In the latest publication from the Worldwatch Institute, entitled "Who Will Feed China? Wake-up Call for a Small Planet" (Norton, 1995), Lester R. Brown warns that China's 1.2 billion people, increasing at a rate of 5.5 million per year, may soon have to import grain.
What is so dire about that prospect? Isn't it cause for the grain-growers of the world to rejoice? Yes, but what if there is not enough grain in the world to meet China's needs? Won't that cause terrible problems for everyone?
"In an integrated world economy," Brown writes, "China's rising food prices will become the world's rising food prices. China's land scarcity will become everyone's land scarcity. And water scarcity in China will affect the entire world. China's dependence on massive imports... will be a wake-up call that we are colliding with the Earth's capacity to feed us."
Trying to put the brakes on population growth in their country, Chinese leaders opted in 1979 for a policy of one child per couple. Unforeseen resistance, based on a strong preference for male children, especially in rural areas, "has led to widespread female infanticide," Brown observes.
In the Westernized world, a formula put forth in 1974 by two scientists, Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, has framed the population debate for the past two decades.
"The impact of humans on the environment (I) is equal to the product of population (P), consumption of goods (A), and the pollution generated by manufacture and disposal of those goods (T). Thus, environmental impact = number of people X goods-per-person X pollution-per-good; or I=PAT, where 'I' is units of pollution." ("Taking Population out of the Equation," by H. Patricia Hynes, 1993.)
In her critique of this formula, Hynes tells us that the scientists' assumptions were based on metaphors of population bomb, population control, and population explosion , along with images of teeming Third World mega-cities. Further, she remarks, the "P" of "I=PAT" increasingly refers to the one-fifth of humanity in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia who are absolutely poor and have the highest fertility rates. The "A" and "T" have meanwhile come to be associated with the consumption and technology of the wealthiest and most industrialized fifth of the world's population. It is now common to read that the bottom billion and the top billion of the world-one ranked by fertility rates, the other by lifestyle-pose an equal threat to the planet.
The problem with the I=PAT equation, Hynes points out, is that it obscures differences of power, gender, race, and class between the poorest fifth of the world, who are mainly women and children of color, and the wealthiest fifth, the majority of whom are white men.
An alternative feminist and humanist approach would reformulate I=PAT so that the omitted elements of social and environmental justice are brought into the heart of the analysis. For example, Hynes continues, the world's military units supposedly account for up to 10 percent of global air pollution. This is contrasted with the much lesser impact of the poorest billion people who are now the targets of international population-control policy.
The original I=PAT equation regards humans as ecological parasites, predators and polluters, having only a net negative impact on the environment. Hynes counters this conception with models of environmental stewardship, such as the Chipko forest-saving movement in India, the Green Belt movement in Africa, and the centuries-old stable existence of indigenous peoples in rainforests.
Hynes reports that feminist environmentalists, geographers, and development experts have documented that women comprise the majority of resource managers in developing countries. The difference between the two equations is the difference between what Winona LaDuke (co-chair of the Indigenous Women's Network) calls the "industrial mind" and the "indigenous mind."
According to Hynes, the original I=PAT uses terms like "fertility rates" to omit the human element in pregnancy and implies that an abstract factor-fertility-is responsible for environmental degradation, thus helping ignore who is responsible for what. "Population bomb," "population control" and "population explosion" likewise suppress any human element and create the impression that the situation and its consequences occur in a vacuum with no social, cultural or political context.
"Beneath the abstract population," writes Hynes, "is the substrate of sexual politics-the crosscutting domain within culture, social relations, history, economy, science and sexuality in which women become pregnant and targets of fertility-control campaigns."
Gloria Steinem, in her article "Words and Change," points out that feminism transformed the terms of discussion by popularizing the idea of reproductive freedom. This umbrella term, Steinem notes in the Sept./Oct. 1995 edition of Ms. magazine, "includes safe contraception and abortion as well as freedom from coerced sterilization (of women or of men) and decent health care during pregnancy and birth." In other words, Steinem continues, "reproductive freedom stated the right of the individual to decide to have or not to have a child."
"Reproductive freedom," she adds, "is simply a way of stating what feminism has been advancing for thousands of years. Witches were the freedom fighters for women because they taught contraception and abortion. The modern contribution is to elevate reproductive freedom to a universal human right, at least as basic as freedom of speech."
Hynes agrees with Steinem's approach, saying that an analysis of fertility makes sense only within a women's human rights framework. The "population problem" should be seen as a consequence of women having less than full human rights. "And this second-sex plight of women is a consequence of patriarchy," Hynes tells us.
Hynes poses some thought-provoking queries :
Although many U.N. population conferences have been held over the years, the latest in 1994, progress will continue to be unacceptably slow as long as implementation is left to nation-state governments and the "international community." After all, U.N. monitors are simply that-they have no enforcement power.
On the other hand, under a world government, an implementing/ monitoring team would work with the support of a World Court of Law. Slackers would be warned and violators would be charged and tried.
Population growth is only one of many major problems besetting our global community. Constructive long-term solutions are extremely unlikely without the existence of an effective world government.
Marcia L. Mason is a feminist, Quaker, peace activist, world citizen, and World Syntegrity Project alumna who lives in Burlington, Vermont.