Lady M. "I did enjoy talking to you both at the BMJ [1]. But we only began our discussions.
Lady M. "When we met last we discussed demographic momentum, or population growth if all mothers decide to have 2-child families (strictly 2.2 children). Would a population instantly stop growing if every mother were to have 1-child from now on?"MHK. "Unfortunately, if a population is young enough, even this would not stop it growing. For example, China's population would continue to grow well into the next century, even if every Chinese couple were to continue to have only one child from now on. [2] This would be even more the case in Africa, because African populations are even younger".
Lady M. "In that case, if a very young population really wants to stop growing to avoid starvation, it has to have 'half/child families' for a period! This would be one child for every two mothers. If only your demographers had faced reality earlier, adjustment would have been so much easier".
MHK. "Let's leave 'half/child families' for the moment, 1-child families are tough enough". It seems to me that demographers are going to have to recognize two kinds of demographic momentum: (a) `2-child demographic momentum' and (b) '1-child demographic momentum'. The Hardinian taboo has prevented them thinking about this.
Lady M. "How practical do you think 1-child families are?MHK. Much more practical than you might thin. In Uganda I lectured several times on entrapment, and 1-child families, and my point was very well taken. After all, it was the editor of the local paper, The Monitor, who replaced my title over my article with his own - "Go for 1-kid families of the [population bomb] will hit Uganda.
The article was apparently read with great interest. In the correspondence which followed the editor argued that the middle classes (which presumably included himself!) should be allowed three, but we forgive him that!
Later in the article he printed this picture from Rwanda showing hands reaching up for food. This is really what entrapment is all about.
Lady M. What about India?
MHK. Here is a
sticker put out by the then Minister of Health of the
Central Government of India, Renulka Chowdhury, in which she advocated
a 1-child policy for India. Her government did not last long,
but that does not seem to have been her fault. What is
interesting is, not that her campaign was short, but
that it was possible at all. There really does seem to be a groundswell
towards 1-child families. Notice the sex of the 1-child!
The poster was carrying two messages.
Look at this piece from Time Magazine, advocating 1-child families in the USA. [23] 1-child families are much less way-out than you think - they might rapidly become trendy.
see also Lady M. "When colonialism ended in Africa wasn't it the unquestioned assumption that all communities would develop, that with development fertility would fall, and that although populations would rise, communities would remain within the carrying capacity of their ecosystems?"
MHK. "Indeed it was. Few people thought that there would be a problem - and almost everyone still thinks so - officially. When I pointed out the severe entrapment of Malawi to Paul Demeny, he replied, I suspect with his tongue in his cheek, to the effect that - "Why does not Malawi do a Malaysia?" - and disentrap itself by rapid economic development?"
MHK. "The point is that Malawi cannot disentrap itself by 'doing a Malaysia', nor - with hindsight - should it have been expected to. Communities which were without such 'starting line' inventions as a written language, the wheel, or permanent buildings until barely a hundred years ago, have a 'starting line problem'. Their economies cannot take off at sufficient speed, to compensate for their high fertility. Their economies cannot provide jobs, houses, schools and hospitals - or exports - fast enough for all the people who are born each year. Unfortunately, if their economies don't develop fast enough, they don't have enough exports. Therefore they don't have enough imports - especially enough imported food - before their increasing populations exceed the carrying capacity of their ecosystems. When this happens they face starvation and slaughter".
MHK. "The 'starting line inventions' appeared in the Middle East 5-10 thousand years ago, and reached Europe two thousand years ago. Europe had reached its 'starting line', and could then slowly develop further. Unfortunately, most of the rest of Africa did not reach its 'starting line' until barely a hundred years ago, when the explorers brought the inventions with them. Everything must be done to develop the economies of communities with a 'starting line problem', but there is no way that their economies can provide the schools, jobs - and exports - fast enough when mothers continue to have 6 children. This is why fertility must be reduced by all possible legitimate incentives and disincentives ('sticks and carrots') as rapidly as possible - while the economy develops as fast as it can".
