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Page added on July 11, 2016
Rethinking the Population Problem
With the knowledge that Bangladesh’s population – which was about 75 million in 1971 – now stands bloated to more than 160 million, all crammed into a land area of only 50,260 sq miles and that the population density is already five times that in any other ‘mega’ country, contemplate the following scenarios and see if you want to picture the country with any further addition to its population. A population that renders running trains to become invisible under loads of humanity spilling out of their interiors and clinging to all over their exteriors, while carrying people to their homes in the countryside on the eve of Eids; traffic jams resulting into prolongation of say a 30-minute trip in the cities to an absurd three-hour trip; unbridled population increase that has already brought down the per capita land to 24 decimals or less and cultivable land to some 11 decimals; law courts reeling under the unwieldy burdens of hundreds of thousands of civil and criminal suits; innumerable daily occurrences of land-related disputes, countless crimes and murders; dying and moribund rivers; desertification and salinity intrusion from the sea; dire inadequacy of water supply causing distress to an enormous segment of the urban and rural population; a catastrophe from the rising sea-level looming large and threatening to submerge one-third of the land area of the country, which could thus engender the need to move and rehabilitate over 50 million internal migrants in the remaining two-thirds of the country’s land territory, which could in turn raise the already high population density to an absurd level; fast-shrinking agricultural and cultivable land due to unplanned and uncontrolled urbanisation, industrialisation, infrastructural and development projects implementation; increasing cost of living, healthcare and education, and rampant and ubiquitous corruption and unscrupulousness; admission of even infants to schools depending on lottery and parents’ capability to pay donations and; myriads of such other woes afflicting our daily life.
The root of nearly all our socioeconomic agonies can be traced back to the overpopulation of the country. Bangladesh’s population has long ago exceeded the combined population of Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Singapore. We do not have enough land even to properly house the existing population, let alone housing any additional people. All the strides and all the remarkable successes that Bangladesh has achieved in various socioeconomic sectors since its independence, and particularly under the present government since 2009, will be nullified if the population growth remains unbridled.
With population growth remaining unbridled, no government can implement development programmes and ensure their long-duration benefits to people. And with hundreds of thousands of young people joining the ranks of jobseekers every year, there is bound to be unmanageable unemployment problems and the resultant negative impact on the society. The world may not keep its doors wide open to perennially absorb our additional manpower and emigrants. There could be many impediments in the receiving countries, including racism and cultural repulsion.
During the first two decades after it came into being, Bangladesh was deemed by the West as a perfect example of a nation ‘whose poverty was a direct consequence of over-breeding’. It was considered a basket-case that barely subsisted on handouts from rich and developed countries. Notable ecologists and leading biologists, like Garrett Hardin, wrote in The New York Times and scholarly journals, that all aids to Bangladesh should be ceased. Very few Bangladeshis were aware of those write-ups and they just occupied themselves resiliently with rebuilding their war-ravaged country. And belying all sinister predictions, today Bangladesh has graduated itself to a lower middle income country.
However, in order to sustain and further augment our socioeconomic progress, we urgently need a sound and effective population policy. We need to plan and regulate the growth of our population so as to avert any big addition to our already huge and absurd population. This small country is comparable to a perilously overloaded ferry that cannot simply accommodate any more passengers. We must not lose our rising living standards. We must not revert to the extreme poverty we had before and be known as a basket case again. We must not return to our pitiable square one and to the mercy of the international community. We certainly don’t want that people of Garrett Hardin’s sort to want to ‘punish’ us for over-breeding.
The government should recognise overpopulation as a priority issue. And in order to address it aptly, a permanent national council or body, comprising eminent demographers, efficient public officials, notable scholars, experts and planners, should be in place to advise the government on the actions to be taken in its bid to manage and regulate our population size, its growth, and its age groups composition, so that it does not show any further significant increase. At the same time, such measures can enable us to avert serious impacts of the ageing of our population on the size of our workforce, which should be as large as we may need.
