An email exchange with Sir Richard Jolly
Starting in January this Year Sir Richard Jolly,and I have had a vigorous exchange of widely circulated e-mails. The last one is much the best. Sir Richard is Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, and formerly second-in-command at Unicef, and senior adviser to UNDP. See.
Sir Richard finds himself as spokesperson for orthodoxy - the current view that demographic entrapment does not exist. This is the public 'lockstep' position of all demographers (their private position may be different, see Jack Caldwell) all development economists and all UN agencies. I argue that, alas, demographic entrapment does exist.
This is no trivial argument, since the position one takes profoundly influences one's view of the world, and particularly of Africa. It is a true Kuhnian clash of paradigms. Since, when paradigms clash, they inevitably clash as personalities, Sir Richard and I find ourselves in the very unhappy position of being those personalities.
An e-mail from Keith Bezanson, Diirector of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the University of Sussex, is included.
Our arguments here, which are in their original form, apart from editorial notes in in green, continue from our previous discussions.
(1)Jan 20th 2004
Dear Richard,
1. I missed you at the seminar I gave in another department of the University of Sussex (not the IDS), but I was delighted to see Alison sitting at the back - taking notes!
Since I was not in a position to take notes myself, I should be more than delighted - and so would the trapped - if she could possibly send me a copy of her notes in any form, or even the page in her notebook it self. On another occasion I will bring a tape recorder.
I could then add the comments to the discussion, which I attach, having given it a new title.
Provided that the plane flies, I hope to visit North Kivu in March, and lecture at L'Universite Adventiste de Lukanga where I have a very warm invitation from a Chef du Zone there . He was at my lecture in Kinshasa last August on Demographic traps in the Congo? , and implored me to visit him in North Kivu, which seems to be seriously trapped. This I feel compelled to do, whatever the risks.
I have also got a warm invitation to lecture at Makerere on my way back. I never thought I would get an answer from the dean, but he really was absolutely charming.
The guts of it all is...
Does one or does one not stay to one's friends in Africa, that, if they don't reduce their fertility, if necessary to one child only, they are going to end up in a starvation and violence - if they are not there already. I think one has to, and that not to do so it is the greatest dereliction of duty in public health.
If my friends want to lynch me, they are more than welcome!
This revelation (!) has only occurred to me recently, and I regret that I did not say it long ago.
Actually, 'my friends' seem delighted that anybody has recognised their plight, and I have yet to meet any aggro whatever. In the event this message was very well taken indeed
Anyway, what about a discussion at the IDS, to welcome the arrival of Professor Haddad?
I am not sure what one might call it, but what about "Is the Great Lakes region of Central Africa demographically trapped?"
It will be hard to get hold of adequate data, but I will it do my best. One wants a change from the entrapment of poor old Malawi!
With very best wishes, and greatly looking forward to Allison's notes, which will surely be most scholarly! They were never sent
Maurice King
Dear Maurice
He is replying in part to another email inviting him to take part in a Lancet debate
I would not wish to take part in any repetition of the misleading and, I believe, endless and un-productive entrapment arguments, however veiled. As many of us have argued so many times, there is no scientific or historical basis for presenting the options (for population or for other variables or issues) in such a one sided, doom laden manner, ignoring the many dimensions of change and the many lessons about what helps reduce fertility ( and what does not) learned over the past decades.
2. There might be a case for some discussion about the role of population policies in the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the context of HIV/AIDS, of slow progress on many of the other MDGs (especially girls education maternal and reproductive health) and of economic and social development more generally, including NEPAD. Particularly important, would be contributions from people who could write analytically and with evidence about local reactions to population and fertility issues in communities where so many men and women in the active age groups have died or are dying of HIV/AIDS, leaving behind households with disproportionate numbers of older people and young children without parents, all with needs for food and income but typically with insufficient capacity to provide the labour needed for agriculture and the many other tasks requiring action.
This said, I don't have the detailed knowledge or first hand evidence to write about this, nor would I wish to particpate in such a Lancet discussion.He is extremely unwilling to take part in any public debate over entrapment
Richard Jolly
(3)
Ash Wednesday February 25th
Dear Sir Richard,
. Since you decline the debate, I have to assume ipso facto that I have won it! Malthus is indeed active in Africa!
In that student seminar I gave, I reckon I left the students and all three dons severely rattled that their discipline is indeed corrupt. Entrapment now needs the courage of a full-scale institution-wide debate.
The Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, has never debated entrapment, despite the fact that Africa's most distinguished demographer thinks that most of it is trapped! And despite what is happening in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, particularly Rwanda, which is plainly outgrowing carrying capacity of its ecosystem - already. And with populations which are set to at least triple, if not quintruple - starvation and violence permitting.
