TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough’s programmes are
usually fascinating and informative but when it comes to his views on
population control, he is talking rubbish. Reactionary rubbish at that.
“Human beings are a plague on the earth,” Attenborough says
in an interview with the Radio Times.
If we don’t limit “the frightening explosion in human numbers, the natural
world will do it for us”.
Attenborough (president of the Malthusian Optimum Population
Trust) calls for urgent measures to cut population growth in developing
countries: “We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia ;
that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves…”
But Ethiopia
is actually a classic example of why this is absolute nonsense. If the calories
grown in Ethiopia stayed in Ethiopia then
there would be no problem feeding the whole population. But the government’s economic
plan is dependent on forcing its own citizens off the land and handing it over
to global agribusiness to grow crops for export.
The government has a 10-year plan to double the size of the
economy, and this means doubling industrial agriculture and agricultural
products such as refined sugar and leather. This is to be achieved by selling
or leasing millions of acres of land to global agri-businesses.
The removal of a planned total of 1.5 million rural families
to new "model" villages in four regions, including approximately
45,000 households in Gambella province, is well underway. Claims that people
are going voluntarily and that jobs and services are waiting for them are a
pack of lies.
One group of refugees from Gambella is taking legal action
against the British Department for International Development. Britain is one
of the biggest contributors to the Protection of Basic Services (PBS) programme
which pays for corrupt officials and soldiers and infrastructure for the
clearances.
The legal action, undertaken by British
law firm Leigh Day, is being launched from the world’s biggest refugee camp
at Dadaab in northern Kenya
where Ethiopians fled after reaching the “model villages” to find there was
nothing there.
The World Bank endorses the Ethiopian government’s desire to
get people out of what it calls “overpopulated rural settings”, but it admits
that in spite of all this recent growth “the absolute number of poor is almost
the same as 15 years ago and a significant proportion of the population remains
just above the poverty line and vulnerable to shocks”.
It is true that population
of Ethiopia is growing at around 2.1% per year, but that rate of growth is
slowing. The fertility rate, i.e. the average number of births per woman, is
still relatively high at 5.7, but this is also slowing. The rate of births
always increases when early deaths from wars, disease or famine increases. It
slows when things are more stable but it takes time for that social change to
take hold.
As more and more land is cleared of people or of trees and
jungle, and subjected to the intensive farming practices of the global chemical
corporations, so desertification and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to
increase. Famine and hunger also rises, as we have seen.
If there was a fair distribution of food, care and support,
health and education in Ethiopia
and all the countries of the world, and if the people owned the land they farm,
there would be no problem feeding people. This approach would also protect the
eco-system because it would be sustainable.
People are not the problem, Sir David, global capitalism and
its relentless drive for “growth” is. I hope you will be making a programme
about that soon!
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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