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EMERGING ISSUE 3: The State of the World: Crossing Some Perceptual Thresholds

19 January, 2016 - 15:18

''You know Jim," said Maggie, "I don't think this stuff here in my Geography and Development book is right ... at least not anymore. It might have been right back then, but it doesn't really make any sense. I mean, look at this Demographic Transformation Model. It says that a society goes through four stages of population transformation. In the first stage both birth and death rates are high, and for this reason population growth rates are low and the number of people is also low. Then in the second stage both birth and death rates decline. Death rates decline because of scientific developments which eradicate most of the infant diseases. The decline in the infant death rate results in an increase in the population growth rate and the population level. In the third stage the decline in the death rate levels off and the birth rate declines sharply, so there is an overall decline in the population growth rate. Finally, in the fourth stage birth and death rates level off and equal each other, causing the population growth rate to reach zero and the population level to stabilize."

Jim was looking at the graphical presentation (Figure 4.7) while he listened to what Maggie was saying. "Well," he asked, "what's wrong with it? It seems to me to make a lot of sense. I mean, that's exactly what happened in this country. I remember my grandmother's telling me that she had a bunch of brothers and sisters, something like ten or twelve. My mother came from a large family of five. I have only one younger sister. So I really think that this model is a rather good description of how societies develop. As the world makes technological and economic progress, most people reproduce less and less."

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Figure 4.7 Demographic Transformation Model 

"That's just it," interrupted Maggie. "You said it: most people—not all people, but most. It seems to me it's the other way around. Most people in the world do not get past the first stage. They get trapped in the high birth rate and high death rate circle. The more babies they have, the more of them die, because they don't have the money to buy drugs and food for their children. I think they ought to have a stage in this model called the Demographic Trap. I think most of us here in the United States misunderstand things. Just because we developed that way, from an agrarian or rural society with high birth and death rates to a highly industrial and even post-industrial society, books lead us to believe that Asia and Africa will develop the same way. The truth is that people in Asia and Africa will never get out of this Demographic Trap. I saw some really horrid things on the tube about life in those parts of the world."

A few days later Jim came home with a ton of books under his arms. He had the last three years' issues of World Development Reports from the World Bank; the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World reports; The Hunger Project's Ending Hunger: An Idea Whose Time Has Come; the latest Freedom at Issue and the Map of Freedom Report from Freedom House; the latest reports of the World Resources Institute/International Institute for Environment and Development; and several reports from the International Monetary Fund on the international debt crises.

The more Jim read on the state of the world and its physical and human systems, the more he began to realize that Maggie had a really good point with her Demographic Trap. As a matter of fact, he started identifying some other traps. In particular, Jim found The State of the World 1987: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society extremely interesting. The back cover of the report highlighted some of the key issues.

Our relationship with the earth and its natural systems is changing, often in ways that we do not understand. The scale of human activities threatens the habitability of the earth itself. A sustainable society satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of the next generation. But by many measures, contemporary society fails to meet this criterion.

State of the World 1987 examines the counterpoint of urgency and uncertainty that has come to dominate world affairs in an age when the environmental consequences of human activities transcend national boundaries ....

The 1987 report assesses human-caused disruptions of global chemical cycles; evaluates the worldwide reappraisal of nuclear power after the Chernobyl accident; profiles the accelerating urbanization of the world's population; discusses the shift to reliance on markets in a growing number of countries; and advocates new initiatives in recycling materials and raising agricultural productivity.

Further reading elsewhere brought more facts to light:

Economic activity could be approaching a level where further growth in gross world product costs more than it is worth.
By 2000, three out of the five cities with populations of 15 million or more will be in the Third World.
More than half the cities in the United States will exhaust their current landfills by 1990.
Climate change could carry a global price tag of $200 billion for irrigation adjustments alone.
The existing scientific effort falls short of what is needed to assess the impacts of human activity on the global environment.
For some of the major adjustments facing humanity, a relatively small number of countries hold the key to success.

Jim was impressed and disturbed. He drew up a list of some traps he had identified and handed it to Maggie after their economics class. Jim divided the traps into three main categories.

Category A: Global Traps:

The Nuclear Trap
The Carbon Trap
The Acid Rain Trap
The Ozone Trap
The Deforestation Trap
The Desertification Trap
The Soil Erosion Trap
The Fresh Water Trap
The Trade Trap
The Slow Growth Trap

Category B: Developed World Traps:

The Overcapacity Trap
The Growth Engine Trap
The Dollar Trap
The Underreproduction Trap

Category C: Developing World Traps:

The Demographic Trap
The Hunger Trap
The Lack of Economic Development Trap
The Liquidity Trap
The Export Development Trap
The Cash Crop Trap
The Survival Trap

Maggie looked over Jim's list and got really upset, but since she had to write a paper on the general international business environment for her international business class, she decided to do some research on the positive things that are happening which might eliminate some of these traps.

For the next few days Maggie hit the library. She had found the term "perceptual thresholds" in one of Jim's references and liked it. A perceptual threshold was defined as the point where "enough people perceive the threat for a cogent response to emerge." Maggie thought that with all this talk about environmental conscience, the Green Party movement in Europe and other parts of the world, and the like, she might be able to identify some perceptual thresholds regarding the natural environment.

After a lot of research Maggie came up with enough evidence to write a paper highlighting humanity's concern for what she termed "A Better Global Habitability."

Maggie sat in front of her computer and started listing the evidence she would discuss in her paper:

Harvard University's National Forum on Biodiversity
International Geosphere-Biosphere Program
Global Change Program of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)
NASA's Global Habitability Project
United Nations' Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA)
World Future Society's Global Solutions

What Maggie noticed in her research was that the greatest turning point is the recognition that a rekindling of progress now depends on a careful integration of economics, population, and environmental policies. In addition, Maggie observed a trend toward greater cooperation between governments and the business world. In September of 1986, for instance, a chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) industry group, the Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy, announced that its 500 members were prepared to support international limits on CFC production. Maggie closed her preliminary list of perceptual thresholds and turning points with the following excerpt from Trend Letter, John Naisbitt's newsletter: 1

From Nation State to Business State: Redefining Roles

We noticed recently one more indication of an interesting trend in the global economy: 16 major multinational companies, based in the U.S., Canada and Europe, banded together to provide free technical advice and to lend experts to foreign governments coping with critical environmental problems.

Tenneco, Dow Chemical, Weyerhauser, USX and 3M are among U.S.-based firms involved in this global effort, sharing expertise under the umbrella of the newly formed International Environmental Bureau, based in Geneva.

. . . Now we're seeing examples of private-sector involvement with other nations—corporations interacting with foreign powers.... I think private enterprise, and even nonprofit organizations such as the International Environmental Bureau, will become increasingly involved in interactions across national borders. Joint research ventures like the Boeing-Japan development project, for example, will become commonplace. Boundaries between political entities and corporate bodies will be blurred.

Government diplomacy and treaties won't vanish, of course. But in both domestic and international affairs, the roles of government and business will be completely redefined.

The nation state-business state movement is particularly promising for the potential it has toward ensuring world stability. One country is less likely to attack another if their business communities are integrally involved.

The trend could be our best shot for peace.

ISSUE FOR DISCUSSION

Support or refute the notion that getting out of one's own trap is equivalent to providing somebody else with an opportunity—for example, the Overcapacity Trap can be solved by making excess capacity available to the people who are caught in the Hunger Trap.