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OCR for page 35
Will slower population
growth alleviate pollution
and the degradation of the
natural environment?
The quality of the natural environment, including air and water, climatic
conditions, and the number and abundance of species of plants and animals,
has direct significance for the health, economic production, and aesthetics
of human populations. In addition to being essential requirements for human
life, air and water are direct inputs into many production processes and
also provide an important economic service by absorbing the residuals of
production processes (Smith and Krutilla, 1979~. Climatic conditions, of
course, represent an important parameter in agricultural production. Climate
remain-e Anal ~1~ ~ ~_:~1 ~ ^~ ,~ .. ..
Us - w~un pram and animal species to create aesthetically appealing
environments Mat can beta basis for tourism. And naturally occurring plant
and animal species represent sources of genetic diversity that may be important
in developing new products Trough biotechnology (Miller et al., 1986~.
Production and consumption of industrial goods provide the primary link
between population and environmental degradation, so the strength of the
linkage may depend importantly on income levels. However, there are
many processes of environmental degradation Hat depend more directly on
population. For example, while most of the buildup of aunospheric carbon
dioxide responsible for the emerging "greenhouse', effect is due to fossil
fuel combustion, predominantly in He developed countries, some 23 to 43
percent is due to the burning of forests, primarily for land clearance, in
developing countries ~Voodwell et al., 1983), which may well be linked to
population increase. But because only a moderate proportion of the addition to
atmospheric carbon dioxide is athibmable to activities in developing counties
35
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36
POP UI'ION GROWTH AND ECONOMIC DEYELOPMENT
and because the sensitivity of this addition to changes in population size or
growth is uncertain, the effect of population trends in developing countries
on the carbon dioxide problem may be minor.
Environmental resources are mostly renewable, but as with other renewable
resources, human action can interfere with the renewal process in ways that
produce permanent degradation. This possibility is most evident in the case
of total species extinction, which is clearly an irreversible process. The
atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and fluorocarbons as by-products of
production has effects that are also so long term as to mimic irreversibility,
as are effects of siltation of major water resources. Eutrophication of lakes
and effects of acid rain are processes that can be reversed, but probably
not in less than a generation.
Reflecting their physical characteristics and seeming abundance, environ-
mental resources typically have no property rights that govern access to
them. Because of this common-propert~r aspect, many of these resources
tend to be overexploited. For instance, when access to air and water is
unregulated, polluters can impose substantial costs on other users, and in
many cases, these costs are greater than the costs of pollution abatement.
Thus, there would be a net gain to society if there were some institution-
such as pollution taxes or a market in pollution nghts-that would allocate
rights to the resource so as to balance costs and benefits. However, there
are a number of barriers to setting up such institutions.
It is both analytically and empirically difficult to determine the optimum
levels of pollution taxes or to specify the conditions required for efficient
markets in pollution rights. The use of either pollution taxes or markets in
pollution rights has had relatively few applications (Starrett, 1972~. On a
pragmatic level, imposing and enforcing new properq rights to previously
unpriced resources is politically and administratively difficult. Vested interests
that would suffer losses from the new assignment of property rights may
oppose ~em, as has occulted in the United States (Portney, 1982). In
developing countries, which may lack administrative resources, even if
environmental quality measures are adopted, such measures may be difficult
to police. And many environmental problems have an important international
dimension, because many environmental resources extend beyond a single
political jurisdiction so that regulations affecting their quality require a
negotiated consensus. Win weak international cooperation in many fields,
including use of resources, it may be unrealistic to expect environmental
quality policies established in one country to adequately reflect the potential
costs of degradation in another country.
The vast abundance of environmental resources has provided little motive
for regulation until relatively recently, when it became increasingly evident
that human activity could significantly degrade the quality of environmental
. .
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POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
37
resources. In response, the richer countries have instituted policies that have
reduced levels and rates of pollution and degradation in most (though not
all) major areas of air and water quality (Baumol and Gates, 1984~. These
improvements reflect the fact Hat a clean environment is, in a sense, a
"luxury good" insofar as the willingness to pay the required costs seems
to increase with income levels. For developing countries, there are few
systematic time series for measuring environmental quality, but it is clear
that important instances of deteriorating quality are occurring (see below).
In discussing the role of population growth in producing change in
environmental quality, it is convenient to invoke a scheme used by Commoner
et al. (1971~. This scheme considers the size of population, the level of per
capita production, and the level of pollution produced per unit of production.
Commoner and coauthors note that it is pollution per unit of output that has
been quantitatively the most important in producing the rising U.S. levels
of pollution they review. The second factor, rising levels of per capita
production, can have immediate effects that increase pollution, but as noted
above, it can also have advantageous effects that work through higher levels
of personal income. It is difficult to envision equivalent advantageous effects
for changes in population size. Eventually, population grown may increase
pollution to the point that new forms of social intervention are introduced,
but this possibility does not negate the direct negative effects of population
growth.