As the demographer Verena Raleigh put it:"The population scene in Africa is terrifying!"
The possibility of 'development' causing sufficient fertility decline in time, before communities have outgrown the carrying capacity of their ecosystems, in those cases where they have not already done so, is remote indeed.
I have therefor to conclude that development economics and the IDS are intellectually corrupt!
Mercifully, unlike the IDS, entrapment can be debated in Kinshasa, Vanga (up-country Congo), Butembo and Makerere - so far, sanely, rationally, and without any 'aggro' whatever. Why not also at the IDS?
I am therefore going to have to tell my friends in Africa that they are being hoodwinked by a corrupt demography and a corrupt development economics, and consequently by corrupt UN agencies, and that unless they reduce their fertility radically - if necessary to 1-child families - they can only expect starvation and violence - if indeed they are not experencing it already.
This is by far the most important public health message in much of Africa at the present time. To flinch from it can only be considered gross dereliction of duty.
Should my friends wish to lynch me, they are more than welcome.
This is after all the evening of Ash Wednesday: ...pulvis est, et in pulverum reverteris...
So, Dear Sir Richard, for Heavens sake let us discuss all this rationally - and in public!
Remember that over it all hangs a 'mega, mega Rwanda'...
Maurice King
(4)
March 1st 2004
Dear Maurice
If you seek open exchange, you owe it to provide a more honest account about how your presentation in Sussex was actually received - and replied to. You comment that "I reckon I left the students and all three dons rattled that their discipline is indeed corrupt." This is almost the total opposite of the impression reported to me, especially the strong rebuttals made by Michael Lipton and several others to your arguments that Africa was demographically trapped. Your capacity to continue with your arguments regardless of the points made by others who disagree, is a major reason why many of us do not wish to continue to respond.
As regards my own views, you have put on your website my comments on entrapment as set out in your latest book. I would have preferred you to have done this straight, without interleaving your own commentary. And so leaving you poor readers duped!!! But at any rate, people can see my position. I do not wish to add to it.
I would end by repeating,once more, that I and many of your opponents are not saying that rapid population growth is not an issue or does does not present any problems. My position is
1) population growth is an issue but it needs to be tackled along with many other economic and social issues, in Africa and elsewhere.
2) that some of your proposals - like letting children die as a measure of population control - are immoral and counterproductive. Even "one child family policies" , your current emphasis, have a much more mixed record of achievement than you suggest. In contrast, experience shows that rapid reductions of fertility have taken place, in Africa and elsewhere, but mostly as part of a broader economic and human development, which Africa desperately needs.
3) that the idea of demographic entrapment - a once for all entrapment from which there is no escape, once the trap has shut - raises doom laden fears focused on population alone, which is misleading, counter-productive and historically without foundation.
Richard Jolly
(5)
March the 3rd
Dear Sir Richard,
1. If there is still any doubt as to who did win last time let us have a plenary debate at the IDS - something I have long been asking for.
I was hearing in Kenya recently that demographic entrapment is self-evident - yet the IDS has never even discussed it!
When I question its students, they say "Our teachers always avoided that question! ".
I fully agree about the economical and social issues.
The problem is essentially one of TIME - communities exceeding the carrying capacities of their local ecosystems, before economic development has had time to lower their fertility and link them to the rest of the world - the result of this failure being starvation and violence.
The gravest example to date, is of course Rwanda. In 1991 and then Minister of Agriculture George Gasana said: "We have high population pressure and decreasing agricultural productivity, due to soil erosion... we can produce enough food for 5 million people are, but we have some 7.3 million .. .."
I argue that in these communities population reduction has to be attempted urgently by every legitimate means as the only alternative to starvation and violence.
It can only be attempted if it is combined with a drive to moderate Northern resource consumption.
I have just written an article for a Kenyan Newspaper which ends like this.
I have to warn my friends in the trapped communities of the South, that, if they don't reduce their fertility, if necessary to one child only, they can expect starvation and violence, if there are not experiencing it already. Not to warm them is the greatest dereliction of duty in public health . If my friends want to lynch me, they are welcome. I trust I will proceed to my martyrdom with a good courage ! I only wish I had started sooner.
Meanwhile, I am even more terrified by the Northern lifestyles, and am trying to do my humble best about that also. [The temperature in this study is 5 C!]I hope/trust (!) that such a statement is highly prophylactic of not being actually lynched ! If not, not to worry! However, I am told that population meetings can turn very ugly!
