DRAFT
Demographic entrapment. Rescuing Middle Africa from two corrupt disciplines
– and ‘Saving the world!’
Dan Kaseje and Richard Muga, Vice Chancellors of GLUK the Great Lakes University of Kenya
Jackline Adhiembo, Wikister Aduambo, Perez Akelo, Absai Amolokola, Charles Angirah, Rose Ayugi, Jack Bryant, Florence Diemu, Laleila Geteri, Hannah Hemula, Ali Husseine, Osman Hussein, Paul Isayi, Lydia Kibe, Kemri Kilifi, Sam Kibias, Koki Kiemo, Maurice King, Roma Kioumu, Ben Kunda, Kassim Lopas, Fred Njoroge, George Nolichiri, Nyandert Kmet, Alex Magaga, Daniel Mboya, Fred Frankel, Dominic Mpifikuyu, Michael Moeller, Daniel Mokoya, Isaac Moth, Fenike Muhonja, Sam Mulongo, Carol Musita, Mueni Mutunga-Oonim, Lucy Mwangi, Alice Mwayi, Hanu Nafuelere, Agnes Nafula, Mildred Nanjala, Fred Nya- hera, Irene Obago, Alfred Odoro, George Odhiambo, Jacob Odhiambo, George Oele, Tom Uguluba, Emily Ogutu, Enos Okolo, Caleb Okelo, Nicky Okeyo, Denis Oiwino, Kana Oluguti, Marcelline Olwal, Belinda Opiyo-Onolo, Tomas Orayi, Teresa Ormuroyi, Barrak Osewa, Fred Owala, Kanyce Oyioyi, Omar Salim, FredSemkeh, Ibrahim Shiworko, Benjamin Tsofa, Joseph Wejonga, Elizabeth Yi Wang, Oceana Zhou, Charlotte Homan.
PATH A or Path B ??? —THE CRITICAL DIAGRAM !! Before 'modernization' mothers in Kenya typically had about 4 children half of whom died, leaving 2 to replace their 2 parents, so that the population stayed about the same. After modernization it rose to 8 – shown here as 6, which was more typical for Africa — so that the population rose rapidly. Fertility – the number of children per mother —has got to fall rapidly in the 'crash demographic transition' shown as Path A. A demographic transition is a fall from high fertility to low fertility. The alternative is for the population to go on rising until there are more people than the land can support — the starvation and violence of Path B. The purpose of this paper is to promote the crash demographic transitions, and to remove the Hardinian taboo see which prevents anybody discussing how necessary they are.
Who we are
DK is a doctor and an Anglican priest. RM is former Director of Medical Services in Kenya. ‘We’ are the Great Lakes University of Kenya and our supporters, many of us are community health workers. MK, the narrator (commonly, ‘I’ and ‘My’), is a doctor and 'knowledge engineer' with long service in Africa. My colleagues in Africa provide that rare combination of integrity, courage and compassion, while I do the rest. The Lancet asks "Where is the public health leadership…? [2] We reply, "Here!”
“ The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intelectual welfare of the settled disciplines.” Benoit Mandelbrodt [1]
Abstract
The two disciplines, which we declare corrupt, are demography and development economics, because they will not recognize local demographic entrapment and its extreme threat to the wefare of Middle Africa. In most of the rest of the world fertility has fallen so greatly, that there is now little cause for anxiety. [3] We are concerned with Middle Africa, where it has not fallen enough, or has not fallen at all, so that it remains at 5.9 children per mother.[4] Our population multiplied seven times during the 20th century; it has quadrupled since 1950, [5] and it is expected to more than double again by 2050.[4]. We present evidence to suggest that much of our region is demographically trapped. By this we mean that an agricultural community has already exceeded, or is about to exceed, the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, and its ability to migrate, and the ability of its economy to produce goods and services, which it can exchange for food and other essentials. In many communities in Middle Africa pressure on carrying capacity is already acute. [6]
We are daunted by the scale of the preventable popu- lation-driven poverty, starvation, and violence that is in store for us in Middle Africa. The need for the crash demographic transitions is our first acute emergency.
We find that demographic entrapment is taboo to demography, to development economics, to public health, to family planning, and consequently to the UN agencies and NGOs - the Hardinian taboo. Hitherto it has been taboo to The Lancet, since it has previously rejected this paper three times. The Editor has however promised to accept it this time provided that it is'scientific'. We have therefore communicated our sources to him so that he can redact them.
This particularly evil taboo lies at the interface between science and religion, so we expose the many factors holding it in place, and term them its ‘Demons’. Since epidemiology has tamed what were once the ‘demons’ of other plagues, it must now tame the ‘Demons’ of this one also, so that demographic entrapment and the starvation and violence that it causes can become another preventable and treatable ‘tropical disease’.
The Hardinian taboo prevents two questions ever being asked. They are: (i) Can be the population-driven starvation and violence that entrapment causes be prevented by public health measures? We argue that it can. (ii) Is the ‘crunch message’ to our communities – that we must either reduce our fertility, or starve, acceptable? We describe an experiment at GLUK which shows that it is, and that the prospects for community based ‘crash demographic transitions’ are encouraging.
If we in the South have to reduce our fertility to avoid starvation and violence, you in the North must reduce your CO2 production and therefore your resource consumption (Demon 3), so that global heating will not be the end of us all – the eschaton. We find that this is also taboo, and postulate that, once dialogue starts, each of these two linked taboo will help lift the other, since they are both part of the same totality — 'two taboos for the price of one'.
A previous article took a conservative approach to global heating,[9] we find that the facts compel a radical one. We thus confront northern lifestyles, and the need to control the advertising that makes them ever less sustainable
By the definition we give of local demographic entrapment, humanity as a whole is also trapped, since we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth, we have nowhere to go and we cannot increase our only imports — photons from the sun. So we are led to consider global demographic entrapment, the destruction of the global ecosystem, and the need for a one–child world. [10] Since the dialogue on population has been silent for twenty years, [8] we do our best to reopen it with the greatest vigour. It has been said that an asteroid hitting the Earth might be better than continuing our unbridled overpopulation. []
Our final concern with the human predicament is the need to shift the very foundations of public health, so that it becomes less preoccupied with child survival and more with the survival of the community — including the survival of the global community.Africa’s ecological predicament
Although Africa’s rapidly rising population is commonly considered to be due to a fall in mortality, it’s rise in fertility is more important. [11-13] Thus, in the days of ‘our ancestors’, before ‘modernization’ and the colonial period, mothers commonly had about four children, half of whom died, so that our populations remained about the same or only grew slowly. Various social mechanisms ensured this, a common one being for a mother to return to her parent’s house as soon as her baby was born, and not to rejoin her husband, until their child could run away and hide, should the tribe be attacked. Similar rises in fertility with the com- ing of ‘modernization’ have been reported elsewhere.[14]
Figure 1 IN AFRICA FERTILITY ROSE AT THE START OF THE SECOND STAGE of the demographic transition, so it has now to fall extra fast in a crash demographic transition to avoid starvation and violence. In most countries in Middle Africa fertility has started to fall so that they are now at point ‘X’, but fertility is not falling fast enough. For convenience in drawing the figure fertility is shown rising at the end of the first stage, rather than at the start of the second stage.
When ‘modernization’ came these fertility reducing traditions fell away, so that mothers came to have about six children, 90% of whom now survive. In Kenya in 1980 they had eight. [15] Although fertility has now started to fall in most of our communities, it is not falling nearly fast enough.
What has happened is that Africa has stuck in the middle stage of the demographic transition. This is a change from high fertility and high mortality, and a steady population, to a stage of low fertility and low mortality and again a steady population, through a middle stage in which fertility falls before mortality, so that the population rises. All communities in Europe have completed this transition and now have comparatively steady populations. In Africa, not only did fertility rise with the coming of modernization, but it is now not falling fast enough for the transition to have been completed in any African country, so that we find ourselves with rapidly growing populations.
