Two Long – Term Problems: Too Many People, Too Few Trees

Nissani, Moti is an interdisciplinarian holding degrees in genetics, philosophy & psychology and with many publications in genetics, ecology, politics, science education and language instruction.  At the moment he teaches a t Wayne State University, USA. Recent writings include: “Conceptual conservatism: and understated variable in human affairs?” (1994); “The plight of obscure innovator in science,” (1995); “The greenhouse effect: and interdisciplinary perspective,” (1996); “The apprenticeship approach to writing instruction,” (1996); “Brass-tacks ecology,” (1997); Lives in the Balance: The Cold War and American Politics, 1945 – 1991, (1992). His essay below provides a brief introduction to the twin problems of overpopulation and deforestation, specially written for this book, especially in Nepal’s context.

In 1992, over fifteen hundred of the world’s scientists – including more than half of all living Nobel Prize winners – signed The World Scientists Warning to Humanity. This document reflects growing concerns about the state of the biosphere:

Human beings and the nature world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put a serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid to collision our present course will bring about. In an unusual joint statement of the same year, the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concurred:

The future of our planet is in the balance. Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial.

The facts speak for themselves. The changes of contracting cancer, emphysema or asthma are far higher now than they were a century ago. Human sperm counts in many localities are worrisomely low. Many of us suffer from premature hearing loss traceable to excessive noise. We work longer hours than our parents did and spend more time getting to and from work. We are troubled by the effects of such things as lead and dioxin on our children’s intelligence and health. We think twice nowadays before plunging, on hot summer days, into possibly contaminated rivers, lakes or seas. We can no longer experience true wilderness. We are uneasy about poisons in our food and drinks; in our homes and workplaces; in our air, water and soil; in our brains and livers; in our pets, domestic animals, lawn and farms.

We are surrounded by signs of global environmental decline. Worldwide, some species of frogs, salamanders and penguins are declining. We have apparently learned nothing from the extinctions of the dodo and the great auk, of the passenger pigeon and the moa. The continued existence in the wild of the most human-like minds we know of-those of apes and cetaceans- is in doubt. Entire fisheries are collapsing. Every hour we add 10,000 people to our numbers, acting as if there is no such things as carrying capacity and future generations; as if we have learned nothing from the environmental failures of earlier civilizations. We squander numberless resources unsustainably, acting as if each and every resource is replaceable. We continue to produce plutonium and other long-lived poisons, even though we know that nothing on the earth can be safely sequestered for millennia. We continue to litter space. When we fight pollution, we typically try to partially clean thing up after the fact, instead of opting for the cheaper and healthier path of prevention. More harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun reach us nowadays raising the specter of skin cancer and cataract epidemics. Soil erosion, desertification and deforestation are proceeding apace. We are seeing already the first sign of human-induced climate changes doing little more than crossing or fingers and praying that dire predictions of sizzling temperatures, floods, tropical diseases and mass migrations will prove wrong.

It takes a great deal of study and reflection to understand the nature, causes, consequence and cures of just one of the environmental ills. No comprehensive coverage of any single ecological issue can be undertaken in this brief, introductory essay. Instead, I shall only limit myself to few cursory remarks about two major interrelated challenges: overpopulation and deforestation. In doing so, I hope to alert you to the seriousness of both and to the need for collective and personal actions.

Human populations have always been in flux, for the simple reason that every day some people die while others are born. Throughout most of human existence, the number of births was slightly higher than the number of deaths; consequently, world populations grew at a very slow rate. A change, especially in the industrialized world with advances in nutrition, sanitation and health, people live longer and more of them reach reproductive age. Thus, for the first time in our species’ existence, the balance between the number of deaths and births has been significantly disturbed. Consequently, during the last three centuries or so, the global human population has been rapidly growing up. Every year, in fact, the world’s population grows by more than 80 million people. It is, for instance, sobering to recall that for every eleven human beings alive now, only one was alive in the year 1650!

As just one concrete example of this exponential growth, consider Nepal. In 1951, Nepal’s population was 9 million. Less than half a century later that number rose to 23 million! And, with annual growth rate of 2.5% and with the average Nepali women giving birth to five children, there is no end in sight to this alarming growth. By this year’s end, there will be roughly 575,000 more Nepalis (Nepalese) alive than at its beginning. By the end of 1999, yet another 589,000 will be added, so that by the beginning of the third millennium, Nepal’s population will be over 24,000,000. If this trend continues unchecked, Nepal’s population will double in just 28 years, reaching by the year 2026, a total of some 46 million. In 140 years, if this rapid growth continues (if can’t), the number of living Nepalis will be 368 million (roughly equal to the current combined population of the North American continent: Mexico, the United States and Canada)!

One first sight, it may appear that, when it comes to something valuable as human being, the more we have, the better off we are. In some other ways, this is true. All things being equal, more people are likely to generate more inventions, more technological breakthroughs and more corporate profits. But, taken as a whole, most ecologists are convinced that the world is already overpopulated.

Human populations cannot continue to grow indefinitely for the simple reason that the world itself is finite. To show this, let’s consider Nepal again. Can this country comfortably support 44 million people, let alone 368 million? More people will need even more food than they need now, and therefore, the process of deforestation will continue so that, eventually, wild trees will vanish. As the population goes up, so does pollution of rivers, lakes, air, drinking water and soil. With more people both town and country become more crowded. The quality of life, and the value we place human life, will continue to erode. When the population is stable, increases in such things as food production, number of physicians or hospitals are often tantamount to improved quality of life, but such increases often fail to keep pace with population growth. Higher population density is also likely to exacerbate crime, ethnic conflicts and warfare.