MHK. "A student asked her professor: "What is going to happen in tightly packed Zanzibar, where the average mother has 8 children?" She was told that economic development would solve the problem - when there is no reasonable possibility of this happening in time. Development economics has avoided the 'starting line problem' - placed a taboo on it - because it is driven by the 'ticking of the population clock' and requires the most vigorous measures to reduce fertility. To this extent the starting line taboo could be said to be secondary to the Hardinian taboo. It might also be called the 'development myth'".
Lady M. "Surely communities with a starting line problem now have the necessary inventions?"
MHK. "A doctor from Tanzania observed that, although his community could change a wheel on a LandRover, they never actually made any wheels. Wheels, etc. have to get into the minds of people, and this takes time. A Ugandan student said to me recently "Give us the technology!" Alas, Africa is a graveyard of rusting factories which have been 'given'. Another Ugandan got it more nearly right when he said: "Where can I buy the second-hand machinery in England to make tomato sauce and envelopes?" This is the kind of entrepreneurship which is so badly needed - but it too takes time".
Lady M. "What about the abolition of debt, and better terms of trade, etc.?"
MHK. "All these are essential, but by themselves, they are not enough for disentrapment".
Lady M. "What about HIV/AIDS?"
MHK. "AIDS reduces population growth much less than you might think. Even the worst AIDS scenario in Malawi would only reduce it from about 3% to about 2%. If there is much AIDS and fertility is falling steeply, then the population might be reduced. There is not much danger of this happening at present, and even if it did, a smaller population might even be an advantage, because Africa's carrying capacity is falling".
Lady M. "Carrying capacity falling! You tell me that it needs to rise?"MHK. "Everywhere I went in Uganda it appeared that soil fertility, and therefore carrying capacity is falling - even in areas which were not being obviously eroded by rain. Look at the figure I was given for falling banana yields in Uganda. The major plant nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium; the minor ones include boron and manganese. In tropical ecosystems these are mostly in the biomass (forest cover) and are continually recycled as plants decay. When this is burnt, the land is very fertile for a few years, after which fertility falls, as the plant nutrients are steadily washed away by the heavy tropical rain. This falling fertility and this 'mining of the soil nutrients' is widespread in Africa. [3] It is not given nearly enough importance, although it has hardly reached the point of being 'taboo'".
Lady M. "Haven't you just told me that, globally, in percentage terms population is now increasing faster than global grain yields? This makes food imports and food aid increasingly uncertain, especially on a continental scale. Doesn't this make falling carrying capacity additionally grave.
MHK. "Yes indeed. Grain prices are already showing signs of rising, and poor countries are already having difficulty paying for their imports".
Lady M. "It seems to me that each country must think urgently about being able to feed itself, even if its carrying capacity is falling. This appears to make 1-child families even more necessary".
Lady M. "When we met at The BMJ, we discussed the 'Foundations of the Hardinian taboo', and discussed the problems of 1-child families. In that list you showed me there were lots of others. Didn't you say that entrapment is hostile to something deep in the nature of your market economy?"
MHK. "Yes, this is driven by advertising and marketing to promote ever more unsustainable and luxurious lifestyles by the few who are fortunate enough to enjoy them - the 'evil is the system'. With the collapse of the centrally planned economies, there does not seem to be any alternative even on the horizon. There is even doubt if the steady state economies that sustainable lifestyles require are compatible with free-market economics. We argue that the recognition of entrapment could be the stimulus for major modification of the market economy".
Lady M. "Difficult, but necessary".