It may be difficult to achieve and sustain that balance, but solutions to a complicated problem is never easy, although not unattainable. Uncontrolled and unmanaged population is already an existential threat to our nation. We cannot afford to paper over the problem and delay addressing it any more. Over-breeding of any particular species of animal or creature, even human beings, in a land tends to have an adverse impact on the ecology of that land. It upsets the ecological equilibrium and triggers natural cataclysms by over-exploitation of natural resources of the land and polluting its environment.
How can one imagine this little country of already teeming crores to have, say 25 crore people, in the future and still ensure decent lives for them? No government, for all its best intentions and efforts, has the power to do that if the population grows to such a ludicrous size. And every political party in the country, if it calls itself patriotic, must extend unstinting support to the government to forthwith adopt the strictest possible measures to control the growth and size of the population.
With growing cities, townships and urban centres across the whole country, Bangladesh is likely to become a huge city-state in about three decades from now, if the current rate of economic growth is sustained. That, however, will gluttonously swallow the country’s invaluable agricultural land, unless we determine the minimum amount of it that we must unwaveringly protect to ensure food security in times of global food shortage, akin to what we witnessed in 2008.
While many of our neighbours are doing extremely well, progressing and consolidating their progress, we cannot live under the shadow of an existential threat due to the still growing overpopulation. Even our immediate neighbor, Myanmar, under its nascent and still shaky democracy, is showing great promise. In FY2015-2016, Myanmar received an FDI of US$9 billion. The total amount of the FDI received by Myanmar from 1988 to 2015 was around US$60 billion. And the country is expected to attain an economic growth rate of 8.4 percent in the current fiscal year (April 2016 – March 2017). Territorially, Myanmar is more than 4.5 times larger than Bangladesh, with an area equal to about half the country under rich forests. It has natural resources of all kinds, including gems, valuable minerals, oil, and offshore natural gas reserves estimated at 10 trillion cubic feet as well as huge areas of rice producing fertile agricultural land. Yet, it has a population of around 50 million, i.e. less than one-third of the population of Bangladesh. I strongly feel that Bangladesh must keep pace with its neighbours in the matter of progress in socioeconomic areas and other spheres. Bangladesh needs to sustain the progress it has attained so far and achieve more. There cannot be any falling back to our past.
The writer is a former Ambassador and Secretary.
This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh
25 Comments on "Rethinking the Population Problem"
Bob Owens on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 2:30 pm
People do not want and will never control their numbers. China, with its 1 child policy, made heroic efforts to reduce population. What was the result of that effort? They barely moved the population needle at all; just look at where they are now. No, people will reproduce until Nature tells them they can’t (which it will do soon enough)!
HARM on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 2:43 pm
Completely wrong-headed thinking from yet another anti-growth Malthusian doomer.
If Bangladesh is struggling with poverty, climate and resource issues, then clearly MORE PEOPLE is the solution. By increasing the supply of people, you increase the level of human INGENUITY, thereby making a solution ever more likely! Increasing population also enables more GROWTH, which is always a good thing, as it feed that magical beast known as the consumer economy.
So instead of hand-wringing over a “problem” (that’s really a blessing), Bangladesh should be encouraging MORE births and sending those soon-to-be-rich little tykes to Trump University, to prepare them for a life of windfall riches that is sure to come.
Get it through your thick heads, doomers: Paul Ehrlich LOST his bet with Julian Simon. The Club of Rome has been proven wrong time and time again. There are no physical “limits to growth”. Growth (and greed) are always GOOD. Breed, consume, obey and be happy!
Sissyfuss on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 2:45 pm
This fellow speaks quite rationally about a predicament that is pure insanity. Normal people don’t look at the big picture, they just follow the norms and mores of their localized traditions. They
will complain about the conditions they find themselves in but never put 2 and 2
together even after collapse.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 2:48 pm
Harm, your sarc is as sloppy as your thinking
HARM on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 3:05 pm
@Sissyfuss,
I could post that comment verbatim on a mainstream website, virtually no one would suspect it as parody, and easily two-thirds of the readers would agree with it. In fact, virtually every word of it (save the Trump U reference) is a paraphrase of previously published opinions from cornucopians and birth-dearthers.