The dialogue on 1-child families can be opened in Africa as this 1996 newspaper article shows. I had written an article: "Will Uganda follow Rwanda?" The Ugandan editor removed my title and replaced it with his own "Go for 1 kid per family...". No demographer or development economist would ever say this - nor would the UN agencies!!!
Uganda still has a total fertility of 7.1 -!!! Kigezi, bordering on Rwand is ecologically/demographically part of the Great Lakes ecosystem, and is said to be grindingly poor and trapped. I hope to visit it.
So where does this leave us?
It is no longer possible to argue that demographic entrapment does not exist.
The uncertainties are its extent (seemingly massive) and degree (seemingly grave).
It is thefore pointless to have a confrontational meeting.
So what about a meeting at the IDS called "Demographic entrapment, the evidence, the solutions, the research agenda, and the political initiatives" (it will take us a week!)
I will prepare a background paper, hopefully for publication later, with yourself and others - my name last.
There is not a moment to be lost.
So why don't you have it as soon as I return, Deus volens, from North Kivu in the Congo DR, in mid-April or in my absence, before I return.
I understand Michael Lipton sent his comments by email, I should love to see them.
As always, it the very best of all possible good wishes.
Maurice King
(6)
Sunday March 7th 2004
Dear Sir Richard,
2. I have just had a phone call from... [deleted he does not want to be quoted] who has been observing our debate with the keenest interest, and is APPALLED by the quality of the arguments used to prove that entrapment does not exist.
I greatly look forward to coming down to Sussex as soon as - Deus volens - I return from the Congo and Uganda towards the end of April, where I will have been studying entrapment in North Kivu, where it is said to be grave.
With very best wishes and greatly looking forward to this.
I reckon we have it in our gift to turn, development economics, demography and the UN agencies completely around on the entrapment issue, and we must use this gift to mitigate an ongoing HUMANITARIAN DISASTER of enormous proportions - but we can only do it TOGETHER!!
Remember, I argue that there are corrupt disciplines (demography and development economics) and institutions (particularly the UN system) but no corrupt individuals, since such is the power of the Demons (factors holding the taboo on entrapment in place) that no insider can pull himself clear of them.
This has to be done by an outsider, over a long time, with much good fortune, and since they are Demons, and the evil of maintaining the taboo is of such mind-boggling magnitude, only by the Grace of God.
This is the Second Sunday in Lent "...from all evil thoughts that do assault and hurt the soul..."
Maurice King
(7)
April 16th, 2004 My circular e-mail on returning from the Congo "Depiegeage" (disentrapment) - I was wonderfully received in North Kivu (Congo)
Dear All,
Considering what has been coming my way by e-mail, it was a delight to go to go somewere where one seems to have been really wanted!
I had lectured in Kinshasa last August on Pieges demographique au Congo?, after which a Dr Kasonia Kizito, a Medecin Chef du Zone more or less threw his arms round my neck and implored me to come and see him in North Kivu - which the Belgians had long considered trapped.
It was not easy to get there, but when I did get to L'Université Adventiste de Lukanga (Campus Wallace) - the 'Harvard' of those parts - I got the warmest possible welcome! [a welcome notice, a log fire, a magnificent supper, and a deputation from the senior staff]
Demographically trapped North Kivu certainly is - there is barely a hectare of unused land, or a trace of the original forest - all the trees are eucalyptus for firewood. See
Such is the pressure of people on land that, in the area I visited, they had already been attacking one another with machetes, and burning each other’s villages to such an extent that a permanent police presence is now required to keep order - the violence of entrapment.
Families average more than six children, less than 0.5% of couples use family planning, 90% of children are stunted and until the recent SCF programme 10% had been severely malnourished.
I lectured in numerous institutes superieures and seminaries. There was no taboo on entrapment, nor was there any doubt that North Kivu is trapped. Moreover, the omens seem very good for a change of outlook in the local Roman Catholic Church in respect of family planning methods.
I came away with a project proposal for the disentrapment of North Kivu - Le Depiegeage de Nord Kivu - Le projet DEPKIV, to go to Oxfam in the first instance, and then hopefully through them to the European Union for the larger funds.
The main planks of this project are a massive family planning programme, combined with a programmes of community conscietization, and assisted migration to the central rainforest, hopefully spreading the migrants sufficiently thinly to avoid turning it into desert - after the pattern of the Amazon.
The purpose of Le projet DEPKIV is to avoid the population crash forecast in the figure by the Belgians.
I was also able to at least open the dialogue on one-child families...
On my way home I lectured in Makerere on this theme:
The the 'discorruption' of two disciplines
(demography and development economics)
And the 'disentrapment' of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa .
Again, there was no taboo and absolutely no 'aggro'.