Lady M. "We have been watching your TV programmes discussing the human rights abuses of China. 'Martian rights' try to balance the rights of the individual Martian against those of the Martian community".MHK. "How sensible. China does the same. People who criticize China for its human rights abuses - which are probably much less common than most people think - never mention that in the 1970s China was faced with the dilemma: '1-child families or starvation?' They apply the Hardinian taboo and refuse to accept that China was trapped, and may still be trapped. However, it now appears to be disentrapping itself, not only by its 1-child families, but also by its thriving economy and massive exports, which promise to let it buy whatever grain that there may be on the international market, at prices that the poorer trapped countries will not be able to afford. Incidentally, if China's present growth rate of 1.1% continues, its present population of 1.2 billion is going to double by 2060 - and it has already become a significant grain importer".
Lady M. "In a severely trapped community, is there a clear path between the human rights abuses of Rwanda with no population control, and those of China which some people think has too much?"
MHK. "There is no easy answer to this question. However, we suspect that China will be found to have more or less 'got it right'".
Lady M. "It looks to me as if the Hardinian taboo has 'gravely flawed' (corrupted) the human rights movement in the same way that it has 'gravely flawed' demography and development economics - prevented them from adapting to the realities or the real world".
MHK. "Exactly. The human rights movement fails to realize that rights must be linked to responsibilities, and has entirely avoided the ecological constraints on the human rights that it declares. For example, declaring that a child has a right to adequate nutrition does nothing to make Rwanda, for example, any larger. We humans find it difficult to say anything against 'human rights'. The result is that the movement has now reached the farcical - it now even discusses the human rights of the obese! It is doing a wonderful job in such matters as torture, but it now needs to be 'brought down to earth' - for those rights where the size of the earth itself is a limiting factor".
MHK. "The major task of the human rights movement should now be to help trapped communities to decide which are the legitimate incentives and disincentives they are going to use. The decision is theirs in the difficult choice between 1-child families and starvation. We should be very careful in criticizing the methods that they use, and not criticize them in the way that we have been criticizing China".
Lady M: "Isn't entrapment what your eighteenth century demographer Malthus [5] said would happen anyway?"MHK. "In effect - yes. Modern demography is very anti-Malthusian. Demographers still try to persuade themselves that Malthus got it wrong".
Lady M. "It seems to me that in Rwanda he went a long way towards getting it right! [6,7]"
MHK. "Yes indeed! The Belgians were worried about its population as far back as the early 1930s. More recently they reckoned that it could not hold more than about 7 million people. They had even made a mathematical model which had predicted a population crash in the middle 90s. [5] When its population reached 7.5 million in 1974, they were expecting disaster any day. It happened, not as the starvation or the random slaughter that they appear to have expected, but as systematic genocide. This is generally seen as a human rights violation, and demographic entrapment has been largely 'Hardinian tabooed out'".
Lady M. "Do you think that population pressure (entrapment) was the cause of the genocide?"
MHK. "It was one cause. There was genocide and there was and is entrapment. One has either got to assume that two completely independent processes were operating side by side in society - which is most unlikely - or that they were linked. We argue that 'the normal level of slaughter' endemic in that region would not have escalated in the way it did, had Rwanda not been gravely trapped. We wrote a paper on entrapment in Rwanda and addressed it to Carol Bellamy of UNICEF. [7] When I wrote the following passage, I wondered if I was rational:
"We are thus in a situation in which the greatest threat to the first-born in a family is more brothers and sisters, especially in families which, as in Rwanda, expect to have 8 children. UNICEF has therefore to come to terms with the fact that the greatest threat to the global child is 10,000 more of himself each hour".
Alas, I knew that I was rational, when Charles followed the above passage with:
"We have to ask you therefore: do you accept this or don't you? If you don't, how can you and your staff justify your refusal to accept it in intellectually convincing terms? We and the world look forward to your reply in these pages".
"That reply has never come - it was 'Hardinian tabooed out'. The alternatives before Rwanda were, and still are, either more slaughter and starvation, or a crash demographic transition to 1-child families, accompanied by massive development aid tied to locally agreed objectives - conditionality in an extreme form. This requires the lifting of the Hardinian taboo, the recognition of entrapment by the Rwandans, the demographers, the UN - and the Roman Catholic Church. This dilemma is the centre of the Hardinian taboo, and has never been adequately discussed".
