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Too many bodies The returnand disavowal of the populationquestionDiana Coole aa Department of Politics Birkbeck University ofLondon UKPublished online 12 Oct 2012

To cite this article Diana Coole (2013) Too many bodies The return anddisavowal of the population question Environmental Politics 222 195-215 DOI101080096440162012730268

To link to this article httpdxdoiorg101080096440162012730268

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Too many bodies The return and disavowal of the population

question

Diana Coole

Department of Politics Birkbeck University of London UK

During the 1960s and early 1970s population growth was regarded as anurgent environmental issue Since then the topic has fallen into abeyanceDespite continuing demographic expansion and anxieties about a range ofsocio-ecological problems ndash from the stresses of high-density urban livingto climate change water energy and food insecurity and loss of bio-diversity ndash there is currently scant consideration of the benefits of popula-tion stabilisation or decline Indeed the problematisation of populationnumbers is widely disavowed or regarded with profound suspicion Whyhave we become so reluctant to ask whether we are too many or tocountenance policies that might discourage further growth I identify fivediscourses ndash population-shaming population-scepticism population-de-clinism population-decomposing and population-fatalism ndash that foreclosepublic debate and subject them to critical analysis I end by eliciting signs ofa hesitant revival of the population question alongside the enduringpotency of silencing discourses

Keywords fertility population limits to growth immigrationsustainability

In 1950 world population had recently exceeded 25 billion By 1990 it haddoubled and by 2020 it will have tripled October 2011 marked one amongnumerous demographic milestones on this expansive journey as the 7 billionthreshold was crossed This is in line with conclusions to the United Nationsrsquo2010 revision that lsquoworld population is expected to keep rising during the 21st

centuryrsquo albeit more slowly during the latter part It projects some 93 billionof us by 2050 and over 10 billion by the centuryrsquos end (United Nations 2010)Such an ongoing increase surely conveys an alarming story to anyoneconcerned about environmental sustainability and social wellbeing Or does itI ask why concerns about population growth and over-population have

Email dcoolebbkacuk

Environmental Politics 2013Vol 22 No 2 195ndash215 httpdxdoiorg101080096440162012730268

copy 2013 Taylor amp Francis

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virtually disappeared from the political agenda of developed countriesespecially since the mid-1970s Have they simply forgotten about evenresolved the issue Or is it rather as my analysis suggests that problematisingit has been foreclosed For despite periodic eruptions of concern amongdemocratic publics members of the policy community have been noticeablyreluctant to address these anxieties Even among critical theorists and Greensscant attention has been paid to the topic over recent decades Indeed it isnoticeable that insofar as population numbers are mooted as a contributor tosocio-ecological problems ndash from environmental degradation and loss ofbiodiversity to food and water insecurity or deteriorating wellbeing ndash pre-emptive dismissals swiftly follow

The analysis that follows identifies five categories of silencing discoursepopulation-shaming population-scepticism population-declinism population-decomposing and population-fatalism These are analytic distinctions Inpractice the discourses overlap or work in conjunction the most obvious factorthey share being antipathy to the Malthusian equation between populationgrowth and resource shortages But these are not merely analytic categoriesthey are also profoundly political Each has a distinctive genealogy in terms ofits ideological and professional investments the political interests it serves andthe narratives in which it is embedded The more that key demographicvariables become amenable to policymaking the greater the impact of thediscourses that frame them

It is not my contention that arguments for disavowing the populationquestion are simply specious but I do think they warrant critical investigationDo they offer good enough reasons for excluding population talk from publicdebate or for dismissing certain types of policy intervention For it is widelyacknowledged that more people especially as they become more affluentexacerbate environmental dilemmas like climate change It is also plausible tointerpret manifold expressions of public disquiet as diffuse responses toexperiencing higher-density living yet for whose articulation no politicallyacceptable discourse currently exists In sum there is surely a case for returningto the population question by re-framing it in light of twenty-first-centuryconditions But this will only be feasible insofar as certain historical legaciesand current investments in this contentious matter have been addressed

Who is talking about whom

The focus of my analysis principally concerns population talk in developedcountries The issue of population numbers is a global and highly variable onebut there are some good reasons for revisiting the topic in this context Overrecent decades there has been particular reluctance to pose the populationquestion here yet it is within these regions that the great narratives andoverarching theories of population growth or stabilisation developed Theirviews disproportionately influence current transnational discourses that frameglobal perceptions of demographic trends as well as affecting these trends

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materially through aid for family planning Furthermore many developedcountries have entered an unprecedented demographic phase of low fertilitythat brings the possibility following centuries of population growth ofstabilising or reducing their own numbers From an environmental perspectivethis would appear to be a desirable course especially since it is among theseaffluent high-consuming peoples that most per capita ecological damage isbeing done As the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) acknowledgesmost environmental problems lsquotend to be aggravated by population growthand greater population sizersquo with lsquoslower population growth in both developedand developing countriesrsquo being beneficial (UNFPA 2008 2009 pp 6 19)Rekindling discussion about numbers thus appears timely Yet my analysisshows how a taboo on considering the merits of population stabilisation iscomplemented in developed countries by a policy framework that favourshigher birth rates and net inward migration as a condition of sustainedeconomic growth On the other hand there are signs that the populationquestion is resurfacing suggesting that the reigning silence and disavowal ofthe topic just might be dissipating In this case open and far-ranging publicdebate about population matters is crucial

Population talk in more developed countries operates at three levelsconcerning their own demographics concerning trends in developing countriesand regarding global numbers more generally Regarding their own populationsize first it is helpful to summarise a few salient elements of Malthusrsquoargument in An Essay on the Principle of Population (2004 [1798]) Malthusclaimed that while the means of subsistence develop in a linear mannerpopulation grows exponentially These different tempos reach a criticalthreshold as productive land is exhausted a situation of disequilibrium heassociated with more developed countries like Britain Either populationgrowth must thenceforth be reduced through rational means notably by sexualabstinence or if these lsquopreventive checksrsquo fail more painful lsquopositive checksrsquowill ensue as the unsustainable excess falls victim to famine disease or warthereby restoring balance (Malthus 2004)

It is hardly surprising that such views should have provoked antagonismAnti-natalist ideas about curtailing the proliferation of the human specieschallenged deep-seated traditional beliefs In raising the spectre of excessivenumbers the population question crossed vitalist and religious taboosregarding the sanctity of life and privileging of human life It challengedEnlightenment ideas about humansrsquo mastery of nature and politicaleconomistsrsquo views on the engine of prosperity It touched on some ofhumanityrsquos most fundamental ideas about the sacred life and death as well ason some of its most enduring identities and rituals regarding the familymarriage and sexuality Demographic change entails three principal variablesfertility mortality and migration All provoke profound ethical questionsespecially once the state involves itself biopolitically in their modification

During the 1960s Malthusianism nevertheless acquired fresh resonance inadvanced industrial countries where there was renewed anxiety about a

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population explosion (Ehrlich 1972 Meadows et al 1972 Goldsmith and Allen1972) Despite the post-war baby boom the rate of increase here was relativelymodest but the multiplication of increasing affluence by larger numberssuggested imminent catastrophe The Malthusian alternative between choosinglimits or facing disaster was widely rehearsed New reproductive technologiesand feminist challenges to conventional gender roles seemed to makepopulation stabilisation more viable yet the task of restoring equilibriumbetween population and environment seemed no less difficult given predilec-tions for sustained economic growth Reducing population neverthelessbecame integral to an environmental sensibility that mobilised new socialmovements and found common cause with new left critiques of consumercapitalism (Marcuse 1964 1972) Limits-to-growth arguments accordinglyprovided the framework for a radical discourse in which economic andpopulation growth were recognised as mutually reinforcing and equallyexponential thus exceeding the capacities of a finite planet Restoring balancesuggested a fundamental social transformation in which fewer people might usetechnology creatively to improve the quality of lives sustained by less toilwasteful consumption or excessive reproduction but enriched by a moreharmonious relationship with nature By 1969 even President Richard Nixonwas warning Congress that the domestic pressure of 200 million Americans wasthreatening democracy and education privacy and living space naturalresources and the quality of the environment (Nixon 2006 pp 775 777)Official reports to both the American (1972) and British (1973) governmentsadvised stabilising population numbers in the national interest Yet this anti-growth orientation would shortly fall into abeyance with the very language oflimits or constraint being rejected

On a second level developed countries express concern about populationgrowth in developing countries where most increase now occurs I want toemphasise here the way this concern rebounded to reframe their own views on thepopulation question On the one hand radical arguments for controlling fertilityin economically advanced nations were complemented by support for populationcontrol policies in the global South where they provoked accusations of racismMy account of population-shaming shows how third-world suspicion about first-world motives rebounded to render the topic uncongenial to democratic publicsOn the other hand while many governments in developing countries still struggleto contain their burgeoning populations (United Nations 2011) new anti-Malthusian discourses in developed countries are helping to reframe their viewsthanks to the circulation of transnational discourses through bodies like theUnitedNations orWorld Bank and via non-governmental organisations (NGOs)and academic currencies So even here the epic story of runaway populationgrowth that formerly galvanised efforts at fertility reduction has become muteddespite regional demographic differences discursive frameworks are increasinglyglobal and hegemonic

Finally there are more generic concerns within developed countries aboutthe effects of world population growth on the global environment It is in this