Carrying capacity
Global carrying capacity has been much discussed. It is not taboo because estimates vary so widely [16] and it is not seen to end in local starvation — 'food insecurity’ is the weasel word — and violence. There is however great reluctance to discuss local human carrying capacity which remains taboo, since, in the absence of food aid, it does end in starvation and violence of local demographic entrapment. The common weasel word 'low agricultural productivity' is much less direct and him does not have this implication It is unfortunate that, while Africa’s population has been increasing so rapidly, the concept of ‘local carrying capacity’ should have been taboo to demography, to development economics and to public health, and consequently also to the UN agencies and NGOs, in that they almost never discuss it. (Demon 1) The assumption has been that, although carrying capacity might apply to the animals, especially farm animals, it does not apply to us. [17] This convenient ‘slip of the mind’, avoids the need to think about what happens when carrying capacity is exceeded (entrapment). Nevertheless, in the villages of Africa, carrying capacity is crucial. For example, in Malawi maize yields under the current system of agriculture, are typically one ton to the hectare. [18] Since this will feed four people for a year, Malawi’s carrying capacity is four people to hectare. Meanwhile the agronomists are under no illusions about carrying capacity. Thus William Allen working in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) writes that “Any given area of land will maintain in perpetuity a limited number of people...” and that “...carrying capacity is meaningless unless the system which forms the basis of the calculation is clearly defined”. [19]
Figure 2 MALAWI, THE ENTRAPMENT ‘BASKET CASE’
When population densities in Africa, are compared with other continents, they are commonly considered to be low, so that population increase should present no problem. However, as was pointed out to me by a former holder of the African agriculture desk at the World Bank,[20] the soils of Africa, besides being thin, are also hot, so that their organic matter, which is so important for maintaining the soil's fertility, and for retaining its moisture, is constantly being oxidized away by the organisms of the soil. The traditional way of overcoming this was to leave it fallow for long periods, of the order of 20 years, so that trees could grow again, and their roots could return the soil’s lost organic matter and thus restore its fertility. Unfortunately, population densities have now become so high, and ‘gardens’ so small, that there is usually no opportunity for adequate fallow. The result has been that soil fertility is falling everywhere in Middle Africa. [20] [21]The problem is less how to increase it, than how to stop it falling further.
FIGURE 'carrying capacity' — falling soil fertility and falling yields of bananas in Uganda, with an increasing area under cultivation. Makerere Department of Agriculture circa 2004Demographic entrapment
In 1989, I came across a paper, now lost, describing how some communities in West Africa were exceeding the carrying capacities of their ecosystems. This struck me as both important and sinister. Not knowing the name for this phenomenon, I had to invent my own. The following year I discussed it with an eminent US expert in international health, [20] who told me that it was called ‘demographic entrapment’. A distinguished development economist confirmed this term. [20] Although its origin is obscure, it appears to have been invented by the development economists in the 1960s. It soon became clear that it is tightly taboo. More recent examples of this taboo are that, although Paul Collier’s widely acclaimed book, The Bottom Billion, [22] lists four other traps, he does not discuss demographic entrapment. John Cleland and others in their extensive account of Africa’s population in this journal, Family planning the unfinished agenda,[23] fail to discuss either demographic entrapment or carrying capacity. Nancy Birdsall’s book, Population Matters, [24] also avoids both these terms, so does Amartya Sen. [25] This is only to be expected because, once carrying capacity is mentioned, it is necessary to consider what happens when it is exceeded, and thus be confronted with entrapment. ‘Carrying capacity’, is therefore almost as taboo as is demographic entrapment. Although Caldwell has discussed the difficulties that demographers have in outlining the boundaries of their discipline, [26]there would seem little reason for demographic entrapment to remain outside it – other than the Hardinian taboo!
In the late 1990s in turning down a paper on demographic entrapment for the Population and Development Review, its Editor, [20] remarked that ‘The Hardinian taboo is already well-known in the literature”. [27]It turned out that, although ‘Garrett Hardin’ was in the literature, the term ‘Hardinian taboo’ was not. In rejecting my paper the Editor had named the Hardinian taboo, and applied it to his own discipline in his own journal. Hardin was a Californian ecologist who studied the way we humans (except for the Chinese) have a unique inability to adjust our population numbers to the carrying capacity of our ecosystems, by tabooing any attempt to do so. [28]
The term ‘Hardinian taboo' can be used in two ways, (i) as the general taboo that we humans place on controlling our population numbers, and (ii) as the taboo specifically on demographic entrapment. ‘Local demographic entrapment’ also has two equally valid meanings, which we distinguish with an asterisk and a hash sign. Disposing of the # version first, ‘#entrapment’ is merely that the poor, being poor, have large families, and that this traps them in continuing high fertility, and therefore in poverty. It is thus only a particular aspect of ‘the poverty trap’, to which *entrapment contributes massively when it is present. #Entrapment is not taboo, probably because it does not end in starvation and violence, so we will say no more about it. [29] This paper is only concerned with the asterisked version, which is a particular type of 'overpopulation'. Since *entrapment is taboo, it has no official definition, so we propose this one:
A subsistence community is *demographically trapped if, under present circumstances, its population (a), exceeds: (b) the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem (too many people for the land to support), AND (c) their ability to migrate to new land, AND (d) the ability of their economy to produce goods and services, which they can exchange for food and other essentials. The outcome of *entrapment is the severest poverty, stunting, starvation, and commonly violence.
Alternatively, entrapment can be seen as a need for ‘the crunch message’ “...we must reduce our fertility or starve..” (see below), or as a community in which one more mouth to feed is less for someone el
Entrapment has a definitive stage when there already is starvation and/or violence, and a much more extensive warning stage when these can be confidently expected because the population is increasing fast.
‘A community...’. Although not formally part of the definition, the term ‘community’ assumes that there is, functionally, an ecologically defined boundary round it, which separates its economy from the rest of the world, and across which economic exchange and migration would take place, if they were adequately possible.
‘...subsistence...’ Agricultural villagers are our main concern.
‘...new land...’ is part of the definition, so as to exclude migration to the nearest shantytown, which is the common means of escape. Since Africa’s ever-growing shantytowns are largely fed by their surrounding rural areas, riots in the shantytowns over the increasing price of food, are therefore an indication of entrapment in the rural areas, which should be feeding them.[30]
‘...AND...’ The two ‘ands’ are important, because a community is only *trapped if all three (b) and (c), and (d), are exceeded. If any of these is not exceeded, it can be assumed to solve the problem.
'...food and other essentials.' The need for food aid is commonly an indication of entrapment. Food aid is not however an adequate relief, since it cannot be guaranteed in ever increasing quantities for populations that are set to triple by 2050, especially when grain for food aid is increasing competition with grain for biofuels. Food aid thus currently masks what would have otherwise been malthusian rises in mortality. Meanwhile the global food situation remains uncertain with global food stocks alarmingly low. The stocks – to – use ratio for maize, for example is presently 13 per cent — the smallest it has been since the early 1970s [31]
'...stunting...' Although there are many causes of stunting, its widespread prevalence suggests chronic malnutrition, as a result of the pressure of population on land.
‘...under present circumstances...’ implies particularly ‘under present rates of population growth’, and ‘under present levels of development assistance’.
The variables which define demographic entrapment appear to distinguish a critical entity in the complexities of Middle Africa. Thus I explained it to an eminent malariologist with much experience there. “Ah,” he said “that makes sense!” To the criticism that entrapment is a simplistic theory, we reply that it picks out a critical variable which could be changed—reduce your fertility or starve—which is not only practical in that there is something to be done, but is acceptable to our own community, to and perhaps to many others. Whether we will reduce our fertility is another matter, but we must at least be given the chance.
