By Garda Ghista
The seed of human life began one million years ago in the land of Rahr, West Bengal. Then, 100,000 years ago the human population had reached one million, and those human beings were in the midst of the tool-making era. This was followed 10,000 years ago by the agricultural era, when the global population increased to 500 million. By 1000 AD the world population was still approximately 500 million, and maintained this figure until the Famine of Europe when it took a sharp dip. Population growth resumed through the Mongol invasion until the mid-1300s when the Black Death killed millions of people. From the 1400s onwards a steady growth in world population ensued, with numbers growing exponentially from 1800 onwards. During this period we saw the industrial revolution, accompanied by the transportation revolution, medical revolution and agricultural (Green) revolution. These technological advances brought momentous changes to the lives of the common people, and caused birth rates to rise and death rates to fall dramatically, such that by the year 1999 the world population crossed the six billion mark.
Demographers predict that by 2013 the world population will reach seven billion, in 2028 it will reach eight billion, in 2054 nine billion, and by the year 2200 it is projected to reach ten billion. In the chart below, we see that the quantities of population, resources, food, industrial output and pollution increase together, interweave and appear to synchronize. While population increase has thus far appeared to follow the exponential growth model, experts predict that population will taper off, along with resources, industrial output and food, thus corresponding to the logistic growth model. This is reflected in the gradually descending lines below of all factors.
The reason that the lines taper downwards and stabilize in the logistic model is due to the carrying capacity, meaning the maximum population size that a given environment can sustain. There are limiting factors in the environment, which in total are referred to as the environmental resistance. It is this environmental resistance that stabilizes any given population at its carrying capacity. Several factors contribute to environmental resistance, including space, food, partners (of the opposite sex), shelter, water, and prevalence of disease. While environmental resistance does put a check on population growth, Brennan and Withgott point out that throughout the 20th century the human population grew at a greater-than-exponential rate, which means the annual percentage increase rose from year to year, peaking during the sixties at 2.1 percent. Continuing at this growth rate, the global population would take just 33 years to double in size!
Experts say that the continuing increase in human population is not a problem and in fact may be good for economic growth. The reasons for the burst of population growth in recent years are technological innovations, increased agricultural output, better medical care, and declining death rates, including much lower infant mortality rates. Births have simply outpaced deaths, which certainly could represent progress. Many economists hold the Cornucopian view that resource depletion due to population increase is not a problem if new resources are found to replace depleted resources. Libertarian writer Sheldon Richman points out that the concept of carrying capacity does not apply to human beings because human beings are not passive with regard to their environment. If there are no resources, people will create resources.
In contrast to Richman, others, including environmental scientists, claim that continuing population growth will have severe consequences for the environment as well as for human health. They insist that not all resources can be replaced, and that most resources are not created by human beings but are found in nature. Second, the most critical resource is space – land on which to live. There is a finite amount of land on our planet. After a certain point of congestion, the quality of human life could be negatively affected. In fact, if we study various countries, we can link large population growth with impoverished and generally illiterate countries. While Thomas Malthus and his “neo-Malthusian” followers have made dire predictions regarding future population explosions, the advance of technology has time and again alleviated any strain on resources. In fact, world food production has risen faster than has human population, which in turn is a damning indictment on the world’s wealthiest citizens, since it indicates that the world’s widespread malnutrition and thousands of deaths from starvation are man-made failures resulting from wealth inequality and tragically faulty, corrupt, economic systems, and not at all a problem with population numbers.
The IPAT model, created by Paul Ehrlich and John Holden, gives some indication of human beings’ total impact on the environment resulting from the interaction of three factors: population, affluence and technology. The IPAT formula is hence stated as I (Impact) = P (Population) x A (Affluence) x T (Technology). In addition to these three factors, we can add a fourth factor – x S (Sensitivity), referring to how sensitive a particular environment is to human pressures. The IPATS model helps us to understand the impact population has on the environment but also demonstrates that population is only one of several factors influencing and affecting our environment.
