Population and Strategies for National Sustainable Development

A guide to assist national policy makers in linking population and environment in strategies for development

Gayl D Ness, Meghan V Golay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781853833755
• eBook ISBN: 9781000151848
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Écologie

The guide serves as a resource for national-level policy makers and the staff of conservation organizations who wish to integrate population and environmental conditions in planning for sustainable development. It presents the basic rationale for linking population and environmental issues, including the demonstrable impact that growth in population and consumption is having on the environment. At the same time, it acknowledges the difficulty of achieving integration due to long-entrenched disciplinary and institutional specialization. The guide refrains from making blanket prescriptions, but rather emphasizes that policy and planning responses must be attuned to the location-specific nature of population-environment interactions. A number of mechanisms for achieving integration are presented, including placement of demographers within national planning organizations, or creation of country-based networks of population and conservation professionals who meet regularly to share knowledge and experience. For those less familiar with previous research, the book includes a primer on demographic change and models and frameworks for understanding the links between population dynamics (births, deaths, growth, migration) and environmental change.Originally published in 1996

Part I

Introduction

This introduction discusses use and users of the guide. It is designed to be used by national or regional (state, province etc.) level planners who wish to link population and environmental conditions more closely in planning for sustainable development.

The introduction also lays out the basic orientation, which is taken largely from IUCN’s basic policy document, Caring for the Earth (IUCN, 1991). The aim of this document, and of IUCN, is to promote sustainable global and local communities. Sustainable development is defined as promoting the wellbeing of people and ecosystems. Although this volume gives emphasis to population conditions, it adheres to the basic position of Caring for the Earth, that both rapid population growth and high consumption are unsustainable.

Finally, the section provides an historical overview that brings more detail to the volume’s basic orientation. The current conditions of global environmental change derive from the integral connection between population growth and technological and social change. The transition to fossil fuels, the rise of urban industrial society and rapid population growth are integrally intertwined, each causing and caused by the other. Gradual changes in the past have given way to exceptionally rapid and potentially destructive changes today. The growth of human populations and of human consumption are now unsustainable. Promoting sustainable development has become a widely shared responsibility of governments and peoples throughout the world. To promote sustainable development, we must build bridges between specialized disciplines and activities to treat our problems in a more holistic manner.

The Guide: Users, Use, and Basic Orientation

Users

This guide is designed primarily for two types of national level planners: those concerned with overall development planning, and those concerned more specifically with environmental conservation.

It attempts to show how population conditions can be taken into consideration in addressing problems of promoting economic development, environmental conservation or, more broadly, sustainable development.

A major aim of this volume is to show how population conditions can be examined and linked to planning for environmental conservation and sustainability. Much of the material on population necessarily emphasizes growth rates and the growth of numbers. This is, of course, primarily a condition of the Less Developed Regions, and arises in part from recent dramatic successes in controlling mortality. The current growth rates in these regions are not sustainable and they are closely related to pressures that reduce the wellbeing of both people and the environment.

Nonetheless, as we state at a number of places throughout this volume, the basic orientation taken here is derived from Caring for the Earth (IUCN, 1991): both population growth and high consumption are unsustainable. Both must be dramatically altered. Caring for the Earth provides many useful guidelines on ways in which production and consumption must change to promote sustainability.

This volume focuses more on population, however, which implies giving much attention to the condition of rapid population growth in the Less Developed Regions. There are three main reasons for adopting this emphasis:

1.It is where populations are growing rapidly that we can see some of the most visible linkages between population dynamics and the environment.

2.It is also where populations are growing rapidly that we can see most clearly the interlinked problems of poverty, inequality and the population–environment dynamic.

3.Perhaps of even greater importance is that the negative aspects of rapid population growth can be mitigated, far more easily than is often believed, by addressing the problem of growth directly. Today we have far greater capacities to intervene to reduce both mortality and fertility than we have ever had in the past. Moreover interventions for the control of mortality and fertility can greatly increase human welfare and the quality of life. As we shall note later, it is not as easy to intervene directly to control human migration, the third component of population dynamics. It can be predicted, and this is important, but it is far less easily controlled by direct intervention than either mortality or fertility.

Use

This is not a book of recipes to be followed mechanically. It is rather a set of ideas and options from which planners and implementers can choose activities appropriate to their specific conditions.

It can be used at national, state or provincial, and district levels, where planning covers a substantial geographic area with many different environmental conditions and many local communities. It can be used by government organizations, or by non-governmental organizations for project planning, or for monitoring the impact of government policies and programmes.

National planning bodies can use the guide to help search for and identify specific sectors or regions where population and environmental conditions pose specific problems, and where strategic interventions can be planned. National bodies can then be led to consider devolution of responsibility and authority for addressing any specific problem. Similarly, national level planning groups in specific sectors, such as agriculture, forests, health, or urban systems can use the guide to identify specific activities where population and environmental dynamics appear to create problems, and then can plan strategic interventions to address those problems.

