Environmental consequences of increasing production:
some current perspectives
A.J. Bennett
∗Department for International Development, 94 Victoria St., London SW 1E 5JL, UK
Abstract
Thomas Malthus, in his ‘Essay on Population’ in 1798, argued that food production would not be able to keep pace with our capacity to produce. Contrary to this prediction there seems to be no evidence that our ability to produce food has been a lasting break on population growth. There are, however, several major areas of concern regarding environmental degradation associated with production having kept pace with demand. This paper examines some of the current drivers of development and environmental change. It identifies some of the impacts of growth and development on land use, soils, water availability and the possible consequences of climate change. Finally the paper returns to the question — will Malthus be proved right? © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Development; Environmental degradation; Global change
1. The context
In his ‘Essay on Population’ in 1798 Thomas Malthus argued that food production would not be able to keep pace with our capacity to produce. So it was inevitable that ‘population will over-tread the limits of subsistence’ and food production would limit the population of the planet. As a political economist he wisely made no attempt to predict a time scale for this event or the number at which the population of the planet would stabilise. However, his prediction has often been used to add weight to predictions of mass starvation and doom.
1.1. Growing populations and food security
When Malthus wrote his essay there were about 1 billion people; in October 1999 the estimated world
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E-mail address: aj-bennett@dfid.gov.uk (A.J. Bennett).
population passed 6 billions. There have been famines, such as the Irish Potato Famine, the great famines in India and China and more recent events in the Horn of Africa. However, there seems to be no evidence that our ability to produce food has been a lasting break on population growth. Indeed the causes of hunger have been those of poverty, conflict, inappropriate policies, failing markets, poor communications and institutional failures, but these have often been exacerbated by nat-ural events, such as drought.
The current view is that we are producing enough food for everyone in the world; but many people do not have access to adequate amounts of safe and nutritious food. FAO estimate that about 850 million people, mainly women and children are food inse-cure, do not have access to sufficient food and clean water to lead normal healthy and active lives. They are poor and marginalised in society. They do not have access to adequate land, water resources or em-ployment opportunities. The greatest number of the hungry live in South Asia but the largest proportion of
the people who are food insecure live in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.
Current opinion is that human populations have grown as a result of complex social, cultural, insti-tutional and economic interactions, underpinned by advances in medical care. Physical and natural envi-ronmental resource constraints have not limited the growth of populations largely because of advances in trade, communications and technology. Slowing population growth rates are associated with economic improvement; education, empowerment and employ-ment, particularly, of women; social stability and improved social services.
On most estimates, world population should sta-bilise between 10 and 12 billions some time in the next century but in any case we should be planning to support 8 billion people by 2025. This projected in-crease in population growth will double the demand for food, forest and livestock products.
1.2. Raising expectations
Education, particularly of women, access to social services and improved employment opportunities have had the most dramatic impact on life expectancy and family sizes in many societies.
Improved access to media and information, coupled with the spread of democracy and economic growth and education, have increased demands and raised lifestyle aspirations and lengthened life expectation. The demands have increased for energy, food, fibre and other primary commodities, shelter and other goods and services we expect from the natural environment, for example, leisure facilities and improved living en-vironments. The growth in populations, urbanisation and wealth will increase the demand for living space, infrastructure and other land-based services. Pressures on water resources will also grow.
Improved communications and infrastructure have resulted in a growing integration of markets world wide. This trend is often referred to as ‘globalisation’, and it affects competition, trade, investment, informa-tion, the media, tourism, the environment and labour markets. While there are many who would like to put the clock back, and reverse the trends in global integration — it is here to stay. Globalisation presents challenges and opportunities. The first challenge must be to ensure these powerful forces benefit the
poor and marginalised and the environment does not suffer.
1.3. The curse of poverty
Despite the fact that land and water resources are finite, humanity has always found ways to satisfy its growing appetite for food, commodities, and other goods and services. Advances in science and tech-nology have enabled us to raise both production and productivity, by raising biological potential, increas-ing nutrient and water availability and reducincreas-ing waste. A combination of these led to the ‘Green Revolution’, which while having its critics, did ensure that there is adequate food and other primary commodities to meet demands across the world. As a measure of our success in satisfying our immediate needs the relative prices for most primary commodities have declined in relation to the prices of manufactured goods and charges by the service industries. Most market ana-lysts predict that future food and commodity prices will not rise in relation to prices in other sectors — they seem optimistic that supply will keep pace with demand.
