Four population-driven threats to space

If from abstract principles and paradigms of my previous article (Malthus, forever?), we turn to the real, contemporary world, we may say that the rapidly expanding world population also has other consequences – beyond the reduction of “pristine” space – that may adversely affect the quality of the environment (space, in our paradigm) and bring about critical situations. Four of these consequences are strictly linked to sensitive environmental questions that will become critical as we proceed towards the end of the century, when world population growth, according to a rather optimistic consensus, is forecast to be close to zero. In the coming eight decades, the world is set to host an additional 3.4 billion people, a number equal to the increase accumulated in the preceding half a century.^[1]

These four consequences are:

(i) human intrusion into the great forests, and particularly the rainforests, whose integrity is a guarantee of the bio-natural equilibrium;

(ii) the intensification of human settlement in the most precarious habitats, in particular along coasts and on the shores of rivers and lakes;

(iii) the explosion of urbanization processes and

(iv) last but not least, global warming.

Each one of these four processes may be described as a population-driven threat to the environment, affecting the quality of space available to humankind.

Population-driven threats to the environment: 1) deforestation

Deforestation processes have accompanied demographic growth ever since the initial spread of agriculture. The great forests play a crucial role in maintaining environmental balances by moderating greenhouse gas emissions, and thus global warming; by maintaining the integrity of water reserves; and by protecting biodiversity. Unfortunately, trees give more (immediate) profit when they are cut down than when they are alive and growing, and pasture and arable land have more (immediate) value than virgin forests. There is ample historical evidence of the deforestation process that occurred in step with population growth across Europe up to the Industrial Revolution. In North America, population settlement and industrialization wiped out the original woodland cover from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In coastal Brazil, the Mata (forest) Atlántica was greatly reduced by demand for wood for the sugar cane plantations and the mining industry, and in nineteenth century India, vast areas were deforested to meet the needs of railway construction and the corresponding demand for fuel, as well as for the shipyards and navy. Perhaps, the single phenomenon that currently arouses the greatest concern and debate is the deforestation of the Amazon basin, which is estimated to have eaten away between 15 and 20% of the rainforest cover. This process, which accelerated after the 1940s, is attributable to multiple factors: the acquisition of land for livestock and crops driven by the demands of a rising population at both local and global levels, timber production, mining and oil prospecting, infrastructure development and immigration.

Similar processes have also taken place – or are taking place – in other parts of the world, such as the Congo Basin, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Figure 1 shows how, over the period 2000-2010, the development of land in the tropical regions for agricultural purposes has taken place at the expense of forested land. Fortunately, this process has been partially (but only partially) offset by the contrary trend in the te mperate regions, but the global balance has been negative for the planet’s health.

Population-driven threats to the environment: 2) fragile coastal regions

Population growth has been particularly rapid in coastal belts, which are advantageous not only in terms of their climate and landscape but also with regard to communications and the multiple economic opportunities they offer. History teaches us that the majority of the world’s great cities develop along the coast or on major watercourses. However, coastal cities are also the most vulnerable. Uncontrolled expansion of residential and industrial infrastructure in such contexts has negative effects in terms of water contamination, degradation of areas of environmental value, as well as exposure to natural risks (just think of the more than 200,000 deaths caused by the 2004 tsunami).^[2] These risks are destined to grow as a consequence of global warming. The environmental vulnerability of coastal areas has become obvious in recent years given the recurrence of natural disasters (typhoons and tidal flooding) in the river delta regions of South and South-East Asia, especially in Bangladesh.

Data on population distribution in coastal areas is scarce and unsatisfactory. First, there are no standardized (and therefore comparable) definitions of what ‘coastal areas’ actually are. Measures include estimating the population of a coastal belt of determinate width (10, 20… 100 kilometres from the sea), or, equally crudely, counting the population of administrative units that border the sea.

A study making use of satellite measurements has estimated the population living within 100 kilometres of the sea but in areas at less than 10 metres above sea level in each country.^[3] These are the most vulnerable territories, and they are placed at further risk by rising sea levels and the intensification of extraordinary atmospheric events. In 2000, 10% of the world population lived in low-altitude coastal regions, which constituted 2% of planet’s total land area. 60% of these 634 million people lived in urban areas. In general, populations in coastal regions tend to increase more quickly than those living inland, and thus the degree of concentration along the coastlines tends to increase (Figure 2). The same study from which we draw these aggregate data also highlighted the dynamics in two countries – China and Bangladesh – between 1990 and 2000, which are home to about one-third of all inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas worldwide.

In China the growth rate in these areas over that decade was 1.9%, versus 1% nationwide; in Bangladesh the growth rates were 2.1% and 1.1%, respectively.^[4]

Population-driven threats to the environment: 3) urbanization

According to United Nations estimates, the world’s urban population has now surpassed that living in the countryside: in 2018, town and city dwellers represent 55% of the total, and this proportion is destined to increase in the coming decades. In many developed countries, more than 80% of the total population is classified as ‘urban’.

A growing proportion of what is classified as the urban population today lives in big and sprawling conurbations with ill-defined boundaries. In 1950, there were 2 so-called ‘mega-cities’ or agglomerates of over 10 million inhabitants; by 1990, according to UN estimates, there were 10 of them, and 33 in 2018. Meanwhile large settlements of between 5 and 10 million inhabitants have more than doubled in number from 21 in 1990 to 48 in 2018, while the number of “small” settlements of 1 to 5 million people (i.e., “small” only in the terms of this international terminology) rose from 239 to 467.^[5] Demographic concentration in urban areas is not, as such, a negative phenomenon. Humans are essentially gregarious animals and tend to live in restricted spaces. But the modern mega-urbanization process has been compressed into a very short length of time, and has occurred in a disorderly and often anarchic manner. Its main negative consequences for the environment take the form of air pollution – with its well-known ill-effects for health – and water contamination, with effects spreading out into the ecosystem well beyond the mega-city’s own territory. Further consequences are the accumulation of waste, and the degradation of space. And since large conurbations are growing faster than the urban population – a gap that will likely intensify in the future – the negative effect on the ecosystem is destined to become further aggravated, unless robust corrective measures are taken.