Other writers have describe what is essentially the same situation in other ways. Thus Lutz writes “it seems that the population–environment–agriculture nexus in Ethiopia has fallen below the threshold of sustainability.” [32] Drangert sees the demographic trap as the massive increase in social services, especially schooling, that are needed by a young and rapidly growing population.[33] Bayley considers it a “... a short-hand term for an imbalance between a country’s population and the agricultural resources... [34]
Although a writer may get near it, the question "Is this community demographically trapped?" is never asked. Thus Leach and Fairhead, [35] in investigating the human ecology of the Sahel, find that reality is more complex than either the neo-Malthusian or the neo-Boserupian models, and fail to discuss the relation between present and projected populations to carrying capacity.
We have been advised that ‘a softer term’ than entrapment would be more easily marketed. We reply that it was the technical term that already existed when we began our study, that Hardin said that ‘if the language goes, the thinking goes’ (17) and that no weasel word would compel the two corrupt disciplines to ‘discorrupt’ themselves. Besides, if it means what it needs to mean, it would soon become just as distasteful as ‘entrapment’.
Disentrapment
Since the term ‘demographic entrapment’ is taboo, there has been no reason to think about what should be done about it, so the term ‘disentrapment’ had to be invented. Although demographic entrapment must be mitigated by altering all the variables in the definition above, they are all difficult to influence — and they don't act fast enough, especially in a community which has already exceeded the carrying capacity of its ecosystem. The same applies to increasing female empowerment and education, and to environmental conservation, valuable as they are. The urgent reduction of fertility, if necessary to one child only (see below), in crash demographic transitions seems however to be the most practical measure, and is certainly the most urgent one. It too cannot act fast enough, especially if a community has already exceeded the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, but it is the best that can be done.The boundaries of demography
When I first started my study of entrapment, I was told by Philip Payne a much respected professor of nutrition at the London School of Hygiene, that he was continually telling his demographic colleagues what a narrow discipline they had made of it. And so I have found it. Society is so multifarious that there is no theoretical justification for borders round any of the social sciences. [36] Nevertheless, ever since Durkhein laid their foundations, they have subdivided and crys- tallized themselves narrowly. During this process of crystallization, the concept of carrying capacity has somehow got tabooed out by demography, by development economica, and by human geography — but not by the agronomy. [19] In this process, both Caldwell [37] and Demeny [38] have tried to define the borders of demography, while leaving entrapment to others.
The failure to think about ‘carrying capacity’ has so paralysed demography that it has deprived it of the opportu- nity of doing anything to restrain dangerously rapid population growth. The Hardinian taboo has prevented it from being ‘pro-active’, and in doing so has infantilised it as a merely descriptive science — collecting data, but never doing anything to influence the variables from which those data are derived. Since ‘carrying capacity’ is taboo, there has supposedly been no need to.
The reluctance to restrain dangerously rapid population growth is Demon 59 ‘Population control’. There are even population activists to whom the term is anathema, notably ‘People and the Planet’, the ‘The Population and Sustainability Network’, and ‘Population Matters’ [the working name for ‘The Optimum Population Trust’]. In doing so they forget that, in trapped com- munities, population growth is likely to end in starvation and violence. By tabooing all methods of population control, they fail to distin- guish between those methods which might be acceptable, from those which certainly are not, such as dragging a mother late in pregnancy to the abortion table.
We argue that, whatever a community decides is correct for them, because they will have to endure the starvation and violence of exceeding the carrying capacity of their ecosystem, and that outsiders, who are not threatened by these calamities have no right to comment. Since the human rights movement have never debated these rights under conditions of entrapment, it's rulings must be considered invalid.How extensive is demographic entrapment?
In 1995, at Wolfson College in Cambridge, I asked Africa’s most eminent demographer [20] “How much of (Middle) Africa do you think is demographically trapped?” “Most of it is, except perhaps Ghana” he replied. “Can I quote you?” “No” he answered. “Whose interests come first?”, I asked “Yours or Africa’s?” There is correspondence to confirm this. I subsequently repeated this to see then Professor of public health in Accra. "Why didn't you think we are? he answered. Had entrapment not been taboo, the eminent demographer would have already written about it himself. However, he would allow himself to be quoted as having said that, for a large group of countries in Middle Africa, the chances of their demographic and economic transitions interacting are ‘pretty bleak’. He meant by this that they won’t develop fast enough for their fertility to fall, and their fertility won’t fall fast enough to allow them to develop— presumably before they have exceeded the carrying capacities of their ecosystems.
Since, as an ‘insider’, he cannot free himself from the Demons of the taboo, we as ‘outsiders’, ask the editor’s permission, to do this for him, while thanking him for a concise statement of the scale the problem. Because the taboo prevents the systematic assembly of the data that might remove it, there is no alternative statement of comparable scope and authority - had there been one, there would now be no taboo.
What is to be inferred from this? Six things: (i) that demographic entrapment is real, (ii) that it is likely to be massive, (iii) that it is powerfully taboo, (iv) that it is outside the ordinary domain of reductionist science, (v) that demography and development economics, but not necessarily their individual practitioners, are gravely corrupt, and (vi) that there is urgent need for ‘disentrapment’ programs.
This is most useful evidence. Is it to be tabooed out, as not being ‘scientific’, or is it allowable? We argue that it should be allowable, especially if the major weight that is put on it is that the entrapment status of all endangered communities, especially our own in Western Kenya, should be investigated urgently. We further argue that not to accept such evidence would be a classic example of the taboo defending itself — and a particularly tragic one. Unfortunately, there is good reason to think that Africa’s most eminent demographer is correct.
Ideally, all the variables (a) to (d) in the definition above need to be measured, and their rate of change estimated, for all the communities suspected of being trapped. Some have been measured for some communities, but the set is never complete, because the question “Is this community demographically trapped?” is taboo and is never asked. However, there are studies which go a long way towards confirming it for Niger [40], Ethiopia [41], Rwanda [42, 43], North Kivu [42], and Malawi [18], etc.
Alexandratos of FAO [6] listed 19 countries with a population growth rate of 1.8% or more (twice the developing country average) and argued that, although the Malthusian threat may have disappeared elsewhere, it still retains its full relevance in these rapidly growing communities, many of which are already ‘food insecure’ (for which read hungry or starving) caused predominantly by ‘production constraints’ and ‘paucity of agricultural resources’ or (for which read carrying capacity). [6]
There are also equally valid qualitative approaches to diagnosing entrapment, both during the warning and the definitive stages. In the latter starvation and/or violence usually make it obvious. Were it not for food aid' demographic entrapment would be even more obvious. In the warning stage, the following factors, especially in combination, suggest probable entrapment — (i) Increasing population densities in rural areas. (ii) Decreasing land holdings. (iii) Falling soil fertility. (iv) Widespread stunting. (v) Severe environmental degradation. (iv) The cultivation of ever steeper and more infertile hillsides. [44] (v) Extensive shantytowns in adjacent urban centers.
On two occasions, after I have lectured in the Congo DRC, members of the audience have asked me to visit their communities because of the violence of the definitive stage. In the Masereka district of North Kivu, I was told that villagers had been burning one another’s huts because of lack of land. When I visited it, there was hardly a square metre of unused land, and I saw the burnt huts. I have still to visit Kasongo Lunda on the Angolan border, where villagers were said by their pastor to be killing one another for lack of land. This does not mean that nobody else in my audiences was from trapped communities, but that, if they were, these were still in the warning stage.
