Sabado, Nobyembre 10, 2012

The Size of the Population:Is it a Problem? by Jolito Ortizo Padilla




Many argue that the planet is already over-populated with 6.7 billion inhabitants. Growth to 9 or 10 billion will be unsustainable. There is a number of arguments put forward to sustain this proposition.

Malthus was an early nineteenth century British economist who put forward " the iron law of wages".He argued that the food supply could only increase arithmetically over time (e.g. 2,4,6,8,10...) while the population would grow geometrically (2.4,16, 256...). The result would inevitably be poverty trap. This was because a rise in wages would lead to more children surviving into adulthood.This would increase the supply of labor, driving down wages, with more children starving to death. In equilibrium, most of the population can only live at subsistence level.

Malthusian economics has proved to be incorrect in the developed world. World food supply has more than kept pace with population growth. In the developed world, average daily calorie intake is more than twice what it was 100 years ago. Modern day Malthusian argue that the pace of technological change cannot be kept up. Farmers cannot increase their yields per acre forever by improving the land, applying more fertilizers and developing better strains. There has to be a limit to how much food the planet can grow. Critics of this view say about two and one half percent annually for 100 years, more than outstripping population growth. Why should this trend not continue? Moreover, the developed countries of the world already have the potential to grow more food than is currently being produced. The objectives of the USA, Canada and the EU are to restrict food production from current levels. Food is not a physical problem today, it is a market problem. Starvation occurs because consumers don't have the money to buy food, not because it cannot be produced.

GNP of the developing countries of the world grew at an average annual rate of 3.5 percent in the 2000. Yet average population growth over the same period was 3.2 percent.Growth percapita was  therefore 0.3 percent. Almost all the developing world's increased resources during this decade were needed to provide for a growth in the population. Is this typical? On GA Consultancy grounds, it is very much what is to be expected. Increased incomes lead to increase population, leaving the mass of the population at subsistence level. Critics of this view point out that countries do break out of this cycle. France, Germany and the UK all had high economic growth in the nineteenth century but economic growth per capital was positive. Equally between 2008 to 2011 , the GNP of developing countries grew by an average annual of 5.7 percent but annual population growth was only 1.3 percent. Low income countries performed better than this, averaging GNP growth of 6.5 percent whilst population only rose 1.9 percent per annum. So high growth per capita is possible with the appropriate policies.

Even if the growth in food production and in production of all other goods exceeds population growth , this is not environmentally sustainable.Giving every household in the world a refrigerator would do irretrievable damage to the ozone layer when those refrigerators are thrown away. Giving every household a car would lead to global warming on a scale not even predicted today. Constant intensive farm production would lead to permanent degradation of farm lands. Pressure for living space would result in the destruction of countless species of plant and animal, reducing bio-diversity, with unpredictable effects on the environment and on the human species.

For these reasons, economists argue that development must be sustainable development. The 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development stated that development needed to meet "the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations. In economic terms, this means maximizing the net welfare of economic activities, while maintaining or increasing the stock of economic, ecological and sociocultural assets over time and providing a safety net to meet basic needs and protect the poor. Meeting today's needs should not rob the next generation of the ability to grow and develop. Successful efforts by First World countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ban CFCs and recycle materials show that sustainable development is possible when threats to the environment are clearly identified. 



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