Population-driven threats to the environment: 4) global warming

Diminishing pristine land and deterioration of space increase the cost of hosting each new human being. Other factors, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions, have a negative effect on the environment. Indeed, increased human presence on the planet is a powerful contributor to modern climate change, which entails global warming, rising sea levels, the tropicalization of the climate in temperate regions, desertification in some regions, and an increase in extreme climate events. This is a very intricate and technically complex subject, and here we will only touch on it fleetingly. It has now been proved that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions – due to the rise in population numbers and in human activities – is at the root of the global warming that has been underway over the last several decades. As we read in the IPCC’s (International Panel on Climate Change) Fifth Assessment Report: “Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever”.^[6] Between 1970 and 2010 there was an 80% increase in the volume of greenhouse gas emissions (four-fifths of which are CO2). All kinds of human activity have contributed to this increase, from energy production to industry, agriculture, housing, trade and transport. Rising population alone may be held responsible for close to half this increase (figure 3).

The IPCC makes complex global simulations based on hypotheses regarding population increase, economic growth, and the rise in emissions. The most recent ones have confirmed that the tendency towards global warming (almost one degree higher in 2000-2010 than in 1850-1900) will continue across the next century. Depending on different hypotheses of emission increases, by the end of the century (2081-2100) the mean temperature on Earth will be between 1 and 4°C higher than it was in 1986-2005.^[7] Specialist publications explain the complex geophysical consequences of global warming, from the melting of the polar ice caps to rising sea levels, the desertification of vast regions and changes in ocean currents. All of these things are of great significance for human society.

Global warming is the consequence of population growth and increasing human activity. Indeed, it could be easily described with an adaptation of the well-known Ehrlich’s equation:

GW = P x A x T x B

where global warming GW is caused by combination of Population, Affluence, Technology and (missing in Ehrlich’s original formulation) Behaviour B, which might be seen as a function of knowledge, customs, social norms and individual tastes. Virtuous behaviours can probably reduce global warming, everything else equal, although the extent of their impact, and how this impact can be measured remain unanswered questions.

Malthus forever?

The notion that space is finite and that population cannot grow forever is probably obvious and intuitive for everyone. The difference with respect to a still recent past is that what once appeared as an immense, unmeasurable expanse of land at the disposal of humankind is now more clearly perceived as finite and increasingly limited. Population growth, dispersion of human settlements, development of technology, increasing wellbeing are the forces that reduce the available space in pristine conditions and endanger the quality of that space, either settled or under the impact of human activity. Space is, indeed, the ultimate resource and the final limit to growth. Malthus was right: nature “has been comparatively sparing in the room… necessary to rear …” us humans. This “room” is shrinking under our very eyes.

Footnote

[1] According to the estimates, and to the median variant projection of the United Nations, the world population was 4.381 billion in 1979, will be 7.795 billion in 2020, and will reach 11.184 billion in 2100. More precisely, given the probabilistic approach followed in the projection, a population of 11.184 billion in 2100 represents the median value of a distribution that, within 80% confidence limits, ranges from a minimum of 10.089 to a maximum of 12.436 billion. United Nations, World Population Prospects. The 2017 Revision.

[2] On September 28, 2018, an earthquake followed by a tsunami in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi killed about 2,000 people.

[3] Gordon McGranahan, Deborah Balk and Bridget Anderson, ‘The Rising Tide: Assessing the Risks of Climate Change and Human Settlements in Low Elevation Coastal Zones’, in Environment & Urbanization, 19, 1, 2007, pp. 17-37.

[4] It is worth adding that the concentration of people in urban areas is very high in these same low-altitude coastal areas.

[5] United Nations, The World’s Cities in 2018, New York, 2018,

[6] International Panel on Climate Change, 2014

[7] International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014, Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers.

The post Four compelling reasons to fear population growth appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Malthus and the limits to growth

Concise and clear, Malthus wrote in the first chapter of his Essay: “Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. She has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years”.[1] Nothing new under the sun: in modern times, two centuries before Malthus, Botero had written similar words[2] and Ortes, the bizarre venetian clergyman-economist, acknowledged that geometrical growth is impossible, because it would lead mankind to “grow not only beyond the number of persons that could breathe on the earth, but to such a number as could not be contained on all its surface, from lowest valley to highest mountain, crowded and crammed together like dried dead herrings in their barrel”.[3] So, for both Ortes and Malthus, and for a score of other writers and, indeed, for everybody with a minimum of common sense, the ultimate limit to population growth is space (or land). Because cultivation depends on land, and so do pastures, cattle raising, hunting, and energy, and all material resources for manufacture, and – above all – subsistence.

Space is getting smaller

Centuries ago, the lack of space was a remote threat in a vast, largely unexplored and uninhabited world. But in our times, the limitations imposed by the finite space of our planet are becoming visible at the global scale. Let us suppose that mankind is subdivided into biologically and demographically sustainable groups (communities, clans, tribes, etc.), each one composed of 1,000 inhabitants. Let us call these abstract groups demoi, and let us imagine that 10,000 years ago, at the time of the “invention” of agriculture, 6 million people were evenly distributed across 6,000 demoi. Each demos would have had, on average, an endowment of land equivalent to the surface of Sardinia (22,333 sq.km). Plenty of land, by all means, for 1,000 humans. By the beginning of the Common Era (birth of Christ), the endowment of each of the 250,000 existing demoi would have shrunk to the size of Ibiza (536 sq.km), while at the start of the industrial revolution (around 1800), it would have been the size of Milos (151 sq.km), in the Aegean Sea, (blessed by the statue of Aphrodite which now welcomes visitors at the entrance of the Louvre), which measures only 15 km by 10 km. Three centuries later, in 2100, each demos’ land endowment will be about the size of minuscule Capri (10.4 sq.km), whose renown is incommensurably greater than its size.

Anthropization of the planet and the value of space

Population dispersion and growth have determined a gradual process of anthropization of the planet. A recent study^[4] makes use of the increasingly precise data that is now available thanks to high-definition satellite imaging. It estimates that agricultural and forest cultivation covers some 47% of the earth’s land area, with around 13% devoted to arable use and permanent cultivation; 26% covered by permanent pastureland and meadows; and around 8% more comprising areas subject to deforestation, or which have been artificially replanted. But to this 47% we must also add the other spaces in which human action is radically changing the face of the Earth: the 3% of land surface devoted to urban areas, another 3% to various types of economic activity, and a further percentage point to infrastructure (roads, ports, railways) and mining activities. The total area directly used or transformed by human activity thus accounts for more than half the Earth’s land area (54%). As for the remaining ‘natural’ areas, 28% of total land is covered by woods and forests, while 19% cannot be turned over to agriculture or other human uses because it is frozen, desertic or situated in high-altitude mountain areas. And even these areas are not totally natural, since they too may be affected by human activities through contamination or global warming.