An EU administrator e-mailed “I am responsible for the EU’s humanitarian relief programme.... We of course entirely share your analysis concerning demographic pressure, which has long been a major factor—perhaps THE [his capitals] major factor—in entrenching extreme poverty and creating the condi- tions for conflict in the Great Lakes region...”. [20]Malthus in Middle Africa
Thomas Robert Malthus was an eighteenth century philosophe. (25) He was also a demographer and a development econo- mist, since in his day the two disciplines had not yet separated. Now that they have separated, and although there are no strict boundaries round any of the social sciences, a tabooed void has developed between them, into which entrapment has been thrown — each discipline considering it the property of the other, when indeed it is recognised at all. As one eminent demographer put it, we have to assume that communities are not always going to have to live on what they can grow. [20] Unfortunately, this is exactly what we cannot assume. He was shifting the responsibility for what should happen if they cannot live on what they can grow,or import any food, onto the development economists.
Although the term ‘Malthusian ceiling’, is used for communities which have reached the limit of the carrying capacities of their ecosystems and are starving, there is no Malthusian equivalent of ‘trapped’, meaning ‘about to be Malthusianised’, and expecting starvation and violence. ‘Disentrapment’ would be ‘deMalthusianisation’ in the definitive stage of demographic entrapment, and ‘de-preMalthusianisation’ in the warning stage. The diagnosis of entrapment is therefore a belated attempt to quantify Malthus.
Should it be argued that predictions of Malthusian crises have failed to materialize before, [39] we argue that were it not for food aid, there would now be many examples, and that in Rwanda for example, where they resulted in violence, they have already occurred. It would not be the model state that it now appears to be where it not for the surplus Hutu population are continually migrating into the eastern Congo, [20] where it is largely responsible for the mayhem of that region.The evil in the Hardinian taboo
Although the Greeks and the Romans had words which suggested it (ἅγιος, sacer), it was Captain James Cook, who introduced the term ‘taboo’ in 1785, when he returned from Polynesia, as being something which is forbidden from discussion by general consent, without reasons being given. [45] The Wikipedia describes it as “A strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred, and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs, and or scientific consensus”— the latter being critically relevant here.
The Hardinian taboo is a curious, sinister, unwritten social convention that demographic entrapment shall not be discussed, without any reasons for this ever being given, or anybody ruling that it should be outlawed. It is a forbidden ‘out of bounds’ area beyond science, that flaunts scientific conventions, and makes entrapment impossible to handle, if these are to be strictly applied. It is an ‘event horizon’, a ‘black hole’, in the social sciences from which nothing escapes.The Hardinian taboo also taboos itself, in that there is great reluctance to even name it; thus, although the Times newspaper printed a letter describing the Hardinian taboo, it refused to print the name itself. [46] A colleague teaches his students about the phenomenon, without ever mentioning either ‘Hardinian’ or ‘taboo’. [47] Hardin remarked that “…when the language goes the thinking goes”. [28] The Hardinian taboo must therefore be named.
Taboos are the concern of anthropologists, who define them as proscriptions on behaviour which are punished by sanctions. These proscriptions presumably have causes. Here we call these causes the ‘the Demons of the Hardinian taboo’ — a demon being anything which holds it in place. [48] Some taboos, such as those concerning sex and faeces are necessary for the proper functioning of society. In the past science has also had its taboos, and its sanctions, as when Galileo was imprisoned by the inquisition. Since demographers and development economist will never discuss demographic entrapment, there is a de facto scientific consensus that it doesn’t exist. So is Hardin’s taboo the last remaining taboo in science, or are there others? Might there be some taboos which are sacrosanct,[49] and if so, could this be one of them? We argue that it is certainly not sacrosanct, since lifting it is urgently necessary for the welfare of Middle Africa.
My first awareness of the specifically evil nature of the taboo, was when I explained entrapment to a devout barrister [20] [47] He quoted St. Peter “There are many Demons”— hence the origin of the term Demon. [50] So what had previously been ‘The foundations of the Hardinian taboo’ became its ‘Demons’ to great effect. He also quoted William Blake, [51] who is said to have argued that good has to be done by ‘minute particulars’, that is in little bits, and that to try to attack ‘the general evil’, as by trying to lift the Hardinian taboo, is the work of a ‘scoundrel’. In trying to do so I sometimes ask myself “Am I very good, or very bad?” In other words, is it permissible even to try to lift the Hardinian taboo? I argue that, by splitting it up into its many Demons, so that they can be seen and attacked, it has become merely rather a large ‘minute par- ticular ‘ and can be lifted.
Above all the Hardinian taboo is ‘evil’— bad in a positive sense (OED). Evil is mysterious, nobody understands it. If most of Middle Africa is indeed demographically trapped, the scale of the evil in terms of the potentially preventable starvation and violence that the Hardinian taboo stops us preventing, is mind boggling. There are other links between ‘population’ and ‘evil’. Thus The Tablet [52] in reviewing a book by the philosopher John Gray, [53] emphasized that he considers ‘population’ to be the ‘predominant evil’. If so, demographic entrapment is the epicentre of that evil. Incidentally, in the course of investigating entrapment I have witnessed two unequivocal poltergeists.
Looking back, I find that, for many years, I have prayed for the trapped, and for almost nobody else. Should this be considered a departure from scientific rationality, I reply that science only takes us so far, and that evil lies beyond it. I can only say that when I sent Dan Kaseje the rejected second submission of this paper, and he emailed me an invitation to lecture on it at GLUK, I was instantly overcome by what St Theresa of Avila called ‘the gift of tears’. [] The back of the evil had been broken! Was this the immanence of the Almighty, or the emotional lability of old age?
If indeed the Hardinian taboo is as evil as it seems to be, combat with it becomes a ‘spiritual endeavour’ in which we enter quite another dimension, where, in the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is necessary to ‘acquire something of the holy spirit of God’, [54] and ‘to partake of some minute portion, some scintilla, of the divine nature’ []. At which point it is necessary to send down (or up?) a 'spiritual taproot'.[55] As a knowledge engineer, I am about sick of the demographers and the development economists — what a shower! I am looking forward therefore to 'knowledge engineering' the theologians.Demons
How is it that an experienced colleague from a Kenyan aid agency [20] can say that he has never had a moment’s doubt about the entrapment argument ever since he first heard it, and nor had any of his friends, and yet so many other people will not recognize its reality? They are in thrall to its Demons.
The Demons of the Hardinian taboo lurk in the subconscious, and are seldom fully articulated. They vary greatly, they often overlap, they are difficult to quantify, and are they change. We can only guess which combination of Demons are bugging who and how much. Once the taboo starts to lift, they will have partly gone, and be difficult to research. Paradoxically, while the Demons are totally effective in maintaining the taboo under some circumstances, other people seem completely immune to them. More than sixty are described, see
Demon 0, lack of integrity and moral courage. The ability of a Demon to cause demographic entrapment to be kept taboo depends him both on its strength, and on the resistance or susceptibility of the person on whom it acts. This susceptibility is a compound of integrity and moral courage. These are linked because exercising integrity needs courage. The compound of these two qualities can properly be called a Demon, because they help to keep the taboo in place. This Demon has been separated from the general sequence of demons because integrity and moral courage are demon resistant. This resistance is probably to Demons in general, rather than to specific Demons.
Demon 1 We have already described this Demon, 1 which is the argument that carrying capacity does not apply to man, and is the very foundation of the taboo.
Demon 64, the ‘hole in reality'. To argue that entrapment, as defined above cannot happen, is to argue for a ‘hole in the possible’. It is to assert that it is impossible for a community to exceed the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, and to have nowhere to go, and to be penniless. This Demon therefore ring-fences a ‘hole in reality’. [39] A group of Demons argues, some simplistically, some less so, that the hole doesn’t exist. Here is one of them, which is particularly interesting in that it emanates from a distinguished professor of epidemiology.
