Intricate Web

photo by Judy Anderson

Population, Consumption & Environmental Degradation Why Women's Rights Worldwide are the Key to Global Sustainability

FACT: Population is just one part of the sustainability challenge we face.

FACT: Developed countries are profligate in their consumption of natural resources.

• Developed countries--home to 20% of the world's population- -cause 70% of the world's pollution.
• 'If everyone lived like Americans, Earth could only sustain 1.4 billions people.' - Worldwatch Institute's 2010 State of the World Report

This past March 8 marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. A call went out for one million women to gather in Tahrir Square in Cairo, headquarters of the uprising that ended the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The rebellion of youth in Tunisia was the spark that caused years of pentup anger and frustration to burst into flames in Egypt. Why did Egyptians finally decide they were 'mad as hell and not going to take it anymore'? What does the Egyptian uprising have to do with issues of gender, population and the environment? Let us examine two strands of the delicate tapestry comprising our global environment: population and gender equality.

Egypt's population grew from 42 million in 1980 to 80 million in 2011. In the last two decades, the Egyptian ruling elite promulgated the neoliberal growth model encouraged by the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These policies include welcoming more foreign investment, privatizing and selling off government assets and cutting back government support for housing, social services and education relative to population growth. Much foreign investment went into sectors that generate few jobs. The trajectory of development diverted resources from agriculture. Egypt now depends on the world market to supply half its food needs. 40 percent of Egypt's population has been living near or below the poverty level. 30 percent of Egypt's university graduates were unemployed.

There has been chaotic urbanization, with an unsustainable concentration of population. Greater Cairo has become a city of some 18 million people, half of them living in shantytowns and lacking basic social services. Infrastructure is lacking and there is a sewage crisis. Raymond Lotta observes: 'Diseases that had basically been wiped out, like…tuberculosis, have become epidemic again.' Egypt's ecosystems are severely stressed. The water level of the Nile River is declining. The cities are thick with air pollution. Soil fertility has declined and agricultural land has been lost to urbanization.

The Sierra Clubs Population and Environment Program points out that our planet is now home to almost seven billion people. The rate we consume and degrade natural resources jeopardizes the health of the planet and threatens the availability of clean water and air for generations to come. Currently, 1.1 billion people use unclean water, while more than 90-95 percent of all sewage and 70 percent of all industrial wastes are dumped untreated into surface waters. We have decreased the planet's forest cover by almost one-half and increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by over 30 percent. 'These harsh environmental realities are compounded by the demographic predictions that in the next 50 years the number of people on the planet will expand to over nine billion people.'

One must conclude that any environmental successes may be short-lived if they do not include efforts to address population growth. Slower population growth worldwide could reduce carbon emissions 1.4-2.5 billion tons per year by 2050. One half of this reduction would come from current high fertility regions through expanded access to family planning services. (See Access to Education.)

Population pressures gobble resources. For example, population pressures have led to water shortages in some 80 countries. The situation is particularly acute in Africa, where 25 countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, will face water stress by 2025. Population pressures also threaten the supply of water in the United States, where some of the areas with the fastest population growth between 1990 and 2000 are in the driest parts of the country-Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Scarce resources lead to conflicts.

As consumption has risen, more fossil fuels, minerals and metals have been mined from the earth; more trees have been cut down and more land has been plowed to grow food-often to feed livestock as people at higher income levels eat more meat. Between 1950 and 2005, metals production grew sixfold, oil consumption eightfold and natural gas consumption 14-fold. Today, the average European uses 43 kilograms of resources daily and the average American uses 88 kilograms. The world extracts the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings from the earth every day! (O'Neill, et al, in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science for October 2010).