Enhancing the ‘glue’ that slows migration

A shorter version of this article was published in the national newsletter (number 129) of Sustainable Population Australia, in September 2017. That version did not include an additional comment regarding Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, nor the three paragraphs describing my own attempts to enhance “glue”.

In 2016 the US journalist Thomas Friedman wrote a pair of articles, published in the New York Times, called “Out of Africa”. He describes a visit to a village in the far northwest of Senegal, worth the trek, he says, “if you’re looking for the headwaters of the immigration flood now flowing from Africa to Europe via Libya.” In this village he finds almost no young or middle-aged men; instead they have left for Europe, in search of opportunity. According to Friedman “the village’s climate-hammered farmlands can no longer sustain them, and with so many kids — 42 percent of Senegal’s population is under 14 years old — there are too many mouths to feed from the declining yields.” This scene is repeated right across the Sahel, including Niger, which has a total fertility rate of over 7.

Supporters of Sustainable Population Australia are unlikely to need much convincing that the human carrying capacity of much of northern Africa has been exceeded. In 2002 I co-authored a paper for a conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population which argued that human carrying capacity can be conceptualised as an emergent property of five kinds of capital: human, social, natural, physical and financial. Applying this analysis to sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that its natural capital (e.g. the capacity of its soil, water, climate and human ingenuity to grow food) is not keeping pace with population growth. Nor is its infrastructure (physical capital). At the same time, word of mouth, mobile phones, and the internet provide hope to many of its people that migration to Europe might provide the means not only for a better life to those who can escape, but a means to send some money home (remittances) enabling the import of food and other means to keep life tolerable, for those for stay behind. Staying behind makes sense for the frail, old and young, who not only avoid the arduous and dangerous journey to Europe, but will not need to be housed and fed in a foreign and strange land.

The vectors that drive migration are most commonly analysed as “push” and “pull”. These are surely not hard to comprehend by non-Indigenous Australians, all of whom are descendants of people who arrived more or less yesterday, compared to the time our earliest ancestors left Africa, perhaps 100,000 years ago. But, in addition to these factors, there are two more, which I termed “glue” and “fend” (deterrence) in a report I contributed to in 2005, commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Medical Association (and wrote about in a blog in 2015). For “fend” one only has to think of the hard line approach of Peter Dutton, President Trump and in other countries such as Hungary.

But the “glue” factor seems less well understood, including in Australia. But it is surely not hard to understand. I am very happy to be an Australian living here, where my mother tongue is understood, I am familiar with the culture, and I have the means for a reasonable life, including a sense of safety. Having lived overseas for 5 years, I know that what Australia can offer me, is, in general, at least as good as anywhere on Earth. Of those 5 years, about a year has been in Asia, including in many rural areas. I know that not every Asian seeks to migrate; they are tied to their homeland by memory, affection, culture and economy.

However, looking forward, in the context of still rising population growth, sea level rise, and other manifestations of adverse environmental change it is easy to conceive how push and pull will loosen glue, in many parts of the Asia Pacific, as is already evident in much of Africa. For many Rohingya (a persecuted Muslim minority largely in Myanmar) this has already happened.

Australian politicians and the glue factor

I have met Philip Ruddock (a former Australian minister for migration) at three events organised by recent migrants to Australia. The last time I saw him he told me foreign aid from Australian was a luxury we cannot afford. In the context of intractable budget deficits (significantly due to the immorality of multinational corporations, Australia’s richest people and their tax lawyers) the position of the Liberal National coalition is that aid is a form of bad debt, an indulgent consumption. In response, I argued that aid was a glue and stability enhancing investment that would enhance global and Australian quality of life. But he gave no hint that he understood.

Sarah Hanson-Young, until recently the Greens spokesperson for migration, has repeatedly criticised Australia’s cruel, duplicitous, expensive, and unaccountable policy of deterrence (fend) to asylum-seeking but she too, to my knowledge, has very rarely if ever been reported talking about the need to enhance the glue dimension to migration. However, I have recently been told, she is in fact well aware of this dimension – if so, why does the media rarely if ever include Sarah’s comments on this? (added December 2017, this sentence is not in the published newsletter).