Demon 65, Tony McMichael’s crooked logic. Lately Professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Science, in the London School of Hygiene, he wrote: [39]“ The alleged taboo is not the only impediment to people accepting the need for action. Controversy surrounds the central concepts and phrases. Many demographers and economists reject, or query, the concept of “entrapment….” Of course they do, the purpose of this paper is to expose their disciplines as corrupt, in that they deny the relevance of carrying capacity for man, Demon 1, and therefore the possibility of its being exceeded which is the crux of entrapment. It is also a warning that we should not necessarily take other people’s disciplines for granted, since there are no tight walls round any of the social sciences.
“…The related term “carrying capacity” is loosely used…” It is tightly defined above for trapped communities, such as the villages of Malawi, and is critical.
“…For ecosystems with ecologically defined boundaries it is meaningful, but for human populations in an increasingly intercon- nected world it is less so…” Unfortunately, there is an ecologically defined boundary round Malawi, in that its villagers have great difficulty in migrating out of their trapped community in sufficient numbers.
“…The Netherlands can only grow enough food for a third of its population, but it easily purchases the rest.” There is no problem if there is an economy which will provide the means of exchange for the necessary imports, especially food. Unfortunately Malawi does not have such an economy and is therefore in frequent need of food aid. Unto this day, these arguments have been sufficiently persuasive in the London School of Hygiene to keep entrapment tightly taboo and to prevent it from responding to its greatest challenge.
The taboo in theLondon School of Hygiene is so tight that I have on occasion been ejected through its doors, across its front steps, and onto the pavement of Keppel Street. We therefore declare it intellectually corrupt.
Demon 2 unhappyness, is the ‘bad feeling’, or ‘aggro’ generated by attempts to wrestle with the other Demons and lift the taboo. It is useful to have a blanket term, for all forms of this, for which ‘unhappyness’ is suggested. (Note the typography, the purpose of which is to mitigate the unhappyness). Nobody likes ‘unhappyness’, so it is a powerful Demon. What has heartened me is how rare it is in Africa.
It has to be recognized that there is ‘an ugly side population’—unhappyness at its worst. This has got to be coped with and not run away from. An eminent friend [20] once warned me that “...to mention demographic entrapment is to play with fire”. To which I reply that not to do anything about it is to let the fire of starvation and violence blaze unhindered.
A particularly ugly problem is the critical question as to what a community should do to mothers who have more children than the community thinks they should have? The Chinese made various rules to encourage them to have abortions, which everybody in other countries thought was very wrong. But were they better than the starvation and violence caused by not having any population control? I argue that whatever a community does is right for them, because they are going to have to suffer the starvation and violence of not having it. I also argue that, be- cause the human rights movement has never debated what these rights should be under conditions of entrapment, because en- trapment is taboo, its rulings are invalid. For further examples see Mola [54]
Demon 46 failure of the moral imagination. Zygmunt Bauman argued that one of the reasons why good men do evil things is a failure of their moral imagination. He gives as examples Eichman, “… such a good family man …” who was responsible for organizing gas chambers in the second world war, and also those who were responsible for unnecessarily dropping the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Those who willingly leave the Hardinian taboo on demographic entrapment in place, when they could help to remove it, lack the moral imagination to comprehend the scale of the starvation and violence that they are assenting to. This lack of moral imagination is a deep cultural failing and a major demon.
Demon 24, Garrett Hardin’s lifeboat, is the fear that, if Middle Africa finds itself demographically trapped, there will be massive migration northwards, which will overwhelm the EU. Since Italy borders the Mediterranean, it is particularly vulner- able, so that it’s emergenza immigrati causes great concern. [58] This leaves you in the North with a dilemma. Do you leave the taboo in place, so that starvation and violence can do their worst among us in Middle Africa? Or do you lift the taboo, and do all you can to help us with the crash demographic transitions that are so urgent? We are not concerned with migration north- wards; we are however very concerned with the starvation and violence of the vast ma- jority of us who cannot reach the EU, and who require urgent help with our crash demographic transitions. We strongly advise you, our friends in the North that, it is in your own best interests to do your utmost to promote these transitions, so as to minimize the population pressure that is already causing this northward migration. In some circles, this may be the most powerful of the Demons.In some circles, this may be the most powerful of the Demons. Most climate change models expect the UK to be among the least affected of European countries, and therefore a prime destination for forced climate migrants [59] Besides, there are no moral grounds for excluding those who are fleeing from the effects of the climate change that you have yourself have helped to cause.
Saint Benedict instructed the doorkeeper of his monastery, when he heard a stranger knocking on the door, to open it shouting “Praise be to God!”Demon 63, the illusion of security. Most of the time, most of us live under the illusion that everything is going to be all right — that there’s not going to be massive migration northwards as the population of Middle Africa exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem; that global heating will at worst be a nuisance, that unending economic growth is both possible and desirable; that we are not going to run short of energy, that atomic rearmament is not taking place, that there will always be something in the refrigerator when we open its door, and that ‘the circle of the visible’ is all there is. This Demon “…relieves anxiety, preserves our comforting short term view of the world, and the present stability of north-south relations… it also maintains the current paradigm in international health”. [65] The security that results from leaving this Demon undisturbed is reassuring—disturbing it is unsettling.
‘Corrupt’
If much of Middle Africa is indeed demographically trapped, but the two disciplines whose business it should be, demography and development economics, never discuss it, they have to be declared corrupt - lacking in integrity. (24) Such corruption has nothing to do with money, and is their failure to tackle a distasteful problem, not because it is technically difficult, but because it has grave ethical and political implications — the Demons. The public, and indeed most of the practitioners in these two disciplines, are deluded into thinking they are sound, when both are gravely flawed in their task of improving the welfare of Middle Africa.The UN agencies, including particularly the World Bank, and the NGOs, are also deluded into thinking that these disciplines are sound. So they too have to be declared corrupt, but since they depend on what they imagine is the integrity of academia, their corruption is secondary, because they can rightly blame it for the corruption.
Because of the corruption induced by the Hardinian taboo and its Demons, the international leadership in the population field that the world so badly needs is paralysed. In view of the ‘disentrapment’ that should have taken place and hasn’t, academia’s failure to recognize entrapment has indeed been a calamity.
There is great reluctance to call anybody or anything corrupt. Thus the delegates of Oxford University Press were worried about publishing a book describing demographic entrapment. They said they would publish it, if their assessor [ ]cleared it. He refused to clear the lockstep figure, saying that he would take any other word except ‘corrupt’. I therefore had to publish the book myself.[ ]
Figure. LOCKSTEP is a method of marching with one’s leg close underneath that on the leg of the person in front, such that if anybody changes step, the whole squad falls over. Jason Finkle, a US demographer suggested that every-body here is marching in lockstep, such that if anyone were to recognize demographic entrapment, everybody else would have to also, and the whole squad would for fall over.
The extent of the present corruption in Britain, from Parliament downwards beggars belief. [60] There are striking parallels between a lack of integrity leading to calamity, in the finance industry and in academia.[61]The best respected institution in the land, Britain's Royal Society, has a consultation on People and the Planet, under the chairmanship of Sir John Sulston. Since it too declines to debate the entrapment of Middle Africa, it has also to be declared corrupt.
If this corruption is the result of a powerful taboo, is the individual blameworthy? Or is it more charitable to assume that, such is the power of the Demons, that there are no corrupt individuals, there are only corrupt disciplines and institutions? This is Terry Eagleton’s evil acting corporately— the evil in the system.[62] Or, as Mary Midgley puts it “...the causes of individual and social behaviour supplement each other so closely that they make no sense apart...” [63]
A choice of myth
It should now be clear that the conviction that demographic entrapment doesn't exist is a myth. However, in abolishing this most comforting myth, we have unashamedly to fall back on another one at the end of this paper. Benedetto Croce reminded us that “…myth, fable, and legend loom in- creasingly large in the social thought of our time, not only as objects, but also as a means of inquiry...", [64] and that those who "…warn us against the diabolical powers of myth seldom receive a disinterested public hearing”. [64] He would have agreed with Hardin who pointed out that anybody who tries to lift a taboo becomes intensely unpopular, in that he gathers society’s odium to himself. It may therefore be necessary to die, so as to remove that odium, and allow the taboo to lift.
