Sustainability of equality: a paradox for democracy
First online: 2 April 2019
Steven
A Burr, Katie S McManus & Yee L Leung
Steven
Burr is an associate professor at Peninsula Medical School, University of
Plymouth, UK. Katie McManus is equality and inclusion officer in the Faculty of
Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Plymouth, UK. Yee Leung is a
consultant surgeon at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton, UK.
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DOI: 10.3197/jps.2019.3.2.79
Licensing: This article is Open Access (CC BY 4.0).
How to Cite:
Burr, S.A., K.S. McManus and Y.L. Leung. 2016. 'Sustainability of equality: a paradox for democracy'. The Journal of Population and Sustainability 3(2): 79–85.
https://doi.org/10.3197/jps.2019.3.2.79
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There are too many people in
the world: we all know it, but there are perverse incentives preventing us from
doing anything about it. Democratic ideals, resource mismanagement, human
adaptability and scientific advances, all play a role in deciding whether
equality of resource consumption within our world population is sustainable in
the present age. There are a couple of axioms that need to be accepted: (1) the
planet has finite inhabitable space and resources, and (2) the human population
cannot continue to expand indefinitely. The global human population is
currently 7.6 billion (Cohen, 2017; World Population Clock, 2018). The maximum
sustainable global human population has been conservatively estimated to be 10
billion (United Nations, 2001 p.31), and is expected to exceed this between 2050 and 2100 (United
Nations, 2017a). Any population expansion clearly has implications for
standards of living and quality of life, but with continued growth even the
minimum survival needs of everyone living on our planet will soon outstrip its
capacity to provide. It follows that we must actively control population or
face disaster (Higgs, 2017). However, this requires political intervention
without allowing the adoption of a eugenics agenda. We argue that democracy, through
the welfare state, can lead to a greater degree of economic and social
equality. This economic and social inequality has a tendency, through rising
incomes, higher levels of education, and the greater emancipation of women, to
reduce fertility rates. However, we also argue that in terms of achieving an
environmentally sustainable population that, due to a number of individual and
political interests, liberal democracy appears unlikely to develop policies to
safeguard population sustainability on a global scale.
The inability to sustain the
environment is a consequence of human dominance and mismanagement of the
resources available. Human overpopulation is the root cause of all
environmental sustainability problems. For example, if there were no humans there
would be no environmental pollution or resource problems. We know with logical
certainty that natural population controls will eventually be catastrophic,
unless there is intervention to ensure otherwise. Think of Easter Island on a
global scale (Brandt and Merico, 2015). Modern advances in medicine, democratic
pressure for improved public health and welfare measures, along with increases
in incomes have to some extent circumvented natural controls of lifespan.
Despite this, increasing competition for finite resources must still ultimately
lead to substantial global death tolls through famine, disease, and war. The
only alternative to letting nature take its course and controlling population
through death, is to prevent further increases in competition by reducing birth
rates. Thus, the provision of a high quality of life for the world’s current population through the mutual sharing of global resources is expounded and
promulgated.
It appears somewhat paradoxical
that in many cultures as the quality of life increases the birth rate
decreases. This is due in part to less reliance on one’s own children for care
and security in old age, coupled with opportunities to pursue personal
ambition. However, since current levels of resource consumption are unsustainable,
providing the quality of life which most in the Global North take for granted
for the whole of the world’s current population is obviously not possible. Even
if resource consumption is reduced to sustainable levels, more equitable
sharing of resources in the absence of adequate family planning and a reduction
of global population, cannot achieve both high standards of human welfare and
environmental sustainability. Clearly, we need to reach a global agreement to
restrict conception; ideally through education about family planning,
encouraged by incentives that are proportionate to the environmental costs. We
will have to do this eventually unless pollution leads to widespread
infertility (Joffe, 2003; Lebine et al., 2017).
Better that we start now to give time to develop, agree and refine a worldwide
approach before it is too late. The political appetite to control the size of
populations has publically declined, despite
increased promotion of other environmental safeguards (e.g. against global
warming, United Nations 2017b; and oceanic plastic, Ocean Cleanup,
2018). There is insufficient appreciation that while environmental problems are
the result of human behavior, population is a
multiplying factor. Thus, at levels of consumption compatible with human
welfare there are too many people for a finite space and the associated natural
resources. One person disposing of waste in a thousand acres is an ecological
opportunity by opening niches to increase biodiversity (Shea and Chesson, 2002;
Chase and Leibold, 2003). Whereas, a thousand people
carefully using resources and responsibly disposing of waste in one acre is a
disaster for the natural environment. To think that we might manage to somehow
pull off some technological trick in the future so that billions of people
could all have an equally good quality of life while preserving pristine
environments and retaining species diversity is a logical absurdity.