My own involvement in “glue”

In the late 1970s I decided to study medicine, primarily to try to improve health in the South, then called the Third World. 1989 I co-founded the non-government organisations BODHI and BODHI Australia, now two of the oldest Buddhist-influenced aid organisations based outside Asia. BODHI’s primary goal can be condensed to an attempt to enhance glue and to reduce push, pull and fend.

The arguments made here have been more or less clear to me since a long conversation in 1990 with Dr Maurice King, chief populariser of the concept of “demographic entrapment”. I won the 2001 Borrie Prize (awarded in 2002) by the Australian Population Association (APA) for a long essay that traced the rise and fall of Malthusian thinking within demography. This was an adaptation of the second chapter of my doctoral thesis (Inequality and Sustainability), which was supervised by Professor JC (Jack) Caldwell, a co-recipient of the 2004 UN Population Prize.

Despite winning the Borrie Prize, my resultant article was then rejected by a series of demographic journals, include the Journal of Population Research (the APA journal), the Population and Development Review and at least five more. Today, despite having published at least 50 articles, chapters and reports of relevance to global population dynamics, I have not yet been published in a primarily demographic journal. I share Maurice King’s opinion that mainstream demography has been corrupted by neoliberal forces who deny limits to growth, not only physical but social.

Conclusion

It is clear that Australian political elites have given up on global “health and wealth for all”, despite ostensibly supporting the Sustainable Development Goals, which will be a mirage if business as usual continue. It is not only shameful but stupid that Australia has thumbed its nose at the Pearson Commission target for overseas aid. Our approach of miserly aid, rampant fend (the funding of which probably now exceeds that for aid) is sewing the seed for future misery, both here and abroad.

About the author

In 2002 Colin Butler was commissioned by Frank Fenner, of the Australian Academy of Science, to write a report on Australian carrying capacity. In 2013 the Australian Academy of Science published a chapter in which he argued that the Australian population must be substantially increased, even though this would reduce the Australian quality of life, given the global demographic pressure. However, he argued, this must be accompanied by much greater engagement in the struggle for global development.

Portugal, Bangladesh, climate change, governance and disasters: compare and contrast

Climate change, or global warming, has, for well over a century, been recognised as increasing average temperatures on Earth, as well as extremes. More recently there has been recognition of other phenomena: heavy rain, intensified droughts, sea level rise and even lightning, including in the Arctic. Dry lightning - sometimes with thousands of flashes a day - is credited with help setting part of the Tasmanian highlands alight in 2016.

Even more recently there has been recognition of the likely social effects of climate change including population displacement and migration,* famine and undernutrition, and war and conflict. There is also growing understanding of the risks to infrastructure. Already, intense heat is making flights from some high altitude locations uneconomic. Mobile phones don't work as well in intense heat, railway lines can buckle. Extreme heat also harms the capacity of emergency workers, especially if in high humidity.

In June 2017, two complex phenomena happened, each with scores of deaths, each related to climate change, but also to poor governance, one in Portugal, one in Bangladesh.

Fires in Portugal: three days of national mourning

On June 18, 2017, 62 people died from burns from a forest fire in Portugal, mainly trapped in cars trying to flee. The fires, in poorly regulated eucalyptus plantations, were triggered by extreme heat, low humidity and "dry lightning" (an electrical storm without rain).

Portugal declared 3 days of national mourning.  

Landslides in Bangladesh: scarcely noticed at the national level

On about June 15, 2017, at least 156 people died from landslides after record-breaking monsoonal rain in the Rangamati district of the Chittagong Hills Tracts of Bangladesh. This loss of life is not purely climate change related. It is in part due to aggressive government policies including deforestation, erosion, and an incredibly high rate of recent population growth. According to official Bangladeshi census data the population of the district increased by almost 50% from 1991 to 2011. 