In conclusion, three intertwined global processes are at work: (i), population growth and dispersion; (ii), occupation and anthropization of space; (iii), increasing unfitness of the remaining “pristine” or “semi-pristine” land for human settlement and activities. In the very long run, an additional human, occupying an additional unit of space, will settle in an increasingly inhospitable setting. In other words, the “quality” of that marginal unit of space is declining while the “cost” of occupying or settling it is increasing. It is true that the real world is subject to a plurality of forces, and that adaptation, human ingenuity and technology may sometimes do miracles, but the general (human, social, and economic) cost of settling additional and increasingly inhospitable spaces is tending to increase and represents the “real” limit to population growth.

Similar reasoning can be applied to marginal units of land exploited to produce subsistence or mineral resources and that yield diminishing returns.^[5] In Figure 1, where the population P increases following a logistic curve, while space in pristine conditions S declines in parallel (following an inverted logistic), a proxy for the value V of the marginal unit of land could be the ratio between the two.^[6] This value, in this abstract paradigm, is close to zero at the onset of agriculture, and grows exponentially as population increases and available space declines.

Note

[1] Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1970, pp. 71-72 (1st edition 1799). Author’s italics.

[2] Giovanni Botero, Delle cause della grandezza delle città, 1588.

[3] Giammaria Ortes, Riflessioni sulla Popolazione delle Nazioni per Rapporto all’Economia Nazionale, in Pietro Custodi, Raccolta degli scrittori italiani di Economia politica, vol. XXIV, Milan, 1804, Chapter 1.

[4] Roger LeB. Hooke, José F. Martín-Duque and Javier Pedraza, ‘Land Transformation by Humans: A Review’, GSA Today, December 2012.

[5] I am less certain about this last assumption, since modern extractive technology now extends to regions that were once beyond reach, like the Arctic and Antarctic zones.

[6] Or, more correctly, it is the pressure that the existing population exerts on the residual space.

The post Malthus, forever? appeared first on N-IUSSP.

No disciplinary field develops in isolation from its political, social and cultural environment, and demography is no exception. The first advances in population studies were achieved thanks to the individual efforts of scholars from different backgrounds: political writers like Botero, merchants like Graunt, astronomers like Halley and Wargentin, clergymen like Süssmilch and Malthus. Later, in the 19^th century, with the development of statistics, Quetelet, Farr and Lexis – among others – shaped the contours of the discipline, which was enriched on a regular basis by the results of population censuses and the collection of vital statistics, as well as by closer and systematic contacts among scholars.

This growing body of knowledge attracted the interest of sociologists, economists, and scholars of other social sciences – even biomedical experts. In general, however, it remained at the periphery of these disciplines. The study of population needed specialists, the development of coherent analysis methods, the creation of an autonomous discipline, the formation of specialized institutions, with dedicated chairs, research centers and scientific associations.

This process was initiated in the 1920s and 1930s, and the IUSSP (initially named the “International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems” and referred to hereafter as “the Union”) was founded in 1928. The population conferences in London and Rome in 1931, in Berlin in 1935, and in Paris in 1937, attest to the scientific progress of the discipline, to the strengthening of the methodology, and to the depth and breadth of the participants’ interests. However, this process of growth – and the life of the newborn IUSSP as well – was marred by the interference of politics, by the influence of ideologies, by unhealthy scientific partisanship and, ultimately, by the catastrophe of the Second World War.[1]

A rebirth after the War

Before the war, the Union was a federation of national committees, not of individual scholars, and this was a major weakness: it increased the risk of political interference in the life of the association, and was a divisive factor among individual researchers. In 1947, the new Union was reestablished as an association of individual scholars who were free, in theory, from political manipulation and interference.

These pages are dedicated to the life of the Union during the half a century or so between its reconstitution in 1947 and 1994, when the United Nations organized the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).^[2] I will not cover the last quarter of a century because many of our readers are familiar with the most recent developments of international demography. Some of them have been important actors on the demographic scene and could talk about the Union better than me.[3]

In a first phase, between the 1947 and 1969, when the General Conference was held in London, the Union gradually built up its international profile and its administrative and organizational autonomy. International meetings were held every other year, but the first five of them (from 1949 to 1957) were special – although independently organized – sessions of the ISI Conferences (International Statistical Institute).[4] In 1959 and 1961, the meetings in Vienna and in New York were autonomous initiatives, while in 1963 the Ottawa Conference was again held under the ISI umbrella. The large conferences held in Rome (1954) and Belgrade (1965) were joint initiatives of the Union with the United Nations, which, despite its active involvement in population questions, preferred to remain in the background, leaving the debate in the hands of individual scholars and experts.

In the late 1960s, the Union reached full autonomy, having built a recognized international reputation. It established permanent independent headquarters in Liège, and functioned according to well-tested protocols, including constitutional rules governing the election of its members and officers. A General Conference was held every four years,[5] the Council established scientific Committees with well-defined mandates, and other less regular activities were carefully planned.

Main themes of interest

During this period, demography advanced under the impulse of several driving forces. The first was the full realization by the international community of the extent of the acceleration of world population growth and, therefore, of the need to better understand its causes, mechanisms and consequences. One important achievement was the organization of census rounds every ten years, with shared protocols that ensured the comparability of results.

The population explosion (or time-bomb, or boom, to use the militaristic vocabulary of population change) generated growing interest in the analysis of relations between population growth and social and economic development, and in the design of policies to control such growth, particularly in developing countries. There were also worries about the sustainability (although different words were used at that time) of population growth, and the possible exhaustion of basic resources, such as food, water, energy and minerals.

The role of demography as a discipline became central for the comprehension of such complex questions; it was necessary to improve analysis methods; to reinforce, expand and integrate data collection systems; and to extend the analysis to countries and regions that had remained at the periphery of research.

The Union and its functioning

The Union played an important role in responding to the new challenges. In 1954 and in 1965, the Conferences co-organized with the United Nations were important steps in building international awareness about the political, economic and social relevance of population issues, highlighting the urgent need for appropriate expertise to address these issues.

While the international meetings held before the war were essentially “Western” events in terms of their participants and the topics presented, scholars from the “Third World” – an expression coined by Alfred Sauvy[6] – were now making their voices heard; their number grew rapidly and so did the quality of their contributions. At the 1954 Rome conference, one in five participants were from Africa, Latin America or Asia, while in 1965 in Belgrade, the proportion was one in three.

Topics such as family planning, methods of analysis with defective or incomplete data, demographic aspects of savings, investment and technological development – and the strong focus on developing countries[7] – attest to the transition of demography from a peripheral and ancillary discipline to a well-defined field of study, offering a growing body of knowledge that was key to our understanding of society.

