A population policy for Australia
Chain Reaction #91, 2004
A population policy for Australia
Population has for too long been missing from the environmental debate, particularly here in Australia. While our rivers and coastline degrade, our cities become ever more congested, urban sprawl gobbles up more and more natural habitat, greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, population growth as a contributing factor is ignored.
It is more than three decades now since the Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren introduced the I=PAT formula. Environmental impact (I) is the product of Population (P), Affluence (A) and the technology required (T) to bring the material goods to the population. There have been variations on it, such as that suggested by Barry Jones and the 1994 House of Representatives Inquiry into Carrying Capacity, namely I=PLOT, where L is life-style and O is organisation i.e. the way society is organised. This includes distribution. But given that it is difficult to quantify L, O, and T, it is better to come back to basics and say:
Total Impact (T) = average impact per capita(I) x number of people(N)
So if you double the population but the individual impact (or shall we say ecological footprint) stays the same, then the total impact will double. Or, if population doubles and per capita impact is halved, then the total impact stays the same. Or, if you halve both population and per capita impact, then total impact is reduced to a quarter.
And this latter option is really where we have to go if we are to have some hope of saving the planet. Optimum Population Trust (OPT) in Britain has come up with a carrying capacity table for the world in which they list what populations different countries can carry at three levels: at current standard of living, at “modest” level as defined by the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, and at one where carbon emissions are reduced globally to 2.5Gt C/year (a level at which we could stabilise the atmosphere) but they are spread equitably. Australia has just passed the 20 million mark yet OPT estimates that, at current standard of living, the carrying capacity is only 10 million. If a modest life-style were adopted, we could support 21 million. If we went down the reduced greenhouse gas emissions road, then we could only support two million!
It is perfectly admirable of green groups around Australia to push for lower consumption and so lower environmental impact. It is grossly irresponsible, however, to neglect the P factor in the I=PAT formula or the N in the T=IN formula. The rationale for ignoring this crucial part of the debate, namely to support the applications of asylum seekers to settle in Australia, may on the surface be honourable but is essentially misguided. This is not to say that we should not be doubling our humanitarian intake – we should, and may indeed have to quadruple it or more in times to come as environmental refugees clamour at our shores – but an open door policy that allows population to balloon out will have disastrous consequences for our natural heritage. And that is what green groups should, first and foremost, be trying to preserve. They should do so, not only for its own sake but because ultimately the human economy and the welfare of people depend on the health of the environment.
There are a number of crises now imminent: climate change; water shortages; the big oil crisis as demand starts to exceed supply; desertification; coral reef bleaching; urban pollution, and so on. Global food supplies may reach a critical level before even this decade is out because three of the great food producing nations, the United States, India and China, are over-pumping their aquifers and a lot of land will have to be taken out of irrigation and reverted to less productive dryland farming. China, with its population still growing by ten million a year even despite its one-child policy, will have to draw on global markets. India, with its population growing by 16 million a year, may not be far behind. Meanwhile, climate change may disrupt production in many countries as weather becomes more unstable and extreme events such as droughts and floods become more prevalent.
The prospect of China and India buying up all food on the world market is a frightening prospect for poorer countries who cannot feed themselves. A recent program on ABC-TV’s Foreign Correspondent about Ethiopia showed a country that was only surviving on food aid – they simply could not get to a situation of self-sufficiency, hampered by runaway population growth rates. (One farmer interviewed had 14 children!) Ethiopia, despite its relative fertility and access to water, may experience widespread famine in the not-too-distant future as world food surpluses disappear. They will disappear faster, of course, if the oil crisis bites early since so much of modern agriculture depends on fossil fuels.
Australia produces enough food to feed 60 million people, though Australian agriculture is having disastrous environmental consequences and a revolution is required in order to restore ecological sustainability. Let’s assume, however, that we continue to produce food for 60 million. Do we allow our population to grow to 50 million as many advocate? That leaves enough food for 10 million on the global market. Ignoring the effect that a significant reduction in exports would have on our already overloaded current account deficit, it means less food for the Chinese and Indians to buy, or for the UN to buy to supply in food aid to countries like Ethiopia.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to a balance between people and the resources required to sustain them. Many dispute the concept of ‘carrying capacity’, declaring it is an out-moded concept that can only be applied to sheep or cattle. And indeed, the human economy can over-ride local resource constraints to some extent through trade. Leaving aside the downside of globalisation, a country can sell what it has in surplus to buy what it lacks. If a country’s population has grown beyond its capacity to feed itself, then it must sell resources or manufactured goods to buy food. If there is little to sell, and it cannot feed itself, however, the country must rely on food aid to survive.
Global resources are finite. Freshwater is finite and thus the ability of the world to produce food in a sustainable manner is finite. The atmosphere absorptive capacity is finite. In 2002, Wackernagel et al found that the world had passed its regenerative and absorptive capacity back in 1979 and every year that passes we increase the deficit by one percent. That means in 2004 we are 25 per cent over the limit – we have passed our limits to growth!
So what can be done? We have to stabilise population as soon as possible, both globally and nationally. It is even more critical that we in the industrialised world do so because our per capita impact is so much higher. In Australia, it means keeping fertility about what it is now (1.75) because, although it is below replacement, natural increase still exceeds 100,000 every year. We need to lower immigration from its current 125,300 net (immigration minus emigration) but at the same time replace some of the skilled component (currently 61 per cent) with a bigger humanitarian intake. If we want to help the most people in the world, bringing in hundreds of thousands of people is not the most cost effective way. Increasing foreign aid to the UN-recommended level of 0.7 per cent of GDP, with a sizeable proportion going to family planning to help other countries get their birth rates down, is far better.
But as climate change starts to bite, probably the most effective thing we can do is shift to a renewable energy economy and share that technology with poorer countries so they can leap-frog the industrialised fossil-fuel dependent stage of development. If we don’t mitigate global warming and we get to the higher range of temperatures forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely 6oC by century’s end, it will set off positive feed back mechanisms that will see even greater warming and the end of civilisation as we know it.
Jenny Goldie, recent National director, Sustainable Population Australia