Managing population growth will
reduce competition for resources and improve environmental conditions, and thus
facilitate sustainable levels of global health, affluence and well-being. While
there is a clear imperative to reduce the global population load on the earth’s
resources, there are numerous ways this might be achieved without draconian
coercion (Coole, 2018). However, waiting to see if
passive methods will check overpopulation is a high stakes gamble. If these
methods are likely to be insufficient then coercion must be considered. An
escalating scale of rewards is preferable to sanctions and in turn compulsion;
and decreasing fecundity (the number of offspring) is preferable to decreasing
fertility (the ability to have offspring) as a means to control procreation.
Coercion can only be achieved through politicians agreeing new laws (Maxton
& Randers, 2016), which will lead to new welfare and healthcare policies
targeting demographic goals. This would need to have a dramatic impact on the
working practice of some medical specialties, for example general practice,
psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, and especially
the subspecialty of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. It is clear
that any attempt to actively control family size would directly challenge the
core ethical tenet of personal autonomy, and also conflict with some religious
beliefs and cultural norms. Coercion runs against the current trend of
increasing individual rights over collective responsibility, but with
individual rights come responsibilities to society (Mill, 1859). How can
reproductive freedom be permitted if uncontrolled reproduction increases the
global resource debit, increases misery, and ultimately leads to the
destruction of society? To prevent a global social calamity there does need to
be a fundamental shift in our expectations of self-determination, and a move towards
selflessness and altruism for the sake of humanity. Uncontrolled reproduction
disadvantages everyone, but there is insufficient incentive for individual
restraint unless everyone is regulated (Hardin, 1968). Therefore, it is
necessary to apply sanctions to prevent harm to others.
The ideal is to find a
combination of non-coercive measures that would reduce fecundity below the
level required to maintain the current population; thus reducing human numbers
to a level that can be sustained, with a high quality of life, by the planet.
However, the situation is bad enough to require coercion (Sen, 1996); if
we wait for panic then there will have been too much suffering and irreversible
damage to society and the environment. While coercion towards single child
families (Conly, 2016) seems an excessive approach to achieve a sustainable
population, ruling out directly coercive policies as advocated by Coole (2018) does not seem ‘politically sensible’, because
indirect coercive measures are counter to democratic self-interest and thus
unlikely to succeed. The challenge is to bring about a stable lower global
population through an escalating combination of soft and hard coercive measures
(Cripps, 2015), without victimising the vulnerable. It would be counterproductive
if: (1) Having multiple children is disproportionately more expensive for
parents, as those children will then be disadvantaged; and (2) The only
prospect to fulfill your own ambitions is through
your children, as procreation is surely encouraged. Clearly, population control
is predicated on establishing equal life chances for everyone, through the fair
distribution of resources and opportunities. Our global society needs to change
radically, with each living individual valued as equivalent.
Unfortunately, there are
considerable obstacles restricting our ability to control our own population.
For example, China’s one child policy (1979-2015) (Roche, 2017) failed partly
because boys were (and still are) more valued than girls (Fong, 2015). The
implication is that the policy would have worked if there were complete
equality. It is also true that equally valuing those with disability, and older
people, would bring a positive perspective to the different types of support
required by all subgroups of the population. While liberal democracy is
arguably the most powerful method to ensure equality (both political and of
social and economic opportunity), it may also unintentionally be a powerful
force against population control. In the developed world, family size has
become defined as an entirely private and self-regarding matter and politicians
meddle in such things at their peril. Moreover, the issue of how to pay for an
aging population can lead for a call for higher levels of fertility or
increased migration. Indeed, South Korea has introduced incentives to increase
the country’s birth rate (Kwang-tae, 2017). This
short-termism, motivated by the short duration of most political offices, may
unwittingly be increasingly compromising our long-term quality of life and
survival prospects. Ergo, liberal democracy as we currently practice it is not
conducive to environmental sustainability.
In theory, equality is a
prerequisite for an effective population control policy, and democracy promotes
equality, but while personal autonomy regarding choice of family size remains
an unquestioned basic right, liberal democracy is antithetical to population
control. Why is there inaction? Populations feel powerless as individuals and
have no forum to unite. Decision makers are motivated by typical voting cycles
of only a few years. Those people who possess the most do not want to see their
living standards decrease. Lifestyle practices are often geared towards
immediacy rather than being forward looking. Environmental damage due to
inaction is more likely to adversely impact future generations rather than the
current generation. Clearly most politicians and wealthy individuals have
conflicted interests and are probably complacent about the sustainability of
the planet’s human population or too cowardly to admit the enormity of the
problem. With our future existence at stake, the international community should
be earnestly discussing these obstacles and debating potential solutions. For
example, should we be drafting a model theoretical policy that challenges the
longstanding international human right (United Nations, 1966) to determine
one’s own family? No doubt, this would be extremely difficult and unpopular,
but less difficult and unpopular than what will happen if we do nothing. If we
do not find a way to agree to control the human population peacefully then we
risk having no future for humanity at all.
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