In the 1950s, scholars were essentially professors in the fields of economic, social and political sciences (including statistics) or specialists who worked in research centers dedicated to the same disciplines or belonged to government agencies dealing with planning, census-taking or vital statistics. There were no professorships in demography, and few would have described themselves as “demographers”. Things changed rapidly in the following decades. At the same time, the research focus of individual scholars, dedicated institutions, and international organizations shifted rapidly towards the developing world, whose rate of population growth peaked at the worrying pace of about 2.5 percent per year in the 1960s and 1970s.

The governance and the Union’s activities readily reflected, but also guided, the general shift in attention to developments in non-Western countries. Before 1969, the Presidents of the Union were illustrious European and American scholars (Hersch, Landry, Mortara, Lorimer, Sauvy, Glass, Vogelnik), but in 1969, Chidambara Chandrasekharan from India was elected President (with a four-year mandate), followed by Carmen Miró (Panama) in 1973, and Mercedes Concepción (Philippines) in 1981.[8] Each continental region was represented by an elected member on the Council of the Union (board of directors) where the major scientific and administrative decisions were taken.

The Union still had solid foundations in Europe, and from 1966, led by an Executive Secretary, [9] it moved into small but permanent headquarters in Liège (Belgium).[10] A Secretary General and Treasurer – a European for the sake of proximity to the headquarters[11] – was in charge of transforming the Council’s directives[12] into practical activities. Union members went through an election procedure based on their scientific and professional merits, and membership climbed almost tenfold from a little over 200 in 1951 to close to 2,000 in the early 1990s, with an increasing presence of scholars from less developed countries (LDCs), who nonetheless remained a minority.

During the 1969-1994 period, the Union’s activities were very intensive. They included the planning and organization of the General Conferences every four years,[13] costly events bringing together up to 1,000 experts; the organization of the Regional and of the Special Conferences[14], and of the many Seminars and Workshops organized by the Union’s Committees and Working Groups, established or renewed every four year by the Council (more on these below). Funds had to be raised; venues for the events had to be chosen in cooperation with the hosting country and institution; scientific programs had to be designed and participants invited: the quantity and quality of output was impressive.[15]

Protocols, finance, and politics

Not everything ran smoothly. The Union acts under a constitution that, notwithstanding adaptations, calls for relatively rigid procedures and protocols. This gave rise to competition between a somewhat rigid modus operandi (particularly for the General Conferences and other big events) and the need to incorporate the new cutting-edge research, to recruit the most qualified experts, and to cooperate with the best institutions. However, the Union’s priorities were also to disseminate knowledge, to promote the inclusion of left-behind countries and regions, to build bridges with other disciplines, and to ensure smooth collaboration with the growing number of national research centers and of international organizations whose main missions were not to produce original research.

Aside from a fair amount of diplomatic compromise, a way was found to reconcile these competing viewpoints through the activity of the scientific Committees and Working Groups, which had considerable autonomy and flexibility in planning their activities, recruiting members, organizing seminars and meetings that, in general, were co-sponsored and co-financed by research centers and institutions hosting the various events. For instance, in 1988 (admittedly a record year), there were as many as 10 seminars on the following topics: Event history analysis, Biomedical and demographic determinants of human reproduction, Fertility transition in Asia, Collection of demographic data in Latin America, Medicine and the decline of mortality, Mortality in south-east and east Asia, International migration systems, Family in aging societies, Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa, Theories of family change (plus a large African Population Conference, and another conference on Women’s role and demographic changes).[16] In the following four-year period 1989-1993, 22 similar events were organized by the Union.

Another thorny problem was finance. Most international associations of scientists struggle with financial constraints. Autonomous revenues (membership dues, Conference registration fees, sales of publications) covered only a fraction of the Union’s general budget. Non-earmarked grants from Governments and other institutions, highly appreciated for the flexibility they allowed in spending, were unfortunately rare and small.

Some donors were generous (first and foremost the UNFPA, created in 1969) in supporting activities that coincided with their missions and priorities. There were no problems in financing activities on topics like population and development, high fertility, family planning, maternal and child health, AIDS/HIV, gender issues… But financing the committees on historical demography, anthropology and demography, or meetings on issues pertaining to the developed world, was much more difficult. Maintaining a certain balance between “fashionable” topics and themes that lay outside the remit of the various donors proved hard to manage. The temptation was, of course, to “follow the money”, but on the whole, the Union has succeeded in maintaining a reasonable and honorable balance.

I have touched upon the issue of expanding the membership of LDC scholars, and the (slow) progress achieved. But during the period under examination there were two major problems, concerning the USSR and its satellites on one hand, and China on the other.

In the socialist bloc, experts were few, and participants in Union-sponsored events were often bureaucrats under an official mandate. A personal recollection provides a good illustration of the situation: on two or three occasions, the Union invited a well-respected Polish scholar who declined to participate, giving unconvincing reasons for his refusal. These invitations were reiterated until we were warned (of course, unofficially) that insistence on our part (a letter was also sent to the president of the Academy of Science) was dangerous for the person in question since his (purely intellectual) ties with the West had aroused the suspicions of the authorities.

Another episode illustrates the attitude of China. Early in 1977, I had an interview in Paris with the Chinese Ambassador to UNESCO. I told him that the Council would be pleased to invite a delegation of Chinese scholars to the General Conference to be held in the same year in Mexico City. China, at the time, had begun sending students to doctoral programs in Western universities. The Ambassador listened to my words kindly and attentively, asking about several aspects of the Conference, and I thought that things were going well. But I realized I was wrong when he remarked abruptly “I have been informed that your association includes a few members from Taiwan and this fact makes it impossible for us to participate in the Union’s activities”. It proved fruitless for me to point out that the Union chose its members solely on their individual merits, and that Conference participants were individual scholars and not representatives of a nation. No Chinese scholars came to Mexico. Four years later, things had changed radically: at the General Conference in Manila there was a substantial Chinese delegation, and a special session was dedicated to the population of China, with papers presented by Chinese colleagues.

The basic principles of the Union: then and now

In 1989, addressing the General Assembly as the newly elected President of the Union, I summed up the principles that I intended to follow,[17] and I think those principles are still valid today, with the necessary adaptations to the new situation.

