Are we carrying on regardless the limitations of Planet Earth?

Rajiv Roy *

Crowd at Ema Keithel, Imphal on Ningol Chakkouba Shopping in Nov 2012 :: Pix - Bunti Phurailatpam

We have done enormous amount of damage to the planet earth in terms of environmental degradation, pollution affecting our air, water, crops and the rest of it, no matter where we are living. And the cause of all this is the unmindful rise in population. More people means more weight on the environment, water, crops and all of that on which human beings survive. Such is the enormity of this rise in world population that we are now invading into the lands of animals affecting man-animal conflict that hits headlines often. But the question is can we stop this population growth. The answer is really in our hand because the present misery in which we find ourselves is our own creation. And unless we stop reproducing we will keep harming the planet earth more and more leading to its complete annihilation someday. It is not that it is never too late because we are already too late in this case and the soon, in fact today, we start thinking about it may be we might be able to stop this beautiful planet from extinction. The world of science are researching on topics, such as, what happens if the earth stops rotating and such other possibilities that often hit our minds. Well given the mindless hurt we are meeting on planet earth every hour we may well be approaching there when the earth may stop spinning altogether.

A BBC documentary "How many people can live on planet earth?" actually reveals a dreadful image of the planet earth, which is indeed an eye-opener, is a must watch for one and all where naturalist Sir David Attenborough investigates whether we are heading for a population crisis. The earth is home to millions of species but only one species dominates everything – Human Beings. There are 7 billion people living on this earth today and the population is increasing by 2 people every second, two hundred thousand everyday and nearly 18 million people every year and each additional life will need food, water, shelter and the rest of it to sustain a living.

The documentary says that population science is often controversial because it touches the personal decision we take but we ignore it at our peril. There is no doubt that the world population will continue to grow but the only question is by how much. Human population density is always a factor be it in any country of the world either in urban or rural with disappearing tropical forests to ugly scenes of plastic wastes and now the relentless increase of atmospheric pollution. A group called Optimum Population Trust is campaigning to contain birth rate with which Sir Attenborough is associated because he believes that if population continues to grow we are not only going to damage the nature but it give rise to inequality and human suffering. His study focuses on how population growth will affect our ability to obtain most basic needs, water, food and energy and to see how many people can live on planet earth? Human beings are good at many things but looking at our species is not one of our strong points.

The United Nations has by and large every human birth and death records for the last 60 years. Hania Zlotnik, head of UN Population in the documentary said that she is the thermometer to tell whether the earth is getting hot or cold in terms of population change. But the UN does much more than just storing these data, they make projections for the future and their figures are staggering. She said that by the mid century the world population will go up to 9 billion. In the next 40 years the earth will have to nearly accommodate 3 billion more people – that is more than the population of whole of Africa, Europe, North and South America combined. How can we be so sure about this figure? Well, as Sir Attenborough says that there are a billion youngsters in the earth today who will grow up and have their own children and live long enough to be grandparents. So where will these people live? It is projected that there is likely to be 10 million more people in UK; 100 million more in USA; India will overtake China to become the most populous country in the world but the population of some country will shrink like Japan, Russia, Germany and much of Eastern Europe. The least developed countries will see most rapid growth in population like Afghanistan will double and so most of sub-sahara Africa, Asia's population will treble, and in the next 50 years everyone is going to be affected by these demographic changes wherever they are. Population will thrive depending on the amount of natural resources like air, water, food et al but when disease strikes life can be cut short.

From 18th century onwards there has been a very large increase in population from about 1 billion up to 7 billion today. Basically what these increase in population represent, Prof Tim Dyson, London School of Economics, said is death rates have been controlled because of diseases like cholera, smallpox, measles have been massively reduced from 18th century onwards. Extending life by controlling diseases is perhaps one of the biggest achievements of humanity. Living healthily and long has consequences on population growth in the world. Just as the population spurt was taking place at the late 18th century, a book, "An Essay on Population" by the English clergyman Thomas Malthus was published. Malthus made a simple observation about the relationship between human and resources and used it to look into the future. Malthus pointed out as Sir Attenborough quotes from the book, "... that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man". Food production can't increase so rapidly as human reproduction, demand will eventually outstrip supply. Malthus goes on to say that if we don't control human reproduction voluntarily life could end in a misery, which has earned a bit of reputation, has a bit of pessimist. But Malthus in principle remains true. The productive capacity of the earth has physical limits, observes Sir Attenborough, and those limits will ultimately determine how many human beings it can support. For this, man has to calculate the amount of food, water et al required to sustain as economically as possible similar to what the astronauts are doing for their survival in space. For e.g. they simulate everything about their sustainability on space in terms of food supply and water. They drink hundreds and hundreds of time the same water molecules because they are recycled.

