Human Tide Floods Planet
Posted 8th January 2001

As world population continues to grow, natural resources are under increasing pressure, threatening health, social and economic development and humanity itself, warns a new report from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "As we humans exploit nature to meet present needs, are we destroying resources needed for the future?" ask Don Hinrichsen and Bryant Robey, co-authors of the latest issue of "Population Reports, Population and the Environment: The Global Challenge," published by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program. "Most developed economies currently consume resources much faster than they can regenerate. Most developing countries with rapid population growth face the urgent need to improve living standards" but risk irreparable harm to natural resources on which they depend, according to the report. "Water shortages, soil exhaustion, loss of forests, air and water pollution, and degradation of coastlines afflict many areas," write the authors. "Without practicing sustainable development, humanity faces a deteriorating environment and may even invite ecological disaster," they note.

Needless to say such reports eminating from `The West' get little traction in so-called developing nations, the second and third-world's. These latter nations are deeply suspicious that the focus on their populations is yet another in a long line of economic and political pressures designed to maintain the West at the expense of everyone else. This mutual antagonism and suspicion undermines any justified moves to dam and then disipate what can justifiably be called a human population tidal wave sweeping other species off the face of the Earth. The much used term sustainable development is anathema even to many people in the West, focussing as it does on the selfish needs of existing transnational business and its desire to sustain its bottom lines. Population is an issue over the whole world, but it is treated very differently in different countries.

Things are changing despite the huge schisms in perspective and approach. But while the rate of population growth has slowed over the past few decades, the absolute number of people continues to increase by about one billion every 13 years, and the environment continues to deteriorate. Can we assume that life on earth as we know it can continue no matter what the environmental conditions? Obviously not, however `life as we know it' is a conservative concept appealing only to the extreme minority of the world's population who are far from happy with life as they know it. Life will evolve, with or without human institutions and so any conservative agenda is not going to hold. The evolutionary pressure for a world-wide change in human economic and political and social perception is immense. Over the past 10 years environmental conditions have either failed to improve or appear to be getting worse. In the future, how people protect or abuse the environment could largely determine whether living standards improve or deteriorate. Despite international concern about the environment since the 1992 Rio de Janeiro "Earth Summit," almost every environmental sector is still spiralling down toward ground-zero: Unclean water, along with poor sanitation, kills more than 12 million people a year. Air pollution kills three million more. In 64 of 105 developing countries, population has grown faster than food supplies.

Overcultivation, largely due to population pressures, has degraded some two billion hectares of arable land - an area the size of Canada and the United States. By 2025, with world population projected to be at eight billion, 48 countries containing three billion people will face chronic water shortages. In 25 years, humankind could be using more than 90 percent of all available fresh water, leaving just 10 percent for the rest of the world's plants and animals. Half of all coastline ecosystems are now under pressure because of high population densities and development. About half the world's population occupies a coastal strip 200 kilometers wide - just 10 percent of the world's land surface. Over the past 50 years, almost half of the world's original forest cover has been lost. Current demand for forest products may exceed the limits of sustainable consumption by 25 percent. Since 1950, according to one estimate, some 600,000 plant and animal species have disappeared, and now nearly 40,000 more are threatened. This is the fastest rate of extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over the past 40 years ocean surfaces have warmed an average of over half a degree Celsius, largely as a result of carbon emissions from fossil fuel use and from burning of forests. Global warming could raise the sea level by one to three meters as polar ice sheets melt, flooding low lying coastal areas and displacing millions of people. Global warming also could result in droughts and disrupt agriculture. The Johns Hokin's report urges governments and policymakers to take immediate steps toward implementing sustainable development. Sustainable development means raising current living standards without destroying the resource base required to meet future needs. In effect, the world needs to live off its ecological interest" rather than using up its "ecological capital," the authors write.

Steps forward recommended include:

Using energy more efficiently

Managing cities better

Phasing out subsidies that encourage waste

Managing water resources and protecting freshwater sources

Harvesting forest products rather than destroying forests

Preserving arable land and increasing food production - a second Green Revolution

Managing coastal zones and ocean fisheries

Protecting biodiversity hotspots Adopting a climate change convention among nations.

Stabilizing population through good quality family planning services "would buy time to protect natural resources," according to the report. It would also provide opportunities for women and families to raise their living standards. The authors note that the number of people in developing countries who want family planningservices has risen. But annual global spending on family planning programs is less than half the US$17 billion agreed to for 2000 at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. In the end though, if humans can't work together as a species, we will fall apart.