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context of sustainability that renewed anxieties have recently been expressed inreports I classify as population-fatalist These generally recognise that themultiplication of relatively small but expanding ecological footprints in poorcountries plus the larger ones imprinted by richer individuals are collectivelyresponsible for exacerbating phenomena like climate change (Wire 2009OrsquoNeill et al 2010) As the Living Planet Report 2008 concludes lsquowith theworld already in ecological overshoot continued growth in population and perperson footprint is clearly not a sustainable pathrsquo (WWF 2008 p 29) The AllParty Parliamentary Group on Population Development and ReproductiveHealth (UK) endorses the view that lsquoworld population growth poses seriousthreats to human health socioeconomic development and the environmentrsquo(APPG 2007 pp1 3) Yet while such claims suggest that world populationnumbers are hesitantly being re-problematised demographic solutions areroutinely rejected as too controversial or inefficacious to contemplate

Population talk in developed nations is in conclusion a complicatedmatter because it is mediated by its policy applications in foreign contextswhere wider geopolitical relationships imbue it with intense political andaffective charge Yet this interaction also engenders discursive convergence astransnational discourses circulate thus endowing dominant frameworks withcapacities to frame global perspectives The significance of major worldpopulation and development conferences hosted by the UN warrantsparticular mention here The prelude to each mobilised considerableideological posturing and conflict national policy statements and NGOactivity while they left in their wake important reports action plans andagendas that would frame approaches over the ensuing period Three suchconferences ndash in Bucharest (1974) Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994) ndash havebeen particularly significant to the extent that the name of their location issufficient to identify the new paradigms exemplified there

Discourses of dismissal and disavowal

Population-shaming

Among my five silencing discourses population-shaming is most indicative ofthe poisonous legacy of NorthSouth relations Like population-sceptics itsprotagonists reject claims that there is an objective demographic growthproblem Rather than charging neo-Malthusians with misplaced anxietyhowever they suggest that ostensible concerns about over-population are asubterfuge for pursuing heinous ulterior motives (Furedi 1997) The humus ofpopulation-shaming is a pervasive suspicion that limiting population actuallymeans limiting certain categories of people who are deemed redundant orundesirable Those who persist in advancing such arguments risk publichumiliation for playing a numbers game that is interpreted as a blame gameone in which the worldrsquos problems are refracted through population growthand blamed on the incontinent fecundity of the less privileged whether they bethe poor women or inhabitants of the global South Sometimes advocates of

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

Environmental Politics 205

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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virtually disappeared from the political agenda of developed countriesespecially since the mid-1970s Have they simply forgotten about evenresolved the issue Or is it rather as my analysis suggests that problematisingit has been foreclosed For despite periodic eruptions of concern amongdemocratic publics members of the policy community have been noticeablyreluctant to address these anxieties Even among critical theorists and Greensscant attention has been paid to the topic over recent decades Indeed it isnoticeable that insofar as population numbers are mooted as a contributor tosocio-ecological problems ndash from environmental degradation and loss ofbiodiversity to food and water insecurity or deteriorating wellbeing ndash pre-emptive dismissals swiftly follow

The analysis that follows identifies five categories of silencing discoursepopulation-shaming population-scepticism population-declinism population-decomposing and population-fatalism These are analytic distinctions Inpractice the discourses overlap or work in conjunction the most obvious factorthey share being antipathy to the Malthusian equation between populationgrowth and resource shortages But these are not merely analytic categoriesthey are also profoundly political Each has a distinctive genealogy in terms ofits ideological and professional investments the political interests it serves andthe narratives in which it is embedded The more that key demographicvariables become amenable to policymaking the greater the impact of thediscourses that frame them

It is not my contention that arguments for disavowing the populationquestion are simply specious but I do think they warrant critical investigationDo they offer good enough reasons for excluding population talk from publicdebate or for dismissing certain types of policy intervention For it is widelyacknowledged that more people especially as they become more affluentexacerbate environmental dilemmas like climate change It is also plausible tointerpret manifold expressions of public disquiet as diffuse responses toexperiencing higher-density living yet for whose articulation no politicallyacceptable discourse currently exists In sum there is surely a case for returningto the population question by re-framing it in light of twenty-first-centuryconditions But this will only be feasible insofar as certain historical legaciesand current investments in this contentious matter have been addressed

Who is talking about whom

The focus of my analysis principally concerns population talk in developedcountries The issue of population numbers is a global and highly variable onebut there are some good reasons for revisiting the topic in this context Overrecent decades there has been particular reluctance to pose the populationquestion here yet it is within these regions that the great narratives andoverarching theories of population growth or stabilisation developed Theirviews disproportionately influence current transnational discourses that frameglobal perceptions of demographic trends as well as affecting these trends

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materially through aid for family planning Furthermore many developedcountries have entered an unprecedented demographic phase of low fertilitythat brings the possibility following centuries of population growth ofstabilising or reducing their own numbers From an environmental perspectivethis would appear to be a desirable course especially since it is among theseaffluent high-consuming peoples that most per capita ecological damage isbeing done As the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) acknowledgesmost environmental problems lsquotend to be aggravated by population growthand greater population sizersquo with lsquoslower population growth in both developedand developing countriesrsquo being beneficial (UNFPA 2008 2009 pp 6 19)Rekindling discussion about numbers thus appears timely Yet my analysisshows how a taboo on considering the merits of population stabilisation iscomplemented in developed countries by a policy framework that favourshigher birth rates and net inward migration as a condition of sustainedeconomic growth On the other hand there are signs that the populationquestion is resurfacing suggesting that the reigning silence and disavowal ofthe topic just might be dissipating In this case open and far-ranging publicdebate about population matters is crucial

Population talk in more developed countries operates at three levelsconcerning their own demographics concerning trends in developing countriesand regarding global numbers more generally Regarding their own populationsize first it is helpful to summarise a few salient elements of Malthusrsquoargument in An Essay on the Principle of Population (2004 [1798]) Malthusclaimed that while the means of subsistence develop in a linear mannerpopulation grows exponentially These different tempos reach a criticalthreshold as productive land is exhausted a situation of disequilibrium heassociated with more developed countries like Britain Either populationgrowth must thenceforth be reduced through rational means notably by sexualabstinence or if these lsquopreventive checksrsquo fail more painful lsquopositive checksrsquowill ensue as the unsustainable excess falls victim to famine disease or warthereby restoring balance (Malthus 2004)

It is hardly surprising that such views should have provoked antagonismAnti-natalist ideas about curtailing the proliferation of the human specieschallenged deep-seated traditional beliefs In raising the spectre of excessivenumbers the population question crossed vitalist and religious taboosregarding the sanctity of life and privileging of human life It challengedEnlightenment ideas about humansrsquo mastery of nature and politicaleconomistsrsquo views on the engine of prosperity It touched on some ofhumanityrsquos most fundamental ideas about the sacred life and death as well ason some of its most enduring identities and rituals regarding the familymarriage and sexuality Demographic change entails three principal variablesfertility mortality and migration All provoke profound ethical questionsespecially once the state involves itself biopolitically in their modification

During the 1960s Malthusianism nevertheless acquired fresh resonance inadvanced industrial countries where there was renewed anxiety about a

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population explosion (Ehrlich 1972 Meadows et al 1972 Goldsmith and Allen1972) Despite the post-war baby boom the rate of increase here was relativelymodest but the multiplication of increasing affluence by larger numberssuggested imminent catastrophe The Malthusian alternative between choosinglimits or facing disaster was widely rehearsed New reproductive technologiesand feminist challenges to conventional gender roles seemed to makepopulation stabilisation more viable yet the task of restoring equilibriumbetween population and environment seemed no less difficult given predilec-tions for sustained economic growth Reducing population neverthelessbecame integral to an environmental sensibility that mobilised new socialmovements and found common cause with new left critiques of consumercapitalism (Marcuse 1964 1972) Limits-to-growth arguments accordinglyprovided the framework for a radical discourse in which economic andpopulation growth were recognised as mutually reinforcing and equallyexponential thus exceeding the capacities of a finite planet Restoring balancesuggested a fundamental social transformation in which fewer people might usetechnology creatively to improve the quality of lives sustained by less toilwasteful consumption or excessive reproduction but enriched by a moreharmonious relationship with nature By 1969 even President Richard Nixonwas warning Congress that the domestic pressure of 200 million Americans wasthreatening democracy and education privacy and living space naturalresources and the quality of the environment (Nixon 2006 pp 775 777)Official reports to both the American (1972) and British (1973) governmentsadvised stabilising population numbers in the national interest Yet this anti-growth orientation would shortly fall into abeyance with the very language oflimits or constraint being rejected

On a second level developed countries express concern about populationgrowth in developing countries where most increase now occurs I want toemphasise here the way this concern rebounded to reframe their own views on thepopulation question On the one hand radical arguments for controlling fertilityin economically advanced nations were complemented by support for populationcontrol policies in the global South where they provoked accusations of racismMy account of population-shaming shows how third-world suspicion about first-world motives rebounded to render the topic uncongenial to democratic publicsOn the other hand while many governments in developing countries still struggleto contain their burgeoning populations (United Nations 2011) new anti-Malthusian discourses in developed countries are helping to reframe their viewsthanks to the circulation of transnational discourses through bodies like theUnitedNations orWorld Bank and via non-governmental organisations (NGOs)and academic currencies So even here the epic story of runaway populationgrowth that formerly galvanised efforts at fertility reduction has become muteddespite regional demographic differences discursive frameworks are increasinglyglobal and hegemonic

