The following is adapted from an essay
I wrote for a competition on population policy and human rights. Selected
essayists were invited to a workshop
in Berlin in February 2007, organised by the Irmgard Coninx Stiftung
Foundation. My fellow finalists were human rights activists and junior
academics from all inhabited continents, though not Russia, a country then
experiencing a serious decline in population, health and human rights. I
remember how one of the moderators of this meeting, a prominent US social
scientist, was cold, rude and indifferent to my arguments; I will not name her.
Some of my colleagues were also blind (but not rude), but some were very
sympathetic.
A version of this essay was published
in BODHI Times in June 2007 (number 32).
A queue in heaven
Imagine you are in a heavenly queue, await your turn to occupy the
next available womb. What womb would you hope for? Few readers of this essay
would choose, as their new mother, a woman who is illiterate, impoverished,
diseased, or so vulnerable that disease and poverty are ever imminent. But the
souls in our imaginary queue have no choice. We know, today, that a vast number
of human conceptions occur in women who meet one or more of these criteria. In
turn, almost from the moment of conception, foetuses who develop in such women
are likely to suffer progressive disadvantage. Usually, the uterine environment
in such women is doubly burdened by an under-supply of nutrients, especially of
the vitamins and other trace elements needed for optimal development (including
long chained fatty acids), but with an over-supply of development-harming
contaminants, such as lead, mercury, and a cocktail of persistent organic
pollutants.
By the time of birth – often underweight, to an underweight mother
– most infants who have gestated in such an environment are likely to suffer at
least subtle cognitive and often physical impairment. Very often, further
disadvantage then accrues, as the child learns (or fails to learn) in
conditions of scarcity, limited intellectual stimulation, and ongoing and
chronic nutritional adversity and environmental pollution.
A few children will escape from severe poverty but they are likely
to be exceptional. Far more pass lives burdened by chronic scarcity,
insecurity, and servitude. In many places, such as Rwanda, Darfur in the Sudan,
Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Peninsula, or the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh, human
lives are too frequently characterised by intermittent or even constant fear of
violence, the perpetration of violence, or both.
Two communities and
two propositions
This essay pleads for greater
co-operation and dialogue between two mutually suspicious communities. On one side are human rights advocates, anti-globalisation
activists and feminists. On the other are a small number of academics, activists and
development workers who argue that fertility and population growth rates are crucial determinants
of progress towards greater prosperity, freedom and human rights.
My argument rests on two main propositions. First, the social, economic and
developmental benefits of slower population growth rates have been substantially underestimated
in recent decades. Because of the sustained effort of a handful of activists, the
importance of this principle is be being belatedly rediscovered. For example, an enquiry
into this question by the UK Parliament (released 2007) emphatically
agreed with this. Summarising this evidence, Dr Martha Campbell, Professor John
Cleland and two co-authors published a paper in the prestigious journal
Science, called ‘Return of the Population Growth Factor,’ in
March, 2007.
Soon after WWII there was widespread
economic and political understanding of this principle. The Green Revolution,
which started in the late 1960s, won a temporary reprieve in the ancient race
between the stork and the plough. Within fifteen years of Norman Borlaug’s 1970 Nobel prize speech, warning
that the Green Revolution should be regarded as a precious opportunity to slow
population growth, the view that high population growth is harmful for human
development came under vigorous attack from a coalition of forces led by the
government of US President Ronald Reagan.
Borlaug said (in part):
"the tide of the
battle against hunger has changed for the better during the past three years.
But tides have a way of flowing and then ebbing again. We may be at high tide
now, but ebb tide could soon set in if we become complacent and relax our
efforts. For we are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of
food production and the biologic power of human reproduction. Man has made
amazing progress recently in his potential mastery of these two contending
powers. Science, invention, and technology have given him materials and methods
for increasing his food supplies substantially and sometimes spectacularly, as
I hope to prove tomorrow in my first address as a newly decorated and dedicated
Nobel Laureate. Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human
reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing
the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his
potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the
rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in
some areas.
There can be no
permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight
for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite
in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but
united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other
amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind."
Representing vested interests such as
the oil industry, and intensely threatened by the implications of the ‘Limits
to Growth’ arguments the Reagan administration called for "free",
deregulated markets, including to determine for population size.
"President Reagan's personal views
are contained in a pamphlet made available by the US delegation at its first
press conference, Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation
(Washington, D.C.: The White House, n. d.). In a televised debate during the
Presidential campaign, President Reagan responded to a question about the
"population explosion" by stating that it has been "vastly
exaggerated----over-exaggerated," New York Times, 22 October 1984, p. 85.
(Unfortunately I have been unable to
retrieve the original NYT article.)
