TIEMPO

a bulletin on global warming and the Third World

issue 7  January 1993

published by the International Institute for
Environment and Development (London, UK) and the
University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) with support
from the Swedish International Development Authority in
association with the Stockholm Environment Institute

editorial office:  TIEMPO, c/o Mick Kelly, School of
Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia,
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK (email gn:crunorwich)

*******************************************************

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT

MARIA ELENA HURTADO discusses the complex links 
between population, economic development and
environmental degradation.

THE SPECTRE of population growth in the Third World
has, for decades, haunted conservative and liberal
alike in Europe and in the United States. Fear of an
invasion of economic refugees fleeing from poverty is
its oldest and more widespread expression. 

Though seldom articulated in so many words, the
underlying assumption is that people are poor because
there are too many of them. Hence, the mindless use of
the phrase  over-population  conjuring up a vision of a
country that is unable to provide a decent standard of
living for its people because there are too many of
them. In reality, rapid population growth is a
consequence, rather than a cause, of poverty.

Now, to the spectre of shirtless immigrants descending
on northern shores, has been added a second one: that
of global environmental catastrophe due to population
growth in the Third World. Again, the simplistic
assumption is that population growth is a leading, if
not the leading, cause of environmental stress.

Emphasizing human numbers is a convenient way of
distracting attention from the fact that, at present,
the main source of environmental damage can be traced
to the high consumption, high waste economies of the
industrialized North.

Obviously, as the proportion of the world's population
living in the Third World grows 95% of the future
increase in global population will be in developing
countries and, as they become more affluent, their
share of world resource use and of waste generation
will rise.

Future-gazing is, however, very imprecise. The latest
United Nations estimates of 10 billion people by 2050
could easily be wide of the mark. The consumption side
of the environmental impact equation could be also. 

Long-term projections of future demand for resources
can be misleading. Take oil consumption. Until 1974,
when OPEC succeeded in pushing prices to unseen
heights, oil consumption was expected to rise in line
with population. In fact, it did not. Developed
countries found ways of using energy more frugally.

We should be tackling the problem of environmental
degradation by confronting, together, all three
elements of the equation population, wasteful
consumption and polluting or destructive technologies. 

When it comes to pollution, for example, a recent study
by the Center of the Biology of Natural Systems in New
York has shown that technology has the upper hand. The
relative impact was assessed of each of these factors
on air pollution from cars and power plants, water
pollution from nitrogen fertilizers and glass trash in
the United States and the Third World. In all cases,
the environmental effect of technology, and of
consumption, was higher than that of population growth.

Why then the concern in the North over population
growth in the South, an emphasis that soured relations
between northern and southern non-governmental
organizations at the Earth Summit preparatory meetings?

One answer may be is that it is politically expedient
for the rich industrial countries to focus on
population growth in developing nations. It is easier
to lecture Third World countries on the virtue of
population control than to agree to provide them with
environmentally-friendly technologies at affordable
prices, one of two key Third World demands at the Earth
Summit.

Arguments about the need to control population growth
in the Third World usually give pre-eminence to
improving the provision of family planning services.
Reality is more complex, however. Though access to
family planning services will lower fertility rates,
these services will only have a significant impact if
economic and social change has created the desire, or
the need, to have fewer children.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Latin America and
the Caribbean. Here, most countries have undergone, or
are undergoing, the demographic transition towards
lower fertility rates. In the early 1960s, the
continental average was six children per woman. Now it
is a little above three. Due to the demographic
momentum, however, it will take more than a decade from
now to bring numbers down. Thirty-six and a half per
cent of the people in Latin America and the Caribbean
are 14 years old or younger the figure for the United
Kingdom is almost half that.

Apart from showing that fertility rates drop when
economic and social change create a disincentive
towards large families, the case of Latin America and
the Caribbean also seems to indicate that the
demographic transition to lower fertility rates may be
quite rapid once the process begins. In just thirty
years, from 1950 to 1980, life expectancy at birth
increased by one quarter and the total fertility rate
declined by a third.

Something else happened too. The conscious policy of
setting up import-substituting industries pushed the
share of agriculture in the national economies down
drastically. The rural population also slumped as
millions moved to cities to take up jobs in the new
industries. The dramatic demand for food from the
burgeoning city dwellers combined with the drop in the
rural labour force stimulated the modernization of
agriculture, which in turn, sped up the migration to
cities.

The rural population in Latin America and the Caribbean
stabilized in the mid-1970s at around 124 million. In
fact, Latin America has the lowest ratio of people to
land area in the entire developing world.