Whatever our technological achievements are we are still utterly reliant on the natural systems of the earth for survival. As the population increases people have utilized their agricultural resources more or less very effectively. But those things are scram as we are reaching the limits of our requirements alarmingly, the fundamental ingredient of life – water. We called the earth blue planet because 70% of it is covered with water but most of that is sea, just 2.5% is fresh water and of that tiny fraction of just 1% is available for human use, the rest is popped up in mountain glaciers and ice polar caps. Brian Richter from The Nature Conservancy said that there is no more water on the planet than when life first appeared on earth. We appropriate over half of the consumable water to serve our needs to transform deserts into fields, to generate energy from river and to build cities in some of the most arid regions of the planet. But despite our ingenuity there are many who struggle to get this basic resource. Brian said that more than a billion people on this planet lack access to safe drinking water and we know that things are going to get more difficult as population continues to grow. Within the next 20 years as much as half of the world population will live in areas of water stress. Chronic water shortage is often the result of poor infrastructure, poverty, politics or simply living in an arid part of the world. But increasingly, the pressure of population is to be blamed.

The documentary featured water scarce Mexico City, the richest eight cities in the world ahead of Moscow, Hong Kong and Washington DC. It mainly benefits from heavy rainfall. But the city's water system is buckling under a water supply to its 20 million inhabitants. And everyday a million people are affected by the shortages. There, people are relying on emergency services by government water tankers, whose numbers are growing daily. The documentary showed a truck driver there who said that in the near future wars will be fought over water, not oil. People don't seem to understand instead of conserving, we just waste it. The problem there is, similar to what we see here in the Northeast India, a leaked water supply system and reservoir system. The people of Mexico City have to adapt their lifestyle to an erratic water supply. And so, packaged water selling businesses are mushrooming there. There a tub of water is used by an entire family and toilets are flushed after 2/3 people have used it. The water truck driver said that this will hit the whole world one day when the shortages are global and there is little left to be done.

The water we use at home is a fraction than what we use in colossal quantity in industry and agriculture. Brian pointed out that we all know where the water in our taps are coming from but we seldom ask about the water into our can of cola, to the shirt that we are wearing, where those goods are produced how much water is required and what are the consequences of the natural systems in those areas, the local communities who are dependent on that same water. For e.g. Brian says, the cup of coffee that we take require about 120litres just to produce the coffee; a can of beer 150litres; a hamburger 8000litres; to grow the enough cotton in our shirt requires 3000litres.

The impact of human demands on fresh water systems is that they can be seen from the space. Lakes and rivers have dried up all over the world because they were diverted to irrigate and grow cotton and other cash crops in various countries like what is seen in drought hit and arid lands of Africa where millions of people are dependent on these natural water-bodies. It is possible to distil fresh water from the sea and in the last 20 years more and more countries have turned up to desalination. But with current technology, desalination part is often expensive utilizing enormous amount of energy and their by products can be damaging to our seas. With rivers and wetlands going dry all over the globe, Sir Attenborough points out, today already 1.2 billion people are living with water scarcity and our prospect to provide more than 3 billion more people do not look good. A bulk of our water goes in agricultural fields and it is clear that our ability to provide foods will be drastically affected. Some of the most accurate information about food supply comes from space. Dr Molly Brown, NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, monitors food production on earth with the aid of NASA's satellites. She is beginning to see global agriculture meet a natural limit. She said that we are already using around 40% of the global land in producing foods and with the growing population we need to double our food production. How we are going to do that is by raising productivity because we have no more land to expand our agriculture.