Finally there are more generic concerns within developed countries aboutthe effects of world population growth on the global environment It is in this

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context of sustainability that renewed anxieties have recently been expressed inreports I classify as population-fatalist These generally recognise that themultiplication of relatively small but expanding ecological footprints in poorcountries plus the larger ones imprinted by richer individuals are collectivelyresponsible for exacerbating phenomena like climate change (Wire 2009OrsquoNeill et al 2010) As the Living Planet Report 2008 concludes lsquowith theworld already in ecological overshoot continued growth in population and perperson footprint is clearly not a sustainable pathrsquo (WWF 2008 p 29) The AllParty Parliamentary Group on Population Development and ReproductiveHealth (UK) endorses the view that lsquoworld population growth poses seriousthreats to human health socioeconomic development and the environmentrsquo(APPG 2007 pp1 3) Yet while such claims suggest that world populationnumbers are hesitantly being re-problematised demographic solutions areroutinely rejected as too controversial or inefficacious to contemplate

Population talk in developed nations is in conclusion a complicatedmatter because it is mediated by its policy applications in foreign contextswhere wider geopolitical relationships imbue it with intense political andaffective charge Yet this interaction also engenders discursive convergence astransnational discourses circulate thus endowing dominant frameworks withcapacities to frame global perspectives The significance of major worldpopulation and development conferences hosted by the UN warrantsparticular mention here The prelude to each mobilised considerableideological posturing and conflict national policy statements and NGOactivity while they left in their wake important reports action plans andagendas that would frame approaches over the ensuing period Three suchconferences ndash in Bucharest (1974) Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994) ndash havebeen particularly significant to the extent that the name of their location issufficient to identify the new paradigms exemplified there

Discourses of dismissal and disavowal

Population-shaming

Among my five silencing discourses population-shaming is most indicative ofthe poisonous legacy of NorthSouth relations Like population-sceptics itsprotagonists reject claims that there is an objective demographic growthproblem Rather than charging neo-Malthusians with misplaced anxietyhowever they suggest that ostensible concerns about over-population are asubterfuge for pursuing heinous ulterior motives (Furedi 1997) The humus ofpopulation-shaming is a pervasive suspicion that limiting population actuallymeans limiting certain categories of people who are deemed redundant orundesirable Those who persist in advancing such arguments risk publichumiliation for playing a numbers game that is interpreted as a blame gameone in which the worldrsquos problems are refracted through population growthand blamed on the incontinent fecundity of the less privileged whether they bethe poor women or inhabitants of the global South Sometimes advocates of

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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materially through aid for family planning Furthermore many developedcountries have entered an unprecedented demographic phase of low fertilitythat brings the possibility following centuries of population growth ofstabilising or reducing their own numbers From an environmental perspectivethis would appear to be a desirable course especially since it is among theseaffluent high-consuming peoples that most per capita ecological damage isbeing done As the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) acknowledgesmost environmental problems lsquotend to be aggravated by population growthand greater population sizersquo with lsquoslower population growth in both developedand developing countriesrsquo being beneficial (UNFPA 2008 2009 pp 6 19)Rekindling discussion about numbers thus appears timely Yet my analysisshows how a taboo on considering the merits of population stabilisation iscomplemented in developed countries by a policy framework that favourshigher birth rates and net inward migration as a condition of sustainedeconomic growth On the other hand there are signs that the populationquestion is resurfacing suggesting that the reigning silence and disavowal ofthe topic just might be dissipating In this case open and far-ranging publicdebate about population matters is crucial

Population talk in more developed countries operates at three levelsconcerning their own demographics concerning trends in developing countriesand regarding global numbers more generally Regarding their own populationsize first it is helpful to summarise a few salient elements of Malthusrsquoargument in An Essay on the Principle of Population (2004 [1798]) Malthusclaimed that while the means of subsistence develop in a linear mannerpopulation grows exponentially These different tempos reach a criticalthreshold as productive land is exhausted a situation of disequilibrium heassociated with more developed countries like Britain Either populationgrowth must thenceforth be reduced through rational means notably by sexualabstinence or if these lsquopreventive checksrsquo fail more painful lsquopositive checksrsquowill ensue as the unsustainable excess falls victim to famine disease or warthereby restoring balance (Malthus 2004)

It is hardly surprising that such views should have provoked antagonismAnti-natalist ideas about curtailing the proliferation of the human specieschallenged deep-seated traditional beliefs In raising the spectre of excessivenumbers the population question crossed vitalist and religious taboosregarding the sanctity of life and privileging of human life It challengedEnlightenment ideas about humansrsquo mastery of nature and politicaleconomistsrsquo views on the engine of prosperity It touched on some ofhumanityrsquos most fundamental ideas about the sacred life and death as well ason some of its most enduring identities and rituals regarding the familymarriage and sexuality Demographic change entails three principal variablesfertility mortality and migration All provoke profound ethical questionsespecially once the state involves itself biopolitically in their modification

During the 1960s Malthusianism nevertheless acquired fresh resonance inadvanced industrial countries where there was renewed anxiety about a

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population explosion (Ehrlich 1972 Meadows et al 1972 Goldsmith and Allen1972) Despite the post-war baby boom the rate of increase here was relativelymodest but the multiplication of increasing affluence by larger numberssuggested imminent catastrophe The Malthusian alternative between choosinglimits or facing disaster was widely rehearsed New reproductive technologiesand feminist challenges to conventional gender roles seemed to makepopulation stabilisation more viable yet the task of restoring equilibriumbetween population and environment seemed no less difficult given predilec-tions for sustained economic growth Reducing population neverthelessbecame integral to an environmental sensibility that mobilised new socialmovements and found common cause with new left critiques of consumercapitalism (Marcuse 1964 1972) Limits-to-growth arguments accordinglyprovided the framework for a radical discourse in which economic andpopulation growth were recognised as mutually reinforcing and equallyexponential thus exceeding the capacities of a finite planet Restoring balancesuggested a fundamental social transformation in which fewer people might usetechnology creatively to improve the quality of lives sustained by less toilwasteful consumption or excessive reproduction but enriched by a moreharmonious relationship with nature By 1969 even President Richard Nixonwas warning Congress that the domestic pressure of 200 million Americans wasthreatening democracy and education privacy and living space naturalresources and the quality of the environment (Nixon 2006 pp 775 777)Official reports to both the American (1972) and British (1973) governmentsadvised stabilising population numbers in the national interest Yet this anti-growth orientation would shortly fall into abeyance with the very language oflimits or constraint being rejected

On a second level developed countries express concern about populationgrowth in developing countries where most increase now occurs I want toemphasise here the way this concern rebounded to reframe their own views on thepopulation question On the one hand radical arguments for controlling fertilityin economically advanced nations were complemented by support for populationcontrol policies in the global South where they provoked accusations of racismMy account of population-shaming shows how third-world suspicion about first-world motives rebounded to render the topic uncongenial to democratic publicsOn the other hand while many governments in developing countries still struggleto contain their burgeoning populations (United Nations 2011) new anti-Malthusian discourses in developed countries are helping to reframe their viewsthanks to the circulation of transnational discourses through bodies like theUnitedNations orWorld Bank and via non-governmental organisations (NGOs)and academic currencies So even here the epic story of runaway populationgrowth that formerly galvanised efforts at fertility reduction has become muteddespite regional demographic differences discursive frameworks are increasinglyglobal and hegemonic

Finally there are more generic concerns within developed countries aboutthe effects of world population growth on the global environment It is in this

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context of sustainability that renewed anxieties have recently been expressed inreports I classify as population-fatalist These generally recognise that themultiplication of relatively small but expanding ecological footprints in poorcountries plus the larger ones imprinted by richer individuals are collectivelyresponsible for exacerbating phenomena like climate change (Wire 2009OrsquoNeill et al 2010) As the Living Planet Report 2008 concludes lsquowith theworld already in ecological overshoot continued growth in population and perperson footprint is clearly not a sustainable pathrsquo (WWF 2008 p 29) The AllParty Parliamentary Group on Population Development and ReproductiveHealth (UK) endorses the view that lsquoworld population growth poses seriousthreats to human health socioeconomic development and the environmentrsquo(APPG 2007 pp1 3) Yet while such claims suggest that world populationnumbers are hesitantly being re-problematised demographic solutions areroutinely rejected as too controversial or inefficacious to contemplate

Population talk in developed nations is in conclusion a complicatedmatter because it is mediated by its policy applications in foreign contextswhere wider geopolitical relationships imbue it with intense political andaffective charge Yet this interaction also engenders discursive convergence astransnational discourses circulate thus endowing dominant frameworks withcapacities to frame global perspectives The significance of major worldpopulation and development conferences hosted by the UN warrantsparticular mention here The prelude to each mobilised considerableideological posturing and conflict national policy statements and NGOactivity while they left in their wake important reports action plans andagendas that would frame approaches over the ensuing period Three suchconferences ndash in Bucharest (1974) Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994) ndash havebeen particularly significant to the extent that the name of their location issufficient to identify the new paradigms exemplified there

