The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the world’s leading scientific academies warned on Thursday.
Rich countries need to reduce or radically transform unsustainable lifestyles, while greater efforts should be made to provide contraception to those who want it in the developing world, the coalition of 105 institutions, including the Royal Society, urged in a joint report.
It’s a wake-up call for negotiators meeting in Rio for the UN conference on sustainable development.
The authors point out that while the Rio summit aims to reduce poverty and reverse the degradation of the environment, it barely mentions the two solutions that could ease pressure on increasingly scarce resources.
Many in the scientific community believe it is time to confront these elephants in the room. “For too long population and consumption have been left off the table due to political and ethical sensitivities. These are issues that affect developed and developing nations alike, and we must take responsibility for them together,” said Charles Godfray, a fellow of the Royal Society and chair of the working group of IAP, the global network of science academies.
In a joint statement, the scientists said they wanted to remind policymakers at Rio+20 that population and consumption determine the rates at which natural resources are exploited and Earth’s ability to meet the demand for food, water, energy and other needs now and in the future. The current patterns of consumption in some parts of the world were unsustainable. A sharp rise in human numbers can have negative social and economic implications, and a combination of the two causes extensive loss of biodiversity.
The statement follows a hard-hitting report by the Royal Society in April that called for rebalancing of resources to reduce poverty and ease environmental pressures that are leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future.
By 2050, the world’s population is projected to rise from seven billion to between eight and 11 billion. Meanwhile consumption of resources is rising rapidly as a result of a growing middle class in developed countries and the lavish lifestyles of the very rich across the planet.
“We are living beyond the planet’s means. That’s scientifically proven,” said Gisbet Glaser of the International Council for Science, who cited research on ocean acidification, climate change and biodiversity loss. “We’re now at a point in human history where we risk degrading the life support system for human development.”
The scientific academies stressed that poverty reduction remain a priority, but said action to promote voluntary family planning through education, better healthcare and contraception can aid that process.
“The P-word is not talked about because people are scared of being politically incorrect or alarmist. Even so, the the population dialogue should not just be about sheer numbers of people – that type of dialogue leads to finger pointing,” said Lori Hunter, a demographer who was in Rio for a side-event. She said the picture was more complex and touched upon the need to consider factors that shape fertility decision-making. She mentioned that in some areas, scarcity of natural resources leads to larger families as families need labor. There are also high levels of unmet demand for contraception in many regions of the world.
“You need to push the levers that are shaping family size,” said Hunter. “Basically, you can’t save the environment without reproductive health policies and programmes.” She also mentioned that processes such as migration, urbanisation, aging are important in considering the environmental impacts of future consumption.
The draft negotiating text of Rio+20 mentions the need to change “unsustainable patterns of production and consumption” but the US wants to delete passages that suggest developed countries should take the lead.
There is also little recognition in the text that economic growth might be limited by ecological factors. This is partly because although scientists talk about “global boundaries”, there is no agreement on where they might lie.
The stock taking of global inventory is still a work in progress, but it may speed up after the launch on Thursday of a new scientific initiative – Future Earth – that brings together academies, funds and international institutions to co-design research related to sustainable food production and changes to the climate, geosphere and biosphere.
The picture might become clearer if proposals at Rio+20 to beef up the UN environment programme are accepted, along with a plan for a “regular review of the state of the planet.”
Glaser, who is the lead negotiator for the scientific community at Rio+20, said there was still no agreement on the 80-page text.
“They’re negotiating words rather than the issues behind the words. I’m afraid that if there’s no miracle, there’ll be a relatively low common denominator that just drops all the main areas of contention.”
Kenz300 on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 1:49 pm
The world added a billion more people in the last 12 years. In parts of the world we have a food crisis, a water crisis, a climate change crisis, an oil crisis, an energy crisis, a financial crisis, and a jobs crisis. Every country needs to develop a plan to balance its population with its resources, food, water, energy and jobs. Every problem is made harder to solve with the ever growing world population and only leads to move poverty, suffering and despair. The countries that does not balance its population with its resources will be exporting their people and that will not solve the problems.
MrBill on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 2:53 pm
Yes, population growth is the elephant in the room.
BillT on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 3:23 pm
Just by taking the Empire’s expenditures on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (!$4 T.) would have fed the entire population of the Earth for 1 year. The world’s GDP divided EQUALLY among the 7 billion of Earth’s inhabitants would give every man, woman and child $10,000 per year or $40,000 for a family of 4. The poor in this world know they are being screwed and that is why they hate the West. Less than 10% of the population uses more than 70% of the resources.
wermod on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 4:57 pm
Democratic governments will never be able to stop human population growth. One can see how the democracies of the West react to stagnant or declining native populations: importing massive numbers of immigrants from places with surplus populations. The logic of the growth-based economic paradigm we live in demands infinite population growth. The action that is required at this point to even attempt a prevention of a civilization/planet-wide collapse from overpopulation is so drastic that ordinary people will never consent to it. Only a very small percentage of people will “opt out” or drop out of the mainstream voluntarily, as in the Transition Towns movement, while the vast majority will continue business as usual because it is too difficult and uncomfortable to change. The only ‘hope’ is that totalitarian regimes will rise up in the chaos of the coming years, with the gumption to force rapid depopulation, since they would not require the consent of the masses. And what would that scenario look like? Hardly any better than the civilization collapse scenario. There is no way for us to win at this point, we are faced with the classical dilemma of two more or less equally horrible options.
dsula on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 5:28 pm
BillT: Giving everybody in the world $10k/year would probably inflate food prices to such a level even you in manila couldn’t afford to eat anymore.
Everybody hates the west, but most want to go and live there. I wish they wouldn’t.
fecteau on Fri, 15th Jun 2012 7:55 pm
I fully agree that we need to control the population. However, we can also drastically reduce the per-capita weight on humans on the ecosystem.
The worst impact on the planet doesn’t come from oil consumption. It comes from meat production (mostly in factory farms). W humans, can leave a healthier life as vegetarians. Doing so reduces our ecological footprint by an order of magnitude.
BillT on Sat, 16th Jun 2012 1:29 am
dusula, maybe they do and maybe they don’t. The West is dying and will soon close their doors to immigration of all kinds. Look at Europe, slowly closing their borders to migration, even within Europe. The Empire is trying to do a EU and unite Mexico and Canada with the Us, but I don’t see that as being successful, unless Us and Canadians wants to live like Mexicans.
As for the $10k example…maybe it would but that shows how skewed the world is toward the top 10% and why the years ahead are going to be very dangerous for the West.