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Patrons: Professor Frank Fenner Professor Ian Lowe Professor Tim Flannery Dr Mary White Dr Paul Collins |
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September 2001
No 51 |
The Newsletter of Sustainable Population Australia Inc
(formerly: Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population Inc.) |
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POPULATION GROWTH
AND DESERTIFICATION
Dr Harry Cohen, National President,
For many of us, the image of Asia is of lush paddy fields. Nearly 40 percent of Asians, however, live in dryland areas prone to desertification and drought. Right now, north and west China is in the grip of its worst drought in a decade. Dust storms from the interior, reminiscent of the US dustbowl of the 1930s, are blowing right across the Pacific. Late last year the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said the world could no longer ignore the crisis in Asia's drylands. Dramatic examples of desertification could be found in the encroaching deserts of Western China, |
India and Pakistan. Desertification,
however, is not simply the encroachment
of deserts - it is the process of soil erosion
and land degradation in dryland areas. It
results from complex interactions
between unpredictable climate variations
and unsustainable land use practices
such as overcropping, overgrazing,
deforestation or inappropriate irrigation.
It is not confined to Asia but is a global problem. While the West African Sahel
is the most seriously affected region in the world, almost 100 countries are directly affected, even in Europe, where considerable areas of land bordering the Mediterranean will be lost to desertification within 50 to 75 years. And over here in Western Australia, in |
the south western part of the state, the
soil is powder dry. We have had no rain
of significance in five years and we have
just had our longest warm June stretch
ever. We may well be on the way to
desertification in our own land.
As land is stripped of its vegetation, the higher reflectivity of bare soil acts to reduce the already low rainfall. Wind and water erosion strips away the fertile top layers of soil. Desert-like conditions intrude on the pastures, transforming them in ways that can turn out to be permanent. Desertification also causes the genetic erosion of plants, animals and microorganisms in dryland environments. Species and genes adapted to dry conditions are relatively few, so when they are lost, the loss is keenly felt. The most serious consequences of desertification are reduction in food productivity and poverty. Poverty in turn leads to further land degradation as desperate people overgraze the land and cut down remaining trees for fuel wood. The end result may be famine, particularly in times of drought. Cont p 3 |
Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 1
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The SPA Newsletter is mailed quarterly to members of Sustainable
Population Australia Inc.
Membership is open to all who agree with SPA's aims and objectives. For further information, please contact the SPA National Office or your nearest SPA Branch. All membership applications and renewals, and Newsletter contributions, should be sent to the National Office. newsletter@population.org.au SPA NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE President: Dr Harry Cohen Phone (08) 9381 9729 bh Harry.Cohen@health.wa.gov.au Vice President: Dr John Coulter Phone/fax (08) 8388 2153 coulters@camtech.net.au Secretary: Hugh Oldham (02) 6281 3319 oldhamwh@austarmetro.com.au Treasurer: Sue Nancarrow (02) 6247 0333 Committee: Ana Guinea (02) 9939 6889 ah Dr Patricia Weaver (08) 9386 1890 Sandra Kanck (08) 8336 4114 ah Sheila Newman (03) 9783 5047 SUSTAINABLE POPULATION FUND TRUSTEES
SPA NATIONAL OFFICE National Director: Jenny GoldiePostal address: PO Box 297 CIVIC SQUARE ACT 2608 Office: 256 Baroona Rd, Michelago, NSW 2620 Phone: (02) 6235 5488 Fax: (02) 6235 5499 Email: natdir@population.org.au Website: http://www.population.org.au SPA REGIONAL BRANCHES
NSW: Ph (02) 99396889, PO Box 3070, DURAL, NSW 2158,
nsw@population.org.au
President: Tomi Strugar.
