Interactions between Coastal and Marine Ecosystems and Human Population Systems: Perspectives on How Consumption Mediates this Interaction

摘要

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was widespread belief among environmentalists and lay people that uncontrolled population growth was responsible for environmental degradation of all types. This neo-Malthusian belief originally surfaced in the publication of The Population Bomb by Ehrlich and Ehrlich in the late 1960s, which interpreted the unprecedented high growth rate experienced in that decade in an alarmist tone (1-3). In ensuing years this belief, combined with work on carrying capacity and a growing environmental movement, led to the seemingly commonsense conclusion that high growth, and high fertility in particular, are destructive for the environment. The rhetoric often is shrill (see various Worldwatch Institute publications in the 1990s), and extends beyond academia and the NGO sectors (4). Scientific research, however, has not shown a definitive link between population growth or size and environmental decline. A growing body of work indicates that neo-Malthusian assumptions about environmental change may be misleading (5). Numerous critics have pointed out that consumption of resources by citizens of the global North is at least as important in explaining environmental degradation as population growth (6, 7). On the other hand, growing consumer demand in developing countries also portends threats to the environment (e.g. the growing middle class in China and India), and does not contradict statements about how high population growth is a cause of environmental degradation (8, 9). In other words, the sheer number of people does not on its own explain the dire state that many ecosystems are in-how people and institutions use those resources, or consume them, is as important (10). The organization of consumption then becomes a key mediating factor.