They were:

1. Defense of the Union as an association of individual scholars who must not be subjected to lobbying by pressure groups acting on behalf of organized interests.
2. Defense of the Union’s scientific prestige through the selection, planning and professional implementation of its scientific activities.
3. Importance of building bridges with other disciplines: fruitful collaboration has been established with historians, anthropologists and researchers in the biomedical fields. Less satisfactory, for complex reasons, is our record with economics.
4. More flexibility in the implementation of scientific programs.
5. Importance of improving relations and dialogue with donors, reaffirming the Union’s independence and autonomy in deciding our scientific priorities, while submitting their priorities to serious analysis.
6. Importance of responding to the request that the Union take some responsibility in the dissemination of knowledge.

“Being an association of scholars, we are not very good at dissemination. Our timid attempts have not been very successful. And yet it is an important area; we have many things to say, many interesting results to communicate not only to other scientists, but to administrators and policy makers. It is a difficult area that requires professional skills that we do not have”.

Have we made progress in the last quarter of a century? Have we kept our independence? Is our scientific prestige intact? Have we taken full advantage of the digital era? (Until the 70s, before the introduction of fax machines, communication about the international affairs of the Union was handled by the postal service, as in the 19^th century.) Have we improved the dissemination and communication of our research? Have we developed interactions with other disciplinary fields? Recounting the recent and less recent history of our association, and comparing the present with the past, is a healthy exercise.

Footnote

[1] On the history of the Union from 1928 to the end of the War, see the booklet prepared by IUSSP for the General Conference of Florence, in 1985, The IUSSP in History; see also L. MacKellar and B.W Hart (2014). “Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers and the Prehistory of the IUSSP”, Population and Development Review 40(4).

[2] Another reason for this choice of period is that in 1993, at the end of my mandate as President, I ceased to be directly involved with the IUSSP.

[3] Among them, past IUSSP Presidents (José Alberto Magno de Carvalho, Jacques Vallin, John Cleland, Peter McDonald, Anastasia Gage) or Secretary Generals (Allan Hill, Wolgfang Lutz, France Meslé, Nico van Nimwegen).

[4] Geneva 1949; Washington 1951; Rome 1953; Petropolis 1955; Stockholm 1957; Ottawa 1963.

[5] London 1969; Liège 1973; Mexico City 1977; Manila 1981; Florence 1985; New Delhi 1989; Montreal 1993; Beijing, 1997. Regional Conferences were also organized in cooperation with United Nations regional branches: Sydney, 1967 (with ESCAP); Mexico City in 1970 (with ECLA and CELADE).

[6] Alfred Sauvy was President of IUSSP between 1961 and 1963.

[7] “In each topical meeting, special attention was given to the problems of developing countries”, United Nations, World Population Conference, 1965, Vol. 1, Summary Reports, p. 1.

[8] Ansley Coale, USA, was elected President in 1977. William Brass (UK) and Jack Caldwell (Australia), who served as Presidents in 1985-89 and 1993-97 had devoted a large share of their scientific career to research on developing countries. I myself (1989-1993), on the other hand, had worked mainly on historical topics and on the demography of contemporary Europe.

[9] Bruno Remiche from Belgium was Executive Secretary from 1969 to 1995.

[10] In 1981 The Union acquired the building that housed the headquarters in Liège.

[11] Eugene Grebenik was Secretary General in 1965-1973; followed by me (1973-1981), Georges Tapinos (1981-89), and Allan Hill (1989-97).

[12] The General Assembly, convened only every four years, could also give general guidelines.

[13] In London in 1969, Liège in 1973, Mexico City in 1977, Manila in 1981, Florence in 1985, New Delhi in 1989, Montreal in 1993, Beijing in 1997.

[14] Regional Conferences in Sydney in 1967, in Mexico City in 1970, in Accra in 1971; Conference on Population and Economics in Helsinki in 1978, and Conference on The Peopling of America in Veracruz, 1992.

[15] I recommend that a directory of all the activities undertaken by the Union since its foundation be posted on the Union’s website. (A list of IUSSP activities – probably not complete – is available at: https://iussp.org/en/iussp-meetings-and-events). Besides, a special program could be launched in anticipation of the Union’s centenary to be celebrated in 2028, nine years from now. The three volumes of the Veracruz Conference of 1992 on the Peopling of the Americas, for instance, are already online, thanks to the effort of the Colegio de México (http://iussp.colmex.mx/descargar-volumenes).

[16] IUSSP, Newsletter n. 36, May-August 1989, pp. 5-6.

[17] IUSSP, Newsletter n. 37, September-December 1989, pp. 17-18.

The post The Union and the study of population: 1947-1994 appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Population change is a process

Population interacts with the external constraints such as space, land, water, air, non-renewable resources and energy. Humankind, throughout its history on this planet, has found these resources in almost unlimited supply. But things have changed rapidly in recent times and some natural resources – particularly air, land and water – are under stress because of rapid population growth. During an exceptional twentieth century, the world population increased fourfold (from 1.6 to 6.1 billion); during the current century it will fall short of doubling (11.2 billion in the year 2100, UN 2017, medium variant projection), and will approach zero growth towards the end of this period. At the time of writing, 30 per cent of the total increase projected for the 21st century has already been achieved (by the end of 2017 the population has reached 7.6 billion, 1.5 billion more than in 2000, out of a total forecast increase of 5.1 billion for the entire century). Since population change is a complex process, the question to be discussed is whether this change is compatible with smooth and balanced development. In short, is sustainability threatened by the current and foreseen demographic trends? My thesis is that there are several aspects of current trends that may compromise development and its sustainability, the political order, and the relations between countries (Livi Bacci 2017). However, these negative aspects can be attenuated, if not resolved, through appropriate policies implemented by governments with the support of the international community. Of the several threats to sustainability, I will briefly comment on two: the environmental consequences of the struggle against poverty and backwardness, and the increasing anthropization of land.

Population and global warming

There is a consensus in the international scientific community that global warming is primarily “anthropogenic”, or due to the increase in human activities. More and wealthier people mean more production and consumption, more emissions, stronger greenhouse effects, warmer climate.

With more technology, it is possible to lower the quantity of energy and non-renewable materials required for every additional unit produced or consumed. However, this will be easier to achieve in wealthy societies where the dematerialization of consumption is possible (an additional dollar may be spent on buying an e-book, enjoying a concert, purchasing personal services). Much less so in poor countries, where an additional dollar is spent on buying oil for heating, cooking, and transportation; metal tools for work; food for nutrition; shoes for walking; and other basic commodities for which dematerialization is impossible or minimal (Livi Bacci 2015). Figure 1 shows the decomposition of the change in total CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion, by decade, between 1970 and 2010. The role of population growth in the change in global emissions is more or less equivalent to that of GDP per capita growth in the 1970s and 1990s; it is larger in the 1980s and smaller in the first ten years of our century. The counteracting impact of technology (i.e., less energy intensity for every GDP unit) is more or less equivalent, in the last two decades, to that of population. It is obvious that population growth will be responsible for a fair share of future greenhouse gas emissions. Slower growth means fewer emissions. Total fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is at present around 5 children per woman and, according to the UN, it will be 3.1 in 2050 (medium variant). If, with adequate policies, it could decline to 2.6 (low variant), the population in 2050 would be 1.96 billion instead of 2.17, lowering significantly the increase in emissions. Reducing the speed of population growth would have beneficial effects of the same order of magnitude as those produced by technological progress.

