BMJ No 7120 Volume 315
Education and debate Saturday 29 November 1997
To the point of farce: a Martian view of the Hardinian taboo - the silence that surrounds population control
Maurice King, Charles ElliottWe humans have problems controlling our population. We apply the "Hardinian taboo" - a refusal to consider or discuss population control - so as to prevent ourselves having to deal with the problem adequately. Our worst problem is demographic entrapment. If the Hardinian taboo on entrapment is not removed, there will be increasing slaughter and starvation throughout much of Africa and elsewhere (malignant uproar), as recently shown in Rwanda.(1) If it is removed, there will be intense discussion (benign uproar), followed - we argue - by behaviour change in the countries of the North (sustainable lifestyles) and of the South (reduced fertility). Which is it to be? Do we open the dialogue or don't we? The "foundations" of this taboo include the problems of one child families. The US State Department has, we believe, been orchestrating the global population debate to the point that it has corrupted critical aspects of academic demography, to the greatest possible disadvantage of trapped populations, presumably lest its own consumption of resources be criticised. We follow Hardin(2) in thinking that, with modern communications, the solution to "the population problem" could come quite quickly. The difficulty is removing the taboo sufficiently to get enough "benign uproar."
| Summary points |
| The Hardinian taboo is a refusal to contemplate overpopulation as a problem |
| The choice is between the vigorous argument that will follow the lifting of the Hardinian taboo and the slaughter and starvation of letting it remain |
| The world wide web could be the key factor in lifting it |
| Lifting the taboo has important implications for the market economy |
| Lifting it would be a powerful agent for good |
The problem seen from Mars
| Lady M: Back home in Mars we have long been
interested in you humans. We can measure Earth's rising temperature
and see your disappearing ice caps and your vanishing forests. We watch
your television and subscribe to the BMJ. One thing
especially mystifies us. Why is it that, when your population is
increasing at 10,000 people an hour - and is set to double - you do so
little about it, especially when it contributes so largely to your
poverty, your hunger, your street children, and your slaughter? You
seem to have extraordinary hangups in controlling your
population.
Self: We do indeed. There is an ecologist in California called Garrett Hardin(2) who has been describing these hangups for many years. He calls them taboos. The other animals have their populations controlled for them by such mechanisms as predators and the competition between species. We try to avoid thinking about our population growth, or the methods we need to control it. For example, there was great hype over world population at the first Earth Day in 1970. Twenty years later, when the world had nearly 50% more people, the second Earth Day was almost completely ignored.(2) Interest in population is presently at a low ebb; funding is even lower(3); and family planning is being subsumed under reproductive health. (8) |  |
Let me give you a recent trivial example. I had described the Hardinian taboo to one of the participants at a conference of paediatricians in Kampala. She saw it in operation the following day. She described how her colleagues had broken up into small groups to discuss the causes of malnutrition in their parts of Africa. After some hesitation, they all had reluctantly put "overpopulation" at the bottom of their lists. When the reports of the small groups were eventually summarised, overpopulation had somehow disappeared. This happens not only in our little conferences but also in our big ones. Our population conference in Cairo in 1994 failed to address adequately the issue of rapid population growth, which many poor countries consider their first priority(4) - and which should have been its major task. Our food conference in Rome in 1996 failed even to notice that in percentage terms the rate of growth of the grain yield of our fields is now less than that of our population.(5) The grain available to the average human is now steadily falling.
|
How the "experts" avoid discussing entrapment The "experts" avoid considering these five variables together: a specific area; its carrying capacity; its population (especially its projected future population); migration out of it; and its economy. If they consider these variables separately, they can assume that whatever they have not considered will solve the problem. For example, they can assume that economic development will provide sufficient exports, and therefore sufficient imports, especially food, even though there is no reasonable hope of this happening - in time. |
The Hardinian taboo
Self: Curiously, the taboos that we have in dealing with population have only recently been given an overall name. I sent a paper(6) on demographic entrapment to Paul Demeny, the editor of our most respected demographic journal, the Population and Development Review. He replied that "the Hardinian taboo is already well known in the literature." It turns out that the term "Hardinian taboo" isn't listed in the standard demographic database popline - so it can't be traced in the literature. The taboo has been so powerful and so well hidden that we haven't needed to name it. By naming it, Demeny took the first step towards finally abolishing it. By rejecting our paper, he was applying the taboo to his own discipline in his own journal. This is remarkable, since the Population and Development Review is an organ of the Population Council, which should be clarifying population issues, not obfuscating them.
Lady M: That's odd. Demography is the key science for
your UN population agency, UNFPA. It seems to me that demography is now
gravely flawed as one of the sciences on which your agencies base their
population programmes; one might say that certain parts of it are now
grossly c Self: Exactly! The head of one "centre for population
studies" told me that he could not investigate demographic entrapment
because all he had was demographers. The head of one "institute of
development studies" told me that he could not investigate it because
he had no demographers.
Lady M: In that case, both disciplines have reached the
point of farce.
A community is demographically trapped if its population
exceeds three criteria: the carrying capacity of its ecosystem; its
opportunities for migration; and the ability of its economy to produce
sufficient goods or services that can be exchanged for food and other
necessities from elsewhere in the world. A community is also trapped
if, because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this
unhappy state before long. A trapped community faces starvation or
slaughter, or both (malignant uproar).
Lady M: If this is the demographic trap, how does
a community get out of it?
Self: Theoretically, it would be possible for a population
to escape the demographic trap in one of four ways: increasing the
carrying capacity of its ecosystem sufficiently - making its fields grow
more; providing enough opportunity for migration; developing an economy
which would produce sufficient exports which could then be exchanged
for the necessary imports; or reducing the birth rate, if necessary to
one child only. In practice, although everything possible should be
done to make the most of the first three of these options, it seems
that the reduction of fertility has to be the major
one.
