Social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics

Ecological economists accept that the global population cannot grow forever. But papers discussing the relevance of population growth and the prospects for minimising it are rare in the literature on ecological economics. Even these papers treat population almost exclusively as an issue relating to the scale of human activity. The many ways in which population growth rate and local demographic pressures drive negative social and environmental trends remain largely unarticulated. The mistaken belief that action to reduce population growth requires involuntary control of people’s reproduction has fostered a taboo on the topic and deterred analysis of demographic influences on issues such as inequality, unemployment, debt, social cohesion and conflict. This paper discusses how some of these influences relate to ecological economics discourses on natural resources, labour, capital and governance. It argues that population stabilisation is not only ultimately required for a steady state economy, but can be a powerful lever in a virtuous cycle of effects diminishing resource consumption and environmental impacts, reversing income inequality and undermining the leverage enjoyed by capital over labour. A richer, more integrated treatment of population dynamics would greatly enhance the ecological economics research agenda in the coming decades.

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