Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D.
January 17, 1999
Redefining Progress, San Francisco USA
DRAFT IN PROGRESS - COMMENTS MOST WELCOME
The challenge of sustainability
Sustainability, or securing everybody's quality of life within the means of nature, is the most pressing issue humanity needs to deal with. Overwhelming evidence shows that current human activities are already exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. At the same time, a large percentage of the world population still does not have its most basic material needs met. This underlines the need to address both the ecological and social challenge simultaneously. As many know but few dare to acknowledge, population size and demographic growth rates are key variables behind both challenges. Population growth may not be the cause of unsustainable development patterns (more likely it is its result), but a larger population size certainly narrows options in a world that is ecologically overloaded by our species' aggregate consumption.
Today in 1999, there exists per person on this planet only 2.2 hectares (or three soccer fields) of biologically productive space which we define as area covered by photosynthetic activity. If the world population grows to 9 billion in the next decades, this average will shrink to less than 1.5 hectares per person assuming no biological degradation. Note that even for reasons of genetic stability, the continuity of some life-support functions, and the survival of the 10 to 30 million species with whom humanity shares the planet, a significant part of this space should be left undisturbed.
Therefore, today's overarching question for research and policy is how to secure everybody's quality of life within this limited bio-capacity. Even if we did not allocate any space to other species, the existing capacity is still less than half of the area typically used to maintain a European, or less than a quarter of what is needed to provide for the lifestyle of an average American. Indeed, the "ecological footprint" of the "world middle-class" or, to be more precise, of the wealthiest 20 percent of the world earning over 83 percent of the world's income, adds up to a size larger than the total biological productive land on the planet - and is growing. The footprint of the other 80 percent of the world population corresponds to a bit over one third of the total planetary capacity.
This makes visible to what extent the wealthy parts of the world are responsible for humanity's ecological load. If the wealthy part of the world wants to continue to consume at current levels, then it has far too many members. At least there are too many if all of them want to live at the same time, as Herman Daly points out. Also, with more people, rich or poor, it will be increasingly difficult for everybody to enjoy life with dignity. This shows that we are in a tremendous crisis. By overextending its footprint beyond the biosphere's sustainable capacity, humanity lives from depleting the Earth's natural capital rather than on nature's interests. Worse, humanity acts as if this can continue forever (even official UN scenarios deny the possibility of collapse or decline). In addition, the severity of the challenge is underlined by the fact that among the thousands of people I have met, I know far too few people who can live well on a 1 hectare footprint. With shame I must admit that I am not one of them either. Still, I am convinced that living well on one hectare is possible - and a major challenge to human creativity. Many most enjoyable things about life are fortunately not very resource intensive. How can we translate this insight in a new social contract for a society? How can society live successfully on a low footprint and in steady-state rather than depending on permanent growth? To find ways we need to invite everybody to contribute to this transformation: homemakers, natural and social scientists, administrators, visionaries, engineers, politicians, inventors, activists, etc.
Population and sustainability
Obviously, to achieve a sustainable world, the size of the human population (in conjunction with its level of consumption) will determine the likelihood of success. Expansion of both reduces options. Still, I would argue that population growth in the poorest sectors of the world's societies is not primarily an immediate ecological concern. In fact, the footprints of over half the world's population is under 1 hectare, and their aggregate footprint may actually be shrinking. We need humane and caring programs to slow down (and hopefully even reverse) demographic growth trends, primarily due to the growth's detrimental impact on human well-being. It is the poorest part of humanity who suffers first from the unsustainable lifestyle of humanity. Their well-being is threatened by overpopulation and overconsumption by the rich (crowding them out and pushing them on the marginal lands) and from their own rapid population growth. By growing rapidly, these poor sectors of society remain excluded from basic health and educational services, from fair employment opportunities, and eventually even from sufficient caloric intake. The result may be social collapses with fatal consequences on massive scale world-wide. This demographic growth trap is perpetuated by poverty, low status of women, poor female education and health, current economic "development", and lack of security. Hence, keeping this demographic growth trap in operation means preparing unprecedented human tragedy and suffering accompanied with significant ecological destruction.
Therefore, I believe that cooperating with all societies to move as smoothly and with as little hardship as possible through a demographic transition, is among the most strategic and foremost causes humanity needs to take on. Such a transition can be achieved by increasing the underprivileged people's access to health care, social security, education and decision-making - particularly for girls and women. Luckily, reducing population growth can be achieved in ways that are beneficial to the mothers, the families, the countries, future generations and other species.