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By John Coulter T he situation with respect to 'boat people' generally, and those on the Tampa specifically, underscores the lack of leadership and clear policy direction of all political parties in Australia in recent years. Not surprisingly therefore media comment and discussion programs also reveal a community lacking a comprehensive and integrated view of a sustainable, equitable and humane direction for Australia.I have not heard one radio, seen one TV program, or read one newspaper that interviews an ecologist or considers the environmental consequences of how we deal with immigration in general and boat people in particular. The comprehensive view which sees this problem in its wider context has been totally absent. Readers of this Newsletter will know that there have been numerous high level reports recommending that Australia develop a population policy. All have been rejected by both old parties when in government. They will also know that Australia's 19 million people are not living sustainably, either in and on Australia, or in a global context. They will be concerned about the despoiled environment we leave our children and how we balance the ethic of intergenerational with that of intragenerational equity. Failure of human populations to live sustainably is not unique to Australia. Every country does irreparable damage to its environmental future. If one were to identify one factor that is driving the tribal strife that in turn is generating the refugee movements it is the growing disparity between available resources and expanding human populations. Of six billion people now in the world about three billion live in poverty; more people than ever before. Some 40,000 children die each day from malnutrition and poverty related disease. At the current rate of just under three children per family, world population will double to 12 billion in 50 years. Even if a policy of 2.1 children per family were adopted tomorrow, because of the very young median age in most populous countries, global population would hit 12 billion in 70 years before stabilising. Ninety nine percent of food comes from the land and 80 - 90 percent of that is cereals. Since 1984 cereal availability per capita has been declining. Globally cropland has declined 20 percent in the last decade, irrigated land by 12 percent. Each year erosion destroys 10 million ha of cropland. Expansion of human populations is also removing between 10 and 35 million ha of arable land for houses, roads and industries. Between 1960 and the present, global cropland per capita has fallen from 0.5 ha to 0.27 ha. Each year 10 million ha is lost but an additional 5 million ha is required to feed the 84 million people added to the global Cont p 8 |
Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 3
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Famine forces people from their
communities. For instance, by 1994, one
sixth of the population of Mali and
Burkino Faso in Africa had been
uprooted as a result of desertification.
Many of the thousands of illegal
immigrants who pour across the
southern US land border each year come
from the driest, most eroded,
impoverished regions of Mexico.
As the Asia Development Bank said,
rapid population growth has contributed
to the pressure on the land. While
desertification is a complex mix of
climatic and human effects, more often
than not, population growth is the driving
Dr Harry Cohen force behind detrimental land use practices.In his award winning essay on desertification last year, Raphael Mweninguwe, describes the plight of a father of eight in Malawi who has three acres on which to grow crops to feed his family, one that also includes six orphaned grandchildren. The soil has lost its fertility so he encroaches into Thyolo Mountain, a forest reserve. Outside the reserve, the hills are already deforested and the rivers no longer flow all year round. |
Malawi has implemented its 1997 Forestry Act that imposes stiffer penalties for illegal forestry activities such as charcoal burning and wanton cutting of trees. But the fertility rate in Malawi is 6.7, the highest in sub- Saharan Africa, and in the Thyolo district, population has climbed to 600,000 people. Such population growth drives agricultural expansion, the major cause of deforestation in Malawi. Should the country turn into a desert, says Mweninguwe, it will have devastating socioeconomic effects on the lives of people. Under the International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), rich and poor countries have to work together to develop strategies to combat desertification. Eliminating poverty is an obvious objective, but this must go hand in hand with efforts to end population growth. Providing reproductive health care and contraception is the best means of bringing birth rates down. Ensuring children survive into adulthood by providing clean water, food and vaccinations against disease is also critical. Educating girls and women correlates very closely with declining birth rates. |
Unless certain countries act quickly to
implement these measures, they may find
themselves in a downward spiral of
disease, desertification, famine and
death. The populations of countries like
Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan and India are
expected to increase dramatically in the
next 50 years. Pakistan, for instance, with
357 million people, will have more than
live in the United States and Canada
today.
These countries have large areas of
drylands and widespread poverty in
places. Cropland per person is shrinking
rapidly, pushing more people onto
marginal land. Getting fertility rates down
quickly is vital if they are not to succumb
to further desertification and its dire
consequences.
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Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 3
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SPA Patron For many years he has worked in varying capacities in TV and radio with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
He has a Master's degree in theology (Th.M.) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in history from the Australian National University (ANU). He has taught church history and theology in Australia, US and Pacific countries and worked as a parish priest in Sydney and Hobart. In 1998 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Resource and |
Environmental Studies at the ANU, and
Ethel Hayton Visiting Fellow in Religion
and Society at the University of
Wollongong. He also has wide
experience in tertiary and adult
education.