Hardin also observed that taboos can only be lifted by eccentrics — those who are ‘not in the centre of things’. This is because, to lift a taboo one has to be immune to the social pressures that keep it in place, in this case the Demons. If one is resistant to one kind of social pressure, one is likely to be resistant to others also, and thus to appear eccentric, for example in matters of dress. [28] It is not that it is necessary to be deliberately ec- centric to lift a taboo, but that eccentricity is a likely side effect. It's French equivalent un originale is kinder.
Hardin also wrote that taboos have to be stalked, until the time is right for the kill. This one has been stalked for twenty years, so that it is now high time that it was put to the sword.
Lifting the Hardinian taboo
The Hardinian taboo is beset by so many demons that lifting it might seemed impossible. Besides there is no precedent for lifting such a taboo, because not only is it probably unique, but most taboos, such as those surrounding faeces and sex, are nec essary for the welfare of society and don’t need to be lifted. This taboo also has its uses, although they are hardly creditable — Demon 63, the illusion of security. [66]
Since the anthropologists have never found it necessary to lift a taboo, trying to lift this one has no precedent. Papers in other journals have so far had no effect, [7, 57, 67-69] nor have papers[65] [70] or letters [71-75] in this one, or letters to influential newspapers.[46] This is hardly surprising since Carnal argued that “ Such apocalyptic views cannot sit easily in the..” “...policy forums of the” UN agencies “... and, possibly, of most learned journals”. [76] This journal, has until now, been one of the strongest upholders of the taboo. Of the third rejected submission of this paper, I was told “Important, but not a Lancet paper” . That you see it here at all required a theatrical attempt at a public meeting to ‘have the Editor’s balls’ modelled as two red cheeses, which incidentally he took very well; combined with a threat to mount ‘a vigil to the death’ on his doorstep if he didn’t publish it — what an imaginative way to go, since go one must!However, should the taboo should start to lift in the universities, it will lift in the UN agencies, and the NGOs. There is probably no need for a new NGO – all existing NGOs with any interest in Africa should consider it their first priority. Once the UN agencies and the NGOs are recognizing entrapment, governments will surely follow. This change could be slow, or it could be fast, now that we can communicate and travel so easily.
‘Crash demographic transitions’ and ‘the crunch message’
The failure to take account of carrying capacity has resulted in the delusion that all that is necessary is to supply family-planning services, after which fertility will fall and all will be well — forgetting that, while it is falling, the population will still be rising, so that a community may exceed the carrying capacity of its ecosystem meanwhile— if indeed it has not already do
The problem is that, even the provision of good family planning services and filling the massive unmet need for family planning, [78] so as to remove all the barriers that prevent its use, [ ] will not act fast enough in trapped communities. They key question is: Can the fertility declines that are necessary for demographic transitions be speeded up sufficiently? And if so how? The development of successful malaria vaccines [79] will make such crash demographic transitions, even more urgent.
A critical step is to overcome the universal reluctance to tell the trapped communities of Middle Africa to have fewer babies. Hitherto nobody has dared to do this. Thus Lord Adair Turner wrote [80]“... there are good reasons for being reticent about telling developing countries that they must contain fertility – rich people telling poor people to have fewer babies...” . We are those poor people, and we are, at last, telling ourselves to have fewer babies. Messages like this need a generic title so we have called them ‘crunch messages’. [crisis messages] For not having had the courage to tell us long ago, you rich people have done us the greatest harm. This is Demon 44, ’The crunch message Demon’, the reluctance to tell us poor to reduce our fertility.
THE FIRST CRUNCH MESSAGE was delivered by a Ugandan newspaper editor, David Ooma Balikowa in 1996,[81] as shown in this Figure.
I have delivered the following crunch message in Africa many times:
"Should I or should I not, say to you my friends in Africa, that if you don’t reduce your fertility, if necessary to one child only, you can expect the direst poverty, starvation and violence, if indeed you are not experiencing it already. I argue that I have to, and that not to do so is the gravest dereliction of duty in public health. If you want to lynch me, you are welcome, I trust that I will proceed to my martyrdom with a good courage.”
Are ‘crunch messages’ messages of the general nature “Reduce your fertility or starve” acceptable in trapped communities? They are at GLUK since there is already acute pressure of population on land here in Western Kenya. They are also acceptable in the Congo and Uganda.
So far, I have not been lynched! In practice, this crunch message has always been well taken, since the trapped seem to know what is in store for them. In the Congo they said “We don’t murder grandfathers!” Nor was I martyred at GLUK, despite the fact that I was immediately followed by someone who delivered a diatribe in support of Demon 11, the cultural traditions of the South that favour high fertility. ‘A little red book ’ was then passed round, and 72 signatures obtained, starting with the Vice Chancellor, to the effect that the Hardinian taboo should be lifted, and this paper published. As you see, our names are at the head of this paper. Many of us are primary health care workers. That at least is permission to begin, in Kenya certainly, and probably in all other trapped communities also.
'THE LITTLE RED BOOK' containing the signatures this paper. It is a good example of how weak the Hardinian taboo is in Africa itself, what support there is for disentrapment.
If a community is already severely trapped, it should ideally have one child families. Their many problems are Demon 6. If they had no problems, there would probably be no taboo. Are they better or worse than the starvation and violence, which are the likely alternatives? The Chinese thought they were better. If they didn’t have any problems, there would probably now be no taboo.
Although even the idea of one child families is commonly thought to be ridiculous in Africa, the Ugandan newspaper editor in the figure didn't think so. He was however a journalist, not a demographer! Since we don’t know what is going to happen in future, let’s at least formulate the problem and encourage our communities to discuss them.
One child families are closely associated with Demon 48 “Who is going to look after me in my old age?” It is sometimes argued that families have to be large in Africa, so that we have somebody to look after us in our old age, and consequently that crash demographic transitions to lower fertility are impossible. The only way out of this difficulty is for us old to look after one another in our old age — for the ‘old’ to look after the ‘old-old’. Such arrangements may be difficult, but the alternative is starvation and violence.
A further problem is that mothers may be afraid that their children will die, if they have too few, especially only one, so they have more, just in case. The solution is for them to use reversible methods of family planning until that child is five after which his of chances of dying are much reduced. They may also think that the chances of his dieing, are greater than they really are. In Kenya, whereas half our children used to die, 90% now live.
‘Community based crash disentrapment programs’
Demon 52 is the ‘One-child-no-strong-state Demon’, which argues that population control, and particularly one-child families, are only possible in strong states with the power to implement them, and that they are therefore impossible in Africa, because we have no strong states. The implication is that, since nothing can be done, let’s forget the problem — and let Middle Africa proceed to starvation and violence. The challenge therefore is to see if ‘disentrapment programs’ can be implemented at the community level. A meeting at GLUK, decided that they could, but only as part of a ‘development package’ which built on a community’s strengths. This was a huge demographic breakthrough. Miraculously therefore, ‘demographic proactivity’ looks like being acceptable in Africa, whatever the demographers may say. So let’s get busy and see if it works? If it doesn’t, nothing is lost, but if it does, even in some communities, they will be saved!!
For this to happen, governments must themselves be reached, and for that to happen, the Hardinian taboo must lift in demography and development economics, hence the importance of this paper. Since Africa’s demographers were mostly trained in Europe and the USA in a corrupt demography which kept entrapment taboo; this error has now to be corrected.
A provisional decision as to whether a particular community is demographically trapped and how seriously, should not be too difficult—see qualitative approaches — but it should only be a beginning. A thorough diagnosis of the entrapment situation throughout Middle Africa and elsewhere is now most urgent. The four variables that define entrapment must be measured for all the communities at risk. This will probably turn out to be most of the region.