Entrapment is so disturbing, its solution requires such radical readjustment that emotional tension is inevitable, and indeed desirable - you probably should get hot under the collar! The common reaction to any grave problem is to deny it , or to propose some totally impracticable solutions , such as colonizing Mars (Besides Lady M may not want us!) The problem needs vigorous (and often heated discussion) what we call 'benign uproar'. The alternative is what we call 'malignant uproar' - slaughter and starvation (Rwanda) on an increasing scale, particularly in Africa. If it blows your mind...
Lady M: "Oh, dear! How many other countries are trapped in that they are going to follow Rwanda?"MHK: "Nobody knows for sure, because nobody will fund the necessary research. However I did ask Africa's most eminent demographer, Jack Caldwell, how much of Africa he thinks is trapped? He replied: "Most of it except perhaps Ghana" (incidentally, it too may be trapped). I subsequently asked if I could quote him? "No" he wrote. However, in a subsequent letter I said that I was in a terrible dilemma. "Should I act in the best interests of Africa, or respect the wishes of its most respected demographer?" I met him later at a conference. Although he said nothing - I don't think he could have said anything - the taboo felt so tight and there were so many eminent demographers present - he gave me a very warm handshake afterwards. I think I know where Jack's heart is - in Africa!".
Lady M: "I understand you recently visited Uganda, what did you find?"
MHK: "It also appears to be trapped. I was told that land-hungry slaughter had already started on a small scale in Mbale and Kigezi. I lectured several times on the theme of 'You're trapped what are you going to do about it?' They took it with wonderful open-mindedness and rationality. One lady did say bitterly "The North bleeds us dry!" She's right. See earlier in this page
A health ministry official said: "Here there is no problem discussing entrapment...it is London that has problems...our population is our problem...population is just like AIDS...only when people started talking about it did we change our behaviour...we must fight population head-on". Quite incredible reasonableness - how unlike London and Washington!"
Lady M: "It seems to me that Uganda needs what you call a 'disentrapment programme' - urgently. But were you 'telling them what they should do' - that would have been very 'neocolonial?'".
MHK. "No, I was discussing with them what they could do. We must not forget that Africa does not yet have the cultural independence of China. It is much less easy for Africa to say "To Hell with the West, 'we are going to do our own thing'". It is still highly 'colonized' by what the West thinks and sees fit to say and teach".
Lady M. "What are the UN agencies doing about it?"
MHK: "Almost nothing. Because demographic entrapment is taboo to the demographers and the development economists, it is also taboo to the UN agencies, and it was taboo at the Cairo population conference". See UNDP *
Lady M. "What do you mean 'almost nothing'? Surely UNFPA* and other agencies are busy with family planning?"
MHK. "Indeed they are, but only a tiny fraction of what is needed. I once discussed entrapment with an eminent family planner. He put hands to his head and said agonized: "Families must be made to see reality but they must not be forced". The reality is 1-child families or starvation and slaughter. This awesome reality is what the Hardinian taboo prevents us facing, and therefore prevents them facing. I get the feeling that UNFPA is equal to facing this reality - if the intellectual climate of the world will let it. For this 'the dialogue must be opened'".
Lady M. What is the Population Council doing about all this? It has a distinguished board trustees from many nations, and is the Population and Development Review is its 'house journal'? Surely it can get its teeth into entrapment?
MHK. It is 'sitting on its hands' and waiting for disaster - malignant uproar - without even daring to open the debate.
