreements give all
citizens an equal right to use the atmosphere,
the overall size of the human population
will become a critical variable, affecting
each individual’s right to pollute.
People, coasts, oceans, mountains and
rivers:
Similar connections can be made for many
other vulnerable ecosystems. The pressure
on coastal zones is immense. Just over
half the world's population – around
3.2 billion people – occupies a coastal
strip 200 kilometres wide (120 miles),
representing only 10 per cent of the earth's
land surface. Increasing human numbers
and mounting development pressures are
taking a heavy toll on coastal wetlands,
mangroves, sea grasses, coral reefs and
biodiversity in general.
Rapidly expanding populations and the growth
of cities along coastlines has also contributed
to a rising tide of pollution in nearly
all of the world’s seas. Between
80 per cent and 90 per cent of all commercial
fish are caught within 320 kilometres
of land, and many within 50 kilometres.
Thus pollution, mostly from land-based
sources, is a contributing factor in falling
catches.
Coastal urban areas dump increasing loads
of toxic wastes into the sea. In fact,
waters around many coastal cities are
so thick with pollution that virtually
no marine life can survive.
Deforestation and erosion in heavily populated
mountain areas, is also threatening these
precious ecosystems, which provide the
water towers of the world, and the people
who cluster in the river valleys below.
Slowing population growth is only part
of the answer to such problems, but integrating
the social and health measures agreed
at Cairo in 1994, with other conservation
measures is an essential strategy in many
cases. It will also ease the future prospect
of environmental refugees growing ever
more numerous. Already the UN University
predicts that some 50 million will be
on the move from damaged environments
within five years.
PEOPLE, POVERTY AND A SUSTAINABLE PLANET
In all the discussion about population and
a sustainable future, it is sometimes
forgotten how big a role rapid increases
in human numbers continue to play in the
least developed parts of the world, which
are least able to meet their needs.
The population of the 50 least developed
countries is projected to more than double,
passing from 0.8 billion in 2005 to 1.7
billion in 2050, according to the 2005
World Population Prospects report from
the United Nations. These are also the
countries that are most affected by HIV/AIDS
and which lose most of the half million
women who die each year from childbirth-related
causes. And many are suffering from environmental
stress and a shortage of land.
According to Professor Antony Young of the
University of East Anglia, who has 40
years of experience working in 30 developing
countries, “Contrary to estimates
by the FAO, most developing countries
have no ‘spare land’ (land that
is not yet under agriculture but which
could be cultivated on a sustainable basis).
As a result, the effects of population
increase are counteracting advances in
rural development.”
He instances the case of Malawi, whose population
has grown from 3 million to 11 million
over the past 40 years, and is projected
to reach 47 million by 2050. Average farm
size has dropped to less than half a hectare,
soil fertility is much reduced and yields
are low. There are simply no viable development
options left to its Government or to the
rural people themselves, he says.
“This is a typical example of the future
for many developing countries, unless
they include measures to check population
increase in their development policy,”
he said in a report in the Geographical
Journal. “In order for the Millennium
Development Goals to succeed in the reduction
of hunger and poverty, the only long term
solution is to adopt the recommendations
of the UN 1994 Cairo Conference on Population
and Development.”
The same could be said of countries such
as Niger, on course to grow from 12 million
to 52 million people by 2050, for Ethiopia,
projected to grow from 72 million to 173
million or for rain-starved Yemen whose
20 million people are expected to grow
to 71 million by mid-century and for Pakistan
where fertility rates remain high, much
irrigated land is stressed by salinization
and where population is projected to grow
from 159 million to 228 by 2025 and 295
by 2050. For these and many other poor
countries it is quite wrong to assume
that the population bomb has been defused.
To see the other submissions go to http://www.appg-popdevrh.org.uk
© People & the Planet 2000 -
2006
