Environment and Society. Paul Robbins
world.
The Potential Violence and Injustice of Population-centered Thinking
Given that population may be an effect of other economic and political processes, that affluence and consumption have a large hand in determining the environmental impacts of populations of any size, and that some growth in population may lead to increased rather than decreased resources, what are the implications of thinking about environmental problems in strictly demographic terms?
For critics of population control, the implications are serious indeed. For such critics, the history of population politics and efforts at control are fraught with violence and injustice. Consider, for example, the Indian emergency during the period of Indira Gandhi’s rule in the 1970s. In 1975 Mrs. Gandhi declared martial law and made the end of population growth, through dramatic measures, including mass sterilization camps, the rationing of food and services contingent on family size, and even forced sterilization of some villages and slums, a central part of state policy. Most of these draconian measures were enacted on groups with the least political power, moreover, including marginal caste communities and the urban poor. International neo-Malthusian observers heralded the effort, with some American and European observers calling for logistical support of all kinds in this war on overpopulation (Hartmann 1995).
Yet none of these measures slowed or halted India’s population growth, which is only now slowing decades later as a result of complex political and economic factors, including women’s rights and access to education. All that these efforts achieved was a horrible violence to those poor and unfortunate enough to be caught up in the panic and a general distrust among all Indians for any discussion of population at all. So, the persistence of Malthusian thinking in the international press, in coercive government population policies, and in environmental analyses of various kinds appears to many critical observers to be dangerous indeed, as it distracts attention away from other driving forces (in economy, society, or politics) of environmental degradation. It also tends to unjustly vilify places and people who may have little or nothing to do with ecological change or negative environmental impacts (Robbins and Smith 2017). While there may be a billion people in India, for example, the United States, with one-quarter that population, emits more than five times the amount of carbon dioxide gas – a key driver of global warming (see Chapter 11).
More pointedly, critics maintain that making the politics of the environment a politics of population directs policy action, blame, and social control specifically onto women and their bodies. As Elizabeth Hartmann argues in her critical book Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, by seeking to restrict population, neo-Malthusians effectively seek to restrict women, and yet:
the solution to the population problems lies not in the diminution of rights, but in their expansion. This is because the population problem is not really about human numbers, but a lack of basic rights. Too many people have too little access to resources. Too many women have too little control over their own reproduction. Rapid population growth is not the cause of underdevelopment; it is a symptom of the slow pace of social reform. (Hartmann 1995, p. 39)
Thinking with Population
In this chapter we have learned that:
Human population growth holds serious implications for the sustainability of environmental systems, especially as growth tends historically to be “geometric” or exponential.
Environmental impacts of individual people and groups can vary enormously, owing to variations in technology and affluence.
Population growth has often led to increased carrying capacity, owing to induced intensification and innovation.
Carrying capacity and ecological footprint analysis can be used as indices to think about impacts of human individuals and populations.
Malthusian thinking has severe limits for predicting and understanding human– environment relations, since population is an effect of other processes, including development and the rights and education of women.
Even accepting important criticisms, of course, the question of population cannot be fully ignored. Given the lifestyle of the people in places like Phoenix, Arizona, where massive amounts of water are expended just maintaining peoples lawns, there may well be a limit to the number of people the world can maintain, and every person over that limit certainly taxes the landscapes, with implications for native biodiversity, for open space, and for clean air. Still, as such resources become scarce and more valued, an incentive to provide them may emerge. Environmental groups (like The Nature Conservancy) are increasingly buying lands throughout Arizona, for example, simply to protect them from development, leave them open and unspoiled, and allow them to provide habitat for the flora and fauna of the desert. Advocates of such an approach suggest that the very scarcity of these environmental “services” is the ticket to their conservation. It is to this argument – that markets can provision and produce scarce environmental goods – that we turn next.
Questions for Review
1 What “crisis” did Malthus predict as inevitable? What was his proposed solution?
2 While Malthus blamed the poor for pending crises, contemporary thinkers like Paul Ehrlich place equal blame on the very wealthy. Why is this the case? (Hint: think I = P*A*T)
3 Who has a larger ecological footprint, you or a subsistence fisher in coastal Bangladesh? Explain.
4 How can population growth force a transition from extensive agriculture to intensive agriculture? How does this transition often lead to innovation?
5 What factors led to the dramatic decrease in population growth rates in Kerala, India? Compare the case of Kerala to India’s national population control program put into place in the 1970s.
Exercise 2.1 What Is Your Ecological Footprint?
Go to http://myfootprint.org/en and read about ecological footprint analysis. Take the ecological footprint quiz, noting your responses and results. Now take the quiz again, three more times. Each time, change only ONE of your answers from your original answers, as if you had changed one of your own behaviors. Make note of: How does the changed behavior change the resulting final footprint? By how much does the footprint change? And, which particular changes appear to get the most ecological benefit?
What was your original footprint? How did it compare to the national and global averages? In what categories were you higher or lower than this average? How many Earths would be required to support a planet in which everyone lived as you do? Why do you think your overall impact is higher than/lower than/equal to the average? What factors in your life, background, or current situation account for your overall footprint? Will they change in the future? In what direction?
What three changes did you introduce in your proposed behaviors in the three further quizzes? Which of these changes had the greatest impact on your footprint? Which of these is actually the most feasible or likely change (i.e. which would be easiest)? Is the easiest change the one that would make the biggest difference in terms of ecological benefits? Why or why not? What makes some choices more difficult than others? In light of this, to what degree do you feel that global population is a factor in environmental change, relative to consumption, affluence, and lifestyle?
Exercise 2.2 Where are Fertility Rates High? Why?
Visit the Population Reference Bureau’s data hub at https://www.prb.org/data. Using the tools you find there (which include tables, maps, and other resources), research the Total Fertility Rate of four or five countries, along with some other key indicators, like development, wealth, education for women. Where are large families (fertility rates > 3.5) more normal and why? Where are fertility rates lower (<2.5) and why? What possible support, policies, or interventions