Bradshaw and Brook - Commentary
How much environmental pressure can family planning avert? – A commentary on projections by Bradshaw and Brook
The paper “Human population reduction the authors and reviewers, since it clearly is not a quick fix for environmental contradicts the global outcome, and the problems” by University of Adelaide headline. But they were evidently environmental scientists Corey Bradshaw oblivious to this internal contradiction. and Barry Brook, presents a range of scenarios purporting to explore the extent I went to the trouble of calculating the to which action to reduce fertility can reduce the environmental impact of 2100 population for each subregion, from human population growth this century. the data in Tables S2 and S3, and While the authors do advocate action to summing them to find the global total. extend family planning globally, they This gave 14.5 billion under the BAU downplay its near-term environmental scenario, and 9.8 billion under the slow- impacts. decline-to-replacement-fertility scenario. There are some serious problems with the This contrasts with the 10.42 and 10.35 projections, which have had the effect of billion estimated using the same diminishing the risk of continuing on our parameters at global level. Note that the current path, and understating the impact difference would be even greater if the of lowering fertility. By deriving the global projection were done on national data scenarios by applying global average rather than subregions. The UN projects fertility, mortality and age structure, they each nation before summing regional and have ignored the highly significant impact global growth. Under its “constant of country-to-country variations. High fertility” projection, we would reach 28 fertility countries rapidly increase their billion by 2100 (with some reduction in share of the total global population, so mortality built in). that a “constant fertility” scenario actually The third scenario, in which fertility falls has a rising global fertility. This is amply to one child per woman by 2100, is demonstrated in their own subregional considered “draconian”. Yet it matches scenarios. At the global level, their “BAU” closely my own projection of a scenario in scenario (1) is almost the same as the which family planning programs are “realistic” scenario (2a) in which fertility adopted by all remaining high-fertility falls slowly to 2.0 globally by 2100 but countries, and they achieve merely the mortality also halves. However, when they average course of fertility decline and apply it to subregions, “the final mean stabilisation already achieved by family population densities [in 2100] were planning countries in the past. (I also between 16% and 37% lower [for assumed an end to pro-natalism in low- subregions in the 2a projection] than fertility countries, in contrast to the UN’s those predicted assuming constant vital medium assumption that they rebound rates.” One would have thought this toward replacement.) The difference is would raise some consternation among that my family planning scenario would
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Bradshaw and Brook - Commentary
make the transition to below-replacement and expending futile effort addressing much more quickly, and early reductions proximal causes and false fixes. have much greater impact on final population than later. My BAU projection reaches 14 billion by 2100, like Bradshaw and Brook’s, although mine is based on Bradshaw’s blog features a cartoon, country projections extending recent ridiculing the high-consumption rich patterns of fertility change. (The UN’s mid telling the poor to stop breeding when it is projection only reaches 11 billion because they who are sinking the lifeboat. I have it assumes an immediate rate of fertility often used the same cartoon to decline that simply isn’t happening.) demonstrate the wrongheadedness of the Hence, the very achievable, non- self-righteous “it’s all about consumption” draconian option of modelling family crowd, who clearly miss the point that it is planning programs on those which already the poor who suffer most from their have runs on the board, achieves a 15% population growth. Not to mention that reduction from BAU by 2050, and a very biodiversity loss is associated more non-trivial 45% reduction by 2100. strongly with population pressure than Achieving best practice would bring it overconsumption, as Bradshaw and Brook down even further. Each year of delay in demonstrate in their paper. Bradshaw implementing this program would add does not comment on the cartoon, so the close to 100 million to the peak inference must be that he shares its population. message – that those who advocate population control are deficient in both This adds to my exasperation that facts and morals. The opposite is the truth Bradshaw and Brook essentially hose – which Bradshaw and Brook’s flawed down the priority for action to curb projections conceal. population growth. They have the cheek to label those who suggest population Bradshaw and Brook are no doubt sincere growth is the “elephant in the room” as in their belief that morally acceptable merely lay proponents, when they are efforts to reduce fertility will do little. This clearly lay demographers themselves. An probably results from their ignorance of elephant in the room doesn’t cease to be the impact of family planning programs, relevant just because you decide that where they have actually been there is no near-term way of getting it implemented without being stifled by the out. It is important to understand that, Vatican and the U.S. gag rule. This when we address social and ignorance is apparent in the passage environmental crises, what we are doing “*Fertility] lowering has been happening in is mitigating the impact of the general for decades, a result mainly of overpopulation elephant – it saves us higher levels of education and embittering ourselves against scapegoats empowerment of women in the developed world, the rising affluence of developing nations, and the one-child
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Bradshaw and Brook - Commentary
policy of China.” All three of the such comparisons, because doing so mentioned drivers were probably weak would contravene the UN’s mantra that it influences. In developed countries, the is evil to “focus on the numbers”, and that arrival of the pill had more to do with it – population-focused family planning was a the great increase in women’s roles in the wrong turn that only led to human rights workforce that occurred during WWII breaches. Instead of acknowledging that didn’t stop post-war fertility climbing far the active promotion of small families did above its pre-war depression level. rapidly change cultural norms without Affluence of developing nations has risen coercion, we have to pretend that all the only where and when fertility had already past success was due to women’s dropped far enough to enable it, while empowerment or wealth. We redefine China’s fertility transition was mostly “family planning” as “family planning to done under a voluntary program before meet the unmet need for contraception” the one-child policy began. The “general” (i.e. supplying contraception to those who lowering they refer to is the result of rapid ask for it) and then demonstrate how lowering in individual countries at ineffective it is at lowering fertility (which different times, averaged with all those indeed it is). There is apparently greater who saw little decline because they did concern about the faintest possibility of little, other than hope girls’ education and coercive contraception (which no-one affluence would step in. advocates) than about the daily horrors of coercive pregnancy, against which the As for the benefits only being felt by our “sexual and reproductive health and great-great-great grandchildren, one only rights” agenda has been decidedly has to compare the countries that did ineffective. It’s time for a conversation major voluntary family planning programs about the difference between “coercion” in the ’70s and ’80s with those that did and “duty of care”. not to see that the benefits have been very substantial within one generation. But of course, we’re not allowed to make
Briefing by Jane O’Sullivan - October 2014
Dr. O’Sullivan is Honorary Senior Fellow at the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Queensland and sits on the Executive Committee of Sustainable Population Australia.
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