Land is finite

An expanding population requires more land and space in a finite world. As population grows, the available space declines, and anthropization of land increases. With 13 per cent of the earth’s land surface occupied by arable land, 26 per cent by permanent pastures, 8 per cent by managed forests, 3 per cent by urban areas and 4 per cent by infrastructures and economic activities, 54 per cent of all land is now directly or indirectly affected by human activities. Of the remaining 46 per cent of (relatively) pristine land, much is inhabitable because located in permafrost, desert or high mountainous areas (Hooke and Martin-Duque 2012).

Three aspects are worth considering with attention. The first is the human intrusion in the great forests, and particularly into the rainforests, whose integrity is a guarantee of the bionatural equilibrium. The second is the intensification of human settlement in the most precarious habitats, particularly along the coasts and along the shores of river and lakes. The third is the explosion of the urbanization process.

Deforestation has affected the major river basins in America, Africa and Asia. In Brazilian “classic” Amazonia (3.6 million km²), the deforested area rose from 2 per cent in 1980 to 12 per cent in 2010, while in this period the population increased 2.5 times (from 5.9 to 14.8 million) due to rapid immigration. Immigration, deforestation for residential space, infrastructures, cultivation, pasture, and mining are processes closely linked to population growth. Rainforests play a crucial role in maintaining environmental balances, moderating greenhouse emissions and thus global warming, maintaining the integrity of water reserves, and protecting biodiversity. The fundamental problem for the governance of rainforests is that the trees are more valuable when they are cut down than when they are standing and that pasture and arable land have more value than virgin forests. Strict regulatory actions are therefore needed.

Population density and population growth, almost everywhere in the world, are higher in coastal than in inland areas, with the former being in general more valuable, attractive and functional (historically, major cities developed along the coastline or on the banks of the major waterways). These areas attract commercial and industrial activities and immigration flows, they need infrastructures, they stimulate urbanization. However, several of these areas, particularly low-lying coastal areas, are also fragile and vulnerable (just think of the more than 200,000 victims caused by the 2004 tsunami in South East Asia), and the more so as global warming raises the sea level.

“Of the 1,692 cities with at least 300,000 inhabitants in 2014, 944 (56 per cent) were at high risk of exposure to at least one of six types of natural disaster (cyclones, floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides and volcanic eruptions), based on evidence on the occurrence of natural disasters over the late twentieth century. Taken together, cities facing high risk of exposure to a natural disaster were home to 1.4 billion people in 2014” (UN 2016). In 1950 there were only two so-called “megacities” or agglomerations of over 10 million inhabitants, and in 2016 they numbered 31, of which 24 in less developed countries. The modern mega-urbanization process has been compressed into a very short time, in a disorderly and often anarchic way. Its negative consequences include the degradation of space, air pollution and water contamination, with effects that spread out into the ecosystem and well beyond the megacity’s own territory. As the growth of the big conurbations is faster than the growth of the urban population, the negative effect on the ecosystem appears destined to increase.

Malthus again?

Yes, Malthus again. The world has fixed limits: there are probably no limits for the production of subsistence, as Malthus thought. But land, space, air and water have limits; they are resources that have to be managed. Management means governance, particularly at the international level. And the world would be probably better off if, by the year 2100, its population stood at 10 instead of 11 billion.

References

Grossman R. (2017) The world in which the next 4 billion people will live, N-IUSSP, November 13

Hooke R. LeB., Martin-Duque J.E. (2012) Land transformation by humans: a review, GSA Today, 22 (12)

Lam D. (2017) The world’s next 4 billion people will differ from the previous 4 billion, N-IUSSP, July 24

Livi Bacci M. (2015) Pauperia and Tycoonia: population and sustainability, N-IUSSP, July 14.

Livi Bacci M. (2017) Our Shrinking Planet, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Martine G. (2018), Global population, development aspirations and fallacies, N-IUSSP, February 5

UN (2016) United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, The World’s Cities in 2016. Data Booklet. 

UN (2017) United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects 2017.

The post Thinking about the future: the four billion question appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Declining population, production and productivity

Almost 80 years ago, John Maynard Keynes (1937) in his Galton Lecture before the Eugenic Society affirmed that “the first result to prosperity of a change-over from an increasing to a declining population may be very disastrous.” Indeed, “a change-over from an increasing to a declining population” is what is happening today in the developed world, but is this going to be disastrous? Certainly a declining population implies a shrinking labor force and possibly a shrinking GDP, and – among developed countries – a shift in the balance of power in favor of North America as compared to Europe and Japan. From a geopolitical or geodemographic perspective, a declining population implies a loss of power and influence in the international arena. But one can legitimately argue that our central concern should be for individual wellbeing (with its imperfect proxy, GDP per person) rather than the “power” of a nation. The question has been discussed repeatedly in the decades since Keynes’ statement. Growth may slow down, or become negative, because the working-age population declines more rapidly than the total population. However, productivity need not be negatively affected because when labor becomes scarce, the system reacts by increasing investments in technology and human capital. On the other hand, activity rates may increase at all ages, and retirement from work may be postponed. If the labor force does not shrink, the number of immigrants can also be kept to a minimum.

The case of Germany

We may gain a clearer view of the question by taking a closer look at Germany, Europe’s powerhouse. With zero migration, between 2015 and 2050, the population of Germany would decline by 16%, while its working age population (20 to 64 years old) would fall by 24%. Let us assume that the activity rates, in each age group, increase to the level of the European country with the highest activity rates for that combination of age and gender (an increase, on average, of 6 points for men and 20 points for women). Let us also make the rather extreme assumption that 50% of men and women aged 65 to 80 years will be active in 2050, thus scraping the bottom of the barrel of native German human resources. Well, even in this extremely favorable perspective, the total active population in 2050 would be 4.5% lower than in 2015 – a modest decline, if compared with the 24% drop under the constant activity rates scenario, but still a decline, accompanied by ageing: in 2015, the proportion of the labor force above age 55 was slightly more than 20%, in 2050 it would be 35%.

