Environmental Debates and Racial Nuances

Are we too many on earth? Environmental activists have always claimed that the world is overpopulated. But what is the optimum number of humans? Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 to 10 billion people. The carrying capacity is the maximum number of individuals of a species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available. The environment’s maximal load.

On 15 November 2022, the United Nations reported that the earth reached 8 billion people, so is the alarm justifiable?

I feel the overpopulation debate isn’t looking at the planet as a whole, but on individual countries such as China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. This is where population discourse has racial, colonizer undertones, often characterizing women from the global south as breeding too much.

Take Zambia, for instance, with a population of over 19 million people on an area of 752,617 km². We are similar in size with France (67.39 million people), Myanmar (54.41 million) and US state of Texas (29 million). England is smaller than us but has 56.29 million people. But it's us who are too many? Most importantly, the bigger population of Zambians live in rural areas, if they're stopped from accessing firewood and wood products, how are they going survive??

Second, over 80 countries that have fewer births than required to replace the number of individuals who die each year, including every country in Western Europe, China, Japan, Russia, Poland, and Canada. Data across all countries, it is assumed that there is much lower future fertility rates than initially expected. Meaning that even the present assumption that the world population will be about 9.5 billion by 2050 may be too high as fertility continues to fall rapidly. 

Of the 49 countries classified as Least Developed Countries, 33 are in Africa (out of 54 African countries), 15 in Asia plus Haiti. Unfortunately, these countries need the resources they are endowed with to develop their people.

(Effect of poverty of the environment is shown here on the neighbors Haiti with a GDP per capita of $1,830 and The Dominican Republic with $8,477)

We live in an unfair world. Millions of people in developed countries live high-polluting lifestyle. Not people in the global south. We need to redefine what the good life is, instead of never-ending expansion, the latest iPhone, jetsetting. Everyone wanting to fly private etc.

All people have a right to live a dignified life. The ecological footprint of somebody in the top 1% is as high as 175 times that of somebody in the bottom 10%. So, saying it’s all about population numbers is simplistic. Multinational Corporations are the polluters. Not us. We also want to develop.

Huge populations (densities) are a catalyst for development. China and India have demonstrated population dividend underpins the economy and sustains its expansion. In sum, forget the naysayers. Be fruitful and multiply and fill Zambia.

“(Huge population) benefits include a larger number of young persons who are more likely to innovate, such as coming up with more efficient ways to grow food, and pay for the benefits to retired men and women. A bigger population also increases the demand for new drugs, software, social networking, and other innovations that have increasing returns to the scale of demand.” - Gary Becker (Nobel Laureate and University of Chicago professor). 

A brother says that I am for the Cornucopian Theory of Population, this is the view that increases in population (demand) lead to technological innovation and substitution. This in turn leads to an increase in access to and decline in relative price of materials. I'm of the view that population and environmental issues should not be looked at from a national but global perspective.

I'm placing human rights before anything. And I know you agree with me that human rights precede anything else. Do you know that in high polluting countries they don't pay carbon tax? And you and I in Zambia, which has insignificant CO2 emissions, are forced to do that.

When we must choose between feeding the hungry and conserving the environment, people ought to come first. A hungry man can't see right or wrong. Since times immemorial, the environment has been sacrificed for human development; most - if not all - development is of this kind. Though by no means warranted, but that which gets people fed is basic and urgent. Then nature should lose, and people win? Certainly not. There must be a win - win. That's where developed countries need to come in and help poor countries eradicate poverty - as an indispensable requirement - which also help preserve the environment. Only developed nations are wealthy enough to be concerned about saving the environment.

In conclusion, we need science of sustainability that contextualizes the discourse by different subpopulations. And like the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic models showed us in the past 2 years, the discourse should also be viewed through the lenses of social science. To save the environment, we need global efforts in ending greed and poverty.