The world record for fertility decline is presently held by Iran — where the TFR fell by 5 children over 20 years,, and was associated with a great increase in female education.[82] Ideally, the TFR needs to fall even foster than this in communities which have already exceeded the carrying capacity of their ecosystems, even though may have little female education, and little prospect of much more. If the alternative is increasing starvation and commonly violence, crash disentrapment programs are surely worth attempting.
Despite the magnificent example of China and Iran, there is no reference to the term 'crash demographic transition’’ in the literature, so they have been described in a book called Primary Mother Care and Population [83] This has the Path A / Path B diagram on its front cover, and describes all the necessary family planning methods, precoital and postcoital. Ten thousand copies are presently in transit from China to Nairobi. How will they be received? Much will depend on how quickly 'the message' gets through to the governments, the NGOs and the universities of Middle Africa.
Every relevant instrument in the global culture — especially you!
Community disentrapment programs need everything the world can possibly do — ‘every relevant instrument in the global culture’. This ranges from the mobile phone at the tech- nological end to papal encyclicals at the spiritual end. It also includes you, Gentle Reader!
If you are His Holiness, Benedict the XVI, we pray that, in your love for the least fortunate of God’s children, you will in your infinite mercy see fit to promulgate the two following encyclicals Si infortunatus est, and Si tua sacerdos est, because the disentrapment of Middle Africa is impossible without them. Demon 10 is the The Holy See’s disapproval of most methods of family planning, and Demon 9 is the attitudes of many religious fundamentalists, to abortion. Since much of Middle Africa is yours, these two Demons stand firmly in the way of its disen- trapment. So they must both be put to the sword. Besides, most of the faithful in every continent would rejoice, since they use these methods anyway.
Si infortunatus est habitare in communio plaga demo graphica, permissus est utor artis progeniesquam optavi. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a community which is de mographically trapped, you are at liberty to use whatever family planning method you wish.
Si tua sacerdos est in communio plaga demographica, officium tua explicare communio plaga demographica ad vulgus tua ut deminuo fertilitas sua. If you are a priest in a trapped community, it is your duty to explain demographic entrapment to your pa- rishioners, so as to encourage them to reduce their fertility.
If you have any influence in any institution, your first task is to discuss entrapment with your colleagues and juniors, and especially with your students. Even this journal cannot be expected to lift the Hardinian taboo, unless heads of institutions and departments take active steps to discuss it with your colleagues and your students. Once even a few of you were to start, the others would probably follow. Should you fail to do this, attempts to lift the taboo are likely to be Sisyphean. [77]
If you are from the South, do everything possible to reduce the fertility of yourself — if it is not already too late ! — and your community; even tying one mother’s tubes will help.
In you are from the North, every gram of fossil fuel you don’t burn to heat-up the Earth will also help. So never feel helpless!
If you are from a UN agency, make sure it plays its part. The disentrapment of middle Africa should be the first priority of UNFPA, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
If you are from an NGO, concerned with Africa, make sure it plays its part. If your seniors are resistant, resist them.
If you are a family planning provider, the first step is to fill the unmet need. This is huge. [78] If family planning serv- ices are available, mothers will use them. The first task of the governments and the donors is therefore to provide them. The donor community should be extremely ashamed of not having already filled this need.
If you are a journalist of any kind, the crunch mes- sage must reach every member of the community, continually by every possible communication channel, especially the radio, television, and through the schools All newspapers should print a suitable article. All key terms need translation into the local languages — ‘demographic entrapment’, ‘crunch message’, ‘car- rying capacity’, and ‘demographic transition’, etc. This will need imagination, because some local languages don’t have a word for ‘fertility’.
If you have any responsibility for mobile phones, they have a great path to play, since they are becoming universal and have already proved useful in public health.[85] All that would be required would be a government directive to the effect that all messages should start with a suitable ‘disentrapment jingle. “Reduce your fertility or starve” or “One child is smart”, or something similar. Susan Watkins in her study of reproduction in Kenya found that “fertility declines, if and when they occur, are almost invariably portrayed as resulting entirely from the agency of local actors...” [86] The challenge now is to inspire those local actors — perhaps they are you?
MOBILEPHONES ARE A HUGE OPPORTUNITY. Here is a Masai herdsman using one in Kenya.
If you are thinking of awarding a Nobel prize, why not suggest that GLUK should get one since it would do much to lift the Hardinian taboo. Years ago, someone said “Just re- member me, when you get your Nobel prize, will you!”. So why don’t you, Gentle Reader, propose to the Nobel prize committee that GLUK gets one?
If you have any spare money, the disentrapment of middle Africa would be the best possible use for it. Twenty years ago, Mrs. Macdonald, a GP’s widow, gave me fifty quid (£50), saying “You’ll need it!” Since only sixpence now remains, more funds are urgent! Mr Warren Buffett, the world’s most gen erous billionaire, is therefore to be asked if he could possibly give a billion dollars for the disentrapment of Middle Africa. Besides being essential, the promise of this gift would in itself do much to lift the taboo — and land him in Heaven as the most imaginative donor of all time.
China's leadership in a one–child world
If ‘disentrapment’ is ever to get under way on a large scale, China’s help, ideologically, technologically, and financially, will be crucial. China’s demographic transition differed from that of Europe [87] and was the first case of deliberate ‘disen- trapment’, although this term was never used. In 1970, after Chairman Mao’s vigorous pronatalist policy, China was dis- mayed by its ‘grain problem’, and wondered how its increasing millions were to be fed. The result was its celebrated ‘one child policy’. (31) Its massive subsequent economic development, which surprised China as much as everyone else, has enabled it to ‘disentrap’ itself by allowing it to buy whatever it wants on the world market. Massive economic development on this scale is, for the moment at least, out of Africa’s reach. Whether one- child families are eventually practical in Africa, when necessary, remains to be seen, but the dialogue must at least be opened. If they are not, the consequent starvation and violence will be grave indeed.
However unpopular, this thought has got to be articu- lated, and the small family culture accepted, as it has in Hong Kong, where the total fertility rate is 1.1 despite that beingno limits on family size. Somehow humanity has got to come to terms with the 4-2-1 problem,[10] which means that one child could be responsible for two parents and four grandparents
The key message, however unpalatable, is the inescap- able fact that, if global population was only 1 billion before the use of fossil fuel, and it will supposedly reach 9 billion, in the post-petroleum age [88], it should be bought down voluntarily, before it is bought down by global heating, starvation, violence, and disease. The first requirement therefore is the reinstatement of the regular decennial International Conferences on Popula- tion and Development, the most recent of which should have been held in 2004. In view of the global threat of global heat- ing, and the local threat of demographic entrapment, its theme needs to be ‘A one-child world’.A tectonic shift away from ‘paediolatry’
Late Western liberalism, with its extreme uncertainty as to the foundation and content of its ethics, has seized upon ‘the child’, as if, in getting things right for him, it could somehow get things right for everybody else. [70] In trying to do this, it has got things wrong for the survival of those communities which are exceeding the carrying capacities of their ecosystems. Why reduce perinatal mortality, in for example Malawi, if there is no ecosystem to support the children who are rescued? This is Demon 13 The high status of the child in Western liberalism (‘paediolatry’). Thus we have a UNICEF for children but nothing for the aged.
‘Our ancestors’ had an instinctive feel for their survival as communities, rather than for the survival of the individual child. Thus, in some tribes, if a mother found herself with twins, and only wanted one, she would choose the strongest, and leave the other. [20] Such a practice is anathema to the ‘paediolatrous’. There is only a moral dilemma, if there is a choice to be made. For the aid agencies, the dilemma is where to put new funds: into child survival, or into the survival of the community — and the long-term survival of its children? [44]
PAEDIOLATRY. Demon 13 The high status of the child in Western liberalism. The most heart-wrenching part of this the paper. I have sent UNICEF a subscription and hope that they have been able to rescue this child. So you can see how difficult it is it?
