Development is the Best Contraceptive
The Controversy of Population Explosion & the Ethiopian Famine
By Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia
Jan 11, 2004
In November of 2002, I wrote “Uprooting the Root Cause of Famine in Ethiopia,” a sequel to an article entitled “The Paradox of Bread Basket Starving Ethiopia” (September 2002), which, in turn, is an outgrowth of a major project (The Politics of Famine and Strategies For Development in Ethiopia) completed in 1988-90.
The main themes of the above titles were galvanized in “Famine Could be Defeated Through a Synergy of Development Programs,” that I have presented in December 2002. In all the articles and the dissertation, ‘development’ is thematic centrality, as I shall presently reiterate in this article.
The focus of this article is on population explosion as the culprit behind the Ethiopian famine, as some neo-Malthusian observers like to argue. Population explosion, as will be substantiated later, is not the main cause for the Ethiopian famine; lack of development is. There is no doubt that population explosion, as a factor, can aggravate other problems in the complex scenario of famine, but to argue it is the main problem is tantamount to dismissing the multivariate variables (ill-conceived government policy, instability, unsustainable resource consumption, inappropriate and inadequate technology, access to capital, inequity in land and other resources etc.) that are the collective omen haunting the Ethiopian landscape.
We should have a deep and comprehensive understanding of famine and the situation in Ethiopia in order not to err in policy and come up with wrong prescription. It is for this simple reason that I have argued in “Uprooting the Root Causes…” as stated below:
“In order to have clarity on the phenomenon of famine, we must first be able to combat ambiguous, elliptical, and seductive explanations of the Ethiopian famine. Put otherwise, we must avoid sentimental and superficial analysis of mass starvation shrouded in mystery and religious overtone.”
Once we establish a modicum of clarity on the nature and causes of famine, we can easily discern the controversy of population explosion, especially as pictured by the gloomiest neo-Malthusian advocates.
When Thomas Malthus wrote his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, he alarmed the world with an Armageddon of human devastation, because he believed that the world population was pushing against the earth’s resources. His simple, but unscientific, logical deduction is that population increases in a geometric and exponential ratio (1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8 et.) whereas food production increases in only arithmetic ratio (1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 etc.).
To be sure, the dramatic increase in world population in the 20th century is unprecedented. As the World Population Growth, 1750 to 1995 and Projected to 2050 of the United Nations (1995) indicates, it took 2 million years for the world population to reach 1 billion in 1804. In 1927, the world population was 2 billion; 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, and before the turn of the 21st century, it is in excess of 6 billion. Yes, Malthus is right in this regard, but absolutely wrong in his prediction of food production. The latter indeed has exhibited exponential, and hence surplus production.
What Malthus was unable to see and predict was the revolutionary dynamic and mass production potential of the Industrial Revolution that began in England in the 1750s. Ironically, he was born and raised in England when the Industrial Revolution unleashed a momentum unprecedented in human history. All societies that have witnessed surplus production have escaped the vagaries of famine. The cause for famine, therefore, is subsistence and fragile economy and not population.
On top of mass and surplus production, distribution of wealth among members of society (we may not realize equality, but we may come close to attaining equity), a critical political economy tenet, is crucial in our extrapolation of the causes of famine. The distribution of wealth may be controversial, but the exponential growth of food production is indisputable. For example, American agro-business giants like Archer Daniel Midland (ADM), Pioneer Hi-Bread, and Monsanto, alone can feed the entire planet. I like to further substantiate the thesis of lack of equity in wealth or lack of access to food as the main culprit behind widespread famine.
According to a microeconomic principle, popularly known as Engel’s Law, the ability to acquire more food depends on the income necessary to buy it. Discussing ‘poverty and entitlements’ Amartya Sen argued that “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of being not enough to eat. While the latter can be the cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes.” By the same token, Richard Barnet, in his book The Lean Years, quite convincingly, tells us that “most people who stop eating do so not because there is insufficient food grown in the world but because they no longer grow it themselves and do not have the money to buy it.”
