Lecture Tim Dyson,iss,The Hague,The Netherlands,23 April 2009 part 9.mov — Transcript

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1. 0:00is uh
2. 0:01projecting and we have also been quite
3. 0:04lucky to be able to develop modern
4. 0:06contraceptive methods which were
5. 0:08effective safe and cheap if developing
6. 0:11hormonal contraceptive another
7. 0:12contraceptive device had been as hard as
8. 0:15finding a vaccine against malaria or
9. 0:17against HIV then the fertility
10. 0:19transition will have taken probably much
11. 0:20longer with numerous numerous ecological
12. 0:26consequences next
13. 0:28slide um again my overall impression is
14. 0:31that the human species has been very
15. 0:33lucky so far with respect to the
16. 0:35population problem Europeans and North
17. 0:37Americans PVE the way for compean
18. 0:39control by choosing low fertility on
19. 0:41their own and when given the choice
20. 0:45couples or all over the world choose to
21. 0:47have a fertility near or below netro
22. 0:50production and this seems to be true
23. 0:52everywhere and largely in dependent from
24. 0:54culture and religion and my when I
25. 0:57started my studies about 30 years ago
26. 1:00this was not at all obvious I mean
27. 1:02people didn't know what will happen in
28. 1:03particular in
29. 1:05Africa even the country is considered
30. 1:07the most conservative also have now good
31. 1:09family planning programs as for instance
32. 1:11Iran or
33. 1:13Pakistan in most countries and in
34. 1:15virtually all urban areas in the world
35. 1:17fertility is declining very quickly and
36. 1:19this has happened only with two
37. 1:21generations I mean te mentioned that the
38. 1:23transition in Europe took about two
39. 1:26centuries or sometimes even more but uh
40. 1:30things are changing much quicker in uh
41. 1:32developing
42. 1:37countries um I skip this uh next
43. 1:41slide now a point which is often debated
44. 1:46uh and sometimes very confusing is
45. 1:49whether population negative population
46. 1:51growth is desirable or not as you know
47. 1:54the United Nations population division
48. 1:56is making those projections
49. 1:58stabilization of the world population
50. 2:01around 9.2 billion people in 20150 and
51. 2:04they assume that that point most
52. 2:07countries will adopt replacement
53. 2:09fertility so something very
54. 2:12stable uh now many countries especially
55. 2:15the the most developed ones have now
56. 2:18below replacement fertility if this
57. 2:20becomes a universal pattern this will
58. 2:22lead ultimately to negative population
59. 2:25growth so I listed on the next slide a
60. 2:28few arguments for and against uh
61. 2:31negative population growth on the left
62. 2:34side you have the uh Arguments for and
63. 2:38if you can read them you will see that
64. 2:41they are mostly national uh concerns or
65. 2:44private concerns military power was such
66. 2:47a big deal in Europe in France uh in the
67. 2:5119th century and beginning of the 20th
68. 2:53century especially after the 1870 war
69. 2:56against Germany and which created this
70. 2:58very uh population
71. 3:00attitude for more than a century
72. 3:03economic power increasing GDP is
73. 3:06increasing the GP is the main target of
74. 3:08course the more people you have the
75. 3:09higher will be your GDP bigger will be
76. 3:12your market and so on um you will have
77. 3:15an N supply of labor if you have a
78. 3:17population growth uh this seems to be
79. 3:19good for the economy but primarily for
80. 3:21the employer interest because they can
81. 3:23pay lower salaries it's not necessarily
82. 3:25the interest of the employees of course
83. 3:28and again to the uh
84. 3:30argument that it induces Innovation and
85. 3:32the more problems you have to solve the
86. 3:34more Innovative you are uh but we have
87. 3:36seen that is is happen only rarely in
88. 3:39history and it produces a younger
89. 3:41population we have seen all the pyramids
90. 3:43earlier on you have a nice
91. 3:46uh pyramid with a very wide bases so you
92. 3:49have lot of children in the streets and
93. 3:51so on and so forth now there's the the
94. 3:54issue that that is behind this is
95. 3:57dependency ratio now whether you have a
96. 3:59High population of children and small
97. 4:02population of elderly or the opposite is
98. 4:04basically the same for your dependency
99. 4:05ratio because you have to spend income
100. 4:07on those who are not active so uh it's a
101. 4:11ridly weak argument in term of economic
102. 4:14growth especially that the children have
103. 4:16no Capital whereas the elderly can have
104. 4:19accumulated Capital during their working
105. 4:22life now the counter arguments in favor
106. 4:25of population Decline and there are more
107. 4:26Global type of argument well of course