This population increase is not largely due to a high birth rate (though the birth rate is high) but the "transmigration" from the Bengali plains to the Chittagong Hill Tracts. This is effectively a form of land grabbing, a brutal and familiar story of the displacement of Indigenous people, underway in this part of Bangladesh since before partition with India (1947) but accelerating since the 1970s. It has been supported by the Bangladeshi army and other instruments of state. A fundamental driver, of course, is high population pressure on the plains.

As a result of poverty and rapid population growth, many people in the Chittagong Hills Tracts, both migrant and Indigenous, have been forced to build flimsy houses on unstable hills and in vulnerable locations. This is poorly regulated, if at all. For decades, state resources have favoured the military and the settlers, at the expense of the Indigenous people who are increasingly displaced.

Vulnerable housing: Chittagong Hill Tracts. Source

In Bangladesh, unlike in Portugal, there was little attention paid by the state.** Prime minister Hasina went overseas. Both she and the opposition leader (Khaleda Zia) expressed their condolences for four members of the military who were killed (the military's statement implied these deaths were during active rescue work, but locals say the hillock of their camp collapsed and they were buried), but they said little if anything about the others who were killed. Although Bangladesh received condolence messages from India, Russia, Japan and elsewhere mainstream Australian media appears to have not noticed the landslide deaths.

All the road connections to Rangamati were initially cut due to the wide scale of the landslides. Rangamati could only be reached by water from the Kaptai reservoir. The electricity supply was slow to return, food prices were high, compounded by a shortage of food, fuel and drinking water as well as other essentials. There is fear of an outbreak of water-borne diseases. Parts of Moanoghar, a charity which BODHI supports, were flooded, but the children were moved to safer buildings. Some houses were destroyed near Moanoghar and the adjacent road. Reports: here and here.

Arson

An earlier arson attack in the Chittagong Hills in June 2017 (over 150 houses burned) was also scarcely reported in Australia outside of social media. A newspaper report linked the arson to the alleged murder of local Awami League leader Nurul Islam Nayan by two Indigenous men. Two Chakma men were arrested. I have no idea if they are guilty or innocent, but the burning of these houses cannot be justified. At least one Indigenous woman was burned to death.

A woman amid her burnt home in Tintila tries to salvage whatever small things she can. Photo: Prabir Das/Anvil Chakma

    
What is BODHI doing? ***

We are shortly to send $5,000 to Moanoghar to help. Due to the urgency, approval from the Bangladeshi government (to receive foreign funds) is expected to be much faster than normal. 

The wider significance

Those who have more resources in this world generally have more of its political and other forms of power. They even shape the history books.

Claims of overpopulation are generally dismissed by those with power, including in the scientific literature. The capacity of ingenuity to solve problems is exaggerated. Of course, ingenuity helps, but often ingenuity (and aggression) is used to appropriate resources formerly controlled by others, whether in the British Empire, America, Tibet or the Chittagong Hills.

Climate change, by reducing the increase in crop yields, by eating away at coastal land, and by making an increasing fraction of the planet uninhabitable, including through heat and storms, is reducing the arable land which humans need. Ingenuity (eg desalination, vertical farming and hydroponics) is only a partial compensation. In the future, while population growth and climate change worsen, more conflict must be expected. This situation could easily get out of control, generating global catastrophe.

We need to act intelligently, co-operatively, and rapidly to reduce this slow burning planetary emergency.

Notes

* The work of Norman Myers (who I once met at a three day workshop to mark seven billion day, run by the Foundation for the Future) was for decades criticised as alarmist, not only by climate denialists, but by also by some leading migration experts. My impression is that this criticism is diminishing as sea level rise forecasts and other factors, such as extreme heat, grow increasingly dire.

** This is based on material supplied to me by Bengali speakers. I do not have the resources to check the Bangladeshi media, especially by searching in Bengali. I did search in English, finding a reference to the death of the four soldiers but nothing else.

*** BODHI and BODHI Australia are the NGOs I co-founded in 1989.