Apneaman on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 4:55 pm
Over population, of every species, is a self correcting problem. Evolution guarantees it and now we are going to find out who really is the “fittest”.
A ‘slow catastrophe’ unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end
“It was a milestone public health officials have been anticipating for years. In a steady march, disease-causing microbes have evolved ways to evade the bulwark of medications used to treat bacterial infections. For a variety of those illnesses, only colistin continued to work every time. Now this last line of defense had been breached as well.”
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-antibiotic-resistance-20160711-snap-story.html
Sissyfuss on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 7:20 pm
Sorry Harm but Bangladesh has weighed on may mind for decades. It is the epitome of the human delusion that growing our numbers is the essence of our existence regardless of the consequence. I find it dismal and enervating to my being
Harquebus on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 9:11 pm
HARM.
If Ehrlich had allowed more time, he would have won the bet.
“Although the original authors of The Limits to Growth, led by Donella Meadows, caution against tying their predictions too tightly to a specific year, the actual trends of the past four decades are not far off from the what was predicted by the study’s models. A recent paper examining the original 1972 study goes so far as to say that the study’s predictions are well on course to being borne out.”
“All the while, governments cling to the idea that “green capitalism” will magically pull humanity out of the frying pan.”
“As long as we have an economic system that allows private capital to accumulate without limit on a finite planet, and externalize the costs, in a system that requires endless growth, there is no real prospect of making the drastic changes necessary to head off a very painful future.”
http://energyskeptic.com/2016/limits-to-growth-is-on-schedule-collapse-likely-around-2020/
Go Speed Racer on Mon, 11th Jul 2016 9:37 pm
There are not too many smart people. There are too many fat stupid rude ugly people
So if you are the latter, go jump off a bridge.
onlooker on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 12:06 am
Bangladesh is a case study in a given delineated society overshooting its land area and resource base. The author while sounding hopeful is fooling himself, this country is hopelessly mired in an overshoot predicament that only Nature can and will solve. SLR will be the final nail in the coffin for this country.
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 5:42 am
We just broke the record for hottest year, nine straight times
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/jul/11/we-just-broke-the-record-for-hottest-year-9-straight-times
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 5:50 am
Biblical Flooding, Crocodiles in the Arctic and Warning Signs on North America’s Highest Mountain
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36667-biblical-flooding-crocodiles-in-the-arctic-and-warning-signs-on-north-americas-highest-mountain
Davy on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 7:00 am
“Donella Meadows, caution against tying their predictions too tightly to a specific year, the actual trends of the past four decades are not far off from the what was predicted by the study’s models.”
I find the model may point to unrealistic back side of all the curves it defines. We know that the descent is likely much more jagged and extreme. Model can’t quantify this because there is no formula for the chaos of turbulence.
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 7:52 am
Record heat in SE NM leads to record attendance at Bottomless Lakes
http://www.kob.com/new-mexico-news/record-heat-in-se-nm-leads-to-record-attendance-at-bottomless-lakes/4196316/#.V4TnLtQrKt_
Lubbock breaks July 11 record high temperature by 4 degrees
http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2016-07-11/lubbock-breaks-july-11-record-high-temperature-4-degrees#.V4TnXdQrKt9
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 7:54 am
The Hottest Temps. EVER in Michigan and much of the U.S
http://woodtv.com/blog/2016/07/11/the-hottest-temps-ever-in-michigan-and-much-of-the-u-s/
Burn that Mother down……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_sY2rjxq6M
Dustin Hoffman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:12 am
Oh my, better buy another air condition to prepare for record heat…thanks.
