Comment to the paper "Defining Habitability" and discussion around the concept of carrying capacity
Marion Borderon
Marion Borderon
Dear Jane, (dear all),
thank you so much for this super insightful input. This confirms how intellectually stimulating (and necessary!!) this debate on the concept of habitability is and that it absolutely invites us to consider the link between carrying capacity and habitability; in particular to recall the importance of population growth as a key element of the concept of carrying capacity and therefore the legitimacy of asking ourselves if it is not, for the moment, the great omission from the debate on habitability.
I find this question of "habitable for how many?" extremely legitimate. I believe this brings us back to the very prolific debate and research of recent years on the link between pop and environment. I am thinking of the conclusions of the paper from Sherbinin et al. (2007) Population and environment and in particular to the following sentences “[…] much of the research [..] has sought to deconstruct population into its component parts and to understand how human social institutions in all their complexity (e.g., markets, policies, communities) mediate the impact of population variables on the use of resources, waste generation, and environmental impacts”.
I wonder to what extent it can be said that it is the "characteristics of the population" and not their quantity that should be taken into account. The demographic characteristics of a population can threaten or enhance the habitability of a place. A densely populated society that works together (to use David O'Byrne's terms: whose individual priorities aggregate to form a set of priorities relevant to the community (and the SES) may be more sustainable than a society with a small population growth that does not agree... (Of course, the more of us there are, the more difficult the compromise may be). The challenge of ageing societies comes to mind. Can society function if the dependency ratio is heavily skewed? Can this situation lead to a breakdown of the 'social contract' (in the sense of Emile Rousseau) and make society extremely fragile? On this point, I find Luke Kemp's statement on the importance of this notion of societal fragility very convincing.
The question remains as to which components should be included in the definition of habitability. How can we avoid making habitability too narrow a concept to capture complex social and environmental realities without making it a catch-all concept? (as David O’Byrne wrote this morning: "Perhaps one question we need to answer as we define a new concept is what added value/new perspectives does this concept bring?)
So we could go back to the intention - why do we want to talk about habitability - and how to talk about it, for what reasons, for whom. @to all, on these questions, we'll have two great case studies tomorrow that will give us food for thought... If you are very impatient to find out more, listen to the webinar available online with in particular the intervention of our two panelists Aliyu Barau & Carol Farbotko at the start of the webinar.
Sincerely,
Marion
adeshe...@ciesin.columbia.edu
Many thanks, Marion, for your thoughts on the carrying capacity link.
There is often a tendency to deflect substantive engagement with the issue of carrying capacity and overpopulation by nuancing it into obscurity.
You ask the question, “to what extent it can be said that it is the "characteristics of the population" and not their quantity that should be taken into account.” Without doubt, the characteristics are important. But the word “not” is concerning. Why would any characteristic render irrelevant the number of people bearing that characteristic? Is that not like saying it is the length, not the width, that determines the area of a rectangle.
You assert, “The demographic characteristics of a population can threaten or enhance the habitability of a place.” Certainly humans are notorious for modifying their environment to improve its habitability – at the cost of its habitability for a great many other species. But, while this can expand its (human) carrying capacity, limits still exist. You admit, “the more of us there are, the more difficult the compromise may be.” But difficult is not the same as infeasible. We have to face up to ultimate infeasibility.
You wonder, “The challenge of ageing societies comes to mind. Can society function if the dependency ratio is heavily skewed? Can this situation lead to a breakdown of the 'social contract' (in the sense of Emile Rousseau) and make society extremely fragile?”
I find the answer to this question is unequivocal: ageing is an absolutely trivial threat compared with overpopulation. Even if it was the challenge you seem to believe it to be, it would in no way justify pursuit of population growth in order to bolster younger cohorts (or rather, to dilute older cohorts). Indefinite human population growth is unsustainable, meaning that it must reach a point where further “compromise” is impossible. This point could be a bit further down the track if we are perfect co-operators, but it must come. In the meantime, we “compromise” away our quality of life. We can see that at play in the slums of Lagos or Manila. Their continued survival represents remarkable levels of adaptation and remarkable translocalisation, but all that capability won’t improve quality of life while in-migration keeps swelling the population by several percent per year.
That sustainable human flourishing requires a non-growing (stable or declining) population is a non-negotiable fact. No amount of improving the “characteristics” of people will get around the finitude of the planet.
In contrast, the challenges of ageing are vastly exaggerated, as is the extent to which population growth can deflect them. I have done quite a bit of work in this area – see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.08.015 and https://population.org.au/discussion-papers/ageing/. In particular, the economic models that show workforce shrinking in proportion to the working age population are deeply flawed, since they make no allowance for labour market feedbacks. A tightening labour market always increases workforce participation. So far this has happened to the extent that no ageing country has seen any contraction of the workforce on account of ageing. Quite likely, they will continue to see none, unless population decline is very rapid (say, >1% p.a.). Very rapid population decline would lead to more strongly skewed age profiles, but there is still no evidence that this is a threat to economic wellbeing, if the political will can be mustered to make the necessary institutional changes. Increased longevity means a greater proportion of each life is spent in able-bodied adulthood. The composition of the economy would be a bit different, with more aged care and less construction and education, but that is not a threat. More older people means more accumulated wealth on average, which has been described as the ‘second demographic dividend’ enabling high levels of capital per person.
So I think we can put aside “characteristics” and “ageing” as reasons to dismiss discussion of population pressure.
