Introduction
While it is easy to measure population growth, climate change
has proved to be a more difficult concept. Globally, Asia and Africa are the
regions that have been experiencing relatively fast population growth and they
are the regions with the highest population of people living in poverty. The
global population stands at 7.2 billion people by 2015, with annual growth rate
of 1.18 between 2010 and 2015. The most
developed countries have 1251 million people with growth rate of 0.9 over the
same period. However, poorer regions hold most of the world’s population, with
less developed and least developed regions having 6098 million and 954 million
people respectively. The annual growth rate of population between 2010 and 2015
is 1.36 and 2.38 in less developed and least developed regions respectively. While
United States of America has annual population growth rate of 0.8 between 2010
and 2015, Kenya has 0.5 over the same period. (UNFPA, 2015)
Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet's
weather patterns or average temperatures. The average temperature of the planet's surface - has risen by
0.89 °C from 1901 to 2012. (United Kingdom’s Met Office, 2015). Climate change
is caused by emission of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, as a result of burning
or use of fossil fuels. Developed countries are responsible for most of the
carbon dioxide emitted while developing countries; particularly in Africa
produce the least amount of carbon dioxide. The last United Nations Framework
on Climate Change (UNFCC) meeting in Paris, France in December 2015 agreed on
the need to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius but developed
countries have been a hindrance to any legally binding agreement. (UNFCC,
2015). Climate change causes many disasters that cause deaths and diverse
effects to humans including floods, droughts, tsunami, earth quakes others.
‘The tautology
that greenhouse gas emissions depend on population and emission per person is
too simple a way of thinking about greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas
emissions depend on income, technology, demographic factors like household
size, city size, population density in built up areas, institutional and
economic factors like availability of public transport at reasonable cost and
convenience, and a host of behavioral factors like people’s propensity to walk,
bike, car pool or drive solo to work. ‘ (Cohen, June 2010).
Population and Disasters
‘In the first
eight months of 2015, the world has seen more than 120 climate related
disasters. Fourteen of the 15 hottest
years since record keeping began over 130
years ago have been since 2000’. (World
Bank Climate Change Overview, October 2015)
Analyzing one
year alone cannot give a correct impression whether the likelihood of
environmental disaster is linked to high population growth. However, data from several years shows a link
between the two with overall rise in world population resulting in more
disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts and floods.
According to the
2015 state of the world population report, the likelihood of being displaced by
a disaster today is 60 per cent higher than it was four decades ago. Over the
last 20 years, there have been an average of 340 disasters per year, affecting
200 million people annually, taking an average of 67,500 lives a year. In
absolute numbers, the United States and China recorded the most natural
disasters between 1994 and 2014, due mainly to their size, varied landmasses
and high population densities. Among the continents, Asia bore the brunt of
disasters, with 3.3 billion people affected in China and India alone. (UNFPA, 2015). This is in line with
proponents of the New Malthusian view on population growth and resources since
the increase of global population over last 20 years has resulted in more
damage to the environment.
However, proponents
of social view argue that population growth is merely a symptom and in fact
increase in income and access to social services will make people more
resilient to changes in the environment. According to the same report, the
average number of people affected due to disasters over the last 20 years has
actually fallen from one in 23 between 1994 and 2003, to about one in 39
between 2004 and 2014. (UNFPA, 2015).
The poverty level reduced from 1958 million people living below $1.90 a
day in 1990 to 902 million people in 2012 (World bank data). As the world poverty levels went down, the
number of people affected due to disasters reduced , which could be due to
better infrastructure and access to better social amenities.
Income and climate change
Even though
population growth and climate change are related, they affect people
differently according to their income levels. The poor, who are mostly in the global south,
suffer more when disasters occur.
An editorial
in Guardian in 2008 argued that, ‘The UK
has around 60 million people; but the average British citizen creates nearly 10
times more carbon dioxide emissions than the average Indian, and 166 times more
than the typical Ethiopian. So the best way to deal with climate change is not
for Ethiopia to curb its (runaway) population growth, but for the British and
others in the west to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.’
The Centre
for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters’ data also shows how income levels
impact disaster death tolls. On average, more than three times as many people
died per disaster in low-income countries (332 deaths) than in high-income ones
(105 deaths). The drought situation in California
in United States since 2015 has caused any potential deaths of children but the
drought situation in Somalia has caused is feared to cause deaths of 50,000 children.
(BBC News, 2016).
Most of the
rich countries have experienced slow or even negative population growth over
the last decade but remain the highest polluters of the environment. ‘Capitalism is the underlying cause of
the extraordinarily high rate of resource use, mismanagement of both renewable
and nonrenewable resources, and pollution of the earth. Any proposed
“solution”—from birth control in poor countries to technological fixes to
buying green to so-called “green capitalism” and so on—that ignores this
reality cannot make significant headway in dealing with these critical problems
facing the earth and its people’. (Magdoff, 2013).
The rich
countries produce more waste and green house gases such as carbon dioxide due
to high consumption levels. Most of the world’s energy supply is from fossil fuels,
which are harmful to the environment. A 2012 International Energy Agency report
indicates high income countries consume half of the global energy but only have
15% of the world’s population but low income countries except China consume
13.4% of global energy but have 40% of the world’s population.
I argue that
low-income countries can avoid the dirty energies and leap frog into cleaner
energies even in spite of the rising energy needs as a result of increasing
populations; just like the telecommunication sector.
However,
other experts, such as Professor Hans
Rosling in his talk “Don't Panic - The
Truth About Population”, think low income
countries should be left to explore their energy resources with the hope of
spurring faster economic growth, but the focus should be on high income
countries to invest in cleaner energies and also contribute financial
resources, to the poor countries to enable them develop adaptive capacity. This is in line with the perspective fronted
by the Global Commons Institute – contraction and convergence framework.
Rich
countries need to do more to cut their emissions. For instance, Germany, which
is experiencing negative population growth, has been in the forefront of putting
its lignite-fired coal power plants
offline. (Ronsberg, 2015)
Conclusion.
It is clear
that most of the countries with low population growth have been the biggest
contributors to climate change that has contributed to environment related
disasters. However, these countries still hold the power in achieving any
meaningful international agreements but have been reluctant. The impact of
ecological damage has been felt more in poor countries that have high
population growth rates. I believe that poor countries should be united in in
demanding more financial resources from the high polluting rich countries, and
invest the resources in new clean energies for their own future.
References
Guardian (2008) ‘An old misconception’, 25 July
[Online]. Available at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/25/population.climatechange
(Accessed 15 May 2013