Between 1988 and 1996 he was a producer-presenter in the ABC in radio and TV, and for three years he was Specialist Editor-Religion for the ABC. He is the author of Mixed Blessings [Penguin, 1986], No Set Agenda. Australia's Catholic Church Faces an Uncertain Future [David Lovell, 1991], God's Earth. Religion as if matter really mattered [Harper Collins 1995], Papal Power [Harper Collins, 1997], Upon This Rock. The development of the papal office from Saint Peter to John Paul II [Melbourne University Press, 2000], and From Inquisition to Freedom [Simon and Schuster, 2001]. He is at present working on a book on the ethics of population. While he is well known as a commentator on the papacy, he also has a strong interest in environmental and population issues, and his book God's Earth has been made into a major TV documentary by the ABC. He is a member of the Australian National Committee for the Earth Charter and he was also one of a thousand world religious leaders invited to attend the United Nations Millennium Peace Summit in August 2000. Nowadays he works as a freelance writer, speaker and broadcaster on environmental issues, social ethics, theology, history and communication.
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Page 4, Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001
Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 5
PROXIES:
If you cannot attend the meeting,
you may appoint a proxy who will
vote on your behalf. Your proxy
must have your written permission
in hand at the meeting. If you are
unsure of whom to nominate, you
may nominate the chair of the
meeting. Please send your proxy
vote to:
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PLANET 9-15 September 2001 This low cost, internet conference, hosted by Nature and Society Forum,
aims to provide an integrated perspective of links between the health and
wellbeing of humans and the health and sustainability of the environment.
Participation will enable you to ask questions or comment on papers
submitted by experts in the fields of health, nutrition, land and water care,
recycling, marketing and bioethics in relation to the production and
consumption of food.
For program and registration details go to www.natsoc.org.au (click
'conference') or email conference@natsoc.org.au
Conference supported by Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care and Healthpact |
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"Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England" by Diana Muir. University Press of New England. Hanover, NH, USA. 2000.
Book Review by Jenny Goldie
T
his remarkable book traces the natural history of New England and of the people who have lived there, starting with the
Native Americans. It is a story of the unique relationship of the people with the land, water and sea. While it is primarily
a history book, it covers a range of disciplines from archaeology to zoology. In that sense it is like Jared Diamond's Pulitzer
Prize winning "Guns, Germs and Steel". Like Diamond, Diana Muir is keenly aware of the problems of overpopulation.
Indeed, the theme of the book is largely how people reacted to resource shortages brought on by excessive population growth
and associated environmental deterioration.
Muir is quick to point out in the introduction that this book is not a jeremiad, that is, "an unpleasant guilt-inducing scold about our reprehensible environmental profligacy…" She argues instead that it is a paean of praise to Yankee ingenuity. And indeed it is, though she is scathing in her criticism of poor forestry practices, over-harvesting of beavers, pollution of rivers, the development and widespread adoption of the motorcar, dams that flooded upstream fields, and many other examples of environmental profligacy.
The Industrial Revolution in New England followed hot on the heels of that in England, out of necessity, given that these six states of north eastern USA had infertile soils, a cold climate and poor mineral resources. The Puritans were the earliest European settlers (though Basque fishermen preceded them by some hundreds of years) in the early 17th century but by the end of the 18th there was little new land left to farm. In order to feed large families, farmers were forced to adopt various industrial processes, utilising the energy of their many streams, to make things that others would buy. By the mid-19th century, the fertile mid-west was opening up and farmers' children had the choice of heading west or working in New England factories. Today, much of New England has reafforested as farming became unprofitable on the thin, degraded soils. Cont p 6
Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 5
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From p 5
The Agricultural Revolution saved hunters and gatherers from starving after they wiped out their bigger prey and populations grew too big to be supported by remaining food supplies. The Industrial Revolution saved the Yankees from poverty, but it depended on fossil energy, the by-products of which are polluting the earth. Muir thus argues that a Third Revolution is now necessary, one that will entail the discovery and deployment of new kinds of energy and materials. Such a revolution is possible, Muir argues, because we no longer arrogantly assume that humanity is above nature. We now realise that we are part of nature and that the world has natural limits. Some may quibble with her assumption that this realisation need not prevent us from illuminating our homes, speaking with friends thousands of miles away, or flying across continents. But as she says: it does caution us to find ways to do these things without destroying the world. This is a beautifully written, scholarly book. Highly recommended.