A ‘crunch message’ to the North, global heating
If we in the South have to reduce our fertility to avoid starvation, you in the North must reduce your CO2 production and therefore your resource consumption, before it is the end of us all. This is Demon 3, the premise of equity — North and South we share the same world. Fossil fuel made your development possible, and you have now burnt most of it, and in doing so have largely deprived us of our chance to develop.
The urgency of reducing CO2 emissions cannot be overstressed.Global CO2 emissions are rising faster than the most dire of the IPCC emission scenarios.[89]
In 2010 they were the highest level ever recorded — 30.6 gigatonnes.
Last year global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by more than 5% despite the worst recession for eighty years, [Fiona Harvey]
The IEA calculate that to achieve the 2°C target, emissions shouldn’t be more than 32 Gt by 2020. At present rates this level will be exceeded 9 years earlier. [89]
The data for both carbon dioxide and methane, are alarming. [90] [91, 92] This makes the current goal of preventing a rise of more than 2°C which is the threshold for potentially dangerous climate change “a nice utopia” ,[89]
Almost 9 out of 10 climate experts do not believe current political efforts will keep heating below 2°C .[93] An average rise of 4-5°C by the end of this century is more likely. This would disrupt food supplies, exterminate thousands of species and cause massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people, with “a 50% chance of a rise of more than 4°C by 2100…disrupting the lives... of hundreds of millions of people, and leading to widespread mass migration and conflict”.[89]
The 1990s are likely to have been the hottest decade of the past 1000 years over the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. [94] [95] [96]
As for doing anything about it, our response has been for targets to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 to 2010 to have been "decisively missed", [97] while plans are being made “…to extract the world’s last remaining reserves of fossil fuels even from under the melting arctic sea ice…”. [82] … Which has melted to a level… almost certainly not experienced for at least 8000 years…[98]Meanwhile, new fuels and technologies may never replace fossil fuels on the scale at which the North currently consumes them. [99]
The message everywhere is for ‘growth’ and yet more economic growth, despite the fact that it is widely recognized that the global ecosystem will not tolerate any more growth. ‘Degrowth’, which is what is wanted, remains a theoretical abstraction.
These dire forecasts of global disaster are never linked to the detailed lifestyle changes required to mitigate them, so here are some of them —A ‘CRUNCH MESSAGE TO THE NORTH’ - your lifestyle is ‘cooking the world’! Here are some of the lifestyle changes that you require. ✿The motor car is anathema, so put yours up on blocks, and ‘get on your bike’.✿Make a good resolution never to get into a car again ✿If you must drive one, make sure that all the seats are always full. ✿Use public transport, demand will soon be followed by supply. ✿Turn off the central heating, and put on several jerseys, a balaclava helmet, a scarf and mittens. ✿Holiday travel by car and especially by air is an offence against human well-being, so ‘stay at home and save the world’. ✿When you want to make contact with distant friends and family, do so electronically. ✿When you make tea, put only just enough water in the electric kettle to fill the cup. ✿When you cook, think about the calories under the pot, as well as those in the pot. ✿For millennia humanity survived on oil lamps and candles; we still do. ✿You have become profligate in your use of light. So turn out the lights whenever you can. Uses the smallest bulbs, and a torch. ✿Use the smallest screen you can, when not using it, turn it off. ✿“Being too clean is not very green.” You don’t need a steaming hot bath every day! Once a week is enough. You won’t ‘smell’ ✿All manufactured objects bear the energy cost of making them, so mend them again and again until they drop. ✿Remember, the height of fashion is beautifully repaired rags.
The advertising evil
The editor recently asked [20] "Should we attack advertising?” In a world which is fast outgrowing its resources and heating danger- ously, it has to be recognized as public enemy number one, since its sole purpose is to increase unnecessary consumption, ever increasing luxury, and usually also CO2 production — in order to make money. This is quite apart from its dire role in particular diseases, such as those of smoking, commerciogenic malnutri- tion and the obesity pandemic, which the recent series of articles on obesity badly touch on [100] [101] [102] The purpose of ad- vertising is the artificial creation of want, which marketing can then fill. The evil in this scientifically devised manipulation of human behavior is still largely unrecognized — but not quite as unrecognized as the Hardinian taboo. Thus the Rory Sutherland, President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, while admitting that even marketing raises enormous ethical questions, preferred to be thought of as “evil rather than useless.” [103] This evil must now be massively taxed — the greater the unnec- essary CO2 production the greater the tax, as for example, on a weekend breaks by air. Global heating being what it is likely to become, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that human survival spends on control of advertising. It is here that Chinese methods of social control have their attractions .[104]
Rebranding the eschaton - the σχατον
If humanity is to act rationally to the greatest threat before it — that the global heating, should it reach 6°C and end civilization as we know it – that threat must be appropriately named and articulated. To the ancient Greeks the end of all things was the ‘eschaton’— the σχατον. [105] This now needs a modern interpretation’ It is more than mere ‘sustainability’, because it has to include the consequences of sustainability not being achieved. Meanwhile, there are competing concepts which claim to make it invalid. One is that human survival will be irrelevant, since computers will soon become transcendently intelligent so that we humans can “upload” our minds into machines. Such views have become ubiquitous in public discussions of robotics and artificial intel- ligence. [71] Another is that Christ's second coming will make it irrelevant.[107]
Counselling ourselves and our communities for the σχατον
As the Vice Chancellor of GLUK, I am also both a doctor and an Anglican priest. Should you think that the prayer that follows is the property of ‘our brothers in Rome’, I would remind you that it dates from the 13th century or earlier, before ‘the family’ split up. Its purpose is to add a most necessary dimension to what has gone before. Ultimately, we must stand somewhere, as we care for one another while the earth heats up, fields desertify, the sea level rises, coastal cities flood, oil runs out, and starvation, cannibalism [] and violence abound. I commend it to you as we struggle with the converging catastrophies of the twenty-first century and beyond. [108] This is one way. Other traditions have other ways. All it really means is that the Almighty entered the world and suffers with us — and makes sense of his ever more mysterious universe.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.
Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.
Passio Christi, conforta me.
O bone Jesu, exaudi me.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.
Ne permittas me separari ad te
Ab hoste maligno defende me.
In hora mortis meae voca me.
Et iube me venire ad te,
Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te.
In saecula saeculorum.
Amen
Latin is his mother tongue, and no translation fully conveys its magic, so you will have to as best you can and google for one. I will only attempt a few lines: Intra tua vulnera absconde me. . In your wounds hide me. In hora mortis meae voca me. “...in the hour of my death call me. Et iube me venire ad te, command me to come unto You...” As to who ‘You’ (Te) might be, I reply with Paul Tillich, that Te is ‘the ground of our very being’. [109] After all, this world is but a cosmic Petri dish for the culture of souls.
If you argue “But this is religion!”, I reply “Why not, and what else is there at this point anyway?” We don't understand the very large, the very small, the very beginning, the very end, and the very complex.[110] Whatever science discloses, makes what it doesn’t disclose, even more mysterious. And yet we have to stand somewhere. In Africa, we are all theists. ‘May you have that peace which this world cannot give’. [111]
So what about the taboo on the σχατον? Cosmically, it too is probably ‘a minute particular’.
So why bother? ‘Love’…for the world…
So let's get very busy and save the world! And Africa.
So why not attack it with ‘the blitz spirit’ — to the last breath in our bodies?
So lets make it ‘fun’ — there is no greater joy than being united in so great an endeavour.
So what are the last words — integrity, and HOPEDeclaration of financial interest
We thank Mrs. MacDonald for £50 towards the cost of this endeavour.
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