This has to be the most significant book on population in decades. Why? Because Alan Weisman, author of bestseller The World Without Us, travelled the world over three years to 21 countries and interviewed not only demographers, park rangers, health workers, ornithologists, doctors, resource managers, agricultural scientists, reproductive rights advocates, journalists, farmers, theologians, politicians, geographers, hydrologists, environmental activists, bio-geochemists and conservation biologists, but young mothers from the huts of Niger to an apartment tower in Tokyo.
It’s worth considering the countries he visited because it illustrates how extensive were his travels. They were Israel, Palestine, Jordan, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Puerto Rica, Uganda, China, Philippines, Mexico, the Vatican, Italy, Niger, Libya, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Japan, Thailand, Iran and his own country, the United States.
This book about population goes far beyond simple demographics. It addresses how many people various countries can sustain without destroying the environment, and in light of looming problems such as climate change, peak oil, water shortages and general resource scarcity. He has concluded well before the end of the book: ‘The Earth can’t sustain our current numbers – and inevitably, one way or another, those numbers must come down.’ The truly classic photo on the title page A little bit crowded transport by Roberto Neumiller is worth more than a thousand words; it is the quintessential metaphor for an overloaded planet.
Thanks to translators, Weisman was able to interview many people who do not normally appear on the world stage. At times I was shaken by what they had to say. In Niger, for instance, the country with the highest fertility rate in the world (7.0), the 70 year old village chief of Bargaja has to count his beads before he can remember how many children he has. ‘Seventeen,’ he says eventually. ‘Seventeen who are still alive. I’ve lost at least that many.’ He doesn’t have a sure count of wives either. The youngest he took when she was 12, when ‘she was fresh’. In 2010, the staple cereal crop millet failed, as did groundnuts, and the cattle lacked grass. The World Food Programme airlifted food for five million people, but even so, this young wife alone lost all her three children to malnutrition. But ‘fortunately’ she is pregnant again though she had been so upset at the loss of her children that the chief offered to divorce her. Weisman asked did she not regret taking the opportunity to find a younger husband, rather than bearing the child of a 70 year old man. ‘But he is the chief,’ she replies, puzzled by the question.
Many Nigeriens do not see population growth as a problem, after all, there are ‘only’ 16.6 million people spread across 1,267,000 square kilometres, and one study showed people wanted even more children. If current growth is maintained, however, the number of people will exceed 50 million well before mid-century. But the climate is changing in Niger. Now the drought never seems to end. ‘Forty years ago, it rained here five months a year,’ said the sultan of the Tahoua region. ‘But since 2000 the climate caused by Western countries has dried our rains. Children, cattle, even goats have died.’ Nevertheless, hydrologist David Dejwakh insists the western Sahel is on top of an ocean of water. Is there enough water to feed Niger’s population of 16.6 million? ‘Absolutely’ is the reply. Will there be enough to feed 50 million Nigeriens in 30 years time? Dejwakh’s smile fades. ‘Even with this ocean of water, 50 million people will have serious problems.’
At the other end of the spectrum, in Japan, whose fertility rate of 1.4 is sixteenth lowest in the world, Weisman interviewed mothers in their thirties with only one child each. One of them, who lives in a two room apartment, cites shortage of space as a reason for deciding to only have one child. ‘It’s hard enough for the three of us. The size of a house pretty much limits the number of children.’ When asked what form of birth control they used to ensure they wouldn’t have a second child, she replied: ‘Not having sex’. It’s not that radical apparently. ‘Frankly, Japanese people don’t have much sex anymore’. When they do, abortion is a favoured means of birth control. Japan’s population has already begun to fall – by a record 244,000 in 2013 – with the inevitable warnings about an ageing population and who will look after the elderly. The Japanese notoriously reject immigration as a solution to potential shortage of workers and instead are developing such measures as robots to lift the elderly out of bed and into chairs. Indeed, the Japanese are quite unfazed by population decline. As Weisman says, in a Japan with far fewer Japanese, there is a chance for natural capital to replenish, and for people to enjoy healthier, even happier lives.
Iran, perhaps, was the most frustrating country. Huge gains had been made in reducing fertility only to be reversed decades later. Although a million Iranian fighters died in the war with Iraq in the early 1980s, by 1986 the population had doubled in 20 years to nearly 50 million. The population growth rate was 4.2 per cent, the highest the world had seen. It was explained to Ayatollah Khomeini that, should such growth continue, to feed, educate, house and employ everyone would far outstrip the country’s capacity. Iran was already exhausted by the war. Khomeini thus gave the go-ahead for what became the most stunning reversal of population growth in human history, and all of it voluntary, though there were a few incentives and disincentives. Doctors and surgeons carried birth control on horseback to every little village in the country, performing vasectomies and tubal ligations on request. Although women were ‘allowed’ three children – they lost subsidies for food and other subsidies for any child after the first three - most women chose two. This widespread availability of contraception was accompanied by massive female education. But then in 2011, another Ayatollah, this one named Khamenei, declared that the family planning policy was now wrong. Funding was removed from the national budget and applied to encouraging larger families. Legal age for marriage dropped to nine. No more premarital classes or surgeons flying into the hinterland to perform contraceptive surgery to poor Iranians. No more contraceptive devices, pills or injections. Only history will reveal whether a generation of educated women will comply with the ‘theocratic-industrial’ powers that are attempting to undo so much good.
The Philippines is a country also influenced heavily by religion, this time the Catholic Church, which has denounced any form of birth control. The consequent high birth rates and impoverishment of the people have put undue stresses on their natural resources, not least along their abundant coast-line. Dr Joan Castro, together with Leona d’Agnes from the US, developed a program that combined coastal resource management with family planning. By helping fishermen to create marine reserves to preserve their livelihoods, they were able to persuade them to produce fewer children which will, in turn, preserve the resource on which they depend.
This book is a travelogue of sorts but much more than that. Weisman explores how we might achieve true sustainability. He interviews Herman Daly, the dean of steady-state economics who has to remind people constantly that ‘neither the surface not the mass of the Earth is growing’. We have to keep our economy the size of the planet. There’s no more room to expand. Wringing oil from sand and shale and newly ice-free Arctic deposits are only buying us time and may cost more than they give. We have to live within the earth’s limits.
Weisman argues that to do that we have to not only stabilise but reduce population numbers. A one-child policy – hopefully voluntary - for the rest of the century would get us back to a more sustainable 1.6 billion people. That on its own would not stave off civilisation collapse, but if we could achieve ecological balance between us and other species, we might just do it.
This is a sobering book but easily accessible. It should be mandatory reading for all decision-makers.
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Top reviews from other countries
Nelson Paul Lee
Wow - read this about population and people and pollution
Reviewed in Canada on September 7, 2018
Client d'Amazon
450 pages de pur bonheur intellectuel pour un tout petit prix. Merci !
Reviewed in France on August 3, 2017A. Travis
will give them a better life. Sounds simple and it could be
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2014