Discourses of dismissal and disavowal

Population-shaming

Among my five silencing discourses population-shaming is most indicative ofthe poisonous legacy of NorthSouth relations Like population-sceptics itsprotagonists reject claims that there is an objective demographic growthproblem Rather than charging neo-Malthusians with misplaced anxietyhowever they suggest that ostensible concerns about over-population are asubterfuge for pursuing heinous ulterior motives (Furedi 1997) The humus ofpopulation-shaming is a pervasive suspicion that limiting population actuallymeans limiting certain categories of people who are deemed redundant orundesirable Those who persist in advancing such arguments risk publichumiliation for playing a numbers game that is interpreted as a blame gameone in which the worldrsquos problems are refracted through population growthand blamed on the incontinent fecundity of the less privileged whether they bethe poor women or inhabitants of the global South Sometimes advocates of

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

Environmental Politics 205

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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population explosion (Ehrlich 1972 Meadows et al 1972 Goldsmith and Allen1972) Despite the post-war baby boom the rate of increase here was relativelymodest but the multiplication of increasing affluence by larger numberssuggested imminent catastrophe The Malthusian alternative between choosinglimits or facing disaster was widely rehearsed New reproductive technologiesand feminist challenges to conventional gender roles seemed to makepopulation stabilisation more viable yet the task of restoring equilibriumbetween population and environment seemed no less difficult given predilec-tions for sustained economic growth Reducing population neverthelessbecame integral to an environmental sensibility that mobilised new socialmovements and found common cause with new left critiques of consumercapitalism (Marcuse 1964 1972) Limits-to-growth arguments accordinglyprovided the framework for a radical discourse in which economic andpopulation growth were recognised as mutually reinforcing and equallyexponential thus exceeding the capacities of a finite planet Restoring balancesuggested a fundamental social transformation in which fewer people might usetechnology creatively to improve the quality of lives sustained by less toilwasteful consumption or excessive reproduction but enriched by a moreharmonious relationship with nature By 1969 even President Richard Nixonwas warning Congress that the domestic pressure of 200 million Americans wasthreatening democracy and education privacy and living space naturalresources and the quality of the environment (Nixon 2006 pp 775 777)Official reports to both the American (1972) and British (1973) governmentsadvised stabilising population numbers in the national interest Yet this anti-growth orientation would shortly fall into abeyance with the very language oflimits or constraint being rejected

On a second level developed countries express concern about populationgrowth in developing countries where most increase now occurs I want toemphasise here the way this concern rebounded to reframe their own views on thepopulation question On the one hand radical arguments for controlling fertilityin economically advanced nations were complemented by support for populationcontrol policies in the global South where they provoked accusations of racismMy account of population-shaming shows how third-world suspicion about first-world motives rebounded to render the topic uncongenial to democratic publicsOn the other hand while many governments in developing countries still struggleto contain their burgeoning populations (United Nations 2011) new anti-Malthusian discourses in developed countries are helping to reframe their viewsthanks to the circulation of transnational discourses through bodies like theUnitedNations orWorld Bank and via non-governmental organisations (NGOs)and academic currencies So even here the epic story of runaway populationgrowth that formerly galvanised efforts at fertility reduction has become muteddespite regional demographic differences discursive frameworks are increasinglyglobal and hegemonic

Finally there are more generic concerns within developed countries aboutthe effects of world population growth on the global environment It is in this

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context of sustainability that renewed anxieties have recently been expressed inreports I classify as population-fatalist These generally recognise that themultiplication of relatively small but expanding ecological footprints in poorcountries plus the larger ones imprinted by richer individuals are collectivelyresponsible for exacerbating phenomena like climate change (Wire 2009OrsquoNeill et al 2010) As the Living Planet Report 2008 concludes lsquowith theworld already in ecological overshoot continued growth in population and perperson footprint is clearly not a sustainable pathrsquo (WWF 2008 p 29) The AllParty Parliamentary Group on Population Development and ReproductiveHealth (UK) endorses the view that lsquoworld population growth poses seriousthreats to human health socioeconomic development and the environmentrsquo(APPG 2007 pp1 3) Yet while such claims suggest that world populationnumbers are hesitantly being re-problematised demographic solutions areroutinely rejected as too controversial or inefficacious to contemplate

Population talk in developed nations is in conclusion a complicatedmatter because it is mediated by its policy applications in foreign contextswhere wider geopolitical relationships imbue it with intense political andaffective charge Yet this interaction also engenders discursive convergence astransnational discourses circulate thus endowing dominant frameworks withcapacities to frame global perspectives The significance of major worldpopulation and development conferences hosted by the UN warrantsparticular mention here The prelude to each mobilised considerableideological posturing and conflict national policy statements and NGOactivity while they left in their wake important reports action plans andagendas that would frame approaches over the ensuing period Three suchconferences ndash in Bucharest (1974) Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994) ndash havebeen particularly significant to the extent that the name of their location issufficient to identify the new paradigms exemplified there

Discourses of dismissal and disavowal

Population-shaming

Among my five silencing discourses population-shaming is most indicative ofthe poisonous legacy of NorthSouth relations Like population-sceptics itsprotagonists reject claims that there is an objective demographic growthproblem Rather than charging neo-Malthusians with misplaced anxietyhowever they suggest that ostensible concerns about over-population are asubterfuge for pursuing heinous ulterior motives (Furedi 1997) The humus ofpopulation-shaming is a pervasive suspicion that limiting population actuallymeans limiting certain categories of people who are deemed redundant orundesirable Those who persist in advancing such arguments risk publichumiliation for playing a numbers game that is interpreted as a blame gameone in which the worldrsquos problems are refracted through population growthand blamed on the incontinent fecundity of the less privileged whether they bethe poor women or inhabitants of the global South Sometimes advocates of

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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context of sustainability that renewed anxieties have recently been expressed inreports I classify as population-fatalist These generally recognise that themultiplication of relatively small but expanding ecological footprints in poorcountries plus the larger ones imprinted by richer individuals are collectivelyresponsible for exacerbating phenomena like climate change (Wire 2009OrsquoNeill et al 2010) As the Living Planet Report 2008 concludes lsquowith theworld already in ecological overshoot continued growth in population and perperson footprint is clearly not a sustainable pathrsquo (WWF 2008 p 29) The AllParty Parliamentary Group on Population Development and ReproductiveHealth (UK) endorses the view that lsquoworld population growth poses seriousthreats to human health socioeconomic development and the environmentrsquo(APPG 2007 pp1 3) Yet while such claims suggest that world populationnumbers are hesitantly being re-problematised demographic solutions areroutinely rejected as too controversial or inefficacious to contemplate

Population talk in developed nations is in conclusion a complicatedmatter because it is mediated by its policy applications in foreign contextswhere wider geopolitical relationships imbue it with intense political andaffective charge Yet this interaction also engenders discursive convergence astransnational discourses circulate thus endowing dominant frameworks withcapacities to frame global perspectives The significance of major worldpopulation and development conferences hosted by the UN warrantsparticular mention here The prelude to each mobilised considerableideological posturing and conflict national policy statements and NGOactivity while they left in their wake important reports action plans andagendas that would frame approaches over the ensuing period Three suchconferences ndash in Bucharest (1974) Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994) ndash havebeen particularly significant to the extent that the name of their location issufficient to identify the new paradigms exemplified there

Discourses of dismissal and disavowal

Population-shaming

Among my five silencing discourses population-shaming is most indicative ofthe poisonous legacy of NorthSouth relations Like population-sceptics itsprotagonists reject claims that there is an objective demographic growthproblem Rather than charging neo-Malthusians with misplaced anxietyhowever they suggest that ostensible concerns about over-population are asubterfuge for pursuing heinous ulterior motives (Furedi 1997) The humus ofpopulation-shaming is a pervasive suspicion that limiting population actuallymeans limiting certain categories of people who are deemed redundant orundesirable Those who persist in advancing such arguments risk publichumiliation for playing a numbers game that is interpreted as a blame gameone in which the worldrsquos problems are refracted through population growthand blamed on the incontinent fecundity of the less privileged whether they bethe poor women or inhabitants of the global South Sometimes advocates of

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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population stabilisation are presented as misanthropic people-haters as whenMurray Bookchin (1991 p 123) asserts that deep ecology lsquoblames lsquolsquoHumanityrsquorsquoas such for the ecological crisis ndash especially ordinary lsquolsquoconsumersrsquorsquo andlsquolsquobreeders of childrenrsquorsquorsquo Sometimes they are charged with misogyny inasmuchas womenrsquos fertility is blamed for under-development or family planningprogrammes are credited with promulgating unsafe contraceptive procedures(Hartmann 1987 Rao 2004) But the most serious charge concerns racismlinked here to colonialism eugenics and genocide As an article in the NewStatesman (2004) states lsquoWe dare not discuss population growth lest we becalled racistrsquo But why is this association so pervasive Are environmental orwellbeing arguments for reducing future numbers necessarily even ifunintentionally racist Or is the connection a contingent one embedded inparticular histories

In order to trace the genealogy of this association analysis of a briefdiscussion in Hardt and Negrirsquos book Multitude is instructive (2004 pp 165ndash167) The relevant discussion occurs in chapter 22 where it concludes a sub-section entitled lsquoGlobal Apartheidrsquo lsquoFinallyrsquo they write lsquowe should add as ina sinister cookbook one final ingredientrsquo that completes the global topographyof power and exploitation lsquoMost discussions of demographic explosions andpopulation crises are not really oriented toward either bettering the lives ofthe poor or maintaining a sustainable total global population in line with thecapacities of the planetrsquo Multitudersquos provocative claims regarding their lsquorealrsquoconcerns rely on strategic signifiers that precis a particular political pastReconstructing this past can therefore help in assessing the contingency of thethree linkages the authors make between population concern and racism