Against this rather optimistic picture there remain major inequities in access to food and resources and evidence of environmental damage grows. This must cast doubts on the sustainability of our achievements and our ability to meet the challenge of doubling production over the next 20 years.
One in five people lives in abject poverty on less than $ 1 a day. They are vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks and stresses. They live in poor or heavily degraded environments. They have limited access to productive assets and have very few or severely restricted opportunities to improve their livelihoods. Over 800 million people, mainly women and children, are hungry. Such inequity threat-ens the stability of countries and society and will surely prevent us achieving the goal of sustainable development.
1.4. Instability
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the reduction of east–west rivalry has not given the ‘peace dividend’ hoped for at the Earth Summit in Rio nor it has re-sulted in increases in the public funding of social services and environmental protection. The world is now full of nasty and intractable local wars, civil strife and instability, as we have seen in Iraq, Angola, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Kosovo and most recently in East Timor. In the areas afflicted by these events it is difficult to meet basic needs and to address en-vironmental and social problems. The prerequisite is the restoration of peace and a return to democratic government.
2. The story so far
We have satisfied the demands of growing popula-tions and the creation of wealth through a range of strategies:
• By changing land use patterns through the con-version of natural or existing systems into more specifically productive or different land use sys-tems. We have converted natural forest into plan-tations, orchards and arable production systems; rangelands into farming or ranching systems and mangrove swamps into fish-farms.
• By intensifying land use we have raised the productivity per unit area, through increasing inputs of labour, energy, nutrients, water and irrigation and pesticides.
• By enhancing biological potential through
selec-tion, breeding and biotechnology, thereby increas-ing the yields and the expression of desirable traits. This has allowed the exploitation of new environ-ments and generally increasing the reliability of production systems.
• By reducing waste through the use of pesticides, better storage technologies, food processing, better marketing and packaging techniques and increasing use of recycling technologies.
• By developing substitutes for natural products through technologies for manufacture and synthe-sis of alternatives and through increased reliance on trade and imports.
• By using existing ecologies and systems differently through increasing the non-consumptive use of some goods and services for leisure, recreational and amenity purposes, such as tourism.
The inevitable question is can a combination of these strategies continue to meet our needs in the future?
3. The impacts
All these strategies have had environmental impacts (Tinker, 1997; see Fig. 1). The question is whether all these impacts are of equal importance and for whom are they important? An additional question is can pro-ductivity be further increased and sustained to meet the growing demands for goods and services.
Many analysts argue that we must double or even treble production of food and timber over the next 50 years. Others advocate that we should be devoting more time and ingenuity to reducing demand, curbing consumption, increasing efficiency in our use of the ecosystems of the planet, or find other ways to satisfy our needs. We need both approaches.
3.1. Environmental change or environmental damage?
Sustainability depends not only on the health of our environmental assets, it requires striking a dynamic balance between the way in which we use and store natural, social, human, physical and financial capital assets (see Table 1).
It is arguable that it is possible to exhaust some nat-ural capital assets provided the benefits are reinvested in other forms of capital. For example minerals can be extracted and the income invested in education and infrastructure but the conversion of forests into agri-cultural land is more controversial. However, these capital assets are not entirely interchangeable and it is difficult to define minimum levels and ‘cut-off points’ beyond which society or ecosystems become irreversibly damaged. But the way in which people and communities choose to live lies at the centre of sustainable development and the environmental agenda.
inevi-Fig. 1. Interconnections between environmental impacts and original causes (from Tinker, 1997).
table, these may not be always undesirable. The chal-lenge is to identify and understand the impact of these changes. We need to be clear where, when and on whom the changes will impact. We need ways of as-sessing whether these changes are likely to lead to
Table 1
Sustainable development: capital assets (adapted from Scoones, 1998)
Natural capital The natural resource stocks from which resource flows useful for livelihoods are derived (e.g. land, water, wildlife, biodiversity, environmental resources)
Social capital The social resources (networks, membership of groups, relationships of trusts, access to wider institutions of society) upon which people draw in pursuit of livelihoods
Human capital The skills, knowledge, ability to labour and good health important to the ability to pursue different livelihood strategies
Physical capital The basic infrastructure (transport, shelter, water, energy and communications) and the production equipment and means which enable people to pursue their livelihoods Financial capital The financial resources which are available to people (whether savings, supplies of credit or
regular remittances or pensions) and which provide them with different livelihood options permanent and unacceptable damage to our environ-mental assets and their ability to continue to provide the goods and services we expect and need of them.
