1 Sustainable Population Australia Patrons: Hon. Bob Carr, Dr Paul Collins, Prof Tim Flannery, Em Prof Ian Lowe, Dr Mary E White Youth Ambassador: Ms Bindi Irwin www.population.org.au 28 February 2017 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Foreign Policy White Paper [email protected]Submission on a Foreign Policy White Paper Sustainable Population Australia is the peak non-government organization in Australia concerned with the environmental and social impacts of population growth and population density. It is a national, independent, non-political, member-funded environmental charity, established in 1988. We welcome the opportunity to comment on Australia’s future foreign policy. The global geopolitical landscape is changing at an accelerating pace. The Australian Government’s review of foreign policy is therefore timely, if challenging given the scale of uncertainties involved. A storm on the horizon Through this submission, we wish to stress that population pressure is an increasingly important driver of global instability. This has major implications for both the risks Australia faces and the nature of influence Australia can have globally. The urgent need to address population growth in the Sahel was vividly addressed in a recent press conference 1 by Toby Lanzer, who is the Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA): Why should we care? Why does it matter? We’ve got so many other things happening in the world. I think what really sparks my concern and motivates me to act, across the Sahelian belt, is this rather stark reality of population growth. One hundred and fifty million people currently live along this sliver of land that we call the Sahelian belt. That’s today, 150 million people. But in 20 years’ time, and for many of us, we know that 20 years is tomorrow, that population will have grown to 300 million people. It would have doubled. Now, in order to stay even, in order to have the same GDP per capita, to have the same sorts of enrolment rates that are currently prevalent across the region, to have 1 UNOCHA Toby Lanzer press conference - YouTube http://oasisinitiative.berkeley.edu/news/
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Sustainable Population Australia
Patrons: Hon. Bob Carr, Dr Paul Collins, Prof Tim Flannery, Em Prof Ian Lowe, Dr Mary E White
the same access to health care that communities have today, one would need 11%
GDP growth on an annual basis. You raise your eyebrows – you look at me. We know
that 11% annual GDP growth is not possible. So in essence, unless the countries of
the Sahel tackle this demographic challenge that faces them, the countries will get
poorer, communities will suffer more, enrolment rates will go down, not up, fewer
women will have access to health care, and the Sustainable Development Goals, just
to mention one hot topic, will not be met.
So I believe that the time is ripe, and it’s absolutely vital that there be a greater,
broader, deeper international engagement across the Sahel, whether it’s on
questions of stability, trade, development such as infrastructure, or indeed tackling
the humanitarian issues, because if we do not, there is no question in my mind, that a
tempest of incalculable proportions awaits us in the future.
From Egypt and Syria to northern Nigeria and Central African Republic, political unrest and
collapse of governance has been triggered by severe deprivations caused by overpopulation.
There is always a cocktail of other influences at play, but overpopulation is the common
element underlying them. Where conflict occurs without underlying population pressure,
such as the Ukraine, the situation does not escalate into ongoing humanitarian crisis,
collapse of governance and mass displacements of people.
Many people have framed the escalating tensions in the Middle East as symptomatic of the
energy crisis. However, for the depleted oil states themselves, it is not an energy crisis but
an income crisis. Their population growth has only been enabled to date through generous
state programs, including food and fuel subsidies, funded by oil revenue. But once they
passed their peak of oil production, the descent in revenue was exacerbated by their rapidly
growing domestic demand for energy.
The political scientist and investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed recently explored these
dynamics in the book “Failing States, Collapsing Systems: Biophysical Triggers of Political
Violence”.2 He anticipates profound impacts on global stability once Saudi Arabia is in
decline. He includes the following summary of the predicament facing oil producing nations
(Table 1).
2 Ahmed, N.M. 2017. Failing States, Collapsing Systems: Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence. Springer.
94 pp. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319478142
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Table 1. Overview of biophysical factors (water scarcity, peak oil, population) for oil-
producing nations, from Ahmed (2017).
For many of these countries, and other rapidly growing nations from Pakistan to Niger,
escalating food import-dependence is exacerbating an already untenable economic
situation. The rest of the world can’t carry such countries for ever on food aid. A new era of
famines seems imminent.