First despicable motives are attributed to population agencies which arecondemned for disguising their real aims through humanitarian rhetoric Thisallegedly hides their true agenda (racism) and practices (coercive) which areclaimed lsquoin factrsquo to represent the dictates of international institutions andnational governments International agencies are charged not only withsponsoring compulsory sterilisation but also with lsquowithholding from somepopulations aid for food or sanitation infrastructurersquo with the specific aim ofculling the worldrsquos poor Multinationalsrsquo lsquothirst for profitrsquo is presented ascomplementary to a broader racist project in which lsquopoverty and diseasebecome indirect tools of population controlrsquo In short both sorts ofMalthusian check are identified here the preventive type being imposedcoercively and the positive kind cynically being left to run its course In thecontext of developing countries they acquire distinctly racist significance

Such charges are not unfounded with India especially commending itself asthe referent for Hardt and Negrirsquos invective Mass famines there had sometimesbeen presented by colonial administrators as salutary checks on over-population Neo-Malthusian views would subsequently persuade the newrepublic to initiate the worldrsquos first family planning programme (1952) but itsoon found itself dependent on foreign aid and mired in geopolitical interestsWhile at home Americans were fretting about the domestic effects of a

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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population explosion on the environment abroad their Cold War anxietylinked population growth to social instability and hence vulnerability tocommunism Following disastrous harvests in the mid-1960s food aid to Indiawas used by the Johnson administration as leverage to insist on a robust familyplanning programme whose respect for human rights was noticeably deficient(Caldwell 1998 Rao 2004 Connelly 2006) These equations formed the basisfor considerable hostility to the population establishment and its Westernsupporters with opposition being eloquently rehearsed by third worlddelegates to Bucharest in 1974 (Finkle and Crane 1975 Hodgson 1998)They interpreted population policies advocated by the US government as neo-colonial and racially-motivated while accusing the West of blaming populationgrowth for poverty rather than recognising the international capitalist systemas the principal cause of under-development

By situating the population issue in the context of the mid-1970s Hardt andNegri invoke genuine dangers of state interference in demographics But theyalso draw on a particularly febrile period when population was a cipher forbroader ideological struggles Because they are unspecific about thesecircumstances they imply that all family planning programmes with widerdemographic goals are coercive and racially-motivated Despite Multitudersquosfocus on the poor its authors ignore the bleak effects of rapid populationgrowth on the everyday lives of those who inhabit slums or the misery ofunwanted pregnancies for those whose need for contraception remains unmet(Davis 2006 Stephenson et al 2010) Nor can they consider the globalconsequences of increasingly affluent populations since ecological concernshave been ruled out as mere hypocrisy

A second association between population policy and racism is made viaallusions to eugenics Hardt and Negri condemn those who are lsquoconcernedprimarily with which social groups reproduce and which do notrsquo For much ofthe twentieth century the project of improving the speciesrsquo genetic stock hadinfluential adherents but by the 1920s negative eugenics entailed sterilising thedegenerate the insane the criminal certain races This policy gained its mostnotorious expression under Nazism as population policy became genocidalThe link in Multitude is undoubtedly reinforced by its authorsrsquo indebtedness toFoucault who explains that treating population as a matrix of different racespermits the state to kill others as a condition of making life healthier (Foucault2003 p 245) In an age of colonial ambitions race accordingly justifiedgenocide while for eugenics programmes killing the enemy was a way to purifyonersquos own race Historically such references remain very powerful Yet againthe link to population policy is specific and contingent It is surely not a goodenough reason to avoid population talk in the current century although it doesprovide a good explanation for our proclivity to do so

In a third linkage Hardt and Negri refer to lsquoracial panicrsquo a phenomenonelsewhere referred to as lsquorace suicidersquo In light of the decline of white Europeanpopulations they argue perceptions of a demographic crisis primarily concernracial composition the increasingly lsquodarker colorrsquo of European and world

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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populations lsquoIt is difficultrsquo they argue lsquoto separate most contemporaryprojects of population control from a kind of racial panicrsquo The term racesuicide emerged early in the twentieth century when President TheodoreRoosevelt condemned families who chose to produce merely two progeny anation that wilfully reduced its population in this way would deservedlycommit race suicide he maintained adding that the differential fertility ratesamong Anglo-Saxons and immigrants might deliver an especially regrettableform of race suicide (Roosevelt 1903) It is indeed the case that populationpolicies have sometimes been motivated by nationalist or ethnic desires toincrease a peoplersquos powers by multiplying more strenuously than its compe-titors But this is not limited to white European populations it is moretypically associated with selective pro-natalism and population concerns arenot reducible to eugenic ambitions especially when it is the affluent who aremost unsustainable

Hardt and Negri are helpful for illustrating how vulnerable demographicpolicies especially those designed to achieve differential birth rates are to racismand xenophobia and how susceptible to entanglement in broader geopoliticalstruggles The warning remains salient inasmuch as such connections haveacquired renewed resonance in light of unprecedented migration flows since themid-1990s In developed countries immigration has replaced fertility as theprincipal demographic variable provoking public anxiety about populationgrowth (UnitedNations 2000 Coleman 2010) with concerns about overcrowdingand the environment again being interpreted as cloaks for racism The connectioncertainly reinforces the sense in which population numbers are an inherentlycontroversial issue But does it not also show why anxieties provoked bydemographic change must be subjected to public deliberation rather than beingsummarily rejected as too shameful to acknowledge

Population-scepticism

Although demography is for the most part an arid quantitative discipline italso has its own narratives and these provide conduits for ideologicalinvestment This section begins with a brief discussion of demographictransition theory (DTT) which is currently the dominant narrative and isresponsible for population-scepticism among experts By scepticism here Imean doubt that there is any longer a population problem since fertility isdeclining almost everywhere In the latter part of the section I consider a morepolitical variant of population-scepticism that suggests population growth isnot detrimental anyway In this case I show how the population-scepticismpromulgated by demographic revisionists has become entangled withneoliberal and social conservative values Both variants of population-scepticism are hostile to an alternative Malthusian narrative In the first casethis is judged anachronistic in the second it is rejected as predicated onfundamental misunderstandings of modernityrsquos capacities for sustainedgrowth

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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DTT comprises one of the great narratives of modernisation (Kirk 1996p 384) As Lee and Reher (2011 p 1) write of transition this lsquohistoricalprocess ranks as one of the most important changes affecting human society inthe past half millennium on a par with the spread of democratic governmentthe industrial revolution the increase in urbanization and the progressiveincreases in educational levels of human populationsrsquo DTT identifies fourdemographic stages that are integral to modernisation Relatively stablepopulations with high fertility and mortality (DT 1) are disrupted bybiopolitical regimes that reduce mortality rates This causes rapid populationgrowth because there is typically a lag before fertility drops correspondingly(DT 2) Thereafter low mortality is matched by low fertility the transitionproper Growth nevertheless continues thanks to the momentum of largeyouthful populations (DT 3) Only in a final stage is transition completed as thepopulation ages and growth stops thereby restoring equilibrium albeit at ahigher level (DT 4)

This account stifles the population question by contextualising it Ifpopulation growth is caused by the second stage it is observed most anxiouslyin the third yet by then fertility is already falling While developed countriesare currently in the final stage of transition exponents of DTT maintain thatmost of their developing counterparts are advancing through the third stageand all are expected to follow suit There is indeed considerable empiricalevidence supporting fertility transition and the theory is useful for classifyingthe demographic situation in particular locations It is nonetheless worthmaking some critical observations about the theoryrsquos predictive powers and itsrelevance for the future given that transition is routinely cited to justifydemographic complacency

Critical theorists will recognise that DTT exemplifies modern grandnarrative structure (Szreter 1993 Greenhalgh 1996) its rhythm of two phasesof equilibrium punctuated by a hiatus being typical of such narratives Itclaims universal applicability but European experience provides its templateand ideal A problem arises insofar as diverse transitional patterns are classi-fied as manifestations of a deterministic mechanism guaranteeing thattransition will everywhere be completed This greatly enhances the scepticalpotency of the theory but like other modern end-of-history arguments it relieson dubious teleological assumptions to inflate its predictive claims Forexample DTT presupposes that secular Western attitudes to contraceptionand family size will prevail yet it is by no means certain that this can be reliedupon in a multicultural world in which religious patriarchal cultures aregaining relative demographic advantage (Norris and Inglehart 2004 Kauf-mann 2010) It assumes there is no Malthusian trap whereby high fertilityforecloses opportunities for development for example by suppressing capitalaccumulation

While current projections are broadly congruent with DTT expectationsthis is unsurprising inasmuch as projections must extrapolate from currenttrends a practice that relies on assumptions themselves furnished by DTT

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

Environmental Politics 209

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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optimism Projections lsquomust not be confused with current realityrsquo preciselybecause their lsquoassumptions reflect the spirit of the era in which they are framedTo them are transmitted its hopes and fearsrsquo (Le Bras 2008 p153 van de Kaa1996 ONS 2008 pp 23 24) Their uncertainty is indicated by the productionof several variants So while the UNrsquos oft-cited medium variant for 2100 is 101billion this increases to 27 billion were 2005ndash10 fertility rates to remainconstant (United Nations 2010 p 1) In short there are no guarantees thatfertility will decline universally or irreversibly Ironically since worldwidecompletion of transition relies on contingent factors such as the willingness ofinternational donors to fund family planning programmes population-scepticism helps to disincentivise the very policies fertility decline depends onand to challenge projectionsrsquo accuracy