Unfortunate obstacles on the way to a demographic transition
Making the demographic transition happen is not an easy task. There are powerful obstacles perpetuating this demographic trap. A major one is the following. Demographic growth seems to be of short-term benefit to those who are not victims of this growth trap. For example, rapid growth of the poorest does not threaten the high-pay of the professionals in the service sector since the growing populations with lacking education will not be able to compete with them for these jobs. An indication about how real this obstacle is can be seen in the fearful articles in Northern newspapers about the new wave of Indian software engineers and data analysts working via Internet for Western companies, competing thereby directly with Northern professionals. Another "benefit" of demographic expansion to the world's middle-class is the oversupply of cheap manual labor.
Some argue however, that the world middle-class wants economic development to make the poor rich since this will increase the number of consumers. Various reasons contradict this view however. Population growth does not seem to slow down economic expansion and accelerates unequal wealth distribution. This means that most of the monetary benefits generated by economic expansion flow into society's wealthy sectors. In addition, sales soar when wealth is concentrated. Members of the wealthy sectors are easy clients for transnational companies - they spend their money easily and fast for advertised products of the global economy. In contrast, poor people have to watch their spending carefully, cannot afford to get into shopping frenzies, and will consume mostly locally.
Further, people with severely limited economic resources have less access to political decision-making and face greater challenges when trying to get organized. Yes, there is a bit of migration pressure on the North. But only a minute proportion of people from the South succeed in getting there. Finally, the South is under military siege. Never in this century has the military superiority of the North been so overwhelming making the North the world's supreme and unchallenged power. Also, "divide and rule" works better than ever. The consequence is (resource) conflicts turning into internal civil wars (examples are many conflict zones in the Middle East, Chiapas in Mexico, recent history of Central America, or Central Africa).
It is too easy for us, members of the world middle-class, to use all kinds of ideological and ethical excuses to make the population issue a taboo. Many reasons for avoiding the population topic are well founded: unfair sterilization practices in the past, overconsumption causing the bulk of the environmental impact, respect for human rights, human reproduction and the sanctity of human life, male domination, Northern domination over the South, and unfair wealth distribution. But to use them in order to avoid thinking about humane ways to reduce the population pressure is irresponsible since it is already the weakest of the world society who have to carry the bulk of the suffering caused by such demographic growth. Waiting to address the demographic challenge increases the potential for human suffering. It would be brutal for current and future generations, and for other species, not to address the population (and overconsumption) issue in the overpopulated North and the rapidly growing South with a big heart and a spirit of solidarity. We need to get started now, nation by nation.
The good news
Let me finish with some good news. Together with Ellipson, a Swiss business consulting firm, we are just about to complete a study showing that countries with ecological deficits (with ecological footprints exceeding their ecological capacity) are less likely to be competitive. The only competitive countries with ecological deficit are those who had a historic advantage to build up financial capital (such as Switzerland, Japan or Holland). The few ones with eco-capacity in reserve who are not competitive suffer from severe and often violent internal conflicts (such as Colombia and Brazil). In other words, such an analysis demonstrates that it is not only ethically superior to reduce a nation's ecological footprint (population x per capita consumption) but also beneficial for the nation since it advances its competitiveness now and in the future.
Notes
Mathis Wackernagel, Larry Onisto, Patricia Bello, Alejandro Callejas Linares, Ina Susana Lopez Falfan, Jesus Mendez Garcia, Ana Isabel Suarez Guerrero and Ma. Guadalupe Suarez Guerrero, "National Natural Capital Accounting with the Ecological Footprint Concept", Ecological Economics (in press) 1998.
see note 1.
Michael N. Dobkowski & Isidor Walliman (editors). The Coming Age of
Scarcity: Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-First Century. Syracuse University Press, March 1998.
As many, including Virginia Abernathy, have documented that these are the factors determining demographic transition (as exemplified by the impressive results of Kerala in the South of India). IN contrast, economic growth on its own stimulates population increases since it gives a sense of expanding welfare. Elevating female status, particularly through giving them access to education, will however lead to an increase of economic activities. Hence, these economic activities are an outcome, not a cause. Andreas Sturm, Mathis Wackernagel and Kaspar Muller, 1998. Nachhaltig erfolgreich: Wettbewerbsfahigkeit von 44 Nationen im Vergleich.
(sustainably successful: comparing the competitiveness of 44 nations). Ellipson (manuscript).
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Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D.
Director, Indicators Program Redefining Progress
email: wackernagel@rprogress.org, mathiswa@compuserve.com
San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
and
Coordinator of the Centre for Sustainability Studies
/ Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad
Universidad Anahuac de Xalapa, Xalapa, Ver., Mexico
Redefining Progress
One Kearny St., 4th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108, U.S.A
.
homepage Redefining Progress: http://www.rprogress.org/
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