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September 1999 Growing Pains Book Review by Mia MacDonald

 

Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge by Lester Brown, Gary Gardner, and Brian Halweil (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). $13.00 paperback. 168 pages

Population—the act of populating and its impacts—is a polarizing issue, and one many people would rather not engage. However, with human numbers rising and those of other species dwindling, the population issue is getting harder to ignore. While human population is growing less rapidly than it was in the 1960s, it is still growing by about 78 million each year. By October 1999, human numbers will reach six billion, the highest level ever recorded. By 2050, our population will have, according to United Nations projections, nearly stabilized at between 7.7 billion and 11.1 billion; the actual number depends on the reproductive choices the coming generation—the largest in history—makes, which are, of course, still unknown. At the same time, in 1999 there are fewer than 5,000 tigers left in the wild, and fewer still mountain gorillas and giant tortoises. By 2050, there may well be none.

Given the numbers, the population issue is increasingly central, both in rapidly expanding developing countries and the backyards of those of us living in the developed world.

For example, growing populations and highly unequal patterns of land ownership (small numbers of rich people have it, while large numbers of poor people don’t) are both responsible for the devastating floods in Central America brought on by Hurricane Mitch and vast tracts of forest having been cleared. And closer to home, few days go by without newly vocal Americans complaining about the population- and affluence-induced problems of pollution caused by Sport Utility Vehicles, woods being chopped down to make way for huge new homes, and declining water quality due to toxic run-off from the factory farms that supply our meat and poultry.

Beyond Malthus, new from the WorldWatch Institute, an environmental research group, is a useful primer on the locations and speed of human population growth, what projected increases mean for a set of key indicators (spanning energy use, biodiversity, meat production, education, protection of natural areas, and 14 others no less critical), and what all of us might want to do about it. The intention of authors Brown, Gardner and Halweil (all WorldWatch staffers), in which they succeed, is to go beyond the predictions of Thomas Malthus, a much-maligned 18th century British clergyman who warned of food shortages and famine if human population growth remained unchecked. The authors seek to move past Malthus’ preoccupation with human food needs and assess the host of additional impacts of human population on the Earth’s life-supporting and social systems.

Malthus re-examined
Malthus has been dismissed by many—as are biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich who wrote The Population Bomb (1968) and The Population Explosion (1990)—as an alarmist who didn’t reckon on the ingenuity of the human mind and technology to avoid the negative impacts of increasing populations. What the authors suggest (and provide easy-to-read, concise chunks of information to support), is that Malthus may yet be proved right—unless the world sits up and takes notice. As they write: “There has been more growth in population since 1950 than during the 4 million preceding years since our early ancestors first stood upright.”

“The results of our analysis,” they continue, “offer further evidence that we are approaching—and increasingly broaching—any number of natural limits…We know that both atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the Earth’s surface temperature are rising. We know that we are the first species in the planet’s history to trigger a mass extinction, and we admit that we do not understand the consequences of such a heavy loss of plant and animal species. In short, we know enough to understand that the growth in our numbers and the scale of our activities is already redirecting the natural course of our planet.”

Meat consumption, Beyond Malthus reports, is growing nearly twice as fast as human population (reaching 36 kilograms per person in 1998) with the result that, by 1998, world grain stocks had declined to one of the lowest levels on record. As a result, “the only safety net remaining in the event of a major crop failure is the grain fed to livestock and poultry.”

Beyond Malthus is not written to inform and raise consciousness alone. It argues for action—a “full court press—an all out effort to lower fertility” before what the authors call “demographic fatigue” takes over. Countries, burdened by the demands of rapidly growing human numbers for social services and natural resources, cannot cope. As a result, what is happening in too many African countries today will become increasingly real: the scourge of AIDS (and other diseases) will overwhelm government resources and death rates will skyrocket. Birth and death rates will reach equilibrium, but at huge human costs. Zimbabwe, the authors relate, is expected to reach population stabilization in 2002 as death rates from AIDS climb (26 percent of adults are infected with HIV) to offset birth rates, “marking perhaps the first time that a developing country has reached population stability primarily as a result of rising death rates.”