Lady M: "Do you really mean that your demographers and development economists, the UN, particularly UNDP, and the Population Council are going to allow an entire continent - not to speak perhaps of parts of Asia - to follow Rwanda into a process of starvation and slaughter that neither of their disciplines, or the UN dare even mention - officially- although it has been talked about at the coffee tables for 30 years?"MHK: "Yes, that's exactly it! The tragic part is that Uganda cannot mount the disentrapment programmes it so badly needs - alone - without the necessary ideological and financial backing from the rest of the world. It cannot fight something which is - officially - completely 'invisible' to the UN and its demographers. I don't imagine that much disentrapment can be done, for example in Liberia or in Sierra Leone, or in Kivu - at the present time, but in Uganda it would be an unutterable tragedy not to attempt it - urgently".
Lady M. "How much is all this going to cost?"MHK. "I have little idea, so I am going to suggest an order of magnitude - say, 220 billion dollars. This is the estimated cost of the F-15 fighter plane replacement [9] - a single weapon system, and a completely unnecessary one. It is also about ten times the proposed budget of the UN's 'System-wide Special initiative on Africa'", which is to cost $25 billion spread over 10 years. [21]
Lady M: "Surely if you are going to counsel any community to have 1-child families in order to disentrap itself, you should have a 1-child family yourself? This is the premiss of equity, which none of you humans, dare say anything against - publicly".MHK. Correct! Since a 1-child policy would apply to all communities, there has to be a UN policy for a '1-child world', not as a tight target, but as a 'political direction'. If any demographer tells you it is 'screwy', remind him that without it, there can be no UN policy for local disentrapment, despite what China may have ben able to do. The message has to be 'we are all in it together'. Many Northern communities now have less than two children, so they are close to it already".
Lady M. "Do you think that a 1-child world is practical?
MHK. "I did say that it was 'a political direction', in the sense that the WHO/UNICEF movement for 'Primary Health Care' was 'a political direction', rather than a tightly specified plan. Although as many people in a community should know that the real target should be 1-child or half-child families, the short term interim target may need to be two children or even four. Remember, it was a Ugandan editor who wrote: 'Go for 1 kid per family...'"
Lady M. You argue that if the South is to reduce its fertility, the North must curtail its resource consumption. What would you say if I were to argue that Malthus: "...would have been been astonished that for the Ugandans, etc. to adjust their behaviour, the Swiss, the French, etc. must set a good example and practice the one-child family. He would also have been astonished by your implied suggestion that the high standard of living in Switzerland (of which you so strongly disapprove [and where I presently live Ed.] is somehow at the expense of the Ugandans, etc.".MHK. I would reply like this
(i) There appear to be sundry communities round the world which are going to proceed to starvation and slaughter, unless they have 1-child families. Nobody outside that country, be it an author, and editor, or the UN can counsel such a community that it would be in its best interests to have 1-child families, unless he or she were prepared to have one himself. The UN has to treat all countries equally, hence the need for a policy for a 1-child world. If a country decides on it's own (China) that's it own concern. The trapped are apt to reply: "What about you - why don't you have them?" Any discussion of local disentrapment by means of 1-child families can therefore only be done in the context of a 1-child world'.
(ii) The earth is finite, both as a source of resources, and a sink for pollutants. Access to sources and sinks have to be shared - as equally as possible. The limiting sources and sinks appear to be land (and water) as a source of grain, and the atmosphere as a sink for carbon dioxide.
If this is upheld, my arguments hold, if not they don't.
Lady M. "We have been watching the crisis in the Catholic Church with great sympathy, tightly gripped as it is by the Hardinian taboo. What do you think?"MHK. "It seems to me that, whereas His Holiness is correct in putting the greatest possible emphasis on the 'stability of the family', he should deflect his attentions from the condom and the pill to the media. From the age of about 5 onwards, we humans are now exposed, round the clock to a choice of explicit 'bedroom scenes' at the click of a button. The pattern of sexual behaviour necessary for the stability of the human family cannot possibly withstand this onslaught on its norms - the effect on the viewer being: "They do it on Dallas, why shouldn't I?" It is not that infidelity should not be portrayed on the media - Shakespeare would not be the same without it - but it is the 'dose effect' of such powerful and continuous media conditioning over many years that is so worrying".