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	March 2, 2004

THE POPULATION STRESS INDEX, AND SOME SOLUTIONS In order to test Edward Hall's hypothesis that population stress is the fundamental cause of human violence and war, I decided to see if there was a correlation between the state of civil unrest and the density and growth of human population in various countries around the world. Using data from the FAO, I computed the population per arable hectare of land for each country in the world with at least a quarter of a million people. Then, using data from the Population Reference Bureau, I mapped this to annual population growth rates (%) for these countries. Initially, I produced the scatter diagram shown below: In this chart, about a third of the countries, those with annual growth rates under 0.5%, are excluded to keep it from being too busy. The overall global population per arable hectare (4.0) and overall global annual growth rate (0.8%) are shown by a large blue dot. The sustainable global population per arable hectare (1.0, per a variety of sources I have cited in earlier posts) and the sustainable overall global annual growth rate (0%) is shown by a large green dot. No country has achieved that sustainable level -- every country in the world has either positive growth rate or a density over 1 person per arable hectare. Sure enough, the countries furthest from the green ideal point are also, almost without exception, the most violent and war-torn countries. At the far extreme, you find Palestine and Kuwait, with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and most of the MidEast countries close by. In the upper central part of the chart you find most of the war-ravaged sub-Saharan African countries, led by the Congo, with its horrendous and incessant war, Sierre Leone, where militias amputate their enemies' limbs as a symbolic warning, and Rwanda & Burundi, site of the bloodiest massacre of the last half-century. Here, too, you'll find Colombia, where anti-drug spraying and civil war have killed thousands, destroyed the economy and poisoned 80% of the arable land. And you'll find Haiti, site of this week's coup, and several Central American states that have witnessed horrendous warfare in recent years. I then decided to multiply the two factors -- density and growth -- together to produce what I call the Population Stress Index (PSI). The calculations are shown graphically (I have tables if anyone wants them as well) on the map above: Purple for a PSI over 10 (extreme), Red for 4-10 (very high), Orange for 2-4 (high), Yellow for 0.5 to 2 (moderate), and White for less than 0.5 (low). If you were to correlate this index against the propensity for violence and war in the past few decades, I think you'd find a nearly perfect match. What's more interesting is that if you repeat the exercise using data from a century ago, you find the major belligerants of the world wars have the highest scores. By the middle part of the last century, China, Vietnam and Korea had exceptionally high scores. So what can be done to bring annual growth down to, and below, zero, to achieve globally a zero PSI, a situation that today exists nowhere on Earth? In his essay How to Influence Fertility, John R. Weeks, Director of the Population Center at San Diego State University suggests the following programs to reduce population growth, and ultimately reduce global human population to the sustainable level of one billion, no more than one person per arable hectare: Direct Programs Indirect Programs Enabling Rational Choices Provide full legal rights to women Increase legal age at marriage for women Promote secular education Promote communication between spouses Providing Motivation Payments for not having children Priorities in jobs, housing, education for small families Community improvements for achievement of low birth rate Higher taxes for each additional child Higher maternity and educational costs for each additional child ("user fees") Economic development Increased educational opportunities for women Increased labor force opportunities for women Peer pressure campaigns Lower infant and child mortality rates Child labor laws Compulsory education for children Peer pressure campaigns Making Means Available Legalize abortion Legalize sterilization Legalize all other forms of fertility control Train family planning program workers Manufacture or buy contraceptive supplies Distribute birth control methods at all health clinics Make birth control methods available through local vendors Establish systems of community-based distribution Public campaigns to promote knowlege and use of birth control Politicians speaking out in favor of birth control It's certainly a solution set worth striving for. I am, however, pessimistic that it's sufficient to overcome the enormous population momentum that I've written about on these pages. Nor do I have much confidence that, when we have an American regime that is hell-bent on banning abortion again, which deprives foreign aid and support to countries and agencies that practice family planning, and which funnels money to religious groups hostile to birth control, there will be enough political will or economic investment worldwide to bring these programs to fruition. You would think that, when evidence indicates that overpopulation is the key cause of environmental degradation, violence and war, and human suffering, there would be an unstoppable groundswell of support for programs to reduce our population back to sustainable levels. But that's the power of our culture: In the face of irrefutable proof of its folly, we continue to chant the mantra of Growth. Postscript: 3pm -- Just found this interesting site  from Matthew White, who tabulated the death rate from war and atrocities during the period from 1975-2000, and conveniently mapped it like I did the PSI. His colour code is: bright red over 1% of the population (extreme), dark red 0.1-1% (high), maroon 0.01-0.1% (moderate), black under 0.01% (low): Sure looks like a close correlation to PSI to me. I'll have to go back and plug in his data to my table to calculate the r2 correlation coefficient, but I'm willing to bet it's very high. 10:51:16 AM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Dave Pollard. Last update: 01/04/2004; 5:48:53 AM.