What the book does well is show that we’re all together in this population dilemma—the daily hamburger-eater and families with many children, whether they live in the “First” or rapidly growing “Third” Worlds. The fact that India will, perhaps by the time you read this, have one billion people may be cause for alarm. But perhaps a more unsettling fact is that U.S. population will grow to an estimated 350 million people in 50 years (from about 260 million today), and each of them will consume many, many times what the average Indian does. All those cars, air conditioned offices, computers, and refrigerators Americans consider a birthright exact a huge toll on the planet.

For example, in its chapter on energy, Beyond Malthus reports that each American’s consumption of energy is nearly double that of other developed nations (Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) and 13 times the energy consumption levels in developing countries. To make this real in terms of population growth, the authors write: “The 71 million people to be added [to the U.S. population] in the next 50 years will boost energy demands by 758 million tons of oil equivalent—roughly the same as the present energy consumption of Africa and Latin America.” By this and a host of other consumption measures examined in Beyond Malthus, it is the U.S. population that is out of control.

Finger Pointing
Still, some additional fingers do need to be pointed. According to UN projections, Pakistan’s population is expected to grow from 142 million today to 345 million in 2050, not wholly surprising given that women in Pakistan have a low “social value” and limited ability to determine how many children to have. (Experts in the population field agree that the status of women is a key determinant of how many children they will have. Women with more education and opportunities have dramatically fewer children). Men retain most public and private power, including, often, deciding how many children a couple will have, and health services are rare or inadequate in Pakistan’s rural areas, where populations grow the fastest. Nigeria’s population, already the highest in Africa, will double in size by 2050, from 122 million to 244 million; the authors do not explicitly detail what impact this will have on Nigeria’s primates and other wildlife, but presumably they will continue to be squeezed into ever smaller islands of wilderness. And Yemen, where population growth is among the fastest in the world and where water shortages are already rife, the number of people is expected to nearly quadruple by 2050, to 59 million.

Another finger needs to be pointed, and the authors do it: most poor countries cannot afford the investments needed to improve women’s status, ensure their reproductive health, and in so doing, slow population growth and bring about gender equality—the combination of inputs that most people working in the population field now agree are both just and effective. That is where donor nations—the rich, developed countries—are supposed to come in. However, they are egregiously failing in their commitments, and putting the future of the planet at risk. At an international conference on population and development held in Cairo in 1994, donor nations agreed to fund one-third of a $17 billion annual program (by 2000) of reproductive health services, including family planning, for the world’s women and men. To date, less than a third of that money has been forthcoming, with only five countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands) meeting their commitments in full. In addition, this year the Republican-led U.S. Congress cut off all U.S. funding—$25 million—to the U.N. Population Fund, charging (wrongly) that the organization promotes abortion as a method of family planning. Congress also holds up payment of U.S. back dues to the U.N. which are woefully behind schedule and now at least $1.5 billion.

In its conclusion, the book comes full circle with Malthus. The authors argue that limits on natural resources, available land, and fish and grain harvests, among other finite inputs, will not allow many of the most extreme projections of population increases to take place. In effect, nature will have her day again. Countries where populations are still growing rapidly will either shift quickly to smaller families, or will fall back into what is called “stage one” of the demographic transition, where economic and social systems break down under mounting population pressure; death rates rise, essentially offsetting the number of births. “There are no other options,” the authors matter-of-factly state to these two scenarios. Thirteen developing countries are currently in danger of reaching this radically degraded state of affairs, including Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, India, Burma (Myanmar) and Yemen.

John Gray, an economics advisor to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, echoed a similar prophecy to the bleakest vision in Beyond Malthus. Writing in Resurgence magazine, Gray argued that, without quick and sustained government and individual action to create a balance between human populations and available resources, “the planet may then return to a kind of equilibrium—one that has been achieved with minimal input from human intelligence.”

Mia MacDonald is a writer and activist who has worked for several years on issues related to global population and women’s reproductive health. She lives in Brooklyn.