I think it would therefore be useful to consider, that since entrapment can be freely discussed in North Kivu, it can now be freely discussed everywhere else and hence the taboo on entrapment must now be considered lifted - and the two disciplines formally "discorrupted" - in that they can now deal freely with their greatest problem - demographic entrapment!
I am very anxious to repeat the process in Rwanda and Burundi. Anybody know how I could get a foot in the door? What I am looking for is another Dr Kasonia Kizito to take me in hand and show me around - truly a most wonderful person - 'the counterpart of counterparts'!
Maurice King
(8)
From Keith Bezanson, Director of the Institute of Development Economics, University of Sussex.
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: "Depiegeage" (disentrapment) - I was wonderfully received in North Kivu (Congo)
Dear Maurice King
I am in receipt of your recent letter requesting a meeting. It is a request that I am unprepared to grant.
I am completely unwilling to intersperse myself between you and Richard Jolly, which appears to be your main aim. It is not that I do not believe that demography and its implications for development policy is a serious subject that merits serious scholarship and equally serious policy review. Your approach, in my judgement, falls considerably short of these requirements. I find your juxtaposition of issues as a debate between you and Richard aiming to declare a 'winner' and a 'loser' intellectually shallow , demeaning to what could be an important conversation and detracting from any credibility you might otherwise merit. Your approach - again in my view - has the characteristics of zealotry, of religious fundamentalism, of absolute rights and absolute wrongs, of absolute goods and absolute bads. There is far too much of this in our world today and it holds the most serious risks to all aspects of human security.
By this message, therefore, I am requesting, respectfully, that you cease to bother me with your entreaties and that you remove my name from your listserve.
Sincerely,
Keith A. Bezanson
(9)
My reply to Dr BezansonDear Dr Bezanson,
Since you refuse to discuss entrapment or to see me, I have had to approach the Fellows of the IDS, directly
Do you really believe that demographic entrapment does not exist - that a community cannot exceed the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, and have nowhere to go... and therefore be faced with starvation and violence ?
Do you really believe that Rwanda - and North Kivu - are not trapped?
I discussed entrapment with an Asian student from the IDS whom I recently met on the bus. He replied: "My teachers always avoided that problem!"
If a discipline's premier institution avoids its greatest challenge - there is only one conclusion - its director retires in disgrace!
It is curious that the struggling universities of North Kivu, especially L'Université Adventiste de Lukanga (Campus Wallace) - trapped as they are - should have the guts and the integrity to face up to this debate, whereas the IDS has not.
This is a true clash of paradigms. Paradigms focus in people. Unfortunately, Sir Richard and I happen to be those people!
You argue that this is not a win or lose debate. I reply that - alas - it has to be, with huge practical consequences. If Sir Richard is correct, and there is no such thing as demographic entrapment, my colleagues in North Kivu can expect no help from Oxfam with its disentrapment. If open debate decides that entrapment does exist, they might have. It would however be very much better to accept that - alas! - demographic entrapment does exist, and to have the "debriefing session" that I suggest above.
I consider it grave academic dishonesty to try it to fudge away a grave problem, with huge practical consequences, by arguing that it is "fundamentalist" - fundamental it certainly is. Goodness knows, it will be elaborated in all sorts of ways...
If scholarship is at issue, let the fellows examine my demolition of Sir Richard's arguments on the disentrapment website below.
You don't want your letter circulated. I reply that this dialogue has been public so far, and should remain so.
I sense that you are frightened! So am I ! Years ago, Sir Richard warned me that to discuss entrapment (which does not exist!) is to "Play with fire!". I replied that not to discuss it is to let fire burn unhindered. No wonder then that those poor souls in North Kivu, are burning one another's villages, for lack of land on which to plant their cabbages.
It is all scary, very scary, especially since the taboo on entrapment has been held tight for so long. However, in Africa on nine occasions recently, I delivered the following message, mostly in French:
Should one, or should one not, say to one’s friends in Africa that, if they don’t reduce their fertility, if necessary to one child only, they must expect the direst poverty, starvation, and violence?
I argue that one has to, and that not to do so is the gravest dereliction of duty in public health.If my friends want to lynch me, they are more than welcome.
I trust that I will proceed to my martyrdom with a good courage!
Much better, than, say, carcinoma of the rectum!
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Est ce que on devrait dire, ou non, à mes amis africains que, s’ils ne réduisent pas leur fecondité et ils ne se limitent au besoin à un seul enfant, ils devraient s’attendre à la pauvreté la plus extrême, la famine, et la violence?
Je maintiens qu il faut le faire, sinon c’est manquer gravement á son devoir en ce qui concerne la santé publique.
Si mes amis veulent me lyncher, qu ils le fassent en toute liberté.
