By Donald N. Levine
“Famine is a visible horror…. Witness the agony, degradation, hopelessness and silent anger on the dismal and skeletal faces… faith for survival while in the agony of slow and grinding teeth of famine… the slender and uncontrollable hope for miraculous succour in the face of pious indifference…. Nothing else manifests man’s inhumanity to man more than famine.” Mesfin Wolde Mariam
Traveling north to Aksum and Adwa and south to Awassa I was struck by two things, the wan landscape and the swarms of people. The Awassa road, not so long ago lined with trees, appears bare savannah now. Formerly tiny towns had turned into sprawling urban centers. It made me think.
On return I studied up on food insecurity in a course on World Hunger co-taught with biologist Jocelyn Malamy. This made me more aware than ever of the close ties among population growth, deforestation, and food insecurity–and gave me a sense of responsibility to share that awareness with any reader who would engage the issue. Conveniently, one of my readers did so. Consider the response to Getz #4 sent by Ato Zinah Minyehal:
Professor Levine,
Why is population increase for Ethiopia such a concern? There are many countries with higher density of population than Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s problem is the dysfunctional political system, not the population. When democracy takes hold, the country will certainly prosper. I strongly disagree with the premise that population growth is a problem by itself…
Ato Zinah’s point of view represents the views of many Ethiopians I know. But I disagree, and in response, let me share some uncomfortable facts.
Some 85% of Ethiopia’s people still live in the rural sector. By itself, population growth automatically increases food insecurity among them. Can there be any doubt that malnutrition, hunger, and famine comprise a major challenge to Ethiopia in its foreseeable future? To take the most extreme of these afflictions: although famines have been reported in Ethiopia for nearly as long as we have records, averaging one famine every fifteen to twenty years between 1500 and 1940, in the last fifty years famines have occurred with increasing severity and frequency, averaging one every seven years. Recall: 1959; 1973-4; 1985; 1995; 2003; 2006.
A major cause of these famines is poverty. At times when production is ruined from natural hazards–drought, locusts, excessive rainfall–impoverished farmers and pastoralists have no reserves and no cash with which to secure food. As Mesfin Wolde Mariam demonstrated in Rural Vulnerability to Famine in Ethiopia, subsistence rather than commercial farming is the condition of famine in rural Ethiopia. Given that rural Ethiopians live in a subsistence economy, it follows that rapid population growth renders them more vulnerable to hunger, disease, and famine. Two million more infants per year means two million more mouths to feed, two million more children to school in a severely impoverished system. Increased family size means decreased size of food portions and declining nutrition. Malnutrition has already reached the point, UNICEF reports, where 47% of children under five are underweight, and more than half are stunted. Chronic hunger and intermittent famines require substantial relief aid. That heavily burdens the state, donors, and NGOs, diverting resources that might otherwise go to education, health, reforestation, crop improvement, soil restoration, water-harvesting technology, agricultural research, and improved farming technology.
Larger families diminish agricultural output, since all land that is physically cultivable is now cultivated. Larger families result in smaller farming plots, which means less food production per family for each new generation. Land units formerly measured by the gasha are now measured in hectares. Land use demands created by larger families cause subsistence farmers to overuse their land, thereby ceasing crop rotation and degrading the soil. Over four per cent of the country’s arable land has already lost its ability to support crops, according to Ethiopian environmental scientists.
More people results in increased demand for firewood, and constant deforestation to expand farmland. Deforestation exposes grazing lands and farmlands to soil erosion followed by massive land degradation with attendant drops in food production. Without government regulation, high population densities also cause degradation of water resources.
Such dynamics affect countries all over the world. Demographers project an increase of 2.6 billion people by 2050 living on roughly the same amount of arable land. But the cycle of poverty, hunger, and disease in which millions of Ethiopians are trapped makes these factors affect Ethiopia to an extreme degree.
And they threaten to grow worse, much worse, if present population trends persist. Consider projections provided by Daniel Assefa of the Ethiopian Economics Association in his penetrating analysis of the dimensions and impacts of Ethiopia’s demographic explosion. He calculates that Ethiopia’s current Total Fertility Rate (TFR = births per woman per lifetime) of 5.9 would produce a total population of about 325 million by the year 2050. This means that an area of farmland that hosted about 44 persons in 1995 and about 65 today would have to supply food for 300. Keeping to its current exceptionally high birth rate means nothing but catastrophe in Ethiopia’s future. At that rate, in ten years the population of childbearing age will have increased to the point that huge continuing population increases will be inevitable.
And yet, solutions to this crisis are not overwhelmingly difficult. Education is a major key, especially for women. Keeping girls in school longer will postpone the age at which they begin to bear children. Education empowers them to consider the advantages of smaller families and to learn about family planning. In addition, raising the age at which girls become sexually active lowers their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS infection and helps them withstand the pressure to enter the growing prostitution industry. To be sure, additional schooling is expensive and not quickly instituted. Family planning services delivered efficiently to all women of reproductive health and in particular to those who are married would likely have a powerful effect in a fairly short time.
In his report on population and environment in Ethiopia published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Sahlu Haile rightly affirms that no population program has succeeded without strong and proactive support from national governments. Whatever the political system, this critical area can be dealt with. For example, Iran is viewed as a success story for reducing population growth dramatically by means that are universally applicable. In the decade after 1976, Iran’s population increased by 50 percent; at that rate of growth Iran’s population would have reached 108 million by 2006. But through a variety of methods–dropping maternity benefits for couples with more than three children, requiring men and women to attend classes about contraception before obtaining a marriage license, and making both condoms and contraceptive pills widely available, even giving away condoms at health clinics–the government of Iran managed to check population growth to reach only 71 million this year. Iran’s TFR started at Ethiopia’s current level of around 6, and then dropped to below 2!
Ethiopia’s government has done relatively little to deliver the message about family planning. Although some of her ministers realize the importance of this problem, the government has addressed it so ineffectually that dramatic changes are needed to deliver incentives to engage in family planning. Ato Daniel would expand the circle of agents to include private groups, NGOs, and the public at large as well as government agencies. To that, Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia has written in “Combating Future Famines in Ethiopia,” the conquest of famine in Ethiopia is a “mammoth historical task,” requiring action on many fronts, and should not be left to the homeland authorities alone: “The Ethiopian intellectual and professional in the Diaspora must be willing to contribute.”
Population growth and environmental degradation present the two most critical challenges that face this generation of Ethiopians. They constitute a common ground on which all Ethiopians can congregate. This common purpose can best be served by a robustly democratizing process, which supports a framework within which differences can be resolved nonviolently; which supports media that can freely report successes and shortcomings of initiatives; and which enhances communication that can facilitate all development undertakings.
Of course, many factors beside population growth contribute to chronic hunger and vulnerability to famine. But that is a big one. Can it be controlled? Only if more Ethiopians become concerned, and if all concerned demonstrate a commitment to “deny famine a future in Ethiopia” in Dr. Gheladawdewos’s stirring phrase. And, may I add, if we move to take action before it is too late.