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John Williams
After the Australian continent broke free from the other Gondwana remnant, Antarctica, 50 million years ago, it drifted northward and its climate became drier. Hard leaf sclerophyll plants and eucalypts replaced most of the lush temperate and sub-tropical forests of conifers, cycads and ferns. The new plant varieties had to adapt, not only to the drier conditions, but also to the lack of deep fertile soils. Under these dry and infertile conditions, trees and plants with deep and thick root systems dominated. Erosion through time led to the accumulation of sediments, sodium chloride and other salts. The accumulated salts are derived principally from the surrounding oceans and carried inland in spray and rain; some are released from weathering rocks. Since the continent is flat, and dominated by a gentle fall towards its interior, most rivers and groundwater systems are very sluggish, with little capacity to drain the continent of its salt and water. As a consequence, enormous stores of salt characterise the Australian landscape. Trees, woody shrubs and perennial grasses comprise much of Australia's native vegetation. This perennial vegetation, with its relatively deep, dense, root systems, takes up most of the rain that falls. Only very small amounts of rain leak to the groundwater. The water table is prevented from rising because over time, the water that drains from the landscape is about equal to the small leakage to groundwater (0.5 – 5mm a year). Large-scale clearing of native vegetation by European settlers and its replacement with annual crops and pastures, however, has substantially increased the amount of water leaking beneath the root zone (15 to 150 mm/year for cultivated grasses and crops). This has caused the water table to rise - bringing the salt with it into the topsoil - and causing dryland salinity. Last year, for the first time, the National Land and Water Resources Audit -- Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000 -- objectively defined the distribution and impacts of dryland salinity across Australia. It warns that by 2050, up to 20 000 km of streams might be significantly affected by salt, over 200 towns might suffer damage to infrastructure, and up to 52 000 km of major roads and 3600 km of railways may be at risk. Already an area of land equivalent to a quarter the size of Victoria is at risk or already affected. This could increase to an area three times as large by 2050. Cont p 7 |
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Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 7
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From p 6
Managing the salinisation process will
involve treating the cause, ameliorating
the symptoms, or a combination of both.
While it is popular to promote use of
salinised land for agriculture, it must be
understood that unless the cause of the
salinisation is brought under control, the
land and its associated water resources
will continue to salt. Salt will continue to
be delivered to the water and
accumulate in the land.
Once the salinisation process is under way, it is extremely difficult to slow, halt or reverse it to protect water and land resources. Preventing salinity is thus a far better investment than any attempt at control or management. Few of our current farming systems can significantly reduce recharge (water leaking through to groundwater) to levels similar to those that existed under natural vegetation. To be effective, recharge reduction must yield leakage rates similar to native vegetation and occupy approximately 40 per cent of a catchment or landscape. This requires a revolution in land use. The need, market forces and opportunity for a change in land use in rural Australia are upon us. 'Business as usual' is not an option, but what are the options for change? No single land-use option will halt the growth of salinity and the loss of native biodiversity in our land and rivers. We need to develop and deploy a suite of novel land uses that are matched to the diverse climate, soils, and hydrological conditions of the areas in which they are deployed. These land uses, in combination, need to deliver leakage rates past the root zone that approach those of natural vegetation. This will require radical change to land use, incorporating:
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Devising the optimal placement of these land uses in terms of salinity control, productivity and maintenance of native biodiversity will require a robust understanding of landscape process and function, and good maps of landscape properties, particularly salt storage and groundwater flow. While a vision for the new industries and prospective land uses is emerging, many of the components described above do not yet exist. A substantial new R&D effort is needed that tackles the redesign of farming and forestry systems and their integration into the landscape as a whole. This needs to combine biophysical and economic studies that deliver novel designs well matched to soil, climate and catchment circumstances. These include biodiversity; on-farm measurement and improved land assessment techniques; modern genetic improvement techniques; and a participatory process that engages community and land managers.