Aging and productivity

Let us now assume that the slight decline of the labor force depicted above has no influence on average individual wellbeing. Can the same be assumed for the process of aging? Is it possible that a 70-year-old additional worker can replace, with no loss of productivity, a missing 30 year old one? This is a central issue. From the point of view of mere physical efficiency, the health status of older persons has improved rapidly, while the incidence of disabilities, chronic pathologies, and the like has declined. On the other hand, the gradual shift from forms of labor involving physical, muscular effort to forms of labor requiring sophisticated intellectual abilities – typical of modern societies – makes aging a lesser obstacle to economic efficiency. Technology and education are the keys to the transition, in keeping with the process of dematerialization of production and consumption. Policies and institutions will sustain this process. So, why worry about aging?

The problem is that notwithstanding the improved health status of older adults, empirical studies tend to confirm that individual job performance, or productivity, over the working life cycle, is shaped like an inverted bowl. It increases in the early part of the working cycle, it is flat for most of the cycle, and declines towards the end. The form of the bowl, the length of the flat platform, the steepness and timing of the decline vary according to a number of factors, such as the nature of the job, the worker’s physical and psychological fitness, the cognitive abilities required, and the working environment. The following is a quote from a review of the literature “An important cause of these age-related productivity declines is likely to be age-related reductions in cognitive abilities. Some abilities, such as perceptual speed, show relatively large decrements from a young age, while others, like verbal abilities, show only small changes throughout the working life. Experience boosts productivity up to a point, and thereafter additional tenure will have little effect. Older individuals learn at a slower pace and have reductions in their memory and reasoning abilities. In particular, senior workers are likely to have difficulties in adjusting to new ways of working.” (Skirbekk. 2008).

In manufacturing, there is a wide consensus that young workers are significantly more productive than older workers, once the effects of the sectorial composition of production are held constant. Of course, this disparity can be reduced with the right policies, investment in human capital or technology. But it cannot be eliminated altogether.

Aging and innovation

There is, however, another aspect to be taken into account. If productivity, for the majority of workers employed in manufacturing, agriculture or the tertiary sector, has the form of an inverted bowl, there are many other significant areas of human activity where the life cycle profile of productivity is heavily skewed to the left, with modal values at relatively young ages. In the hard sciences, the modal age of the “beautiful minds” at the invention or innovation that earned them a Nobel Prize or other prestigious recognition is between 35 and 40 years of age, with a frequency several times higher than at 60 or 70 years of age (Jones, 2010). This is often true in other fields – not only among artists but also among innovative entrepreneurs or initiators of successful startups. Quickness of mind, risk-taking, some homeopathic doses of arrogance, and rebelliousness are often a key to success and the salt of development.

Summing up, there is little doubt that the process of aging represents a trade wind unfavorable to development. The problem is that in the 21^st century the wind is blowing much stronger than in past times. Only up to a point can the unfavorable consequences of an aging and shrinking labor force be counteracted by more technology, richer human capital, and an improved social and working environment.

References

Jones B.J. (2010) Age and great invention, The Review of Economics and Statistics, XCII, n. 1, February.

Keynes J.M. (1937) Some economic consequences of a declining population, Eugenics Review, XXIX, n. 1.

Sirbekk V. (2008) Age and Productivity Capacity: Descriptions, Causes and Policy Options, Ageing Horizons, n. 8, Oxford Institute of Ageing.

United Nations (2015) World Population Prospects. The 2015 Revision. New York, NY.

The post The shrinking population of Europe, ageing and productivity appeared first on N-IUSSP.

The 2030 Agenda builds on the solemn Millennium Declaration, approved by Heads of State in 2000, which agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be reached by the year 2015. The MDGs focused on poverty and hunger, education, women’s empowerment, child mortality, maternal health, disease, environment, and a new partnership for development, to be implemented through 16 ‘targets’ to be reached by 2015. These targets have been only partially met or approximated during the past fifteen years, and are now being relaunched in the more ambitious context of the 2030 Agenda. The 17 goals of the agenda are not prescriptive (and who has the authority to prescribe?), but only a blueprint for action, a call to arms: if the goals are approached or reached, governments deserve praise; if not, they deserve blame, but nothing more than that!

A worthy sermon…but is anybody listening?

The preamble to the SDG declaration is high-flying and magniloquent.
This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognize that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We [Heads of State] are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path.¹

Appeals, exhortations, and incitements may be useful means for inspiring and directing the institutions’ actions to the common good. But their efficacy depends crucially on the prestige of those who voice them and on the credibility of the proposed objectives. Unfortunately, both these virtues are seriously wanting. The prestige of an Assembly of Heads of State is quite low. How can one feel confident about commitments made by Heads of State who are dictators, or are maintained in power by tyrannical regimes that notoriously violate basic human rights and sometimes have blood on their hands? What moral weight will their exhortations carry?

As for the credibility of the proposed goals and targets, this is also dubious as I next argue.

The multiplication of goals and targets

The 2000 Millennium Declaration was broken down into 8 general Goals and 16 specific Targets that were quantified by 48 statistical Indicators, all of them relevant for measuring the pace of development. Maybe not an exhaustive control panel, but a clear and identifiable one. In 2015, the Heads of State have given birth to a far more numerous offspring: the Goals have more than doubled in number (they are now 17), the Targets have increased more than tenfold (to 169), and the quantitative Indicators – the majority of which require data that are as yet, simply non-existent – have grown more than six-fold (304). These indicators range from the science fictional (indicator n. 17.19.2, “Gross National Happiness”) to the irrelevant (indicator n. 4.7.2, “Percentage of 13-year old students endorsing values and attitudes promoting equality, trust and participation in governance”, not excluding a large platoon of indicators that are impossible to measure (indicator 5.6.1, “Percentage of women and girls who make decisions about their own sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights by age, location, income, disability and other characteristics relevant to each country”). It is really doubtful that such a large range of goals, targets and indicators, with no priorities, can be translated into motivations, blueprints for action and guidelines able to mobilize consciences, policies and resources. Unfortunately it is a jumble that mirrors the baroque and bureaucratic procedures of the international organizations: it embraces the demands of numerous and various stakeholders without selecting or prioritizing them.

Let me say here, in order not to be misunderstood, that actually reaching each one of the 17 Goals would be a very good thing. Nobody can possibly be against the elimination of hunger and poverty, or object to fair health or quality education for all, or to inclusive and sustainable economic growth or to the reduction of inequalities, to mention just a few of the Agenda’s objectives. Each one of the 17 Goals reflects noble and desirable, even if abstract, ends: including the abstruse Goal 16 (“Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”). But all these commendable intentions seriously risk being not worth the paper on which they are written, or the cost of the numberless conferences, consultations, high-level meetings that have crowded the international agenda during the past three years.