The most serious international issues reflect economic activity in the
developed counties, including the buildup of atmospheric fluorocarbons,
carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, and the production of acid
rain from sulfurous residues. Although some carbon dioxide accumulation
is due to He burning of forests in developing countries, the most important
environmental problems in developing countries are likely to be relatively
localized, such as air and water pollution from human and industrial
wash especially in cities-and siltation of water resources from erosion. The
cumulative effect of localized environmental degradation is difficult to predict
because natural processes can clean He air and water up to a certain threshold
level, beyond which degradation may progress more rapidly.
How important are these effects in developing counties? Would a developing
nation be willing to forgo a small but nonnegligible share of its income or
employment growth in order to coning or reverse environmental degradation?
In many developing counties, air, water, and many species have been
treated as free goods. The failure to institute restrictions on the use of these
resources suggests either Hat there are severe technological and institutional
barriers to resource control, or that pollution abatement has a low priority
relative to a low-income country's other needs. As we noted earlier in the
case of oil, as common resources become more scarce and hence more
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38
POPUl'7ON GROWIN AND ECONOMIC DEI{ELOPMENT
valuable, rules for access to them tend to become better developed and
more restnctive.
Means do exist to control at the source the pollution of air and water
from industrial processes and the pollution of water in urban areas by human
waste. If these means are not implemented, which they apparently are not
in Chinese cities, for example (Smil, 1984:100), population growth will
likely exacerbate problems of pollution. But the fact that they have not been
widely implemented suggests either Hat the problems are less important,
relative to the many other problems of developing countries, or that there
are severe technological and institutional bamers to resource control.
The problem of siltation of water resources from soil erosion is exceptional
because the means to control it, which originate in millions of actions taken
over highly dispersed areas, are not obvious and probably not inexpensive.
For example, they are not obvious and inexpensive enough to have been
widely adopted in the United States. Crosson (1984) estimates that the off-
farm costs of soil erosion in the United States exceed the on-fann costs,
largely because of siltation. Crosson (1983) also implies that the same may be
hue in developing countries, although the data are extremely poor. He cites
many instances in developing countries in which the siltation of reservoirs has
occurred at a rate far more rapid than anticipated, with a drastic shortening
of He economic lives of the reservoirs because of unanticipated increases
. . .
In soil erosion.
Species loss is another example of a problem difficult to control because of
the highly dispersed actions that contribute to it. It is an international problem
because the potential usefulness of a particular species is not confined to a
single country or ecological area. And unlike many of the other resource
problems with an international dimension, species loss is more acute in
developing than in developed counties. Tropical areas are the home of
about two-thirds of the known species of plants and animals (Hamngton and
Fisher, 1982~. Data on the rate of loss are very poor (Simon and Wildavsky,
1984), but there is little question that the rate of loss has accelerated in
recent years and little hope or Scion that the rate of loss in developing
countries will diminish in the near future. The rate of loss is unlikely to
be slowed because of the difficulty of enforcing preservation strategies and
the tendency to heavily discount Heir aesthetic value as well as a future
in which the disappearing species may acquire greater economic value-as
food, fiber, building material, and drugs. Population grown, particularly by
encouraging encroachment on forested areas, is surely contributing to He
loss of species (Myers, 1980; Hamngton and Fisher, 1982~.
Population may be a factor in climatic change at both He regional and
global level. Overawing by the herds kept by nomad* peoples in the Sahel
region of Africa, for example, apparen~dy led to the loss of ground cover,
OCR for page 39
PORTION AND E~VIRONMENIAL DEGRADATION
39
which increased We sunlight reflected from the earth and reduced We level
of rainfall, accelerating We process of desertification (World Meteorological
Organization, 19831. The accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the
emergence of the "greenhouse" effect, the economic implications of which are
uncertain, depend in part on population growth (National Research Council,
1984~. Using the analytical scheme suggested by Commoner et al. (1971), and
assuming continued growth in output per capita and dependence on technology
based on energy from fossil fuel combustion, rapid population grown in the
developing countries will contribute to the buildup. This buildup could hasten
the global temperature increases and climatic change now predicted for the
latter part of the next century (World Meteorological Organization, 1983~.
Because forests convert carbon dioxide to oxygen through photosynthesis,
the clearing of forest areas for settlement under population pressure also
contributes to the greenhouse effect.
CONCLUSIONS
Because environmental resources are common property, they tend to
be overexploited, leading to pollution and degradation. Controlling or
reversing environmental damage seems to have a low priority in developing
countries in view of the substantial fiscal and institutional requirements.
Although population growth contributes directly and indirectly to environmental
problems, it is important to emphasize that He common-property aspect of
environmental resources also contributes to these problems. Damage is likely
to continue in the developing countries until environmental resources become
scarce enough that the countries are willing to bear the cost of environmental
protection and until the corrective social and political institutions develop. It
is necessary, of course, Mat such protection be undertaken before the resource
is irreparably damaged. While the long-term solution to these problems will
require socially negotiated access rules, slower population growth might allow
somewhat more time for developing countries to implement the policies and
to develop He institutions necessary to protect the environment.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
population growth