What ways can human population be stabilized in various countries around the world? While many European countries consider their birth rates as too low, other (primarily third world) countries believe their birth rates are too high and are working to ‘stem the tide.’ Population has been successfully stabilized around the world, with the prime vehicle being education – particularly the education of women. Our global population of now more than 6.3 billion comprises more than 200 countries, with China having a population of 1.3 billion, India 1.1 billion, the US 287 million, followed by Indonesia with 217 million, Brazil with 174 million, Russia with 144 million, Pakistan with 144 million and little Bangladesh with 134 million and a population density of 2,639 per square mile! Populations are distributed unevenly on the globe, with highest concentrations in temperate, sub tropic and tropical climates and lower concentrations in extreme-climate biomes such as deserts, rainforests and tundra.
During the regime of Mao Tse Tung in the 1950s, the Chinese woman was giving birth on average to 5.8 children. However, the sharp population increase along with rapid industrial development took a toll on availability of water, saw the destruction of forests and severe air pollution. The next government implemented a population control program that allowed couples no more than one child. The program began with education and availability of contraceptives and abortion, but then became harsh by creating a system of rewards and punishments to enforce the one-child limit. One-child families were given access to good schools, medical cares, housing and government jobs, while families having more than one child were punished by societal scorn and ridicule, job discrimination and monetary fines. In some cases the fines amounted to more than half the couple’s annual income. One tragic consequence of Chinese birth control policy has been that mothers, on learning the sex of their unborn child, will frequently abort the fetus on learning that it is a female. During the reign of Indira Gandhi in India, her son Sanjay Gandhi organized thousands of birth control camps where sterilization (vasectomy or tubal ligation) was forcibly inflicted on the poor, illiterate and unsuspecting villagers. Such central government policies reflect an unbounded arrogance on the part of their perpetrators!
This harsh interference of the Chinese and Indian governments can be contrasted with equally or more successful population control programs offered in other countries. Population growth is determined primarily by total fertility rate (TFR), meaning the average number of children born per female member of a population during her lifetime and secondarily by other factors such as huge influx of refugees, famine and disease. In Europe, for example, the TFR is presently 1.4. When the TFR drops below 2.1, it will lead to a decrease in total population. In Pakistan, where illiteracy among women is high and their socio-economic status low, the TFR is high with a consequent burgeoning population. In contrast, the Bangladesh TFR rate today is 3.3 (compared to the 1970s when it was higher than 6.0). Why the difference? Demographers have realized that a large factor is women’s status in the society and women’s empowerment. While in Pakistan no government programs were implemented, in Bangladesh since the 1970s numerous, aggressive outreach programs were undertaken. An excellent example would be the Grameen Bank. The Grameen Bank became famous worldwide for its creative policy of offering micro-credit loans to the poorest of the poor women in the villages. As of April 2004, more than 3.36 million poor village women received loans from Grameen. Its founder, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, along with his colleagues, developed a list of Sixteen Decisions that are repeated by all borrowers. The sixth decision states: “We shall plan to keep our families small.” One can only imagine the rippling effect this decision has had among the village women of Bangladesh. Along with offering loans, the Grameen Bank educates its borrowers, teaching them hygiene, to live in clean homes and repair broken roofs, to grow vegetables the year round, to build and use pit latrines, to ensure the education of their children, among a host of other excellent guidelines. The village women in their simplicity take these Sixteen Decisions and other bank guidelines very seriously. It is an excellent example of how education alone can provide the necessary consciousness-raising to give women the confidence to have fewer children.