onlooker on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:19 am
Davy, the LTR study while not so precise and specific include the fundamental data that defines the limits to be encountered and their interaction. Most importantly it stresses that these limits can be skirted or avoided, too bad humanity did heed these limits. Now humanity will have to deal with the consequences of reaching them and exceeding them
onlooker on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:20 am
these limits cannot be skirted or
onlooker on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 9:21 am
did not heed
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 10:47 am
WHY STEADY STATES ARE IMPOSSIBLE
“One of the absolute key points to remember is that the struggle is for relative status. That’s why if a CEO hears that the whole planet is going to hell, he doesn’t care because his relative status is not threatened. Our rulers only care if their relative status is threatened. That’s why Bill Gates won’t divest from fossil fuel. He would rather have a ruined planet than a ruined portfolio. He can only change his decision if his personal status is threatened. Moreover, all of these decisions are made subconsciously and automatically. We are ALL like this whether we consciously realize it or not. It’s the nature of the human beast — it’s why we cannot avoid collapse.”
http://www.jayhanson.org/why.htm
HARM on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 1:06 pm
“Over population, of every species, is a self correcting problem. Evolution guarantees it and now we are going to find out who really is the “fittest”.
I’m not so sure about the “fittest”, but we’re definitely entering a period where the most skillfully ruthless among us are most likely to come out on top. Not necessarily the best or most decent among us, but those are subjective concepts anyway. Father Evolution doesn’t care about human morality or wishes.
HARM on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 1:07 pm
@Harquebus,
Please refer to Poe’s Law.
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 2:49 pm
HARM, when it comes to antibiotic resistant (newly evolved) bacterial infections all the money, status and power in the world will make little or no difference. We be going retro – either your immune system heals you au naturel or you suffer and die.
Don’t we already live in a world where the most ruthless are on top? They are the ones who have been promoting this whole “survival of the fittest” myth for the last century and a half to justify their system. You don’t need to be “the fittest” to survive. Just fit will do. So, when the environment changes those creatures who adapt are the ones to survive. For the humans, their environment is social and when it changes there is often a changing of the guard because entrenched elites refuse to give anything up. They refuse to adapt and sometimes end up like Louie the 16th and the rest of the French nobility and sometimes it goes down like the fall of communism – went out with a whimper because everyone stopped believing one day. Power is a faith based illusion. There was no planned retreat, no grand announcement that said next Tuesday at 12 noon communism will end. Just mass confusion one day and the next everybody knew it was over. I still don’t get why so many are so certain the elite are masterminds. If they are so fucking smart then why are we on the knife’s edge? If this is the best they can do while still going largely unchallenged and when they have more money and power than anytime in modernity, then why do so many think they will be successful when the shit hits? Any number of scenarios could happen or they could all happen in different places.
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 3:31 pm
Dustin Hoffman, yeah it should be as useful as installing a second steering wheel in your car.
The U.S. Summer is Off to a Record-Hot Start
“Last month was the warmest June in 122 years of U.S. recordkeeping, beating out June 1933, according to the monthly climate roundup released on Wednesday by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Each of the 48 contiguous states came in above its average temperature for June, with Arizona and Utah setting all-time June records for heat. Thirteen other states had a top-ten-warmest June, stretching across the nation from California to Florida.”
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/the-us-summer-is-off-to-a-recordhot-start
What could possible go wrong with everyone cranking the A/c up as their one and only solution to a warming world?
Aging US Power Grid Blacks Out More Than Any Other Developed Nation
http://www.ibtimes.com/aging-us-power-grid-blacks-out-more-any-other-developed-nation-1631086
Not many A/C units in Europe compared to the southern US. Not much good if they OD the grid though.
DAILY NEWS 10 October 2003
European heatwave caused 35,000 deaths
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4259-european-heatwave-caused-35000-deaths/
Apneaman on Tue, 12th Jul 2016 3:34 pm
Study: Climate Change is Already Shifting Global Cloud Patterns, Boosting Warming
“A new study led by researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego has systematically analyzed more than 25 years of cloud records, starting in 1983—a huge task. On balance, cloud patterns have been shifting toward the poles, the researchers found, and the tallest cloud tops have grown taller. Ramifications from these trends include the drying of places in the subtropics like California, South Africa, and southern Europe and a net warming of the planet.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/07/12/study_cloud_patterns_are_shifting_because_of_climate_change.html