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Population control: The
real culprits and victims
Walden
Bello
The author argues that when the
population-environmental debate is considered in a
global context, it is evident tbat population
growth in tbe North (given its over-consumption and
wasteful lifestyle) is a greater threat to the
health of our planet than population growth in the
South...
One of the points around which an informed
consensus has formed since the 1970s is that
because ecological degradation respects no borders,
it is the planet - rather than the nationstate,
whose boundaries are arbitrarily drawn - that is
the most appropriate starting point for ecological
analysis and action.
Viewed in a global context, the contribution of
population growth in the South to environmental
stress is placed in proper perspective:
- Eighty percent of the current consumption of
the Earth's resources is accounted for by the
20% of the world's population that resides in
the North.
- The average Swiss pours 2,000 times more
toxic waste into the environment than the
average Sahelian farmer.
- If levels of consumption and waste do not
change, the 57 million Northerners who will be
born in the l990s will pollute the Earth more
than the extra 911 million Southerners.
In light of these data, it is difficult to
disagree with the Treaty on Consumption and
Lifestyle passed at the Rio de Janeiro Global Forum
during the June 1992 Earth Summit: 'While overall
population growth is a danger to the health of the
planet, it must be recognised that population
growth in the North, due to extremely high levels
of per capital consumption, is a far greater threat
than population growth in the South.'
North's overconsumption of South's
resources
Beyond its impact on the global environment,
overconsumption in the North directly degrades the
environment in the South. Japan's ecological
relationship to the Southeast Asian region is a
case in point. If there is any country whose
population might be said to have outstripped its
carrying capacity, it is Japan, a land with scarce
natural resources and agricultural endowments.
Japan ceased to be selfsufficient in food long ago:
as Edwin Reischauer notes, 'With a population four
times the Malthusian limit (30 million) that was
reached in the eighteenth century, the Japanese now
face an even greater deficit in food of about 30%
or more than half if one counts imported food
grains used in domestic meat production'. Japan
also depends on the outside for close to 100% of
the key raw materials consumed by its industry. Yet
its nearly 130 million people enjoy one of the
world's highest standards of living and an
environment more stable than that of many other
countries.
It is, however, prosperity and ecological
stability that has been purchased by displacing the
Japanese economy's resource and environmental costs
to Japan's less prosperous and less powerful
neighbours.
Japan is the world's largest consumer of
tropical forest products, and it is its insatiable
demand rather than local population growth that has
been the main cause of rapid deforestation in
Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia,
Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. To take one example, the
area of the Philippines covered by forests dropped
from 50% in 1950 to less than 20% by 1990; and 70%
of the timber logged in that country is said to
have found its way to Japan.
Apart from devouring Southeast Asia's forests,
the Japanese economic machine is now exporting
industrial pollution on a massive scale to the
region. Highly-polluting resource-processing plants
like copper smelters were relocated from Japan to
the Philippines and Malaysia in the 1970s. This was
followed in the mid-1980s by the large-scale
migration of labour-intensive car and electronics
assembly plants, along with their components
suppliers, to Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines,
and Malaysia. A third phase of industrial
relocation is about to begin, with the transfer of
pollution-intensive heavy and chemical industries
to the region.
Thailand provides a good illustration of how, in
many Third World countries, it is not population
growth but the impact of Northern overconsumption
that is the principal engine of ecological
degradation. Thailand is one of the success stories
of population control, having reduced its fertility
rates by half since the 1960s. But alongside this
phenomenon of fertility decline has unfolded the
rapid deterioration of Thailand's environment. For
all intents and purposes, Thailand has been
converted into an economic colony of Japan, and
this is subjecting the country to an 'ecological
squeeze': while the mighty Chao Phraya River that
runs through Bangkok is dying, partly on account of
the waste generated by uncontrolled
industrialisation spearheaded by Japanese firms,
irreversible erosion is setting in in the country's
rural Northeast, where close to half of the
region's 53 million acres are severely eroded,
partly because of the effects of unrestrained
deforestation provoked by Japanese demand...
Conclusion
In summary, the current economic crisis in the
North has, unfortunately, made the public there
more disposed toward simplistic, anachronistic
views on the impact of population growth in the
South on the environment. This paper has argued
that from a global standpoint, population growth in
the North is far more environmentally destructive
than population growth in the South owing to very
high levels of per capita consumption in the
North.
Moreover, in many Third Worll countries, the
impact o overconsumption in the North poses far
greater direct threat to their environment than
local population growth For instance, the Japanese
economy devouring of Southeast Asia's forest while
exporting its industrial pollutia to that area is a
central factor in the ongoing ecological
devastation of the region. Thus, as Robert Goodland
notes, a global approach to sustainable development
cannot avoid having as a strategic principle the
fact that 'the North has to adapt far more than the
South'.
Focusing next on hunger in the Sahel, it was
pointed out that recent research has thrown doubt
on the thesis that it was population pressure on
land that was the principal cause of the famines
that hit the region. In fact contrary to the
simplistic HardinFletcher explanation, the famines
appear to have resulted from the complex
interaction of several factors, including global
climate change, the conversion of the Hom of Africa
into an arena of super-power conflict, the rise of
repressive regimes that perpetuated unequal
socio-economic structures, the spread of export
agriculture, and global financial and trading
systems biased against Africa. Given the global
character of some of the factors creating famine
and ecological degradation, lasting solutions can
only be achieved by global partnerships between
peoples in the North and South.
Finally, our examination of the experience of
countries that successfully reduced fertility rates
reveals the crucial role played by measures that
promote greater economic security for the poor and
enhance the social, economic, and educational
status of women.
The importance of limiting population growth in
the South and the South Commission's recommendation
that the societies of the South 'must willingly
accept a firm commitment to responsible parenthood
and the small-family norm' is recognised. However,
to be truly effective, family planning services
must be part of a more holistic strategy of
fertility control, the centrepiece of which must be
efforts to radically improve poor people's access
to resources, promote the welfare of women, and
bring about a more equitable international economic
system.
Walden Bello, executive director of the San
Francisco-based Institute for Food and Development
Policy (Food First), is the author of the recently
published People and Power in the Pacific: The
Struggle for the Post-Cold War Order (London:Pluto
Press, 1992) and Brave New Third World: Strategies
for Suvival in the Global Economy (London:
Earthscan, 1990).
Source: Walden Bello, 'Population control: The real
culprits and victims', Third World
Resurgence, No. 33, May 1993, pp.
11-14.
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