Should we control world population? by Diana Coole

Generally, academics, social commentators and organisations concerned about the growth of human numbers assiduously avoid the phrase ‘population control’. Such sensitivity is not without basis. The association of the term with imperialism, eugenics, forced sterilisations and other coercive state actions has almost completely closed off the topic from reasoned discussion. However, with a title formulated to be deliberately provocative, political theorist Diana Coole unflinchingly tackles the notion of population control and makes a welcome and persuasive argument, subject to appropriate ethical safeguards, for its inclusion on the political agenda.

Admirably succinct, this slim volume contains just three chapters with the first outlining a range of objectives that population management might seek to achieve. Coole points out that the term ‘population control’ is not exclusively associated with reducing human numbers, and numerous countries have, at one time or another, attempted to influence birth rates in an upward direction. These pro-growth policies, most often employed in pursuit of economic growth and national power, are clearly inimical to Coole’s most persuasive arguments in favour of reducing population in the interests of environmental sustainability and social justice. However, the point is also well made that the charge of coercion is generally only levelled at those pursuing anti-natalist policies despite the fact that pro-natalist policies may be no less coercive. While this first chapter focuses on the ends of population control, the next two are concerned with the means, the political/ethical dimensions of measures to influence birth rates, and the practical methods of changing behaviour in relation to the concepts of rights, freedom and agency.

With the growth rate of world population declining, the issue, as Coole points out, is not whether enormous population increases will cease, but whether the pace of fertility decline in the absence of concerted action is fast enough to ensure that ecological boundaries are not breached. Confidence that demographic transition will take care of population growth in developing countries as it did with the already developed world is often characteristic of those who argue for the inviolability of procreative rights. However, demographic transition theory is possibly one of the last remaining ‘grand social narratives’ unchallenged by social scientists, and Coole makes the important observation that it is both Eurocentric and teleological, seeing fertility reduction as a necessary by-product of modernisation and development. Yet as Coole makes clear, there is no guarantee that nations with entirely different cultural norms will follow the same path without important ‘biopolitical’ interventions.

Coole shows how the advance of the discourse of the inviolability of basic human rights has had a significant effect on post-war attitudes to population growth. From the mid 1970s, partly due to the influence of the International Women’s Movement, but also following the general shift in political ideology from the collective to the individual, the population movement was transformed from one alarmed by the consequences of population growth into one concerned with the inviolability of basic human rights: of women to control their own bodies; of access to reproductive health services; and of couples to determine if, when and how many children to have.

In reality, the binary opposition and basic incompatibility between state intervention and individual liberty is an ideological fiction. One of the key insights of this book is that protection of the commons is entirely compatible with, and indeed necessary to, individual basic rights since they cannot be exercised outside of the socio-ecological contexts that form their conditions of possibility. Coole articulates a mediated position of circumscribed consequentialism in which basic rights (self-regarding acts) are protected whilst other rights, dependent on circumstances, may be legitimately amenable to political interventions designed to preserve the commons. In fact, modern liberal democracies are largely governed by voluntary compliance where the restriction of liberty is accepted in recognition that private behaviour can have costs that are collectively harmful.

Unsurprisingly, the nature of coercion and its distinction from other legitimate forms of persuasion is a recurring theme throughout the entire work. Coole observes that in its most benign form population governance is ‘supply’ led, with the state providing contraception and sexual health services to meet freely chosen demand. However, what if traditional cultural and behavioural norms, including patriarchal structures, defeat supply-led policies alone? In practice, governments employ a variety of tools of persuasion including education, public information, and incentive and disincentive schemes to change values and behaviour in order to achieve population ends. In many instances, these policies are emancipatory, transforming female subjectivity, creating responsible agents who are in control of their own fertility and family size. But the tools for creating this positive freedom are also potentially coercive. Coole insists that context is critical to developing policy that avoids outright coercion and cites India’s population programme of the mid-1970s as instructive of how escalating dis/incentives in the context of mass poverty can result in the abuse of basic rights.

Perhaps the most important message to take from this book is that the ‘population problem’ is inseparable from issues of inequality and justice at national and global levels. In particular, Coole is clear that from the perspective of environmental sustainability, population size in both developed and developing countries is an issue. Population is a multiplier of ecological harm, and the fact that the number of people, and hence consumers, in the western world has more than doubled since 1900 and more than tripled since the industrial revolution is often overlooked. Since each child born in the ‘overdeveloped’ world has an environmental impact many tens of times larger than a child born in the developing world, it is both more just and more effective to reduce birth rates in the rich world to well below replacement levels.

Coole demonstrates how pursuing the objective of population reduction is not only achievable through methods that respect basic rights, but is also in fact one of the necessary conditions for the exercise of these rights. She concludes that population policy not only has a significant part to play in environmental sustainability, and in addressing inequality of gender, race and class, but also has wider positive implications for the other species with whom we share the planet.