Rapid Population Growth and Environmental Stress

Abstract

It is often suggested that rapid population growth, especially in developing countries, correspondingly intensifies environmental degradation, which must therefore be mitigated by reducing the rate of population growth. The validity of this assumption can be tested by means of an algebraic identity that relates the amount of a pollutant introduced into the environment to the product of three factors: population, “affluence” (the amount of goods produced per capita), and “technology” (the ratio of pollution generated to goods produced). For several forms of pollution that have a known origin in a specific production process (electricity production, use of motor vehicles, and consumption of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer), it is possible to compare the inferred rate of increase in pollution levels with the rate of population growth in developing countries. The results show that the rate of increase in pollution is largely determined by the technology factor, which governs the amount of pollution generated per unit of goods produced or consumed. This observation extends earlier evidence that both the increasing levels of pollution observed in developed countries and the results of efforts to reduce them support the view that the decisive factor determining environmental quality is the nature of the technology of production, rather than the size of the population.