Both the modernization of agriculture, including the
introduction of capitalist relations in the
countryside, and the urban explosion helped bring down
the size of families. In Brazil, the advance of
commercial agriculture since the 1960s has meant a
shift to individual labour contracts for farm workers
and a progressive reduction in the numbers of
smallholders and tenants, making large numbers of
children a net cost rather than a benefit.

As the cities grew, employment opportunities rose
faster than the labour force and women were encouraged
to take up employment, again strengthening the
preference for smaller families.

The place developing countries occupy in the
demographic transition is strongly associated with
their level of development. The connection between
poverty and large families not only works at the
country level it also works at the level of individual
families and social groups. Fertility levels among
Latin America's poor are double or triple those of the
middle and upper classes.

It is tempting to contrast the Latin American economic
and social path to lower fertility rates with that of
Africa, where birth rates are the world's highest. 

Most people in the 42 countries that make up
sub-Saharan Africa are subsistence farmers too poor to
pay for help in the house or in the field. Children are
the only factor of production they can easily add. High
infant and child mortality, the exodus of men from the
rural areas, the status in traditional societies
attached to child-bearing are added incentives for
women to have more children.

The experience of Latin America and Africa seems to
show that an economic and social threshold is needed
before couples start wanting less children. Unless the
demand for smaller families is there, the best birth
control programme will not make a major impact 
assuming, that is, that governments do not use coercion
to bring population numbers down as happened in India
under Indira Gandhi and as is happening in China today.

As far as environmental degradation is concerned, it is
not possible to show a straight correlation with rates
of population growth in Latin America and the
Caribbean. The connection is rather with a type of
economic development that has led to a spatial
concentration of people in cities and in fragile
ecological areas.

Talk of environmental stress in the Third World
immediately conjures up images of massive tree-cutting
and soil degradation. Both are happening in Latin
America but population growth is not the main factor.

For example, Costa Rica and Paraguay report
deforestation rates of over 4% a year. In Costa Rica,
trees are mainly cut to clear land for cattle ranching
and commercial agriculture. Paraguay is one of the most
sparsely populated countries in the western hemisphere.
In the world-famous case of Brazil, government policies
unleashed the processes that culminated in accelerated
deforestation, among them were the ill-fated
colonization schemes in the Amazon prompted not by
shortage of land but as a way of avoiding land reform.

Deforestation and soil erosion are also a result of the
skewed distribution of land which pushes subsistence
peasants to sub- divide their small farms or to farm on
fragile mountain slopes prone to erosion. In Guatemala,
60% of all farms occupy less than 4% of the total farm
area. Two per cent of farmers own two-thirds of the
land.

In the Caribbean, the major cause of environmental
degradation is not too many local people, but too many
tourists.

By increasing the demand for food, population growth
does put pressure on natural resources. When incomes
stagnate or decline as they did in Latin America in the
1980s then all the increase in food consumption, and
the resulting stress on the environment, comes from the
extra mouths that have to be fed. When the economy is
in better shape, higher purchasing power becomes the
main pressure factor.

But the very high levels of consumption in developed
countries seem to be an even greater cause of
environmental degradation in the Third World. One study
has shown that, even with four-fifths of the global
population residing in low-income countries, the bulk
of the pressure on Third World resources in recent
decades stems from increases in the already high level
of consumption in the industrial countries. The reason
is that the per capita income of developing countries
is one-tenth that of industrialized nations. These
calculations make nonsense of concepts such as  the
carrying capacity of the land , so much liked by the
 population bomb  school of thought.

Of course, the problem is more complex. Given the
present international trade bias against manufactured
goods from Third World countries, it is difficult to
see what else, apart from natural resources, these
countries could export in the short term.

As a means to reducing the pressure to increase exports
at all costs, a swift solution to Latin America's debt
crisis would do more to maintain fish stocks, fertile
soils and forests than installing birth control clinics
in every village, town and city.

Looking at the problem of population versus resources
in all its complexity might stimulate better solutions
to environmental stress. For example, there is a lot of
talk and some action in Latin America concerning the
rehabilitation of degraded uphill environments. In
fact, it might be a better idea to use resources to
create stable employment in industry and services.

It would be fatal, however, to install all new
industries and services in urban areas, as has been
practised to date. Latin American cities are already
reeling under catastrophic levels of pollution from
industries, cars and insufficient services for the
rapidly increasing number of city dwellers.

Latin American cities are the home of half of all
people living under the poverty line. The environment
in which all these poor people live is precarious.
Their makeshift houses are perched on hills as in Rio
and Caracas. They dot a bleak desert as in Lima or are
enveloped in smog as in Santiago and Mexico City. 