Let us assume however that population does stabilise around 10 billion orperhaps declines thereafter Would this be a good enough reason for dismissingpopulation growth anxieties as sceptics do Might environmentalists not stillwonder whether such levels are sustainable or desirable especially whencoupled with aspirations for global economic development and equity and inlight of current ecological challenges Should those who currently urge pro-natalist policies in order to increase the post-transitional birth rate as a driverof economic growth not be challenged to justify their arguments in relation tothe longer-term wellbeing of future generations and the planet There is animportant distinction here between scepticism levelled at the prospect ofcontinuing demographic growth and normative doubts regarding the socialbenefits of living at thickening densities Yet it is partly to suppress suchreflections on the merits of returning to smaller populations I now suggestthat population-scepticism has been embraced by neoliberals as an antidote tolimits-to-growth arguments

An excellent place to start disentangling this political dimension ofpopulation-scepticism is the lsquoPolicy Statement of the United States of Americaat the United Nations International Conference on Populationrsquo (The White-house 1984) My analysis is designed to show the high ideological stakes thepopulation game had assumed by the 1980s as neoliberal interests invested inpopulation-scepticism Despite developing countriesrsquo antagonism to American-led initiatives on population control in Bucharest many had introduced donor-dependent national family planning programmes by the 1980s because theyregarded population growth as detrimental to development It was in thiscontext that the intervention of the Reagan administration in an officialdocument preparatory for the Mexico City conference (1984) represented adramatic shift in perspective

The Statement insists that centralised targets for reducing population haveno place in lsquothe right of couples to determine the size of their own familiesrsquo (TheWhitehouse 1984 p 578) Such arguments have affinity with population-shaming but with two important differences From the neoliberal perspective itwas EastWest rather than NorthSouth political relations that were at issuewhile the link between population policy and coercion was made from the

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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point of view of the political right rather than left A dichotomy was nowconstructed between coercion and voluntarism the implication being thatreproductive rights are antithetical to state intervention because this is ipsofacto coercive Population-scepticism is advanced here by displacing theproblem of population growth onto a problematisation of the (socialist)authoritarian state

While exponents of DTT are sceptical that population increase remains aproblem since growth rates are slowing the Whitehouse (1984 p 576)advanced the bolder claim that growth is itself a lsquoneutral phenomenonrsquo lsquoTherelationship between population growth and economic development is notnecessarily a negative onersquo Whether growth is an asset or an obstacle dependsrather on exogenous factors among which state regulation of the economy isprimary Such claims are in fact relatively agnostic compared to the fully-fledged demographic revisionism that has become the sceptical mainstay ofneoliberal pro-growth arguments Julian Simon (1977) one of demographicrevisionismrsquos principal proponents maintains that population growth is in thelonger run beneficial for economic growth and the environment because morepeople are a spur to and resource for hard work ingenuity and technologicalinnovation This approach continues to furnish the standard riposte to limits-to-growth arguments bigger populations are held to be sustainable because theinventiveness of more people will endow ecosystems with the resilience neededto accommodate them (see for example Australian Government 2011)

Where population growth remains a problem free markets were presentedby the Reagan administration as a panacea Thus lsquoeconomic statismrsquo not onlyhinders development by stifling individual initiative it also disrupts lsquothenatural mechanismrsquo for slowing population growth This natural lsquocontrollingfactorrsquo is glossed as lsquothe adjustment by individual families of reproductivebehaviour to economic opportunity and aspiration Historically as opportu-nities and the standard of living risersquo it is argued lsquothe birth rate fallsrsquo Thisis allegedly because lsquoeconomic freedomrsquo engenders lsquoeconomically rationalbehaviorrsquo that includes responsible fertility choices (The Whitehouse 1984pp 575ndash576) The invisible hand of competitive markets is thus complementedby a homeostatic demographic mechanism in which economic growth andpopulation stabilisation are felicitously attuned through the medium ofindividual rational choice

The ideological intentions of the Statement were made clear by a lightly-coded attack on the American new left The Whitehouse policy response topopulation is advertised as lsquomeasured modulatedrsquo as opposed to lsquoanoverreaction by somersquo Overreaction (in response to imminent environmentalcrisis) was identified in 1984 as an unfortunate consequence of rapidpopulation growth having coincided with two regrettable factors that lsquohinderedfamilies and nationsrsquo The first was foreign socialism the second involved thecounter-culturersquos alleged lsquoanti-intellectualismrsquo attributed here to anxietiescaused by the Westrsquos rapid modernisation Cultural pessimism rather thanmaterial concerns about sustainability was thus identified as the source of

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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domestic population anxiety This interpretation left the way clear for a lsquorapidand responsible development of natural resourcesrsquo that is the sustainedeconomic growth through technologically-enhanced development that revisio-nists and neoliberals associated with population growth For the radical rightin sum the problem of population growth simply evaporated since in the Westit had been merely a delusion of left-wing infantilism while in poorer countriesthe solution lay in liberalised markets whose congenial effects on fertilitychoices would be complemented by the efficiency of privatised health services

Before leaving this category of population-scepticism it is important tonotice how social conservatism was also incorporated Once population growthhad been discounted as a relevant issue it became easier for social conservativesto instigate changes that would not only undermine support for populationpolicies but also direct funding away from family planning programmes Thedefining issue here was abortion While abortion had been viewed as an integralpart of family planning by much of the population establishment the Reaganadministrationrsquos emphasis on human lives included the unborn whose rightscoincided with its pro-life policy Population policies must the Whitehouseinsisted be lsquoconsistent with respect for human dignity and family valuesrsquoincluding religious values Abortion was now scuttled into the category ofdisrespectful (lsquorepugnantrsquo) coercion lsquoAttempts to use abortion involuntarysterilization or other coercive measures in family planningrsquo it stated lsquomust beshunnedrsquo (The Whitehouse 1984 p 578) This judgement was not merelyrhetorical it had immediate practical implications for family planningorganisations NGOs the UNFPA itself which now lost US funding even ifthey only in principle supported abortion

By placing social and religious conservatism at the heart of Americanpopulation policy the Republicans gave succour to traditional antipathies tomodern contraception and womenrsquos reproductive autonomy while introducingan additional level of value-conflict into a field where secular attitudes hadformerly dominated This opened a new dimension in the population-silencingframe Asking why population growth now attracts so little attention in theUnited States Martha Campbell cites lsquoanti-abortion activists religious leadersand conservative think tanksrsquo as a major cause (Campbell 2007 p 240) Asreligious voices have become more strident in a context of multiculturalistrespect for diversity and neo-conservative support espousing populationconcerns that imply anti-natalism has correspondingly become more risky

In conclusion population-scepticism is espoused by experts who doubt thatpopulation growth remains problematic Here I have merely suggested thatcomplacency is unwarranted because of contingencies and uncertainties But Ihave shown that scepticism also has a more political dimension inasmuch as itis reinforced by revisionist claims that population growth is advantageous aview that is congruent with neoliberal desires for sustained economic growthand anathema to limits-to-growth arguments It is evident that the Mexico Citypolicy did represent a profound discursive shift regarding population trendswhich were now interpreted through the lens of the American new right To

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

Environmental Politics 209

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

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some extent population policy was merely one among several vehicles forexpressing this ideological turn but the links between population growtheconomics and sexual reproduction also rendered this a compelling area forexhibiting new right values at home and for instantiating them in theinternational arena

Population-declinism

Population-declinism is a corollary of population-scepticism in that it is anexpression of the final stage of demographic transition It warrants its owndiscursive category however because it differs from scepticism in twosignificant ways regarding mood and policy implications Its affective tenoris quite different from the dynamic pro-growth bullishness of politicalscepticism A symptom of completing transition is that the population agesThis phenomenon engenders a sense of melancholia and loss connected to fearsof relative decline it is despondent about completing transition Population-declinism is currently powerful in precluding enthusiasm for populationstabilisation because rather than welcoming ageing as a sign that modernityrsquosenormous demographic expansion is ending it promulgates images ofenervation and decay in which the faltering powers and risk-averse outlooksascribed to older people are attributed to whole regions (like lsquoold Europersquo) Fordeclinists low-fertility societies are destined to fail relative to more youthfulenergetic competitors with feebleness in the global economy accompanyingweakness in the military theatre (Jackson and Howe 2008) The remedy is toencourage renewed growth

Such anxieties induce a second distinction between declinism andscepticism While the latter rejects state interference in influencing populationnumbers regarding it as unnecessary inefficacious and coercive population-declinists do advocate interventionist policies Unlike earlier limits-to-growthexponents however they promote pro- rather than anti- natalism alongsideimmigration in order to rejuvenate developed world populations (Commissionof the European Communities 2005 Dixon and Margolis 2006) In 2009 almosthalf the governments in these countries regarded their population growth astoo low (United Nations 2009) The populations of the United States UnitedKingdom and Australia inter alia are all projected to increase substantially by2050 through a mix of natural growth and net migration Yet the power ofdeclinism is such that this is rarely complemented by consideration of whetherupward trends enhance quality of life or the environmental systems on which itdepends (Coleman and Rowthorn 2011)

While policies to grow late-transitional populations are widely justified byageing demographic interventions actually seem unhelpful here On the onehand longer life expectancy inevitably entails more elderly people a situationlikely to persist worldwide as mortality declines It need not be perceived indeclinist terms but not doing so would require a radical change in currentperceptions of older people and evaluations of the good life (Coole 2012a) On

