Population policy: no answer to environmental problems
By Francesca Davis
Opposition leader Kim Beazley on August 3 responded to the focus on immigration occasioned by Pauline Hanson and One Nation by renewing the ALP's call for a population policy. This has been pushed by the ALP with the claim that it would avoid the annual debate over immigration intakes and address the issues of ageing population and regional development.
The experience of population policies in Europe shows different results. There such policies have been used to justify reducing immigration, strengthening the hand of the state in policing immigrants, and to consolidate national chauvinism.
In the recent past, environmental arguments have been used in Australia to call for population policies. The Australian Conservation Foundation, Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, the Greens, Democrats, Australians Against Further Immigration and One Nation have all argued that population must be reduced, or its growth curtailed, to preserve the Australian environment, and that this requires limiting immigration.
However, this is the first time in Australia that one of the major parties has proposed population control as concrete policy.
Although the Greens have released little detail, their 1996 policy frameworks include both a population and a related immigration policy. These include "a programme to stabilise the global population by lifting Australia's contribution to population activities in our overseas budget". The goal is to "stabilise population numbers at a level which is both precautionary and ecologically sustainable".
The Greens propose that "Australia's voluntary immigration programme be reduced as part of a strategy to achieve eventual stabilisation of the Australian population".
The Greens have been remarkably quiet on the immigration and population debate. Yet immigration is not a peripheral question for green and other progressive activists at present; it is the pivotal issue the right wing are using to recruit and grow.
The ALP's adoption of a population policy is an adaptation to right-wing forces scapegoating migrants. Environmentalists need to carefully examine any arguments that lead to similar positions. The idea that we need to reduce our population in order to preserve the environment is one of the ideas in popular consciousness that builds support for cuts to immigration.
Such cuts are racist and cannot be justified. All people have an equal right to a decent standard of living, not just those fortunate enough to be born here. The conditions that Third World migrants seek to escape are a direct or indirect consequence of First World multinationals' exploitation of the rest of the world.
In 1996, there were around 19 million refugees fleeing war, famines and poverty. Most of these will not achieve official refugee status. Limits to migration mean only a fraction of these will be accepted by other countries. On what basis will that decision be made?
In the past, populationism has left the green movement open to justifiable criticism because of its anti-humanitarian nature, as fertility programs are forced on the Third World and needy migrants denied entry to the First World.
Now, however, such a position actively contributes to the growth of right-wing forces in Australia, and may provide the support needed to get such a policy adopted.
The relationship between people numbers, consumption and environmental destruction is more complex than is suggested by the environmental argument for limiting population.
The argument is far too deterministic, assuming that what people consume and that the way resources are used to produce what we consume are fixed and unchangeable.
In fact, what people consume is largely determined by social factors beyond their control. If public transport were free, reliable and extensive, would people choose to consume one to two cars per household? Is it really consumer "need" that drives the production of 20 different sorts of washing powder? Of course not.
It is because these things make profits for corporations that they are produced, not because they are demanded by consumers. That's also why light globes blow instead of lasting forever. Planned obsolescence is very profitable.
It's profitability, not consumption, that drives the economy to mass produce useless items and wasteful packaging using non-renewable resources.
Just as what is produced is not inevitable, neither is the way it is produced. Most of what is produced today could be produced in environmentally friendly and sustainable ways, but it's cheaper for companies not to do so.
According to US ecologist Barry Commoner, pollution levels in the US increased by over 1000% in the 20 years after World War II. The increases in population and levels of consumption were not comparable. The real change was the nature of the technology and the raw materials used, a decision that industry took based on profitability.
We could potentially produce what we need for a much larger number of people without the horrendous impact on the environment. The key issue is social control over how goods are produced and what goods and services are deemed necessary for quality of life. While industries are privately owned and run for profit, such social control is not possible and the Earth's resources (human and natural) will continue to be wasted and exploited.
Development and education have been proven to bring down birth rates. Birth rates are already dropping in the First World, a fact that makes excluding migrants more clearly a racist act. A rising standard of living in the Third World could rapidly reduce global population increase. However, this would require a fundamental redirection of wealth to the Third World.
Focusing on population growth as if it were the central cause of environmental destruction leaves the central problem, a systemic one, untouched. It also leaves the green movement vulnerable to xenophobia.
The term "overpopulation" carries loaded meaning. Surplus people? Belgium carries a higher population density than many African nations — yet Belgium is rarely considered to be overpopulated, while African nations are. The fact that family planning programs are proposed for the Third World that we know would never be accepted by wealthy white populations in the First World is also racist.
In Australia, sterilisation programs or limiting the number of children allowed, as in China, would be seen as an abrogation of civil liberties. Instead immigrants, mostly people of colour, are targeted as "surplus"; reducing immigration becomes a high priority as a way of reducing population.
Despite their genuine concern for social justice and commitment to non-discrimination, the Greens can't escape the contradictions that stem from blaming population growth for environmental destruction.
The Greens' population policy is weighted toward aid to women and the poor in the Third World. But even 0.7% of Australia's GDP directed to aid, which they advocate, is only a drop in the ocean. A massive redistribution of wealth and at least the cancellation of Third World debt is a prerequisite to overcoming the poverty that makes people flee their homes.
In the meantime, it will not help the Bosnians, the Kosovans or women fleeing Afghanistan if our borders are closed. And the Greens do propose reducing voluntary immigration. The Greens end up penalising migrants for an environmental crisis they did not cause.
Stopping all immigration tomorrow would do nothing to save Australia from the global problems of the greenhouse effect, species reduction and pollution of the air and oceans, nor local problems of salination or the declining water flows of the Murray Darling.
Environmentalists and other progressive activists must take responsibility for thinking through the consequences of population policies. If the policies one supports penalise the world's poor, who also happen mostly to be to be people of colour, by excluding them from our privileged lifestyle, does that help build the progressive movement we need to ensure a sustainable and humane world? Or does it contribute to racist and nationalist ideologies?
Population policies in other developed countries have not done anything to stop environmental destruction. They are at best a diversion from the need to challenge destructive power structures.