Gullible supporters of free market
ideology claimed (especially in the 1990s) that since no limits to growth
actually exist, and since the "invisible hand" of the market would
maximise public goods, any attempt to regulate population growth would not only
be pointless but also would harm human rights.
There were probably thousands of such
essays written in the 1990s, but they are not easy to find on the web. Here is one. I recently tried to find a link to
"Apocalypse soon" published in The Economist (332, 25-26) in 1994,
but it's no longer easy. The Economist published a slew of such papers, in
support of hyper-optimists such as Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg; in the days
before the 2008 Financial Collapse, and the rise in the price of energy and
food.
My second major proposition is that it
is more likely that inclusive economic growth will generate improved human
rights than the converse. (Leave aside, for the time being, the vexed definition of what economic growth measures and
constitutes.) That is, while the relationship between economic
growth and freedom is far from straightforward, in the main, freedom is more
likely to flourish in a rich society than in a poor society. This is likely
even if existing wealth is distributed fairly evenly in both societies.
(Consider for example, the lack of freedom in egalitarian Czechoslovakia during
the Cold War).
(The following argument also ignores
the fact that much wealth in rich societies is stolen, appropriated or otherwise kept from the poor so that their comparatively high
freedom is likely to have a narrow scope.)
For a start, people in rich societies
are more likely to be educated and have the tools to develop their human
potential than are people in poor societies. Though people in Singapore are
neither democratic nor free, I would much rather be born there than in a
terribly poor country like Burundi. Poverty is no guarantor of human rights, as
the current situation in Zimbabwe clearly shows.
Contesting Freedoms
and Rights
Obviously, choosing one’s family size
is a human freedom. In calling for a lower population growth rate in order to
accelerate development (in countries such as Pakistan, Uganda or East Timor
where the total fertility rate is much greater than replacement levels), I am
not arguing for an enforced reduction in family size, nor even for explicit
economic or social penalties (such as restricted promotion) tied to family
size. Instead, I am calling for a greater recognition of the role of high
population growth in undermining development, including by academic and
political leadership. I am also calling for the implementation of social
policies which will accelerate the demographic transition.
The most important of these factors are
well known. They include universal primary school education, the lifting of
taboos concerning discussion of this topic, and the availability of cheap
contraceptives, especially condoms. Feminists, human rights activists and the many
development workers who remain ignorant about or silent on this issue need to engage
in this debate. One response from this community is to argue that the open
discussion of this topic will inevitably lead to abuses, such as the compulsory
sterilisation of minorities. In fact, denying the role of smaller families in
economic take-off helps to perversely maintain poverty and inequality.
Of course, slowing human population
growth is not enough to solve our human predicament (illustrated, for example,
by the increasingly dire predictions concerning climate change). The tension
between the right to reproduce and the struggle to develop is hardly unique.
All acts of co-operation necessarily entail a trade-off between competing
freedoms and responsibilities. As a society, we choose to restrict the freedom
to drive on both sides of the road (except in Delhi on the way to the airport!)
Nor are human restrictions on fertility
a recent invention. While a few demographers might still claim otherwise, there
is increasing recognition that contraception is ancient, by methods including
prolonged lactation, herbs, taboos and possibly other means.
Skewed age
distributions
One reason to lower fertility is to
reduce ‘youth bulges’. These refer to concentrations of
young men who are poorly educated, under-employed, (rationally) resentful,
comparatively easy to manipulate and potentially violent. Such men are
vulnerable to recruitment into activities which can damage society, such as
gangs, rebel groups and terrorists. A youth bulge was pivotal in the 1994
Rwandan genocide, when land scarcity forced many young unmarried men to
unsuccessfully seek work in the city.
Conclusion
I
am not arguing that curtailing the liberty to choose to have as many children
as one might like is without cost to human freedom. Rather, I am arguing that
that right needs to be balanced against other rights and freedoms, including
for other people and future generations.
Although denied by most of the
mainstream economic, political and demographic literature, localised and global
overpopulation are realities. The former is manifest through means such as
poverty traps, violence, poor governance and epidemics. The latter is evident
through the twin threats of the loss of ecological wealth and climate change.
Although both consequences are mediated by technological and social factors,
future human well-being is at serious risk. Climate change is increasingly
understood as having agricultural consequences, including of increased
inequality of highly productive agricultural land. Combined with climate
change, the existence of weapons of mass destruction and high population growth
in developing countries is a toxic brew. There is an urgent need for fairer
global governance. This will slow population growth, and contribute to a
virtuous cycle. Development with human rights is the best contraceptive.
Lobbyists for human rights need to re-examine the economic arguments for
slowing population growth; campaigners for slowing fertility need to seek
allies from within the human rights community.