An interesting question can be raised that if human population remains unchecked, it would lead to one of two scenarios: (1) a lower standard of living, or (2) government restrictions on reproductive freedom. Which of these options would be acceptable? I believe there is no need for governments to put restrictions on the reproduction freedom of men and women. In fact, no government has the moral right to interfere in these personal issues. But, it is more than viable for human beings to reduce their standard of living and limit consumption. Certainly this could have many positive side effects, such as people concentrating instead on intellectual and/or spiritual development as opposed to endless material acquisition, which seems par for the course in western countries such as the US, and whose supposed merits are rammed down our throats daily by the mainstream media. While poverty leads to ecologically destructive behavior, affluence has even worse impacts on the environment in terms of humungous individual consumption and waste, leading to an unfairly large ecological footprint. Ecological footprint is defined as “the environmental impact of an individual or of a population, i.e., the cumulative amount of the earth’s surface area required to provide the raw materials a person or population consumes and to dispose of or recycle the waste that is produced.” Sadly, there is no limit to the desire to consume. The ecological footprint for the average US citizen stands at 9.7 hectares (ha) – the highest of any country. The ecological footprint for the average Canadian citizen is 8.8 ha, for Norway 7.9 ha, and for remaining countries the figures are far lower, ranging from 0.8 ha (Ethiopia) to France (5.3 ha). .
In the 1950s, demographer Frank Notestein and others created a theoretical model of economic and cultural change called the demographic transition model, to explain declining death and birth rates occurring in the more industrialized nations. Notestein calculated that countries “moved from a stable pre-industrial state of high birth and death rates to a stable post-industrial state of low birth and death rates.”
In the pre-industrial stage death rates are high because disease is rampant, medical care minimal and primitive, and food sources unreliable. Birth rates are high because of high death rates, and parents need children to help in the daily house and agricultural labor. The pre-industrial stage is followed by the transitional stage, when death rates decline somewhat due to greater availability of food and improved medical care. However, birth rates remain high due to tradition, and hence there is a surge in population growth. After this comes the industrial stage, characterized by falling birth rates due to growing employment opportunities for women in factories. Children are no longer essential because the agricultural era is declining. In the post-industrial stage, both birth and death rates are at a low level (as in Europe today) and are stable. This demographic transition model works well in western countries, but may or may not apply to developing nations. For example, many nations place a high emphasis on and have tremendous affection for children. They live for their children. This is the case today in Iraq, where 60 percent of the population are children. Another major factor that can skew the demographic transition model is the status of women in any particular country. If their status is low, the TFR is correspondingly high. As we have seen in Bangladesh over the past 30 years, with education and just a little bit of women’s empowerment (still the women of Bangladesh suffer under oppressive male chauvinism and religious fundamentalism), the TFR rate can drop considerably.
Still another factor can skew the numbers in a demographic transition or render it meaningless, which is lethal disease. In some countries today, AIDS rages out of control, with more than 40 million people afflicted globally. In 2001 alone, an additional five million people were diagnosed with AIDS. In future other factors may enter the picture such as groundwater depletion and global water shortage. In Bangladesh today, due to arsenic poisoning of the ground water in thousands of rural tube wells, millions of villagers are falling sick and dying as this silent killer reaches epidemic proportions.
According to Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the socio-economic environment of our global society today is severely disturbed, with increasing extremes of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ In this scenario, some claim that continuing population growth is a menace to the growth of human beings. However, this is pure propaganda dished out by vested interests. It is a matter of great sorrow and dismay that there are people in government or in the private sphere who consider a growing global population as a menace to the existing human society, and in some countries even compel civilians to limit the number of children to one or zero, with severe penalties for those who digress. Human beings have achieved a solid level of intellectual development and scientific knowledge; hence, it is well within their capacity to solve the problem of population growth. In the words of Sarkar, no problem is greater than the human capacity to solve that problem.
The population problem should be viewed with two factors in mind – availability of food and availability of space. The earth is abundant enough in food resources to feed every man, woman and child on the planet. However, due to lack of coordinated cooperation, collective effort, lack of proper ideology and sound planning, society is presently divided into countless belligerent groups and subgroups. For this reason alone, thousands of children starve to death every day without justification.