While agricultural production has so far kept pace with population growth, yield growth has
slowed. Consequently, new land is increasingly being recruited through deforestation, and
land is being farmed more intensively than it can sustain in the long term. In addition, areas
where production is rising most do not necessarily match those areas where population is
rising most, so an increasing proportion of the world population is dependent on
internationally traded food.
A 2015 report by the WorldWatch Institute noted that “imports of grain globally increased
more than fivefold between 1960 and 2013 as more nations turned to international markets
to help meet domestic food demand.”3
A highly acclaimed analysis by Lagi et al. (2011) found a strong relationship between the
FAO’s global food price index and the incidence of violent unrest.4 They concluded that
prices above a trigger-point were inclined to trigger unrest. While these incidents in the past
have been transient, generally corresponding to weather patterns negatively affecting food
production globally, the baseline of food prices has been rising as demand increases
inexorably while supply faces increasing challenges to expansion. A world of sustained high
food prices will be one of protracted instability and dysfunction.
3 Gardner G. 2015. Food Trade and Self-Sufficiency. WorldWatch Institute – Vital Signs Report. http://
vitalsigns.worldwatch.org 4 Lagi, M., Bertrand, K.Z., Bar-Yam, Y. (2011) The food crises and political instability in North Africa and the
Middle East. New England Complex Systems Institute. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455.pdf
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Figure 1. FAO food price index and start date of ‘food riots’ and unrest. Death toll in
parentheses. From Lagi et al. (2011).
The effect of population growth is to make the global food system more brittle. In 2015,
Lloyds published a scenario analysis examining the insurance impacts of acute disruption to
global food supply.5 Their simulation of a moderately strong El Niño event had disturbing
ramifications for geopolitical instability and the global economy.
A taskforce of experts convened by the UK government’s Global Food Security programme
also concluded that the global food system is vulnerable to production shocks caused by
extreme weather, and that this risk is growing.6
These risk analyses are based on past yield responses to climate events. A more sustained
risk is posed by the depletion of freshwater resources on which a large share of global food
production is based.7 Koniko (2011) estimated that the depletion of groundwater had
reached 145 km3/yr by the 2000’s, contributing 0.4 mm per year to sea level rise.
8 The
increasing depth of groundwater, falling beyond reach of smallholders, is already fuelling
rural-urban migration and tensions between small and larger farmers in the Middle East and
the Gangetic Plains.
5 Lloyd’s 2015. Food System Shock: the insurance impacts of acute disruption to global food supply. Lloyd’s
Emerging Risk Report 2015. 6 Extreme weather and resilience of the global food system (2015). Final Project Report from the UK-US
Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience, The Global Food Security programme, UK. 7 U.N. Environment Programme 2012. A Glass Half Empty: Regions at Risk Due to Groundwater Depletion.
January 2012, www.unep.org/pdf/UNEP-GEAS JAN 2012.pdf 8 Konikow L.F. 2011. Contribution of global groundwater depletion since 1900 to sea‐level rise. Geophysical
Research Letters 38, L17401, doi:10.1029/2011GL048604.
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Figure 3. The annual increment of global population 1990-2010, and that projected under
the UN’s medium fertility and constant fertility projections (UNDESA 2013).9 Black dots give
estimates of actual increment reported annually in the Population Reference Bureau’s
“World Population Datasheets” (PRB 2011-2016).10
International aid spending on family
planning is plotted against the right axis (Source: UN Economic and Social Council 2010).11
Instead of embracing such a cost-effective opportunity as voluntary family planning, the
development community continues to insist that population growth is economically neutral,
and in any case it is poverty reduction and education for girls which drives fertility decline.
The data to support this position are very weak. While poverty reduction and girls’
education are desirable goals in their own right, it is evident that family planning programs,
by reducing population growth, have contributed more to reducing poverty and improving
education access than development and education programs have reduced fertility. This
evidence will be summarised below. Every country which ran a successful voluntary family
planning program until fertility was below two has seen great economic advance, taking off
after fertility fell at least below three children per woman. In contrast, the considerable
advances in education and economic growth in Africa and central Asia under the Millennium
Development Goals were accompanied by less, rather than more, fertility decline.
9 UNDESA (2013) World Population Prospects, the 2012 Revision. Population Division, United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/world-
population-prospects-the-2012-revision.html 10
PRB (2011-2016) World Population Datasheet. Population Reference Bureau