The American government, to take another example, estimates that some 60,000 Americans die each year from respiratory diseases which are in turn caused by human made pollution. Fourteen Americans die each day from asthma aggravated by air pollution – three times the incidence of just twenty years ago. Needless to say, the situation in cities like Los Angeles, Kathmandu, Mexico and Shanghai is even worse. In all these cases, the situation could be considerably improved by controlling pollution and population.

Moreover, the world, as we have seen, faces such frightening problems as desertification, depletion of nonrenewable sources (e.g., petrol, natural gas, and helium), acid rain, loss of wild species, ozone layer depletion and the greenhouse effect. A United Nations 1993 document puts it this way: “Population size and rates of growth are key elements in environmental change. At any level of development, increased population increase energy use, resource consumption and environmental stress”. So, the more people the world has, the more severe these problems are likely to become.

Thus large and rapidly growing populations make decisive contributions to all environmental problems. In the long run, efforts to save the biosphere depend in a part on our species’ ability to roll back its numbers. Yet there is a bright side to this otherwise grim tale: History and common sense tell us that we can control population growth. The German and Swedish populations, for example, defy world trends and are actually declining. In such overpopulated countries like China, Thailand and Egypt the rate of population growth has slowed down remarkably:  thanks to concerted government actions. How do these countries manage to reverse, or slow down, population growth? Many factors account for these remarkable declines: modernization, literacy, media campaigns, readily available family planning measures and contraceptives, equal economic, educational and legal opportunities for women. Human beings thus know how to control their numbers. What they have been lacking so far is to resolve to make use of this knowledge.

Let us move to another long-term problem: the state of the world’s tree. Owing to rapid population growth, poverty and other factors, many third world people are forced to move into, harvest, clear, burn or cultivate tropical forests. Thus population pressures – along with new technologies and the affluent lifestyle of some people – exacerbate the problem of deforestation. A country like Nepal has just so much arable land. So, as the population grows, more and more people are forced to convert forests into farmlands. They must also cut down more and more trees for fuel.

The people of rich countries are also guilty. To satisfy westerners’ insatiable demands for hamburgers, more and more tropical rain forests in countries like Brazil are cleared and converted to pastures. Some rich people also buy mahogany furniture, newspapers and other paper products in vast quantities. It is frightening to recall, for instance, how many trees must be felled to just produce the Sunday edition of the New York Times! Many forests are also damaged by pollution, tourism, construction of houses and factories, and similar practices. Moreover, the productivity and general health of the world’s forests is threatened by such things as the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, airborne pollution and acid rain.

The deforestation crisis is now new. Many earlier civilizations, including those of the Middle East, New México, and Easter Island, precipitated their own decline through the over population and deforestation. The difference is that we are destroying our forests faster, and on a large scale, than ever before.

Earlier in this century, forests covered around 40% of the earth’s total land area and by this century’s end, that figure will stand at about 25%. The destruction of forests, in turn contributes to such things as the greenhouse effect, irreversible loss of many thousand species of plants and animals, landslides, soil erosion, siltation of rivers and dams, droughts and weather extremes. For instance, as the trees of Nepal are cut down, its topsoil is gradually being lost and its rains are likelier to cause devastating floods in India and Bangladesh.

The eventual consequences of massive and ongoing deforestation are uncertain, but they are likely to damage the quality of life on the earth, reduce the number of life forms that share the planet with us, hamper the ability of the biosphere to sustain life. Humanity can continue to fell tress, cross its fingers, and hope for the best. Or it can take hold of its future and reverse the process of deforestation.

We can save our forests by controlling our numbers and our appetites. The list of remedies includes easing population pressure on tropical forests through effective investments in family planning efforts and through education of the third world’s people. Moves towards participatory democracies and a greater measure of economic sufficiency may also help to stabilize the numbers of world’s people and trees. Another remedy would involve greater efficiency in the use of wood products (enforced perhaps through special tax) and recycling. Another measure would provide financial incentives for preserving forests and for sustainable forestry. Still another promising – but in the short term costly – step would involve massive tree plantings of abandoned deforested lands and of unused lands elsewhere (e.g., in cities and along riverbanks, highways and railroad tracks). Reforestation will in turn have added benefits of conserving biodiversity, pristine wilderness, topsoil and homes for indigenous people, and of minimizing desertification, flooding, and regional declines in rainfall.

Sometimes, the steps that can save the world’s forest are surprisingly painless. Appropriate technology provides one way. In some Nepali villages, for example, more efficient cooking stoves (which give off the same hear while using less wood) have been introduced. A Nepali woman remarked that, “this smokeless chulo (stove) has really reduced the smoke in my kitchen and use less firewood”. Besides saving trees, such stoves allow villagers to devote less time to gathering firewood and more time to education and other rewarding activities.

Many similar approaches are available. We can, if we want, have fewer people and more trees. We know that this can be done. We know how it can be done. We know that it ought to be done – for our sake, for the sake of our children and for the sake of other creatures who share this planet with us. What we are still lacking is the wisdom, courage and compassion to convert this knowledge into reality.