Great Britains Royal Society has released a major report on population issues. Entitled People and the Planet, it states that the earth is finite, and the continued growth of human population and consumption threatens global health and well being.
The report offers four key recommendations:
1. Global poverty must end.
2. Developed and emerging economies must reduce material consumption.
3. Greater political leadership and support is needed for reproductive health and family planning.
4. The health and well being of human populations and the environment are deeply intertwined.
Other recommendations include:
* Urbanization to reduce material consumption.
* Removing barriers to primary and secondary education, especially for women.
* Further research on population and environmental dynamics.
* Establishing alternative wealth measures.
* Developing new socio-economic systems.
There is quite a lot to chew on here in terms of both ethics and public policy, so allow me to restrict myself to three comments.
First, anyone familiar with the history of environmental and development policy will not be surprised at either the subject matter or recommendations of the report. The 1960s and 1970s saw a vibrant debate over limits to growth that continues into this decade. The reasons for this ongoing debate are simple. The earth is a limited ecosystem, humans already use ecosystems services and resources at an unsustainable level (several earths worth), the biodiversity of life is experiencing a huge extinction event due to us, and habitat destruction makes ecological recovery harder every day.
Second, while this is an old debate, our recent planetary rush past the threshold of 7+ billion humans makes this a timely and important document. This is especially so as the report arrives in advance of the Rio+20 Earth Summit. One can hope it will have some impact on the deliberations in Rio, and contest platitudes associated with sustainable development.
Since the 1980s and 1990s, policy makers have tried to sidestep the debate by focusing on sustainable development. In various government and corporate circles, this amounts to a faith in limitless economic growth without environmental consequences. The idea that we can have our cake and eat it too is not entirely false. New technologies, just distribution of resources, public health, lower fertility and the like can dramatically change both the production and consumption side of the equation. It cannot, however, put off the basic truth of earthly limits, the sheer growth of human numbers, or the damage our planetary sprawl does to other life.
There are ideologues who deny this. Christian fundamentalists say the second coming of Christ means we need not worry about any of this. Market fundamentalists assume that economic exchange will motivate a solution. Technological fundamentalists believe we can invent our way out of this mess. Experience has proved them all wrong.
This is not to say we are without hope. Cradle to cradle technologies, ecological modernization (decoupling industrial production from environmental impacts), environmental justice, precautionary policies, and green politics can all make a difference. Collectively, these and other alternatives are referred to as sustainability. Sustainability in this sense is quite different from various kinds of sustainable development that cynically seek to sustain production for the benefit of a few, rather than provide equitable development or environmental protection.
Third, the report does do a good job of foregrounding a concern for human health and well being. And so it should. Human beings have an intrinsic value, and we are all part of a moral community that transcends national or political boundaries. No future policy initiatives on population and consumption will be adequate if they do not place human well being in all its dimensions squarely at the centre of our concerns. And that includes questions of public health and medical care, universal access to education, human rights, equitable development, environmental justice, and the like.
Unfortunately, the report is silent on the well being of other creatures, species and living systems. The biological carrying capacity of the planet was not made solely for humans. Non-human animals and the rest of nature deserve to be at the centre of our concerns as well. Humans — animals ourselves deserve to thrive on Earth, but so to do other life-forms and the living systems that make life possible and pleasurable.
The moral considerability of the non-human world has strong policy implications with respect to population and consumption. An example is food.
A burgeoning human population needs feeding. Developing societies also seem to desire to increase their consumption of meat. Meeting these needs and desires involves industrial agriculture, genetically modified organisms, the destruction of natural habitats, public health impacts, and substantial contributions to global climate change. This does not account for the social and economic injustices for low wage immigrant farm hands, nor the decimation of biodiversity by the bushmeat trade. I could go on.
My point of course is not that humans should not eat, although vegans offer strong arguments against diets that incorporate animals themselves. Rather I am illustrating that when we examine the ethics of population and consumption, we cannot do so in moral isolation from equally important issues affecting non-human nature. As John Muir noted, everything is hitched to everything else.
People and the Planet is the poorer for this ethical lapse. For all its virtues, I fear its impact on that ethical debates that are sure to rage in Rio+20 will be proportionally diminished.
You can find the report at http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/.
Cheers
Image. Ecological Footprint. If everyone on earth lived middle class North American lifestyles, we would need approximately 5 earths to sustain them indefinitely. See http://www.footprintnetwork.org.