Lady M: Surely, if every female were to have only two
children from now on, one to replace herself and one to replace her
husband, this would immediately stop the population growing?
Self: Yes - but only if there are the same number of people
in each age group. If a population is young, with many people in the
younger age groups, even instant two child families would allow the
population to continue growing for several generations, although at a
progressively slower rate. This is demographic momentum - the motion you
give a ball when you kick it. African communities are very young
indeed, with about half the population under 15. African mothers still
have about six children. The unhappy fact is that, on average, as much
population growth occurs after the number of children per couple has
fallen to 2 (strictly 2.2) as took place before it.(7) There
is thus an enormous amount of population growth to come. If communities
really want to disentrap themselves, mothers need have to have one
child only, for a generation or more, until the population
stabilises.
Lady M: You humans aren't half screwed up by this
Hardinian taboo thing. Just why should the Hardinian taboo be so
difficult for you p Self: On earth, as I expect on Mars, everything is linked to
everything else. The Hardinian taboo seems to be linked to at least a
dozen other factors, which we have called its foundations.
Lady M: Let me be sure I've got it straight. Do you mean
that these "foundations" have got to change, or at least be under
great stress, if the taboo is lifted?
Self: Yes. Our reluctance to think through the necessary
changes in the foundations and to introduce those changes, is what
holds the Hardinian taboo in place. Let me discuss one of them.
Self: In the 1970s China's population was rising so
fast that the country became worried about its "grain problem|mK - its
population looked like exceeding the carrying capacity of the country.
It had realised that it was demographically trapped, although it did
not use this term. To slow its population growth it started its one
child family programme. It provided various incentives and
disincentives to encourage mothers to have one child only. The choice
facing China was either one child families - or starvation and
slaughter. China could do this only because Chinese culture is largely
independent of the rest of the world, so that the Hardinian taboo does
not operate there. Unfortunately, the world has many more trapped
communities, which do not have the cultural independence from the
Hardinian taboo - or the courage - that China has. Few people in these
countries know they are trapped, and the demographers dare not tell
them so.
Lady M: It seems to me that you humans now have a
choice. Either you can lift the Hardinian taboo and face up to the
heated argument that will certainly follow as you adapt to one child
families and changed Northern lifestyles - or you can continue to close
your eyes to reality, hold the Hardinian taboo tightly in place, and
allow a continent (Africa), and more, to continue its drift into
starvation and slaughter, while a minority of you enjoy unbelievable
luxury. Inequity is now such that 500 of you now own as much wealth as
half of humanity. Are you going to make this choice or aren't you?
Orthodoxy really does seem to be out on a limb. Have we reached the
very bottom of entrapment?
Self: Not quite. In the end it seems that the distinction
between benign and malignant uproar is quite simply whether one
cares - about the world and its people, and about Africa and India in
particular, and about the other creatures in this marvellous Creation;
whether one loves them, or whether one doesn't.
Lady M: So in the end it is either love - or tragedy - and
farce. Tell me, are you hopeful?
Self: Yes, abundantly, provided there is enough
benign uproar, and provided we get down to it quickly! See
you at our website!
"Lady M" continues her discussion at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic_entrapment
We welcome comments at mhking@iprolink.ch, which will keep
these discussions updated.
Funding: None.
(Accepted 9 September 1997) University of
Leeds,
Trinity Hall,
Correspondence to: Dr M King,
email: mhking@iprolink.ch
References
1 King M H, Elliott C M. Unicef's call to
greatness - an open letter to Carol Bellamy. Nat Med J
India 1996;9:130.
2 Hardin G. Living within limits. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
3 Donor fatigue hits family planning in the developing world.
Lancet 1997;349:1530.
4 McIntosh C A, Finkle J C. The Cairo Conference on Population and
Development: a new paradigm? Popul Dev Rev
1995:21;223-60.
5 King M H, Elliott C M. Averting a world food shortage: tighten
your belts for CAIRO II. BMJ 1995;313:995-6.
6 King M H, Elliott C M. Away with the Hardinian taboo.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic_entrapment
7 Cassen R, Bates L M. Population policy: a new
consensus. Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1994.
(ODD policy essay No 12.)
"Disentrapment"
What is demographic entrapment? Demographic momentum
Foundations of the Hardinian taboo
Foundations of the Hardinian taboo
The fear of uproar - both benign and malignant The economic foundations of the global society - its materialist,
consumerist, market economy, driven as this is by diabolical processes
of advertising and marketing to promote ever more luxurious and
unsustainable lifestyles The means of employment that the Northern lifestyle provides, in that
to alter it (unless other radical and difficult changes are also
implemented at the same time) is likely to increase unemployment Northern food habits, which are integral to this economy and lifestyle Current notions of human rights, particularly as they relate to human
reproduction The Holy See's attitude to abortion and most methods of family
planning The cultural attitudes of the South that favour high fertility The "starting line taboo" (see website) The high status of "the child" in Western liberalism The metaphysical position of late capitalist man ("What are we here
for anyway?")
A dread of "the future" in that abolishing the taboo acknowledges
that "the population future" now approaching us at nearly a billion
a decade, is already upon us Self interest, peer group disapproval, inertia, hopelessness, and
"loss of face" The political interests of the US State Department (see website) China's one child families
Conflict of interest: None.
Leeds LS2 9JT
Maurice King, honorary
research fellow
University of Cambridge,
Cambridge CB2 1TJ
Charles Elliott, dean
and chaplain
1 bis Rue du
Tir,
Geneva 1204,
Switzerland
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