Environmental Politics 207

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er 2

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

D Coole208

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

Environmental Politics 209

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

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915

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4 O

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er 2

013

This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

D Coole210

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

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t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

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by [

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er 2

013

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

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and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

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the other the rhythm of transition and its effects on the age profile alsoproduce an acute if shorter-lived hiatus especially where fertility declinesrapidly In this latter case several decades of exceptionally but temporarilyhigh dependency ratios ensue as the last high-fertility cohort ages (currently thecase with post-war baby-boomers)

This age imbalance will even out as population levels stabilise In additionto ideological antipathy to this latter scenario however the initial periodof ageing does pose genuine if short-term challenges for policymakers andthis is what provokes declinists to advocate population growth In particularas the age bulge moves through the population a lsquodemographic dividendrsquo ofa large working-age group becomes a demographic deficit As this spur toincreased productivity passes the dominant economic-growth frameworkimplies policies to replenish the labour force In practice however pro-natalism is largely irrelevant because the situation will be easing by the timenew citizens become productive Immigration achieves faster economicimpact but it is lsquoa fallacy that higher immigration counteracts populationageingrsquo (Productivity Commission 2011 p 5 United Nations 2000 Houseof Lords 2008) In the longer term both these demographic solutionsreproduce the difficulties they are intended to resolve Because new bodiesand migrants also age ceaseless additions would be needed to service andreplace larger elderly cohorts Yet tackling challenges of more elderly peoplewill only be exacerbated if populations expand and ecological servicescorrespondingly deteriorate The principal danger of declinism is that itoperates within a short timeframe that focuses on temporary fiscal andproductivity challenges yet its demographic remedies are likely to aggravateunsustainability later on

Population-decomposing

A fourth category of silencing discourse combines several normative andmethodological trends that collectively decompose the concept of populationinto its constituent parts Aggregated the idea of a population provides aframework for considering overall size growth rates and density disaggre-gated it is devolved into individuals or households Since the mid-1980s andfor reasons not unrelated to the ideological shifts of the period discussion ofdemographics has increasingly assumed this latter form As a result with thenotable exception of DTT the broad narratives that were previously used toproblematise and politicise general demographic trends have largely disin-tegrated The ramifications of population growth they dramatised and theheroic interventions they sanctioned have therefore atrophied too As aconsequence decomposing population has had the discursive effect offoreclosing the problematisation of population by deconstructing it Talkingabout population as a totality that can be planned and managed has cometo be regarded as not only political dangerous but also methodologicallycrude This is a more elusive discursive effect than the first three categories

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

Environmental Politics 209

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ded

by [

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915

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

D Coole210

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having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

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The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

D Coole212

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

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ded

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er 2

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but it has been effective in disenfranchising the population question in threeways normative methodological and ontological

Normatively population-decomposing has been effective in rejecting lsquothenumbers gamersquo This is congruent with population-shaming and politicalscepticism but this argument is rather different in its aversion to referencingpopulation size as such The numbers game is played by those who worry thatthe mass of human flesh is unsustainable or that thickening populationdensities degrade wellbeing Iconic texts like Paul Ehrlichrsquos The PopulationBomb were explicit about population being a numbers game In light of animminent environmental crisis Ehrlich (1972 preface) defined populationcontrol as lsquothe conscious regulation of the numbers of human beings to meetthe needs not just of individual families but of society as a wholersquo In otherwords reproduction was understood as an other-regarding act Ehrlich (1972p 3f) had concluded that lsquono matter how you slice it population is a numbersgamersquo He was probably referring here to the need for statistical familiaritywith the properties of exponential growth but to critics his work suggested anequation between the numbers game and state-imposed coercion As aconsequence the focus on population size and growth rates especially whenlinked to targets and sanctions fell into disrepute This antipathy isencapsulated in UNFPArsquos observation that since the mid-1990s there hasbeen lsquoa shift in population policy and programmes away from a focus onhuman numbersrsquo to a focus on lsquohuman livesrsquo Policies based on perceptions of alsquorace between numbers and resourcesrsquo are eschewed as synonymous with alsquonumbers gamersquo presented as antithetical to human rights (UNFPA nd p 4UNFPA 2008 p 1) In sum even to focus on overall demographic quantitiesbecomes anathema to personal choice and liberty Reproduction is recast as aself-regarding act

One outcome has been to devolve population issues into matters ofreproductive health and individual welfare entitlements Of course thesemeasures are eminently worthy But the change of emphasis they entail hashelped to exclude discussions about overall numbers while supporting the viewthat population is best approached at an individual or familial level At theCairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)(1994) this woman-centred perspective re-oriented the dominant populationframework as legitimate demands by women dove-tailed with their antipathyto the population establishment One outcome was to bolster population-decomposing and its disavowal of the numbers game provoking criticslike Ehrlich (2008 p 107) to lament the way environmental repercussions ofpopulation growth now succumbed to lsquoa narrow focus on issues ofreproductive rights and maternal and child healthrsquo The focus is in no wayreprehensible but it has had the effect of displacing population growth as aglobal environmental issue Campbell (2007 pp 237 243) cites Cairo as lsquotheturning point in removing the population subject from policy discoursersquo notingthat talking about population became politically incorrect thereafter because itwas perceived as disadvantageous to women

Environmental Politics 209

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

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915

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er 2

013

This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

D Coole210

Dow

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er 2

013

having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

Dow

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ded

by [

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t 11

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er 2

013

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

D Coole212

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

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743

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This decomposing trend has been reinforced by the way aggregatedpopulation numbers have come to be regarded as methodologically andstatistically crude thus further undermining the possibility of advancing (neo-)Malthusian arguments Figures at a more fine-grained level make less obviousheadline news or dramatic narratives Complementing new emphasis ondemographic complexity is a widespread view that population dynamics suchas age composition or urbanisation are more relevant for policymaking thanbroader trajectories of population size This too dissolves narrative impact bytranslating demographic trends into numerous policy challenges Thesedisaggregating effects thus serve to de-politicise and de-problematise the issuebecause as data has been refined the demographic phenomena that mobilisedplayers of the numbers game are occluded

Demography as a discipline has itself moreover become more closelymodelled on economics and concerned with economic data thus sharing witheconomics its own movement away from macro-level approaches towardsmicro-level statistical studies where individuals feature as rational agentsmaking choices on the basis of costndashbenefit analysis Le Bras maintains thatevery branch of demographic analysis has been renewed in this direction overthe past two decades lsquoIn fertility studies the dominant position is nowoccupied by microeconomic models of the familyrsquo based on work by GaryBecker and George Schulz (Le Bras 2008 p xi) Ehrlich also argues that as adiscipline demography lsquohas largely diverged from environmental concerns andthe broad analyses of social structuresrsquo it formerly undertook It now lsquofocuseson measuring and modelling the dynamics of various populationsrsquo a processjudged valuable but peripheral to lsquothe really big demographic issuersquo of theenvironmental cost of population growth and its rectification (Ehrlich 2008 p103) It might also be noted that macro-level analysis was formerly associatedwith structural Marxist approaches that have themselves fallen from grace asplanning regimes have succumbed to more laissez-faire frameworks emphasis-ing individual decision-making In sum the normative and methodologicaldimensions of population-decomposing together help to demolish the frame-work in which population numbers matter and in which society has an interestin and responsibility for sustainable levels This makes it difficult to identifyproblematise or debate population growth as a social issue amenable todemocratic debate or collective action

A third component of population-decomposing is more ontological yet ittoo plays its part in deconstructing population in this case by de-materialisingit As advanced countries have developed service or digital economies and asthe more obviously material costs of industrialisation have become lessemphasised so attention to the material needs and costs of more bodies quaneedy biological entities engaged in physical labour has also waned DianeCoyle (1997) writes evocatively of a lsquoweightless worldrsquo and urges governmentsto embrace an age of de-materialisation This complements a tendency tounderstand social systems in virtual terms with production and consumptionre-figured as virtual flows of data symbols and images that can be regarded as

D Coole210

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er 2

013

having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

Dow

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ded

by [

743

214

915

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t 11

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er 2

013

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

D Coole212

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

having little actual impact on the environment Yet a corresponding emphasison the human capital that drives the knowledge economy detracts from thespace that embodied humans require and ignores the consumer durables ndash likecars refrigerators plastics swimming pools ndash they desire It permits an illicitsubstitution of the idea of sustained indefinite growth for earlier recognition ofthe material limits of a finite planet From a virtual viewpoint there is in thislightness of being no obvious limit to the numbers the earth can sustain or totheir capacity to invent new technologies that will render resources infinitelyelastic and felicitously ethereal This surely rests on a dangerous illusion

Population-fatalism

In a final discursive category the term population-fatalism captures somecontemporary British inquiries into challenges posed by population growthBecause these are testimony to renewed concern about expanding numbersthey are suggestive of a return of the population question They are nonethelessdistinctive precisely because their overall tone is not fatalistic they are mainlyconfident that the challenges of 9 billion (70 million in the United Kingdom)can be met But they are fatalist in treating population growth as a given as anaggravating or critical factor they are powerless to change and reluctant toaddress Instead they identify challenges and calculate abatement costs Thisdistinguishes their arguments from population-scepticism which does not seepopulation growth as a problem population-declinism which encouragespopulation growth to foreclose shrinkage population-decomposing whichdisavows the very framework of numbers But it shares their antipathy to anti-natalist policy and is probably apprehensive about population-shaming