levels of education, ethical judgements and social at-titudes. In some cases we have deliberately exhausted a resource or capital assets in favour of a greater goal, but we might at some future date change our minds. For example in the UK, we converted our forests into agricultural land until the early 1900s when we found ourselves unable to meet our needs for timber. The Forestry Commission was set up to increase the do-mestic production of timber primarily through planta-tions; however, a recent survey showed that the public place greater value on the leisure, biodiversity and ac-cess values than the capacity of our forests to produce timber.
It is possible that our valuation of forests will change dramatically if the ‘climate change convention’ agrees to carbon trading and forests become legitimate ‘carbon offsets’. However, maximising carbon values might not increase the biodiversity or maximise the non-timber forest product values of forests.
Sustainability is not a static ‘Utopian’ state nor it is absolute. It is a dynamic process of change. Rapid change is more dramatic and easy to assess, but slow changes are often more difficult to detect even if they have the potential to be more damaging. Sustain-ability involves choices — sustaining what, how, for whom, where, for how long, at what cost, who bears the cost — and who should pay? While science and economics can and should inform the options and decisions made, the final outcome will inevitably be negotiated between people, communities and their governments. The outcome will be strongly influ-enced by their ethical values and economic, social and political power balances. Corruption and market failures can distort these delicate balances and give rise to unsustainable systems.
3.2. Land use
To increase production we have made substantial changes in land use practices. Natural forests, range-lands, savannahs and swamps have been converted to more specialised land use systems. We have sought to increase the yield of some particular or prized goods or services. We have built cities, roads, airfields. We have opened mines and quarries. We have flooded valleys for irrigation and hydropower. Government intervention and subsidies have often fuelled these changes.
For most countries where population pressures are high, the option of bringing new land to production systems (extensification) has reached its limit. Future demands will have to be satisfied through increasing yields per unit area or through imports and substitu-tion. Globalisation in trading patterns and opening up markets could help hard pressed environments, but it could also accelerate the processes of extensification in those countries where population pressure is rela-tively low.
The difficulty is to define optimum and sustainable land use practices or to determine a bottom line for how much natural forest, range, swamp or mountain land a country or community should retain. Though studies of biodiversity are increasing our knowledge and understanding of the extent of land needed and how it should be managed to maintain healthy di-versity of species is still inadequate. It is ironical that many of the richest and best watered ecosys-tems are also those that are most suited to intensive farming.
Some governments and organisations have invested considerable resources in land use and land capability mapping, but these have often proved unworkable in practice in the face of social and economic pressures or corruption.
3.3. Soils
There is now ample evidence from numerous stud-ies and statistics that intensification of cropping sys-tems can lead to changes in soil physics and chemistry as well as to the balance and numbers of soil flora and fauna. However, these changes are by no means auto-matic or unsustainable and some soils are more able to support intensive use than others.
3.4. Forests
Forests provide many valuable traditional goods and services: timber and non-timber forest products, firewood, habitats for biodiversity, soil and water con-servation; they modify local weather patterns; provide shelter and leisure facilities. There is also growing interest in possible new and non-traditional roles that they can and could play in the global carbon cycles and hence in combating climate change. Yet throughout development we have destroyed natural forest cover.
The underlying causes of deforestation are many and complex, and include over use in satisfying the immediate needs of local communities and growing populations or distant markets, corruption, neglect, ac-cident or malice. Despite international concerns, we continue to lose an area of forests the size of a foot-ball pitch every second. The over use of forests results in their degradation and hence their inability to con-tinue to provide a full-range of goods and services to increasing numbers of people.
3.5. Biodiversity
Despite the existence of an estimated 50 million species on earth, our ancestors identified 20 000 plants that were safe to eat. Currently we use only 3500 of the world’s mammals, birds, reptiles and fish to meet all our needs. But the reality is that a few dozen cereal, legume and animal species provide most of the needs of humanity. Why then do we worry about the rest?
