In my opinion, the biggest issue in world politics is overpopulation. Almost everything is easier to deal with when there is a smaller population. It is easier to deal with a famine when less people are starving, easier to control the spread of a disease when there are less people to catch and spread the sickness. Most importantly, I believe, it is easier to conserve natural resources and live sustainably if there are fewer people drawing off of the earth.
The best way to combat overpopulation is by educating people in third world, overpopulated countries about birth control. The graph below shows the demographic transition that a country goes through as changes from being unindustrialized to developed. At stages one and four, completely preindustrial and completely industrial respectively, the birth and death rates are roughly equal, leading to a stable population. Many third world countries, however, are in stages two and three. They have access to enough modern technologies that death rates are dropping, but families continue to use the mentality that each couple must produce many children, because not all of them are going to survive to adulthood. If the people were educated on family planning and the fact that it is no longer necessary to have quite so many children, birthrates could drop.
The best way to combat overpopulation is by educating people in third world, overpopulated countries about birth control. The graph below shows the demographic transition that a country goes through as changes from being unindustrialized to developed. At stages one and four, completely preindustrial and completely industrial respectively, the birth and death rates are roughly equal, leading to a stable population. Many third world countries, however, are in stages two and three. They have access to enough modern technologies that death rates are dropping, but families continue to use the mentality that each couple must produce many children, because not all of them are going to survive to adulthood. If the people were educated on family planning and the fact that it is no longer necessary to have quite so many children, birthrates could drop.
I must agree that overpopulation is a major issue in global politics. However, while education may be the key to prevent such exponential population growth one must take into account specifically whom one is educating, and why. For example, in India, cultural expectations of women are to marry, give birth, and obey their husbands.They have no say in their own sex or reproductive lives. In Indian culture males are considered more valuable than females, and many times a couple will continue to reproduce until a male is born. Approaching this society with mere family planning education would be futile. A need for a new cultural understand is necessary. It is imperative that India begins to value its females from birth to marriage to death. It is known that, generally speaking, the higher the education level of women the lower the total fertility rate. Women in India need not only be educated about their sexual health, reproductive lives and family planning but also be granted the ability to educate themselves academically. This solution is much more easily said than executed. It spans beyond India's borders and into other countries where the cultural expectations of women are to be submissive to their husbands and neglect their own wishes and personal health.
ReplyDeleteWith nearly 7 billion people living on the earth, and still multiplying, our world cannot thrive sustainable and is rapidly exhausting the planet. In order to slow population growth, women in all societies must be given the opportunity to educate themselves and to have a say in their sexual and reproductive lives.
Although Hilary's comment is true, I believe that the problem in India (India being Hilary's example) is that these families of 5 or 6 people are living on the streets. They have no shelter and their kids are growing up without any possibility of an education because their parents need them to scrounge up money so that the family can eat. I think along with family planing people need to take steps to provide housing for these people living under the freeways and in the alleys between shops. Driving through allegedly beautiful places in India like Bombay and Bangalore, the beauty is masked by the omnipresent poverty. Many shops are literally sheds that are thickly coated in dust and rust and in front of them sit hungry mothers, fathers and children. It's truly a heart-breaking sight.
ReplyDeleteI think that if you say that over-population is the problem, the issues that lie hand-in-hand with the issue must also be mentioned. Also, I think that people need to do more than educate. People must take action and do *something* to get results--especially in a place where "maybe later" and "in a bit" means "no," because saying straight out "no" is considered extremely rude.
Thomas Malthus said something very similar to Alyssa's point in "An Essay on the Principle of Population" back in the early 19th century in terms of population vs. resource growth (http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPop.html). It's worth taking a look at a summary of his ideas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus#An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_Population) if you're not familiar with them.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with Malthus's argument -- and the idea that "Almost everything is easier to deal with when there is a smaller population" is that there are some distinct, often political, but also economic, advantages to having a larger population. On the political-military side (and don't forget the importance of this to contemporary state sovereignty), a larger population means a greater ability to defend and secure a state. On the economic side, a larger population often increases innovation in technology and production techniques, allowing more people to subsist on the same quantity of resources (a good example of this is Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat and the Green Revolution: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/energy-environment/14borlaug.html). As an early critic of Malthus pointed out, his position relies on a static view of technology and resources. Liberal economic theory, in contrast, holds that the division of labor and specialization is the process by which wealth is created and that a greated division of labour is possible in a larger economy. As Adam Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations:
"As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for."
The question, of course, is whether these advantages of population growth are enough to offset the negative aspects that you and Dhea point out. The answer to that question may well be "no," but it's not quite as simple as "more people are always worse."