The Stern Review The Economics of Climate Change is a good example ofpopulation-fatalism Although population growth is included as a significantcontributor to global warming there is no suggestion that a demographicelement might be incorporated into climate change policy (Stern 2006 p 12)This formula of neglectful concern has been the hallmark of other recentstudies which prefer technological solutions to controversial political inter-ventions The UK governmentrsquos Foresight Programme has produced tworecent reports in this genre Land Futures ndash Making the Most of Land in theC21st (Foresight 2010) links population growth in the United Kingdom topressures on the land biodiversity carbon sinks urban green spaces and waterthat may badly erode wellbeing The Future of Food and Farming Challengesand Choices for Global Sustainability cites population growth as an urgentchallenge in light of the need lsquoto ensure that a global population rising to ninebillion or more can be fed sustainably and equitablyrsquo (Foresight 2011introduction p 9) But in neither case is there any suggestion that furtherpopulation growth might be tackled The Economistrsquos (2011) lsquoThe 9 billion-people questionrsquo and the Institution of Mechanical Engineersrsquo lsquoPopulationOne Planet Too Many Peoplersquo (2011) follow a similar logic with(bio)technological solutions being proffered for a demographic fait accompli

Environmental Politics 211

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

D Coole212

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollutionrsquos The EnvironmentalImpacts of Demographic Change in the UK (2011) goes further by explicitlyexcluding population growth as an appropriate policy domain (Coole 2012b)Despite acknowledging that lsquototal population is likely to continue to grow at ahistorically relatively high ratersquo in the United Kingdom and that some regionssuffer lsquoobvious pressure on infrastructure services and environmentrsquo (RCEP2011 222 62) the report constructs an eitheror choice between seeking toinfluence demographic change or trying to mitigate its environmental impactIt unequivocally opts for the latter declaring the former not lsquoa good basis forpolicyrsquo because unspecified lsquoobjections on social and ethical grounds wouldoutweigh the environmental gainsrsquo (RCEP 2011 67 68 69) Limitsfurthermore are dismissed as unmeasurable value judgements about wellbeingas opposed to more flexible costed restraints (RCEP 2011 42ndash49) Yet is itnot precisely regarding these normative dimensions that informed publicdeliberation would be salutary

In this regard the Royal Societyrsquos People and the Planet (2012) is unusuallynon-fatalistic It advertises the efficacy of public policy and foreign aid inpursuing the UNrsquos projected low-growth variant especially regarding unmetcontraceptive need lsquoglobal population growth needs to be slowed andstabilisedrsquo and actual numbers will lsquodepend heavily on the population policiesfor the next few yearsrsquo It heeds the interactions between consumptiondemographic change and environmental impact recommending that the lsquomostdeveloped and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce materialconsumptionrsquo It accordingly challenges the economic drivers of populationgrowth by calling for the development of socio-economic systems andinstitutions that lsquoare not dependent on continued material consumptiongrowthrsquo while reintroducing a discourse of finitude scarcity and limits thatacknowledges a declining population can lessen pressure on natural resources(Royal Society 2012 pp 4 5 6 15n1 43 45) People and the Planet perhapssignals a paradigm shift since similar arguments are advanced in UNEPrsquosGlobal Environmental Assessment 7 5 (2012) published in advance of theRio thorn 20 conference It too identifies population and economic growth as theprincipal drivers of a worsening environmental crisis that calls for radicallyaltered lsquomindsetsrsquo if global ecosystems are to become sustainable

Conclusion

I have asked why as the twenty-first century proceeds inexorably towards aworld population of 9 billion plus there is so little discussion of the socio-ecologically deleterious effects of continuing population growth I identifiedfive discourses that together explain why there is currently no politicallyacceptable framework within which population numbers can be problematisedor remedial action commended While they are mutually-supporting in theirsilencing effects two of these discourses seem especially powerful population-shaming because it renders the population question so morally treacherous

D Coole212

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

and population-scepticism because of its complacency and its congeniality forhegemonic pro-growth ideologies I have not attempted to refute sucharguments but I have suggested that they are not good enough reasons forsuppressing discussion about population numbers and the merits of fewerpeople especially as renewed public concerns emerge over resource insecuritybiodiversity climate change and high-density urban living Until the ghosts ofthe past have been exorcised however it seems unlikely that populationgrowth will regain its place as an integral component of the overallsustainability puzzle

Acknowledgements

This research comprises part of a broader inquiry into the politics and ethics of theworld population question I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding thisproject through a major research fellowship

References

All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health[APPG] 2007 Return of the population growth factor its impact upon the MillenniumDevelopment Goals [online] Available from httpwwwpopulationconnectionorgsiteDocServerReturn_of_the_Population_Growth_FactorpdfdocIDfrac14224

Australian Government 2011 Sustainable Australia ndash sustainable communities asustainable population policy for Australia [online] Canberra Commonwealth ofAustralia Available from httpwwwenvironmentgovausustainabilitypopulationpublicationspubspopulation-strategypdf

Bookchin M 1991 Where I stand now In M Bookchin and D Foreman edsDefending the Earth Montreal Black Rose Books 101ndash111

Caldwell J 1998 Malthus and the less developed world the pivotal role of IndiaPopulation and Development Review 24 (4) 675ndash696

Campbell M 2007 Why the silence on population Population and Environment 28237ndash246

Coleman D 2010 Projections of the ethnic minority populations of the UnitedKingdom 2006ndash2056 Population and Development Review 36 (3) 441ndash486

Coleman D and Rowthorn R 2011 Whorsquos afraid of population decline A criticalexamination of its consequences Population and Development Review 37 (Supple-ment) 217ndash248

Commission of the European Communities 2005 Working together for growth andjobs a new start for the Lisbon Strategy Brussels 222005 COM(2005) 24 finalAvailable from httpeur-lexeuropaeursquoLexUriServsiteencom2005com2005_0024en01pdf

Connelly M 2006 Population control in India prologue to the emergency Populationand Development Review 32 (4) 629ndash667

Coole D 2012a Reconstructing the elderly a critical analysis of pensions andpopulation policies in an era of demographic ageing Contemporary PoliticalTheory 11 (1) 41ndash67

Coole D 2012b Population growth in the UK an issue for political debate and policyintervention Politics 32 (1) 21ndash30

Coyle D 1997 The weightless world thriving in the digital age Oxford CapstoneDavis M 2006 Planet of slums London VersoDixon M and Margolis J 2006 Population politics London IPPR

Environmental Politics 213

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

743

214

915

7] a

t 11

24 2

4 O

ctob

er 2

013

The Economist 2011 The 9 billion-people question a special report on feeding theworld 26 February

Ehrlich P 1972 [1968] The population bomb London PanBallantineEhrlich P 2008 Demography and policy a view from outside the discipline

Population and Development Review 34 (1) 103ndash113Finkle J and Crane B 1975 The politics of Bucharest population development and

the new international economic order Population and Development Review 1 (1) 87ndash114

Foresight 2010 Land futures ndash making the most of land in the c21st [online] LondonThe Government Office for Science Available from httpwwwbisgovukassetsforesightdocsland-useluf_report8507-bis-land_use_futures-webpdf

Foresight 2011 The future of food and farming London The Government Office forScience Available from httpwwwbisgovukassetsforesightdocsfood-and-farming11-546-future-of-food-and-farming-reportpdf

Foucault M 2003 Society must be defended London PenguinFuredi F 1997 Population and development a critical introduction Cambridge Polity

PressGoldsmith E and Allen R 1972 A blueprint for survival The Ecologist 2 (1)Greenhalgh S 1996 The social construction of population science an intellectual

institutional and political history of twentieth-century demography Population andDevelopment Review 38 (1) 26ndash66

Hardt M and Negri A 2004 Multitude war and democracy in the age of empire NewYork The Penguin Press

Hartmann B 1987 Reproductive rights and wrongs the global politics of populationcontrol and contraceptive choice New York Harper and Row

Hodgson D 1988 Orthodoxy and revisionism in American demography Populationand Development Review 14 (4) 541ndash569

House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs 2008 The economic impact ofimmigration HL Paper 82ndash1 London The Stationary Office

Institute of Mechanical Engineers 2011 Population one planet too many peopleAvailable from wwwimecheorgcan_the_planet_copeaspx

Jackson R and Howe N 2008 The graying of the great powers demography andgeopolitics in the 21st century Washington DC Center for Strategic Studies

Kaa van de DJ 1996 Anchored narratives the story and findings of half acentury of research into the determinants of fertilityPopulation Studies 50 (3) 389ndash432

Kaufmann E 2010 Shall the religious inherit the earth Demography and politics in thetwenty-first century London Profile Books

Kirk D 1996 Demographic transition theory Population Studies 50 (3) 361ndash387Lee R and Reher D 2011 Introduction the landscape of demographic transition and

its aftermath Population and Development Review 37 (supplement) 1ndash7Le Bras H 2008 The nature of demography Princeton NJ Princeton University PressMalthus TR 2004 [1798] An essay on the principle of population Oxford Oxford

University PressMarcuse H 1964 One-dimensional man London amp New York RoutledgeMarcuse H 1972 [1969] An essay on liberation Harmondsworth PenguinMeadows D et al 1972 The limits to growth a report for the Club of Romersquos project

on the predicament of mankind New York Universe BooksNew Statesman 2004 The fewer the better Available from wwwnewstatesmancom

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