The 20th century saw the use of mechanized farming to raise agricultural productivity. We all owe it to Normal Ernest Borlaugh for his Green Revolution and filliping agricultural productivity, never seen before. Borlaugh developed high yielding disease resistant crops and taught Indian and Mexican farmers how to use them in their farming methods. The astonishing fivefold increase in productivity in many countries allowed them to become self sufficient on food. Thanks to Borlaugh but globally we are seeing a levelling of agricultural yield which is leading to a worrying new trend. To maintain food supply some of the richest countries in the world are acquiring large tracts of lands from some of the very poorest. A human rights lawyer who is monitoring these land deals with the UN, Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur said every land suitable for cultivation is becoming a scarce commodity and countries find it difficult to produce enough food and feed their population. So they are now eyeing to ensure their food security by buying land abroad. International corporations and governments are increasingly leasing out some of the last undeveloped lands in the world to these countries. Their aim is to introduce intensive farming methods and export the foods back to their countries. Olivier said that these land deals are not well monitored and opaque and no local communities will benefit from these investments, something that we get to see in case of cement plants in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya. These deals are often shrouded in controversies but according to local media reports Chinese investors are negotiating land deals throughout Africa, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Brazil. Saudi Arabian has farmlands in Sudan and several British corporations are raising funds to buy farmlands in Angola, Malawi and Ukraine. Some of these investment destinations are in Africa – where its own people are struggling to feed themselves. The future of sub-sahara Africa will be challenging where population will be doubled and there will be pressure on limited supply of land.

We are already at a stage when our existing population requires one and a half earth to support our current way of life. We are simply living beyond the means of our environment to sustain us. To have a sustainability, to remain within the productive capacity of our planet, means that people in industrialized countries are going to have to give up consumption a great deal in order to create the ecological space that is needed for growth in the third world. Just as the titanic sank, the first class went to the bottom as quickly as possible. If we don't make those kinds of compromises then we will continue to reach a space in this planet where we all suffer. Humanity needs to reduce its impact on the earth urgently and there are three ways to do this, observes Sir Attenborough. We can stop consuming so many resources, we can change our technology and we can reduce the growth of our population. We probably need to do all these. For many they have no idea how many children they should have. And when government tries to do something then it always invites criticism. The Chinese "One Child Policy" is an example, which of course stems from the preceding decade of famine and starvation whereas cash reward sterilization birth control measures were adopted in India but with not much of results. We must realize that birth rate falls if the conditions are right. South West Indian state of Kerala is a prime example. The population there is stable because everybody has small family. Prof Irudaya Rajan, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum while commenting in this documentary said today almost 40% couples in Kerala have only one child and an average Kerala women produce 1.5 children. And the reason is education, the compulsory education for boys and girls followed in the state – which also has the highest literacy rates in the world. Where women are well educated they tend to choose smaller families observed Prof Irudaya because when all girls go to school automatically they will marry late. He cited the example of Kerala with some Northern Indian states and said that an average woman in Kerala marry at the age of 28 whereas in UP, Rajasthan, Bihar the girls marries at the age of 18. So at 28 in these states the married women already have 4 children whereas in Kerala the girl is not even married. What Kerala shows is that you don't need aggressive policies like China for birth rate to fall. Wherever women have access to education they and their partners choose to have smaller families. The use of contraception and its knowledge for the people is also important to control birth rates in developing nations, such as, universal access to contraception seen in some African nations like Rwanda. It is estimated that all over the earth, over 80 million births are unplanned. Dyson feels that universal access to contraception is a good thing which will level out population ultimately.

When there are other ways of human impact on earth there are few hopes emerging. Government across the world are recognizing that life support system on the planet indeed need repair and do something about it. An urban planner and environmentalist with the Mexican government who is responsible to find a sustainable solution to the water crisis in Mexico city said that he is convinced that the local ecosystem hold the answer. He found that the solution is the rain because the city is located at the top of a mountain and the only water solution is rain, not rivers, and the need to re-establish what is called the hydrological cycle. This cycle relies on the forests that surround the city but as the city grows they have all over disappeared. His effort to protect the remaining forests part of that is building walls to prevent soil erosion. The city is surrounded by 'holed-in' rocks with the forest on top. When it rains the soil prevents it from running fast, it trickles in these rock holes and the water comes out on the valley of Mexico. That is how the city gets its water from these rocks for which it relies on a rich layer of top soil. The solution to Shillong's water scarcity in Northeast India, for example, does increasingly lies in what is going on in Mexico unless we protect our forests. The only way to have water in Mexico today is at the mountain top – the catchment. If they lose the forest they lose water. The environmentalist there is working with the local communities to protect them. There farmers, instead of crops, are cultivating trees who calls it the "water forest". The owners are committed to their forest development to see that there is no illegal development or lobbying, no pollution and no rubbish. It is their role and duty. Sir Attenborough says that it is important to have an understanding that the natural world is crucial for all us as we depend on it for our very survival. Human beings have capability to think rationally and the population will be dependent on the personal decisions of each and every one on how many children we have to change the way we use our resources. It is in our hand, either we choose to cooperate or carry on regardless.