J’espere que j’accepterai le martyre avec courage.
C'est quand même plus supportable par exemple, que le cancer du rectum !
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To my considerable releif - !!! - this was very well taken, without a hint of "aggro". This is not to say that I will always get away with it, but that I have done so far - I am told that population meetings can get very ugly!
I think that development economics, and especially the UN agencies need to impart this message.
But there is more to it even than this.
The world has only two really major problems - population and global warming, and entrapment links them both.
If the South has to reduce its fertility, to avoid starvation and violence, the North has to reduce its resource consumption - especially of fossil fuel - and its contribution to global-warming.
Since this is such a powerful argument, and since Stephen Hawking points out that global warming could - literally - boil us all, holding demographic entrapment taboo, so as to silence this argument, is a risk factor for disaster of enormous proportions.
You still have several months in which to regain your laurels.
Why don't you avoid any kind of confrontation, and instead chair the "debriefing session" suggested above - after which we can both retire to our gardens with Honour and with our duty well and truely done!
Maurice King
(10)
To the Fellows of the Institute of Development Studies and others.
Oxfam, Sir Richard Jolly, and the "yawning chasm" in Development economics.
Dear Fellows of the IDS,
It is a crisis, because whereas Jack Caldwell, Africa's most eminent demographer, will tell you - privately! - that most of Africa is demographically trapped, the IDS has one person only working on any aspect of population.
If you reply: "We are not demographers!" I answer that the social sciences have no sharp borders...
For the last 40 years I have been proud to have had Sir Richard as one of my friends. For the last 14 years he has been arguing that demographic entrapment does not exist, and thus helping to enforce the taboo that prevents almost everyone - including everyone in the IDS - from working on it or even discussing it.
A community is demographically trapped if, under existing economic and technological constraints: (a) it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem, and (b) it has nowhere to go, and (c) it has too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials.
The consequences of entrapment are the direst poverty, stunting, starvation, and violence.
A community is also trapped, if because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this unhappy condition before long.
Our discussions are currently in crisis, because I have just returned from the Congo with a request to Oxfam from my colleagues there for the disentrapment of North Kivu - and Sir Richard is the principal adviser to Oxfam!! The project proposal itself is on the disentrapment website.
So what to do?
First, you must examine for yourself Sir Richard's arguments as to why demographic entrapment does not exist, so assess them yourself.
A distinguished colleague recently told me that he was appalled by the academic quality of Sir Richard's arguments, but make up your own mind. It seems to me that, in desperately papering over ever-widening cracks, Sir Richard has in fact painted himself, the IDS, the UN agencies, and the world - and Oxfam - into a corner. Looking at his arguments again, they really are incredible....
As an old friend, I am extremely anxious to let Sir Richard down gently - and disentrap North Kivu, and if Jack Caldwell is right, which,alas, he probably is, much of Africa.
I suggest therefore that, since demographic entrapment not only exists but is probably massive, we don't have a confrontation, but instead we have a "debriefing session" in which I hand over my concern with demographic entrapment to your good selves.
I think we should discuss whether or not we think Oxfam should assist North Kivu.
Noam Chomsky has pointed out that England is in many ways "a very intellectually colonised country". No better example of it could be found than the fact the IDS conforms to the largely US determined taboo on demographic entrapment. It is high time that the IDS cast off its American shackles, showed a fierce intellectual independence, and got down to tackling much the knottiest problem in development economics - do we or do we not, allow much of Africa (including North Kivu) to proceed further into the Malthusian starvation and violence of entrapment, without the family planning and population assistance that might at least mitigate this tragedy.
Or do we merely turn our backs on all this - taboo it?
I am delighted to come down at more or less any time to discuss all this with you - together or singly. Do please send me an e-mail.
We are in for some fascinating discussions - badly-needed by a sorely troubled world.
Meanwhile, I am approaching the Chinese for family planning assistance for Africa - including 1-child families, which are badly needed in Rwanda .. ..!! Big problems need a big solution.
If you think that all this is "deliberately stirring it up", I reply that it certainly is, but this is exactly what is now so necessary!
I shall be most interested in what you all do.
Will you, frantically, come to the aid of your beleaguered Knight and Professor Emeritus? My son remarked "...after all the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman..."
Or will you all stick your heads in the sand like your Director?
Or will you face reality fearlessly?
I am in the process of contacting DFID and Hilary Benn, it could be that "disentrapment" will become the flavour of the month ...and your salaries!!
Do please circulate this email.
See you all soonest...
Maurice King
Thought: Do 'yawning chasms' ever go to sleep?
Sir Richard's academic death throes (last agonies)