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Stats 3101.0 (from ABS) Natural increase in that time was 120,600, 900 less than the previous year. Preliminary net overseas migration (NOM) was 104,500 in the year ending December 2000, compared with 88,400 the previous year. Over the last 20 years, Australia has gained, on average, 99,300 permanent settlers each year, off-set by a permanent departure average of 26,400 annually. Queensland recorded the highest growth of 1.7%, Tasmania the lowest at - 0.1%. The national fertility rate was 1.742, down from 1.757 the previous year. The high 2.193 in the N T, the low 1.580 in the ACT. The proportion of settlers arriving on Skill Migration visas has increased to 62 per cent from around 20 per cent in the 1980s. This was partly due to the introduction of a new Skill category three years ago that replaced the Concessional Family Category. Over the past 20 years, the number of long-term visitor arrivals increased four fold to 133,200 in 1999-2000. |
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Sustainable Population Australia, September 2001, Page 7
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From p 2
population. This 15 million ha is largely
coming from removal of forests with a
multitude of damaging environmental
consequences. Erosion can be
compensated to an extent by the use of
synthetic fertilisers. However, these
depend upon large inputs of fossil energy,
usually petroleum and this is neither
sustainable nor affordable in poor
countries as scarcity and price put it
beyond reach. Fertiliser production has
declined by 21% since 1989, principally
in third world countries.
What has been said of land is also true of water, the other essential input to food production. Water demand already exceeds supply in nearly 80% of countries with both surface and ground water being unsustainably overexploited. Australia presently feeds about 60 million people, one third in Australia and two thirds in other countries. It does this unsustainably, using vast energy subsidies from fossil fuels, with massive soil loss to erosion and salinisation and with pollution of the majority of its rivers and water bodies. Some scientists, surveying this situation and recognising the inadequate resources being applied to reversal and remediation have suggested that in 25 years Australia may not have enough food to feed itself. Into this context we must mix the fact of some 23 million refugees worldwide and ask how best can we use our limited resources so as to deliver the best outcome in terms of human and environmental welfare for the long term. I say long term for there will be far more people living throughout the millennia of the future than are alive today. For this reason I lean toward intergenerational equity being given priority over intragenerational equity. It's clear that we can not significantly reduce the number of refugees, much less reduce the rate of population growth in other countries, by immigration to Australia. To attempt to do so would render any move to sustainability useless. |
Given the overriding global imperative to
find paths toward sustainability, given
also the fortunate opportunities for
Australia to blaze a trail in this essential
new direction, I believe our priority should
be to set our own environmental house
in order. Not in a spirit of isolation from
the rest of the world but in a spirit of
cooperation and sharing with other
countries as we explore this difficult
transition. In seeking to build an
environmentally sustainable Australia
we must limit our own population and
this means limiting immigration until we
have achieved sustainability. We must
also set about radically changing our
profligate, resource consuming lifestyle
and here government must take a lead.
It must put in place carrots and sticks
that a market system, properly
internalising environmental externalities,
would contain and so legitimately coerce
us toward sustainability.
Our global responsibilities are best discharged by:
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full year). Millions of women throughout
the world wish to limit the size of their
families but have neither the education
or the means to do it. Providing help here
would help tackle the refugee problem
at source rather than applying a bandaid
to a very sick world. Higher
proportions of 'boat people' are well-todo
young men. Meanwhile a much higher
proportion of those in refugee camps
around the world are poor women and
children. (See 'Australia and the 1951
Refugee Convention', Adrienne
Millbank, People and Place, 2001, 9:2,
pp 1- 13)
Had Australia committed itself to environmental sustainability, developed a population policy based on sustainability, a refugee program within this, and done these things in the context of its global responsibility, we should not now be in the divisive quandary in which we find ourselves. Rather, we may be helping toward a solution to the greatest threat ever to face humankind, a threat of which refugees and boat people are just one symptom - not a cause.
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