Aside from food, there is also more than ample space to accommodate an increasing human population. But, due to the balkanization of numerous fissiparous groups, resulting in all kinds of social, economic and political restrictions, people are not able to tackle the problem collectively in a natural manner. If natural resources were rationally distributed and maximally utilized, the present pressing socio-economic problems in the world would vanish. Shortage of food or space cannot be blamed on nature. These problems result from mistakes committed by human beings. In wealthier capitalist countries some people are afraid that when the population increases their living standard will go down. But, according to Sarkar, if a collective, cooperative economic system is in place, there will not be a problem. People will collectively convert barren dry land into arable farmland, as has already been done in Israel. They will further increase agricultural production and produce higher volumes of food using chemical processes. If in the distant future (100+ years) this earth becomes uninhabitable, still it will not be a problem, because by that time interplanetary space travel will be commonplace, and people will migrate to and settle on other planets having as yet untapped resources. When in a society there is economic liberty, i.e., when there is a progressive and balanced economic system, when people enjoy good health, when they are free from mental worries, and when the intellectual standard of human beings goes on increasing – when these four factors are present - there will be no population problem on this planet.
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NOTES
1. Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, Rahr: The Cradle of Civilization, Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications, 2004, p. 3.
2. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recognized the eight-pound baby of Fatima and Jasminko Nevic, born in then war-torn Sarajevo on October 12, 1999, as the six billionth human being born on the planet, according to UN population experts.
3. The exponential growth model means that the population grows each year by a fixed percentage. If the population is small, the exponential growth will also be small. However, as the population becomes larger, the percentage number will also become larger, which will then cause the growth rate to shoot up every year.
4. Logistic growth is characterized by an initial exponential increase in population which then tapers off and comes to a standstill due to limiting factors – the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the environment that restrain population growth.
5. Scott Brennan & Jay Withgott, Environment: The Science Behind the Stories. San Francisco: Pearson Education, Inc. 2004, p. 199.
6. Ibid, p. 200.
7. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was a British economist who believed that unless population growth were checked by human beings and controlled by laws, rules and other social strictures, the population increase would outstrip food supply and result in starvation, wars and disease, thus bringing down the population in a somewhat violent, chaotic manner. His most famous work was “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” in which he argued the above point and said that “moral restraint” was essential to avoid huge numbers of tragic deaths due to famine, plague and wars. Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich, in his book The Population Bomb, espouses the ideas of Malthus and thus is called a “neo-Malthusian.”
8. Scott Brennan & Jay Withgott, Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, p. 201.
9. A recent Pentagon report predicts that due to global warming and consequent rising sea level (RSL), two-thirds of Bangladesh will become permanently submerged under seawater. Already in the summer of 2004, the country was 60 percent submerged by monsoon floods, and Dhaka 40 percent submerged.
10. USAID Bangladesh: Population and Health. http://www.usaid.gov/bd/pop.html.
11. Scott Brennan & Jay Withgott, Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, p. 197-198.
12. The same problem exists in India, where female babies are aborted or slaughtered at birth. According to some sources, the number is approximately one million female babies and fetuses killed annually. See Garda Ghista, “The Status of Women in World Religions,”
13. http://www.proutworld.org/features/status.htm.
14. Related to total fertility rate is replacement fertility, which is the TFR that keeps the size of a population stable. For human beings, the replacement fertility equals a TFR of 2.1. If the TFR drops below 2.1, it means the population of that country will decrease.
15. See Garda Ghista, “Bangladesh: Towards Economic and Women’s Liberation Via Grameen Bank,” at http://www.proutworld.prout.org/features/bangldesh.htm.
16. Scott Brennan & Jay Withgott, Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, p. 218.
17. Ibid, p. 211.
18. If 60 percent of the Iraqi population are children, and more than 100,000 Iraqis have been slaughtered by the US military and its cohorts, then we can make the simple deduction that 60,000 children in Iraq have been murdered by the US government. It is a clear case of war crimes, violating the Geneva conventions.
19. Scott Brennan & Jay Withgott, Environment: The Science Behind the Stories, San Francisco: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004. p. 220.
20. See the research of Dr. Jamal Anwar, at http://www.sos-arsenic.net.
21. Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, “Population Growth and Control,” in Proutist Economics. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications, 1992, p. 249-254.
22. Ibid.