I have forwarded a similar line of reasoning to that of Barnet’s in “The Paradox of Bread Basket Starving Ethiopia.” Based on the data provided by Professor Michel Chossudovsky (University of Ottawa), I have delineated Ethiopia’s rather ironic inability to feed its famine stricken people despite surplus production. But because most Ethiopian observers were mesmerized by the walking skeletons and unable to assess the food production, I am again compelled to reiterate the data and argument as shown below:
“Ethiopia produces more than 90% of its consumption needs,” argues Chossudovsky, and “yet at the height of the crisis the nationwide food deficit was estimated by the Food Agricultural Organization (FAO) at 764,000 metric tons of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum. In Amhara, grain production (1999-2000) was twenty percent in excess of consumption needs. Yet 2.8 million in Amhara (representing 17% of the regions population) became locked into famine zones and are “at risk” according to the FAO.” By the same token, despite 600 million tons of surplus in the Oromiya region, the latter was classified “at risk” too.
In the final analysis, it is underdevelopment coupled by inequity, not overpopulation, which is the cause for food deficit and ultimately for mass starvation. When I say overpopulation is not a problem, I don’t mean to dismiss entirely its impact on the environment. It is quite apparent that overpopulation could have an adverse effect on the farming and pasture areas. I also have no violent objection to family planning to countercheck fertility rate. However, my argument resonates the very weakness of the neo-Malthusian demographic experts in family planning. Even if we manage to systematically curb population growth by limiting family size, we may still encounter famine unless and until we implement a sound and comprehensive development agenda. Hence, the title of this article, “Development is the Best Contraceptive.” I will further discuss the genesis and messages of the title later; for now, I like to draw the attention of the reader to the positions of neo-Malthusians and cornucopians on the controversy of population explosion.
In 1995, Ronald Bailey edited and published a very important book entitled The True State of the Planet. One of the contributors, Nicholas Eberstadt, writes “Population, Food and Income: Global Trends in the Twentieth Century.” Eberstadt presents a cornucopian (growth optimist) and compelling analysis as opposed to the neo-Malthusian growth pessimist stance:
On top of the above note, cornucopians emphasize on the promise of the Green
Revolution and attendant scientific advances in agriculture since the 1950s known for its abundant yields. In point of fact, Ethiopia also had a similar experience to that of India, Indonesia and the Philippines in mechanized agriculture in the early 1960s although the latter were mostly cash crop industry and at a much lower scale.
By contrast, neo-Malthusians are concerned by what they call ecological overshoot, referring to the earth’s limited carrying capacity. Contrary to the pessimists, growth optimists advance ‘sustainable development,’ a catch phrase that has now dominated international institutions, development agencies, and the academia. Sustainable development is defined as “economic growth engineered by policies that do not destroy the environment to subsidize quick development and short-term profits for producers. Central to sustainable development is that “the present generation’s needs must be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.”
If we clearly understand the essence of sustainable development, the message conveyed is that there is no straightforward relationship between population growth and environmental stress. Underdevelopment and poverty, on the other hand, directly affect the environment. We can support this evidence by the Ethiopian experience where the peasants unwittingly search for fuel wood as a major source of energy, and inadvertently deplete the forest areas. Had the Ethiopian peasants have the fortunes of utilizing alternative energies such as gas and electricity, the forests would have been preserved; and had the Ethiopian government and people implemented a massive reforestation program, the Ethiopian green belt would have been replenished.
Before I conclude, I will briefly touch upon conferences and policies on population. The first world population conference that took place in Bucharest in 1974 prescribed policies that gave weight to economic development and not birth control. Delegates from the South appealed to the developed nations from the North for assistance in development, and they have clearly stated that once massive development programs are initiated, population control will take its own course. In fact, the then prevailing view was enchanted by the slogan development is the best contraceptive, which has become a source of inspiration for my present writing.
The second world population conference took place in Mexico City in 1984. Then, the dominant prevailing view was ‘family planning,’ although highly developed countries like the United States advanced the idea of “free market principles should take precedence over population matters” and also promote “resource saving innovations in response to shortages created by population growth, so that population growth is a stimulus, not a deterrent, to economic development,” as amplified by political scientists Charles Kegley and Eugene Whittkopf.
When the third world population conference met in Cairo in 1994, the Bucharest slogan of ‘development is the best contraceptive’ was revisited, but this conference attempted to reconcile development and population control perspectives with much emphasis on development. The title of the conference was self-explanatory: International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The Cairo conference clearly stated that “population stabilization can be achieved only in the larger context of human development and sustainable economic growth,” and this is what I want to convey in this article.
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