Defusing the Population Explosion

also published in The Age, 28 December 1998

For the past fifty years humanity has been haunted by the spectre of overpopulation.  Doomsayers warn that the world's current population of 5.9 billion could double or triple within our children's lifetime, and present alarming scenarios for the future -- unprecedented famines;  the exhaustion of crucial resources;  billions of refugees pouring out of degraded treeless lands and heading for the few remaining pockets of prosperity.

But the "population explosion" is nowhere near as serious as portrayed.  Indeed, some demographers suggest that the real problems many countries will face over the next century are dislocations resulting from ageing populations and declining numbers of people.

True, the world's population has nearly doubled since 1960.  But beginning in the mid-1960s, there have been stunning, and quite unexpected, reductions in fertility rates in nearly all parts of the world.  Remarkably, the general public seems largely unaware that these have occurred.

A few weeks ago the United Nations announced the conclusions of its 1998 biennial revision of world population figures.  The announcement attracted very little media attention, even though the results give a wallop to the doomsayers.

In 61 countries the total fertility rate -- a basic demographic measure representing the average number of children women bear during their lifetime -- is now below the level required for population replacement.

These countries comprise 44 per cent of the world's population, and include virtually every developed nation, as well as the whole of eastern Asia apart from Mongolia.  In another 34 countries in Asia and Latin America fertility rates are only a little higher than the replacement level, and declining rapidly.

The United Nations also presented a number of projections of future global population based on different assumptions about likely trends in fertility rates.  The "medium variant" projection gives a total population of 8.9 billion people in the year 2050, down from 9.4 billion just two years ago, and 9.8 billion in the 1994 revision.

The UN states the medium variant is considered the most likely, although some demographers have pointed out that historically, the "low variant" projections have been more accurate.  These now predict a world population of 7.3 billion -- and falling -- by 2050;  down from the 7.9 billion predicted in 1994.

There is considerable debate about the reasons for this extraordinary turnaround in world fertility.  Explanations invoking economic development or widespread access to family planning programs seem deficient, because in some places substantial declines in birth rates began before significant industrialisation and economic advances, and before modern contraceptives became widely available.

Obviously, providing safe and reliable contraceptives for all people who wish to use them is a worthy objective.  Yet research in many countries suggests that the real key to falling fertility lies not in family planning programs, but in women deciding they want to have fewer children.

Amongst other things, these decisions seem to be influenced by new ideas about women's roles and childbearing stemming largely from education and exposure to Western media;  changes in economic costs and benefits of having children;  and major reductions in child mortality which allow parents to achieve their desired family size with fewer births.

Nevertheless, even the most optimistic projections suggest that there will be another 1.4 billion people in the next fifty years.  For population control freaks like the American Paul Ehrlich and his followers, who think there are far too many people already, this is still terrible news.  How will they be fed, they ask?  How will the increasing expectations of people in developing countries be met without causing environmental catastrophe?

Here again, the signs are positive.  World food production has continually outpaced population growth since the 1950s, and food is now more abundant and affordable than at any time in history.  This has come about through dramatic improvements in agricultural yields, rather than through substantial increases in the amount of land planted with crops.

Some of the most spectacular gains have occurred in countries once thought to be basket cases.  The 1967 best-seller, Famine 1975!, claimed the situation in India was so bad that the country should be allowed to starve, so food aid could be conserved for nations that might eventually be able to feed themselves.  But now, India is a significant exporter of food.  Recent years have also seen impressive gains in many African countries, as new crop varieties are introduced and economic policies which discouraged food production are abandoned.

These successes seem bewildering to doomsaying environmentalists.  Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute begins each year by warning that the increases in agricultural output cannot continue, despite having been wrong for the past two decades.

But far from being at the end of a period of rapidly improving agricultural yields, we may only be in its early stages.  The potential of biotechnology is enormous, promising benefits such as greatly reduced crop losses to pests and diseases while decreasing the need for chemical treatments, and major improvements in drought resistance and salt tolerance in plants, as well as in the nutritional content of staple foods.

Not only will such developments permit food to be grown for billions more people, they will allow the return of large areas of present farmlands to wildlife habitat.  We might therefore think that environmental activists would welcome biotechnology, but most denounce it as a "technological fix".  Their affinities are for "social engineering fixes", despite the sorry record of this century's attempts to remodel human beings along the lines that the activists would like.

Although it might seem plausible to suggest that increasing numbers of people will place added pressures on the earth's ecology, the relationships between humans and the environment are extremely complex.  Densely populated countries with people who care about the environment, and who have the scientific knowledge and social, legal and economic institutions which encourage efficiency and the sound management of nature can do far better than sparsely populated countries without such qualities.

And recent research from semi-arid zones in Africa suggests that under the appropriate conditions, rapid population growth can actually lead to environmental improvement as well as productivity increases.  One key study was carried out in the Machakos district of Kenya by a team from the Overseas Development Institute in London, and the University of Nairobi.

Records from the 1930s show that Machakos was then regarded as an overpopulated environmental disaster area.  But by the early 1990s, the situation had been reversed, although the population was five times larger than it had been 60 years earlier.

Gullied treeless slopes had become terraced fields, extensive water conservation activities had been introduced, and the district had become more wooded.  The main force for these improvements was the pressure on land, which made it more valuable.  This increased the incentives for people to invest in conservation measures and to adopt new more environmentally friendly practices.

As one of the research team's leaders commented, "terracing, tree planting, distributing manure or fertilisers are not consistent with low population density.  There is an inherent contradiction in calling simultaneously for intensified, conservationary land use and for family planning".

There are other reasons for being wary of the population controllers, even though they are now repackaging themselves as crusaders for women's empowerment.  Many people in Africa and Asia perceive the Western enthusiasm for population control in their countries as expressing a fear that there are too many non-Europeans in the world.

Their suspicions may have some justification.  Many of the people who first placed the "population explosion" on the political agenda had questionable, and even racist motives.  Some were involved with the now discredited eugenics movement, which aimed to reduce or prevent births among certain supposedly inferior people.

William Vogt, whose 1948 book Road to Survival had an enormous impact in the United States, denounced the "untrammelled copulation" of Indians who were "breeding with the irresponsibility of codfish", and said that the greatest tragedy China could suffer would be "a reduction in her death rate".  And in their urge to reduce birth rates in the developing world many contemporary advocates of population control ignore -- and often excuse -- the terrible human rights abuses that have occurred in the name of family planning in China and elsewhere.

So given Australia's less-than-wonderful past attitudes towards non-whites, and our intellectuals' eagerness to tell the world that we are still a "deeply racist" nation, perhaps one way we could redeem ourselves would be to end all support for population programs in the Third World.

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