108. 4:29the environment will be better preserved
109. 4:32uh we have seen that the human rat is
110. 4:33extremely destructive to the environment
111. 4:36and of course the Lesser people in the
112. 4:38on on the earth uh the better it will be
113. 4:42there are more fixed resources available
114. 4:44per capita I mean to for land for water
115. 4:47for air for fossil fuels for minerals
116. 4:50for fish and so on so forth now a
117. 4:52shorter supply of labor tends to lead to
118. 4:55higher salaries and when your population
119. 4:57declines uh the salaries tend to go up I
120. 5:00mean there's been very well documented
121. 5:02in Europe after the black plague which
122. 5:04killed a third of the population I mean
123. 5:07salaries went up dramatically within a
124. 5:09few years and ship a price of land for
125. 5:13land uh which will give uh people better
126. 5:16access to property and probably less
127. 5:18conflicts also I mean uh the more
128. 5:21population density the more likely you
129. 5:23have to have a conflicts around either
130. 5:25land or water and it will give more
131. 5:28space for wildlife
132. 5:31so let me conclude uh by giving you um
133. 5:34summary of those few thoughts and again
134. 5:37meant to be um provocative in order to
135. 5:40stimulate the discussion well first of
136. 5:43all I think the changing attitude
137. 5:44towards family limitation were enough to
138. 5:47change the relationship between
139. 5:48population and resources as compared to
140. 5:51uh before uh industrialization and
141. 5:53before Mal when mtis was speaking uh the
142. 5:57global environment became a key issue uh
143. 5:59and again that's new I mean it started
144. 6:01about 50 years ago but this is what I
145. 6:03call new by if we talk a long-term
146. 6:08trends um and I think there's an urgent
147. 6:10need to continue along those lines I
148. 6:12think we have a template here if if I
149. 6:14want to if we want to avoid major
150. 6:16conflicts we have to continue uh to
151. 6:18encou to encourage limiting population
152. 6:20if not uh negative population
153. 6:25growth um and the state and
154. 6:27international organizations are more and
155. 6:29more likely to play a role in this issue
156. 6:31and more the norms and attitudes are
157. 6:33becoming Global and I think again there
158. 6:35are less and less conflicts around those
159. 6:37issues than as compared to 30 years ago
160. 6:41and there's more and more a need to
161. 6:42share both the cost and the benefits of
162. 6:48development all right so I'm going to
163. 6:49stop here by saying that we need space
164. 6:51for everybody for the plants the animals
165. 6:53and the humans thank
166. 6:58you
167. 7:01thank you very much Mr Gan for these
168. 7:04seven questions and the critical
169. 7:06questions and some answers that you have
170. 7:08given um I'd like to first see a raise
171. 7:12of hands who would like to intervene and
172. 7:15I will be so impolite as to give you
173. 7:17numbers so would you please be so kind
174. 7:19to remember your number I see number one
175. 7:22I see number
176. 7:24two behind number two I see number three
177. 7:28and I see number I aha there we're
178. 7:30coming now we're in business number four
179. 7:32is all the way in the back the gentleman
180. 7:34with the beard and then we see the lady
181. 7:36with a green shirt number five and I saw
182. 7:39the gentleman there number six that's
183. 7:40the first round let's keep it for that
184. 7:42round and what I would like you to do is
185. 7:45please say your name and the background
186. 7:49you you briefly your organization or
187. 7:51your background that you briefly have
188. 7:52and then ask this is going to be the
189. 7:55tricky one could you please ask one
190. 7:58question
191. 8:00per person yes number
192. 8:03one I think you can understand no you
193. 8:06cannot be heard so please speak in the
194. 8:08mic oh sorry guys um my name is Chris
195. 8:11giling I'm an ecologist with let's say a
196. 8:13West African background and I've one
197. 8:15major point with both of you that in
198. 8:18ecology you have three two types of
199. 8:21survival strategy one is called the AR
200. 8:23strategy which deals with situations of
201. 8:26unpredictability uncertainty and the
202. 8:28essence is
203. 8:29Mobility call it lampedusa and low a
204. 8:33high number of small Offspring hoping
205. 8:36and praying that some of them will get
206. 8:37somewhere the other one is the cas
207. 8:40strategy
208. 8:42um tropical rainforest uh fruit seeds
209. 8:45are very heavy they fall straight down
210. 8:48but because the the plant the young
211. 8:49plant has to wait for ages till some of
212. 8:52the others topple now I'm 100% convinced
213. 8:55that the glorified bonobos we are the
214. 8:58year of Darwin that that this whole