Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 26/04/2012
Event: Sir John Sulston talks about the Royal Society's People and the planet report
People:
Sarah Montague: There are now more than 7 billion people on the planet. And that, of course, means more people using the world's resources, causing prices to rise and damaging the environment everywhere. We've known about those pressures for some time, so it's about time we did something about it. So says the Royal Society, in a major new report it's published today, called People and the planet. We'll talk to the lead author, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir John Sulston, in a moment. First, though, Tom Feilden reports on the challenge that population growth represents.
Ban Ki-moon: Ladies and gentlemen, today the world's population reached 7 billion.
Tom Feilden: October 31st, 2011. The Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, marks a significant milestone in the unfolding history of the human race.
Ban Ki-moon : I'm one of 7 billion. You are also one of 7 billion. Together we can be 7 billion strong, by walking in solidarity for a better world for all. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Tom Feilden: But if the rhetorical flourish was uncharacteristically melodramatic for the world's leading diplomat, the significance of the landmark is hard to overestimate. Despite declining fertility rates in many parts of the world, that 7 billion is set to rise to 10 billion by the middle of the century. And the distribution, age, composition and mobility of all those extra people is twisting the kaleidoscope of the population challenge.
Sarah Harper : We're getting denser, which means we're living in more urban areas. We are getting older - our age composition of the world is changing, and the distribution of people is changing, we're becoming far more mobile -
Tom Feilden: Professor Sarah Harper is the Director of the Centre for Population Ageing at the University of Oxford, and a co-author on the Royal Society's People and the planet report.
Sarah Harper: - and so I think it's important to put those four dynamics together - the change in size, density, distribution and age composition - and see how they play out in different parts of the world.
Tom Feilden: Of course, what really matters is not so much the bald figures as how much of a finite planet's resources all these additional people consume. Jules Pretty is the Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex.
Jules Pretty : The problem is that we've got large numbers of people in the world who have not got enough, and they need to consume more. But we've got a large number of wealthy people in the world who are over-consuming. So if you compare China to the U.S., the U.S. has 80 motor cars per hundred people, China has 0.8. What do people in China want to do? And what do they expect to do? Well, they're going to have lots more cars. And that's going to have an impact upon the planet, and at the moment, we're moving in the wrong direction. And that's why we've got to, kind of, shift towards different thinking about consumption, different thinking about what a green economy might look like.
Tom Feilden: Asking people in developed nations to don hair shirts and go without, Jules Pretty accepts, stands little chance of success. The trick will be to encourage more sustainable forms of consumption, ones that enhance, rather than deplete, the Earth's natural systems. Georgina Mace is the Professor of Conservation Science at Imperial College London.
Georgina Mace : As we enlarge our footprint on the Earth, we're gradually eroding away at that Earth's support system. So we're not doing a good job of, if you like, gardening the planet.
Sarah Montague: Georgina Mace, ending that report from Tom Feilden. Well, as I say, we're joined from Westminster by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir John Sulston. Good morning to you, Sir John.
Sir John Sulston: Good morning.
Sarah Montague: Now, what if we don't do something to address these pressures that are building?
Sir John Sulston: Then things will get worse. I mean, one question that people often ask is to say: "Well, it will take care of itself, we'll all, sort of, suffer from disease or something, so why worry - the population will come down". Well, the question we should ask each other, and ourselves, is: do we want to go that way? I would say: absolutely not. We don't want to go hair-shirt but equally we don't want to end up with pandemics and conflict as a way of limiting our numbers. So I think that we should plan to flourish - very simple.
Sarah Montague [laughing]: Very simple but very hard -
Sir John Sulston: Very high-level -
Sarah Montague: How do you plan to flourish?
Sir John Sulston: Well, indeed. So, just to come back, and the points have been well made already by the commentators - we must look at population and consumption together. There's been far too much argy-bargy, especially over the last 20 years, where people take highly polarised positions on this, and accuse each other of really ill-thinking. We have to take them together, you know. If we had very few people, they could consume all they liked. If we had lots of people and very low consumption, that would be fine, too. It's the combination that matters, that's the impact on the Earth. And the other thing that matters, that's been coming out, is the inequality. I mean, really gross. And, and although by some measures it's decreasing, the developing countries are improving, their position, nevertheless, the absolute top-to-bottom inequality in the world is vast.
Sarah Montague: Okay, well let's - can we go first to this question of the population growth.
Sir John Sulston: Yes.
Sarah Montague: Two thirds of that is happening in Africa. How can the wealthy, the rich countries turn and say "I'm sorry, you can't have so many children"?
Sir John Sulston: By having a deal. You don't - nobody is telling each other what to do. The - one of the members of the Working Group, who is presenting with us at the launch today, is Eliya Zulu, who is head of the Institute for African Population and Development. He's from Kenya, and he is extremely passionate about the need for Kenya to slow its population growth. So it's not us, as it were, white northerners telling him, he's telling us, that this is extremely important. And indeed we've, sort of, had to balance it with our need to dematerialise - which is the best way of putting it - our economy. So, in other words, for example, going for green energy rather than constantly emitting carbon dioxide.
Sarah Montague: Okay, but just back on that question of asking people not to have so many children, are you suggesting you make contraception available, you fund it?
John Sulston: We are very specifically saying that, because we know that there's well in excess of 200 million women who want contraception and, for various reasons, can't get it. And we can help them simply by making it available. No coercion is required at all. This is a humanitarian thing for them.
Sarah Montague: Now on that question of rebalancing, the simple question - whether that's water, food, energy, whatever - the poorest need to have more and we, the wealthiest, need to use less. Which is - sounds so simple, and yet we've known that for a long time, and -
Sir John Sulston: We've known it for a long time, but the thing which we recommend, and although it's the highest but also the last thing [?] that is exceedingly important, and that is GDP. We are completely addicted to GDP. Most of the headlines, in terms of the recession, are about GDP, how we must grow, must grow, must grow. Well, that would be fine, if GDP took into account all the natural capital - that's to say the resources of the Earth that we're consuming - but it doesn't. So a way forward, which we think is hugely important, is to really work on this. You know, people talk about happiness indexes, and so on. There's a very serious issue about pricing the stuff we use from the Earth. If we start to do that seriously, then we will automatically, through the market mechanisms, rebalance.
Sarah Montague: But it would bear no relation to what we measure at the moment, because at the moment you have less pressures on the environment, because the economy's not growing so strongly.
Sir John Sulston: It would - but the point is that we're trying to consume more in order to get out. I mean, we're told to compete for growth, that means to compete for shopping. It means we're supposed to buy more clothes and throw the perfectly good ones away. And so on, and so on. If we priced the material in those clothes properly, then we would not renew them so often; we would make better use of our resources.
Sarah Montague: Sir John Sulston, thank you very much.
Sir John Sulston: Thank you.