Statisticians’ skepticism

According to the 2030 Agenda, the course of development in each one of the 200-odd countries that have signed up to the document will be monitored and verified using 304 indicators. Their feasibility has been assessed by the UNSC (United Nations Statistical Commission, a body representing the national statistical offices that will have to calculate the indicators).² The assessment of UNSC is rather merciless, as the following synthesis demonstrates: of the 298 indicators examined, 50 have been evaluated as “feasible, suitable and very relevant”, and another 67 as “feasible with great effort, but suitable and very relevant”. This is where the real problem begins: 86 indicators have been judged “feasible only with great effort, in need for further discussion and somewhat relevant”, and the remaining 95 indicators (almost one third of the total) are “difficult even with great effort, of uncertain suitability and somewhat relevant”. Given the cautious parlance of the United Nations, the UNSC’s opinion is far from enthusiastic!

What about population?

The population conferences promoted by the United Nations in 1974, 1984 and 1994 were overshadowed by the issue of the unsustainability of rapid population growth, at global level and in the less developed countries in particular. For diplomatic reasons, this central worry was not explicitly put on the table, but emerged in the discussions and in the documents whenever they dealt with the various aspects of population change. In the post-2015 Agenda, demographic issues have all but disappeared, notwithstanding the very rapid population growth of the African continent, the very low fertility of East Asia and Europe, the international migration flows without order or rules, the unchecked human penetration of fragile or pristine areas, or the fact that population growth is implicated in global warming. These are all important demographic phenomena that threaten the sustainability mantra that is the leitmotif of the 2030 Agenda. One might say that Goal 3, “ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”, which includes a series of targets on the incidence of the major pathologies, the health of children and their mothers, infant mortality and so on, is demographic, as is Goal 5, “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” with its rather generic target 5.6, “achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights”. And on international migration we may commend target 10.7, “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people…”, even if it is too generic and ambiguous (who is going to facilitate? What does “responsible migration” mean?) and impossible to achieve without an embryo of international governance of flows. But there is little else on population in the Agenda, confirming the conclusion that population, as far as the official international community is concerned, has become irrelevant for the sustainability of development, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary.

Footnote

¹Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, retrieved December 5, 2015.

²United Nations

The post The United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Lesser role for population issues in the international agenda

Population had a more limited role in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), issued after the Millennium Declaration of the year 2000. Three of the eight goals (4, 5 and 6) concerned child mortality, maternal health (and, indirectly, fertility), and the major scourges like HIV/AIDS or malaria, but population growth as a challenge to development was not at the forefront. Now that 2015 is approaching fast, with mixed results as far as the attainment of the MDGs is concerned, the international community is struggling to find new keywords and messages around which the concerns, resources and actions can be mobilized. A post-2015 development agenda must be designed and approved. Various influential documents², crafted by international groups, have been prepared, with different perspectives and approaches. For all of them, however, a central keyword is “sustainable development”, that must inform all actions at the local, national or planetary level. From one of these documents: “MDGs fell short by not integrating the economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainable development as envisaged in the Millennium Declaration, and by not addressing the need to promote sustainable patterns of consumption and production. The result was that environment and development were never properly brought together.”³ Another document points out that “the scale of human impact on the physical Earth has reached dangerous levels more rapidly and disruptively than was foreseen by most in 2000”⁴.  However, these and other official documents are not explicit about the role that population growth – an extra three and a half billion inhabitants before the end of the century – will have on sustainable development. Indeed, rapid population growth may be “unsustainable” if it continues unabated.

Pauperia and Tycoonia

Let me illustrate the issue with a fictional but simple example of two imaginary countries, Pauperia and Tycoonia, and their development until 2050. Pauperia has a high rate of population growth, which, over the 36 years from now to 2050, is expected to average at about 2% (same rate projected by the UN for Africa over the same period). In Tycoonia, on the other hand, the population will remain stationary. Pauperia, enjoys a relatively high rate of growth of 5% of its per-capita income and experts affirm that this rate is economically sustainable throughout the period under consideration. Tycoonia, however, will enjoy a much lower rate, estimated at 2%. Since the physical impact of mankind on Earth is a function of the combination of population and economic affluence (or income or product), a simple multiplicative algorithm tells us that, over the next 36 years, such impact (assuming business as usual) would double in Tycoonia, but would increase more than twelvefold in Pauperia. We all know that more technology may “decouple economic growth from unsustainable patterns of production and consumption”. In other words, with more technology it is possible to lower the content of energy and non-renewable materials of every additional unit produced or consumed. This may easily happen in Tycoonia, where the dematerialization of consumption is possible (an additional dollar may be spent on buying an ebook, enjoying a concert, purchasing personal services), but much less so in Pauperia, where an additional dollar is spent on buying gasoil for heating, cooking, and transportation; metal tools for work; food for nutrition; shoes for walking; and other basic commodities for which dematerialization is impossible or minimal.

Population growth remains a central issue in the sustainability debate

This example shows how, in poor societies, the impact of population and economic growth on the environment is going to be very heavy, unsustainable, one would be tempted to say, in the coming decades. Hence two general priorities; the first being an acceleration of technological transfers from the rich to the poor world and the second priority will consist of reducing the speed of population growth. If fertility remained unchanged (at the current TFR level of 5.4) over the next 36 years, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa would triple between 2014 and 2050 (from 0.9 to 2.8 billion). If TFR declined to 2.7 by 2050 (as assumed by the low variant of the UN projections) population would “only” double (from 0.9 to 1.8 billion). It is a brutal calculation, but a one point difference of TFR in 2050 corresponds approximately to 350 million people difference in the population at the same date. Sustaining the fertility decline, as I have argued at the beginning, must remain a priority central to the sustainable development discourse. On the other hand, improving the human capital of the population (including the enhancement of its demographic component) will set the ground for responding to the second priority, the acceleration of technological transfers.

Let us be explicit: population growth must remain a central issue in the debate on sustainability.

References

1 – United Nations, Report of the International Conference on Population and Development, New York, 1995

2 – Two recent relevant reports are: High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda,  A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development., United Nations, 2013; Sustainable Development Solutions Network, An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development,  October 2013

3 – New Global Partnership, cit. “executive summary”.

4 – Action Agenda, cit., p.2

The post Pauperia and Tycoonia: Population and Sustainability appeared first on N-IUSSP.