5.4: Population Growth and Consumption?
Until about 150 years ago, the rate of human population growth in Africa had been relatively slow, with the birth rate only slightly exceeding the death rate. Modern medical achievements and more reliable food supplies have changed this balance; they have reduced mortality rates while birth rates remain high. Consequently, Sub-Saharan Africa’s human population has exploded to 1 billion people over the past decade (World Bank, 2019). Today, Sub-Saharan Africa is leading the world in human population growth, projected to increase by four-fold over the next century. Population growth rates for individual countries are similar, if not higher. For example, Ethiopia’s human population has grown from 48 million in 1990—when the region experienced a famine crisis—to nearly 100 million in 2015; current projections forecast a population of 172 million by 2050. The human population of Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam, a coastal city particularly vulnerable to sea level rise (Section 6.3.2), is expected to increase from 4 million to 21 million between 2015 and 2050, while Lagos in Nigeria is expected to grow from 21 million to 39 million people over the same time.
Simple math suggests that more people leads to less space for biodiversity (Figure 5.8), because humans and wildlife compete for the same resources, broadly speaking. With many countries in Africa already facing social, economic, and developmental challenges such as malnutrition, crime, and unemployment, one can almost understand why politicians prioritise socio-economic upliftment over biodiversity conservation. This is a grave mistake; as discussed in Chapter 4, biodiversity and human well-being are intricately linked. It is one of conservation biologists’ most important tasks: to make the link between conservation and human welfare clear to policy scholars and politicians.
In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency of economists, scientists, and politicians to shift the focus from population growth to consumption as the more important underlying driver of biodiversity loss. For many, the emphasis on consumption avoids politically charged topics, such as population control, which most people oppose on ethical or moral grounds, and because it is associated with divisive topics such as xenophobia, racism, and eugenics (Kolbert and Roberts, 2017). Others highlight that it is not the number of people per se, but how natural resources are consumed that is the main cause of environmental decline. Indeed, affluent people and affluent countries have a disproportionate impact on the natural environment because they consume a disproportionately large share of the world’s natural resources. To use one example, the USA accommodates only 5% of the world’s human population but uses 25% of the world’s harvested natural resources each year (WRI, 2019). In fact, decorative Christmas lights in the USA alone use more energy than the annual energy usage of the entirety of Ethiopia or Tanzania (Moss and Agyapong, 2015). And yet, the average USA citizen uses less than half of the energy (measured as carbon emissions) that an average citizen of Qatar uses (World Bank, 2019; see also Figure 5.9), Qatar being a small but wealthy Middle Eastern country.
The major threats to biodiversity are all rooted in expanding human populations and unsustainable consumption patterns.
The global demand for natural resources such as coffee, cacao, palm oil, and timber is helping fuel habitat loss in Africa.
Another important aspect to consider in the consumption argument is that, through increased globalisation , the impacts of consumption in industrialized countries are felt over much greater distances than before (Moran and Kanemoto, 2017). For instance, chocolate consumed in Europe was most likely made with cacao produced in West Africa (Gockowski and Sonwa, 2011); other crops, such as coffee and tea, produced in Africa are similarly enjoyed all over the world. In the best-case scenario, African farmers are satisfying a demand in a global market; at worst, foreign companies are establishing croplands with little benefit trickling down to local people. Supporters of the consumption argument rightfully point out that it would be very unjust to blame the local farmers for cleared forests when they simply produce commodity crops that the international market demands.
As with many other complex challenges, both sides of the population-consumption debate are correct. One method to link the impact (\(I\)) of a human population on the environment is through the formula
\(I = P × A × T\]
This is the IPAT in short, where \(P\) is population size, \(A\) is Affluence (e.g. per capita GPD), and \(T\) is technology (e.g. per capita energy use) (Ehrlich and Goulder, 2007). The IPAT equation is similar in concept to the ecological footprint (Figure 5.9): both illustrate that human populations and consumption patterns interact to exacerbate human impacts on the environment. In other words, many poor Africans can have the same impact on the environment as just a few wealthy Americans, and vice versa.
Both the IPAT equation and ecological footprint concept are insightful as to the challenges facing Africa’s ecosystems and people. Today, Africans are increasingly aspiring to attain the same levels of high consumption as industrial countries. These patterns generally lead to an inefficient, wasteful, and unsustainable use of natural resources (i.e. overconsumption). Population growth rates in many industrial countries are currently slowing; some countries are even experiencing long-term population declines, which allow conservation-minded individuals in those countries to focus their efforts on addressing consumption patterns. The situation is quite different in Africa, where we are faced with increasing per capita consumption and the fastest growing human population on Earth. In the face of the resulting increased competition for space, African conservation biologists must adopt a holistic approach to ensure that welfare standards are upheld or improved while our natural heritage is protected. One of the most important strategies involves championing sustainable economic development over unsustainable economic growth (Section 15.1). While conservation biologists differ in terms of how strongly they argue for addressing the population size issue, most also agree that conservation goals benefit from education, the empowerment of women, and wider access to family planning and reproductive health services.