As far as environmental degradation is concerned, it is
not possible to show a straight correlation with rates
of population growth in Latin America and the
Caribbean. The connection is rather with a type of
economic development that has led to a spatial
concentration of people in cities and in fragile
ecological areas.

Talk of environmental stress in the Third World
immediately conjures up images of massive tree-cutting
and soil degradation. Both are happening in Latin
America but population growth is not the main factor.

For example, Costa Rica and Paraguay report
deforestation rates of over 4% a year. In Costa Rica,
trees are mainly cut to clear land for cattle ranching
and commercial agriculture. Paraguay is one of the most
sparsely populated countries in the western hemisphere.
In the world-famous case of Brazil, government policies
unleashed the processes that culminated in accelerated
deforestation, among them were the ill-fated
colonization schemes in the Amazon prompted not by
shortage of land but as a way of avoiding land reform.

Deforestation and soil erosion are also a result of the
skewed distribution of land which pushes subsistence
peasants to sub- divide their small farms or to farm on
fragile mountain slopes prone to erosion. In Guatemala,
60% of all farms occupy less than 4% of the total farm
area. Two per cent of farmers own two-thirds of the
land.

In the Caribbean, the major cause of environmental
degradation is not too many local people, but too many
tourists.

By increasing the demand for food, population growth
does put pressure on natural resources. When incomes
stagnate or decline as they did in Latin America in the
1980s then all the increase in food consumption, and
the resulting stress on the environment, comes from the
extra mouths that have to be fed. When the economy is
in better shape, higher purchasing power becomes the
main pressure factor.

But the very high levels of consumption in developed
countries seem to be an even greater cause of
environmental degradation in the Third World. One study
has shown that, even with four-fifths of the global
population residing in low-income countries, the bulk
of the pressure on Third World resources in recent
decades stems from increases in the already high level
of consumption in the industrial countries. The reason
is that the per capita income of developing countries
is one-tenth that of industrialized nations. These
calculations make nonsense of concepts such as  the
carrying capacity of the land , so much liked by the
 population bomb  school of thought.

Of course, the problem is more complex. Given the
present international trade bias against manufactured
goods from Third World countries, it is difficult to
see what else, apart from natural resources, these
countries could export in the short term.

As a means to reducing the pressure to increase exports
at all costs, a swift solution to Latin America's debt
crisis would do more to maintain fish stocks, fertile
soils and forests than installing birth control clinics
in every village, town and city.

Looking at the problem of population versus resources
in all its complexity might stimulate better solutions
to environmental stress. For example, there is a lot of
talk and some action in Latin America concerning the
rehabilitation of degraded uphill environments. In
fact, it might be a better idea to use resources to
create stable employment in industry and services.

It would be fatal, however, to install all new
industries and services in urban areas, as has been
practised to date. Latin American cities are already
reeling under catastrophic levels of pollution from
industries, cars and insufficient services for the
rapidly increasing number of city dwellers.

Latin American cities are the home of half of all
people living under the poverty line. The environment
in which all these poor people live is precarious.
Their makeshift houses are perched on hills as in Rio
and Caracas. They dot a bleak desert as in Lima or are
enveloped in smog as in Santiago and Mexico City. 


To these measures, the World Bank study adds:

o    promoting demand for smaller families and family
planning through cultural and agricultural/economic
incentives;

o    creating farmer demand for  sustainable 
agricultural technology;

o    ensuring that agricultural services and education
serve women;

o    improving women's farming practices and shortening
the time spent collecting firewood and water; and

o    reducing forest and wildland degradation by land
tenure reform, agricultural intensification,
infrastructure, migration and population policies.

These conclusions are viable because they capture the
integrated nature of improving the environment and
reducing poverty.

All these interlocking factors apply in Latin America
and the Caribbean where we have seen that population
growth is only one, and in most cases not the most
important, factor behind environmental deterioration.
Reducing fertility rates through better access to
modern birth control methods will make little
difference to the health of the environment unless it
is accompanied by policies on land reform, better
distribution of income, economic diversification away
from the production of unprocessed natural products,
land planning, pollution control, increasing
productivity on the farms through sustainable methods
and the avoidance of damage to the environment.

Finally, it is a delusion to look exclusively at the
Third World for solutions to global environmental
pressures, and this includes curbing population growth.
By doing so we are downplaying, even ignoring, the
other two key factors excess consumption in the North
and the impact of polluting and destructive
technologies.

Mar!a Elena Hurtado is Director of the World
Development Movement.



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