Let’s not forget that ‘overshoot’ exists when we start eating into our natural resource ‘capital’ (environmental degradation) instead of living off the ‘interest’ (renewable biocapacity). Alex said “overshoot is a synonym of sorts for global uninhabitability.” This is not accurate. Uninhabitability is the end game of overshoot, but the overshoot can exist for a long time before we get there. It’s like running up a credit card debt – quite painless until the bank forecloses on you. We appear to be acting under a false sense of security that, because humans are doing OK, we’re not in overshoot and there is no need to change the way we pursue economic growth.
We are so anthropocentric that the parlous state of virtually every aspect of the natural environment doesn’t concern us unless human life or livelihood is at stake, and then the answer is to let them migrate to somewhere else. So anthropocentric that we frame resilience as a ‘capability’, rather than a buffer afforded us by having more natural resources per person than “just enough to get by”. We see this buffer as a wasteful underutilisation of resources and willingly allow it to be eliminated by population growth, and then claim that the lack of resilience is due to failures in social habitability or suchlike.
David O’Bryne asked what added value the concept of habitability brings. I’m struggling to identify the value. It seems to be a device for blaming the difficulty people have subsisting in a place on the characteristics of the place, not the population. It seems to make a virtue out of transforming natural habitats into human support systems. Deprivation must be blamed on a failure of social infrastructure or environmental damage done by people outside the affected community, not a simple (or even a complex and infinitely nuanced, but nevertheless intractable) imbalance between the natural resource base and the human demands on it. We don’t bring these prejudices to studying the ecology of other species.
More grist for the mill, I hope.
Jane O'Sullivan
PIGUET Etienne
Dear colleagues,
I very much enjoyed the seminar !
I take the liberty to post a CFP
Session on Environmental change and migration at EUGEO2023 in Barcelona (Sept. 4-7th 2023).
https://www.eugeobcn23.eu/sessions/?id=1237
DEADLINE for abstracts MARCH 31st.
Conceptual papers as well as empirical/methodological are welcome.
The scope will be broad so don’t hesitate to submit even if not specifically focused on perceptions and mobility intentions.
Please note that there are other interesting sessions at the conference (on Sea Level Rise for ex.).
I also wanted to add a brief note that might be of interest to some of you on the use of “habitability” in the past as mentioned in (Headley 1997) “ The Sixteenth-Century Venetian Celebration of the Earth's Total Habitability: The Issue of the Fully Habitable World for Renaissance Europe” [Journal of World History, Vol. 8, 1. pp. 1-27]. In XVIth century the idea that the whole world was actually inhabited represented a paradigmatic shift (and was already connected to climatic issues). See for ex. this quote from T. Giunti (1563): "it is clearly able to be understood that this entire earthly globe is marvelously inhabited, nor is there any part of it empty, neither by heat nor by cold deprived of inhabitants". Later, the issue of habitability was also debated in XIXth century geography in a colonial context. Ravenstein himself contributed to the debate : Ravenstein, E. G. 1891. Lands of the globe still available for European settlement. Proceedings of the Royal Geographic Society 13:27-35. The debate turned around the possibility for white men to settle everywhere on Earth or on "habitable plateaus" only...
Warmest regard to all the PERN community and thanks a lot to the organizers of the seminar.
Etienne
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Prof. Etienne Piguet Institut de géographie – FLSH Bureau 2.S.38 |
Marion Borderon
Thank you very much Jane for sharing your thoughts and research!
Including population density or population growth in the equation to understand "habitable for whom" (how many humans, but perhaps also how many other species) does not seem to me to be an aberration at all, on the contrary. Thinking about the preservation of other species, the preservation of biodiversity, is crucial, and I am convinced that the survival of our species depends on that of others (but unfortunately, from a scientific point of view, I am not at all an expert in this field, I prefer to give the floor to others).
The fact that a reflective approach to the human and social sciences, in which I am involved, is anthropocentric seems to me to be quite coherent. If studying inequalities within human societies is not exactly the same mission as studying biodiversity conservation, both missions seem to me to be equally laudable and far from incompatible. There seems to be some very fascinating research on the subject (i.e Economic Inequality Predicts Biodiversity Loss).
If we come back to the idea that it is necessary to limit human population growth in order to preserve the habitability of the planet or its ecosystems, I understand the idea, but from an ethical point of view I don't really see how it can be put into practice... As far as the characteristics of the population are concerned, I see possibilities for action, room for manoeuvre - we can educate ourselves, we can make collective decisions (for example in the field of climate change mitigation and also adaptation), we can strive for change, etc. (And so, yes, we could also adapt ageing societies, etc). On the other hand, I don't see much room for manoeuvre when it comes to population growth. To take up your metaphor of the rectangle, yes, there is the length and the width on which we can play to modify the surface of the rectangle... the cursor on the length I see that we can make it move; that of the width I do not.
The argument of population growth and overpopulation has been and continues to be a hot topic, the passage to 8 billion people last year reignited the debate...
You would have understood, I am rather of this school of thought "“The demographic future is not easy to manipulate, especially without violating human rights. Instead, we must plan for our demographic reality. Eight billion people is neither too few, nor too many – it is simply the number of people on the planet. “
And I like to introduce population geography and demography with students with one of my favourite books : Dorling, D., & Gietel-Basten, S. (2017). Why demography matters. John Wiley & Sons. The introductory chapter is always a great success, you learn in a humorous and extremely convincing way how to defuse bombs, especially the one of population... :-)
Best, Marion
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