Definitions of Sustainability

Sustainable Growth is a contradiction in terms. Growth cannot continue indefinitely. The term is neither used nor to be inferred from the discussion in this handbook.

Sustainable Use refers only to renewable natural resources; it means using them at a rates within their capacity for regeneration.

Sustainable Development implies increasing human productivity and the quality of life while keeping within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems.

Source: IUCN, 1991, p. 10

Elsewhere (Carew-Reid 1994), sustainable development is defined more succinctly as:

PROMOTING THE WELLBEING OF BOTH PEOPLE AND ECOSYSTEMS.

The guide can also be used at state, provincial or district levels, wherever administrators have responsibility for a substantial geographic or administrative area. For example, many national planning bodies or agencies now have parallel provincial and district level development planning units, whose local plans fit into and contribute to national plans and have special responsibility and authority for implementation at local levels. In such cases, the guide can be used at all levels, to assist in generating a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the population issues in development stimulation throughout the nation.

Basic Orientation

This work is based on the key policy document of IUCN, Caring for the Earth (IUCN, 1991) which provides both a visionary and a practical statement of what needs to be done to achieve sustainable global and local societies. It has been adopted as IUCN’s basic policy, and has also been adopted by over 80 countries which are members of the Union. As noted in the preface, the basic message of Caring for the Earth, was reflected in both Agenda 21 and in the World Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development.

Caring for the Earth is subtitled A Strategy for Sustainable Living. Later we discuss the issue of strategies. Here we must address the issue of sustainability, since it is central to the vision of IUCN basic policy. The term is now commonly used in connection with both development and environmental conservation. Caring for the Earth provides the definitions on page 4, which are those used in this guide.

Is National Planning Possible?

Failure of State Planning

It may appear incongruous to write of national planning for sustainability today, when central planning and state interventions are everywhere being displaced by privatization and the reliance on markets. To be sure, much central planning has turned out to be less than successful. It has nowhere lived up to the dreams that attended the early Soviet plans, or the central planning of many new nations that gained independence following World War II. Too often central planning has been associated with erratic oppression, corruption or bureaucratic obstruction. Planning and state intervention have been very much discredited, and today they seem to be in full retreat.

Global Forces

Moreover, the capacities of individual states to manage their own economies and societies are weakening under the pressure of global forces that they cannot contain. Global economic conditions intrude heavily on the economy of an) state, and are for the most part beyond state control. International capital flows, controlled by a small number of large transnational institutions, have resulted in heavy debt burdens that now appear unsupportable in many poor countries. The power of external institutions to impose structural adjustment packages is all too evident. Transnational companies have far more power than do most states, to move everything from capital and people to toxic wastes. The breakup oflarge states, the emergence of ethnic conflicts and a massive global arms trade threaten all states with violence and refugee floods that can disrupt any planning. Under these conditions we can not expect a great deal of national level planning.

Possibilities of State Planning

But these conditions do not by any means negate the need for planning and the ability of states to create policies and programmes that can promote sustainable development. States still do have some capacities to control borders, to mobilize resources, and to direct those resources towards productive activities. They have capacities to establish policies that stimulate and enhance individual achievement, and collective welfare. Some of the most important policies and programmes concern the development of human capital, through promoting health and educational services; the protection of natural resources; planning for sustainable use; andnhe empowerment of local communities, through devolution of responsibility for resource management. It is in recognition of these possibilities that this volume is especially directed.

We recognize that for many low income countries, economic growth is considered a necessity. The demand of poor people and poor countries to raise the standard of living and quality of life is a legitimate one and must be supported. As Caring for the Earth maintains, the high inequality of wealth in the world today is neither stable nor sustainable; gross disparities in consumption must be overcome (p. 44).

To the extent that economic growth is necessary to raise standards of living, especially amongst the poor, it must be supported. But growth cannot continue endlessly, and there is much evidence now that economic growth itself will not necessarily produce sustainable local and global societies. The authors of Beyond the Limits (Meadows, 1992) merely restate what the World Bank (1992) and UNDP (1993) have to say about the process of economic growth without increasing employment. Nor does economic growth necessarily by itself alleviate problems of poor housing, the homeless, poor health, or other conditions associated with a lower quality of life. Growth has thus proved in part a failure. To advance the quality of life of human beings and the world’s ecosystems, to produce sustainable local and global societies, different models and different ethics must be found. The idea of sustainable development, for all its imprecision and weakness, provides a better vision than does economic growth.

Companion Volumes

IUCN produces a variety of planning guides for specific environmental conditions, including wetlands, parks and protected areas; for specific species; and for the broader vision of biodiversity. The full list of such guides appears in the appendix. There are two guides, however, that are of special interest to the problem of this guide, integrating population into strategies for sustainability. Our Pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Executive Summary
• Preface
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Population–Environment Linkages in Strategies for National Sustainable Development
• Part III: Linking Population and the Environment — Frameworks and Models
• Part IV: Population Parameters and Dynamics
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index