Anupam- The Dreamer

Inherent contradictions between Human population growth, quality of life of every human and the expanding resource crunch

More than 2 centuries ago, in 1798, famous economist of that era Thomas Robert Malthus prophesised in his book called “An essay on the Principle of Population” about Mathusianism or Malthusian trap. According to this theory of Malthusianism, the human population grows exponentially, however the supply of food and other resources grows linearly. Therefore, there comes a time when the population growth outgrows the food supply growth, and then it leads to depletion in standard of living and consequentially population will start to decline.

The theory was a logical one, but the technological advances during the Industrial Revolution phase in Europe and elsewhere and increased food production due to agricultural revolution, soon made this theory stand on its head. This meant that the theory was falsified by the evidence on ground. Around 1830, the world population was about 1 billion, which increased to about 2 billion in 1930. And now, it has reached an exorbitant figure of about 8 billion people on the planet! To put this in perspective, have a look at the growth of population in last 12,000 years of human history:

Source: World Economic Forum

By analysing the above graph, even if we discount the Old Stone Age, then also the population increase in the Anno Domini (AD) era was more or less linear till 1700s. After that, the increase is so rapid that it not only belies Malthus, but has also raised a lot of concerns about the sustainability of human race in the future.

At the outset, let me clarify that I am a great admirer of technological advancements in all fields that have enhanced the quality of life of human beings and explored new horizons of development. The credit goes to numerous scientists, researchers, intellectuals, etc. who have saved humans from the vagaries of diseases, famines, continuous wars etc., which has led to reduction in mortality rates and increased the average life span of a person. We have improved significantly on the parameters like IMR, MMR, lifespan, elimination of diseases like polio, chicken pox etc. from many parts of the world. The extreme poverty has declined substantially in many countries of the world and in general, people have better access to healthcare, education, and other facilities. It seems that we have come far ahead of the earlier times.

But, the above mentioned big picture hides the uncomfortable reality beneath its glorious façade. Although, the extreme poverty has reduced in general, but still there are many pockets of extreme poverty in Asia, Africa, South America, and many other regions of the world. The poor people living in areas hit by civil wars, ethnic conflicts, sectarian violence, and other violence-stricken areas (to name a few-  Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Bangladesh etc.) do not have access to basic facilities like clean water, hygienic food, healthcare, education, etc. Thus, their living standard is below expectations of a good and dignified human life. Even, the prosperous regions of the world are grappling with modern era problems like air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, traffic jams in metros, etc etc. The resource crunch is very acute in terms of availability of land, water, air, food and fuel, which means the per capita availability of these resources is on a continuous decline.

The ghost of “Limits to Growth” has become alive again. “Limits to Growth”, published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, aptly captured this spirit of limited carrying capacity of the Earth and its environment to nourish the eternal growth of technological advancement and population. It emphasized that the resources are limited (finite) on this earth, which includes clean water, fossil fuels, clean air, soil quality, essential minerals. If we continue to exploit these resources with impunity at a rate faster than the self-replenishment rate of our planet, then a time will soon come when we will cross the carrying capacity of this planet, and then we will have to face the dire consequences of digging our own grave. After that, this unmindful exploitation of resources will definitely backfire on us. And in my opinion, that dreaded time has already come. Let me paint some gloomy picture now!

The unmindful exploitation of natural resources has led to global warming which has become one of the biggest threats to human race till date, the ill-effects of which are already visible in terms of increased frequency and intensity of climate disasters like floods, submergence of low-lying areas, changing climate patterns impacting food production, increasing prevalence of pandemics etc. The clean air quality in many metropolitan areas of the world has depleted significantly, including cities in the US, China, India, etc. So much so, that drastic measures like ban on polluting vehicles, construction work, fossil fuel-based plants, repeated closure of offices and schools, and other disruptions in normal life have become very normal year on year. The clean water availability has become elusive for millions of people around the globe and we already have millions of water refugees! The soil quality has depleted, so to produce more food for our every increasing population, we have no other option than to use harmful insecticides, pesticides, and various chemicals to boost food production, which eventually ends up in our food chain and causing numerous health issues. The boom in the number of transport vehicles and industries are depleting the fossil fuels like anything, and most of the fossil fuels like petroleum, coal may soon be eradicated completely from the face of the earth in our lifetime. Imagine it took billions of years for the geological processes to form petroleum and coal and we humans will exhaust them in just 300-400 years of development, leaving nothing for our future generations! Is this what we call development? Maybe yes. But, is this sustainable development? NEVER!

The sustainable development is the one that meets the needs of the present generations, without compromising the capabilities of the future generations to meet their own needs. But, are we not compromising on the capabilities of the future generations by our mad race of so called “development”? While we want basic human rights for all people and improvement in living standards of each and every person, but that can’t be achieved if the human population grows incessantly. If we want that every human should get good quality clean air, water, food, education, healthcare, public services, opportunity for realizing his/her maximum potential, then we must acknowledge that there is a limitation to resources that our mother Earth can provide to each person. And if we go on increasing our population, then the same finite resources are divided between more people, leading to fewer resources per capita, which will have a direct and significant impact on the lives of the people. Let me give you a simple imaginary example- if every person on this earth has same ambition like others and starts to undertake air travel, do we have enough resources like airplanes, fossil fuels to fulfil this huge demand? And can we deny the facility of air travel (or for that matter exploitation of other resources like good quality food) to the poor people, or we want them to be eternally poor so that they don’t put a strain on the already strained resources?

Some rich people will argue that why should we care about poor people, as we have enough money to buy more than enough resources for ourselves. But, increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor cannot be sustainable. As it is said that “Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere”, so the rich people cannot continue the exploitation of natural resources unmindfully to the exclusion of the poor people. The basic human rights are for all and all human beings are equal in that respect (even if some human beings consider themselves as “more equal” than others 😀 ).

Therefore, if we want to ensure a good quality of life to all human beings and to the fauna and flora of this planet, we have to take several steps. And one major step is to revisit Malthusian theory, and seriously think about containing the population explosion of the world. We don’t want the forces of nature to bring catastrophes to contain the population explosion. So, it is in our own interest that we put our house in order before the nature teaches us a lesson! After all, limited population will lead to increase in per capita resource availability, which will help all of us to lead better quality of life, and at the same time will help in leaving our planet a better place to live in for our future generations.

It will be a win-win for everyone, for us humans, for the biodiversity and definitely for our mother Earth!