Increasing and intensifying production has resulted in a narrowing of genetic diversity within species, the destruction of habitats and the marginalisation of many of the ‘lesser known or lesser used’ crops. It is gene-rally agreed that in future we will need a wider range of species and greater genetic variability to cope with environmental and other challenges. However, it is dif-ficult to quantify these needs or even to predict with any accuracy which species will be most precious. The precautionary principle would point to our retaining as much diversity as we can, but we lack the means to make good assessments and judgements.
There are many who advocate the use of biotechno-logy and genetic manipulation to help us cope with current and future challenges. However, the risks, ethics and uncertainties associated with the produc-tion and release of GMOs have sparked an intense
debate over their use. This highlights the need to en-sure that we attract and retain public understanding and support for research and science. Public opinion and choice are important.
3.6. Water
The lifestyles and development opportunities for many people and countries are already restricted by their access to fresh water. It has been estimated that 400 million people die every year because of water related diseases, which is more than any other sin-gle cause. Eighty countries with 40% of the world’s population are experiencing severe water shortage. In Africa alone 300 million people, one-third of the population, live under conditions of water limitation.
The demand for fresh water is rising, driven by growing populations, economic and industrial growth, and increasing urbanisation; it is growing at two and half times population increase. We need only a few litres of water a day for drinking, but we need at least a cubic meter (ca. 1 t) per day to produce the food we need.
About 75% of fresh water is currently used in irri-gated agriculture, yet 10–15% of the worlds’ irriirri-gated land is damaged through salinity and water-logging. As cities and industries develop there will be increas-ing pressures on water use. Aquaculture will expand to meet the growing demand for fish protein and as incomes increase, leisure and amenity demands will also increase.
Much has been written about conflicts that have arisen and could arise. Many are local and within com-munities or between the rich and the poor. Others tran-scend international boundaries and could lead to wars. The waters of the Middle East are most likely to lead to conflict. The World Water Commission is due to re-port in 2000 and the Global Water Partnership aims to improve and co-ordinate donor support. There is little doubt that we must increase the efficiency of our use of water and aquatic resources.
3.7. Climate Change
want to dwell too long on this issue as many of the papers at this meeting will deal with these challenges. Some climate change is inevitable so we should be preparing to cope with or adapt to the impacts of sea-level rise, spread of pests and diseases, al-tered rainfall patterns and increased abnormal weather events — storms and droughts.
4. So, was Malthus right?
Malthus has not been proven right so far. I am an op-timist — I suppose I am paid to be an opop-timist. Given the power of human endeavour and the knowledge and technologies we can harness it is difficult to envisage a set of natural events that would prevent our being able to produce sufficient food to meet our needs. How-ever, are we able to assess the risks? Will we accept the trade-offs? Who will decide on the acceptability of the compromises we reach and what we decide to give up? These all involve people and choices.
We need better monitoring tools and an increased range of options and technologies. We also need bet-ter means to assess risk and to build in stress tole-rance into production systems. But we must not see this as challenges to the physical and natural sciences and engineering alone, since action involves people and political leadership — we must involve the social scientists.
The dangers of nuclear war have receded, but in future more people are likely to die from the conse-quences of dysfunctional societies, diseases, dirty air and water. Climate change may displace millions of people through sea-level rise, increase the incidence of disease, alter rainfall patterns and ocean currents, increase the numbers and severity of storm events,
but all these are manageable, if we have the means to detect impacts, assess risks and to take action.
5. Precautionary principle or quick reactions
There has been a good deal spoken of the impor-tance of the ‘precautionary principle’ — better safe than sorry. This is logical and sensible. It has been adopted in the face of uncertainty by those who are justifiably concerned with environmental risks. But it should be applied with due regard to the ‘principle of proportionality’. History shows that society and indi-viduals often are reluctant to act while there is uncer-tainty or until they are personally affected. The first reaction is often to lay blame and seek compensation. If the risk is quantifiable many will take out insurance in some form. If the challenge persists then a solution is negotiated. While the compromises reached may not be adequate to resolve the problem they can buy time. The role of the science community must there-fore be to develop the means of assessing impact and quantifying risks and to be ready to articulate options and solutions. It is more likely that our ability to avoid Malthusian decline will come from our ability to res-pond quickly rather from our ability to act responsibly.
References
Scoones, I., 1998. Sustainable rural livelihoods: a framework for analysis. IDS Working Paper 72. Sussex, England.
Scoones, I., Toumlin, C., 1999. Policies for soil fertility management in Africa. DfID, London, 128 pp.
