Phillip Toyne is one of Australia's best known environmentalists and is currently a Director of EcoFutures, an Australian based international policy firm working on building sustainable strategies with business, government and civic leaders. He serves on many national and regional councils and committees. From 1994-1997, Phillip was Deputy Secretary in the Commonwealth Department of Environment, where he played a major role in the international policy arena on issues such as biodiversity, sustainable development and climate change. Between 1992 and 1994 Phillip was at the Australian National University, where he taught environmental law and policy, wrote The Reluctant Nation and developed the ABC Radio series based on it. Between 1986 and 1992, Phillip was Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, where he led successful campaigns on mining in Kakadu, the Wet Tropics, Antarctica, and began the long process of merging green and aboriginal partnerships. He also developed the National Land Care with Rick Farley, a movement which has radically changed land use practices in Australia and which is now moving to Africa and America. Before ACF, Phillip successfully negotiated the passage of the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act, and then led the negotiations for the traditional owners of Uluru (Ayers Rock) resulting in their receiving title to the National Park. The leaseback and joint management arrangements for the Park were a world first, and are used as a model today around the world in reconciling indigenous and environment issues.

A personal view of the environment–population debate
by Phillip Toyne

As a young man, I lived in the remote Aboriginal community of Haasts Bluff 260 kilometres west of Alice Springs in Central Australia. There were about 50 people in that little community and a couple of thousand in the vast expanse of the Western Desert region. In those days, the nearest community to the west was Jiggalong, 1100 kilometres away, with few venturing into the country in between, except those desperately homesick Pintupi removed by welfare officers to large settlements. I did not then understand that we had a population problem and I'm certain the Pintupi didn't either. My point is that the threat of overpopulation is a relative concept, even in Australia, where the real agenda focuses on several of our major cities and our ongoing agricultural land use. I was brought up at the end of the 'populate or perish' era of Australian development. If we did not bring in more people (I'm sorry – British people), then we would surely be overwhelmed by Asian hordes, only too keen to take up our huge land.

We had 7.5 million people at the end of World War 2 and the 2 per cent population growth set then had widespread support. This is no longer true, with views expressed by nearly everyone but our national leaders, calling for populations of between 5 million (the 'deep green' view of our environmental carrying capacity) to 150 million (a breathtaking number based on what's needed to drive our economy to the maximum).

There have been many groups spawned around the population issue, most of them sensible, such as the Australian Population Institute backed by business, which calls for greater numbers, and Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population, whose agenda is self evident. But there have been many dodgy ones, with all sorts of agendas in play – Australians Against Asian Immigration was one such and I vividly remember a time in the late 1980s when this group pushed very hard to co-opt the Australian Conservation Foundation population debate, by joining in numbers, turning up at ACF Council meetings and pushing their manifestly racist agenda and seeking to cloak it in 'environmental respectability'.

 I arrived at one Council meeting to find one of the group's leading lights sitting in a wicker basket at the front door, holding an anti-immigration placard. I've spent the last twenty years wondering what the significance of the basket was.

I was a contributing author of the ACF's population policy, which hasn't changed much since 1992. It is a worthy attempt to look at population issues an through ecological prism.

It starts with a few modest objectives such as: to stabilise human population numbers and resource use; to contribute to the alleviation of global poverty; to achieve, with other people in the world, an ecologically sustainable standard of living for all Australians and to protect ecological processes and systems and preserve biological diversity in order to maintain a sustainable life support system for all species.

It goes on to call for a government population policy to stabilise Australian population numbers at a level that is precautionary and ecologically sustainable, and to be administered without discrimination; immigration to Australia should be looked at in terms of ecological sustainability and our humanitarian commitment to accept refugees.

It wanted all Australians to have a small number of children in order to ensure population stabilisation. For a unit of two adults, this would mean two children or less, on average. In this ACF has been singularly successful with birth rates below replacement levels.

We went on to call for the environment, population and urban planning, incorporating the administration of the immigration policy, to come within the one Cabinet portfolio;
 

We believed it essential to achieve an accelerated completion of the Biological Resources Survey of Australia and ensure regular reviews (in this ACF has not been successful). Why wasn't this call for a basic scientific foundation stone of assessing sustainability enthusiastically supported by the science community at the time?

ACF wanted incentives for energy efficiency measures that reduce per capita demand and encourage the establishment of renewable and sustainable energy technologies; an economy based on sustainable resource use and clean technology with an emphasis on highly skilled work in service, information, value-adding and import replacement industries.

It called on government to give immigration priority to refugees based on political, economic and social criteria and a significant increase in international aid to help recipient peoples to meet ecologically sustainable goals. This should include programs addressing the underlying causes of poverty and rapid population growth. It should acknowledge the links between world population growth, immigration pressures and global environmental degradation.

The rationale for such a policy is compelling. You have all heard the arguments put, at this conference, and many times before:

• Australia's capacity to sustain a large population is limited because the continent is largely arid with old, nutrient-poor soils and a variable climatel
• Only 6 per cent of the continent is arable.
• Dryland salinity threatens to destroy up to 17 million hectares of agricultural land by 2050.
• Our rivers show severe signs of degradation through extraction, regulation by dams and other forms of habitat destruction, and increasing salinity is likely to make the water in many of them undrinkable and unfit for irrigation within a matter of decades, further reducing the possibility of large settlements, particularly inland.
• Australia, one of the top 12 biodiverse countries in the world and the only one in the OECD, has signed an international agreement for the protection of its biodiversity.
• Australia has a very bad record with respect to extinction of species, particularly mammals.
• Clearance of native vegetation for human settlement and agriculture is the single most significant threat to terrestrial biodiversity.
• Australia is currently a net exporter of food but, unless land degradation is checked, could become a net importer within a generation.
• Australians have one of the highest consumption rates and their greenhouse gas emissions per capita are the highest in the world.
• The State of the Environment Report 2001 tells us most environmental indicators (biodiversity, water quality, soil etc.) are declining in Australia, meaning the current population is not living sustainably at the current standard of living.
• In 2001, 11 of the 15 wealthiest nations, based on GDP per capita, had populations lower than Australia's.

Let me illustrate one point in a bit more detail.

Last week I spoke at a Futures Summit in Sydney, looking at water as a critical limit to a sustainable future for Australia. A report on climate change and water had been prepared by Professor John Langford with an advisory panel that would have the Academy genuflecting.

It identified seven strategic water management challenges facing Australia as we move into the 21st century:

1. preparing for an uncertain climatic future;
2. developing water policies and institutions for the new century;
3. making best use of the investment in repairing catchments and rivers;
4. realising the economic potential of irrigated agriculture using less water;
5. providing reliable water supplies to Australia's growing cities;
6. managing the substantial social changes; and
7. achieving the necessary water reforms in a federation.

Now there's a cross-disciplinary agenda for you.

John pointed out that 'most of the rivers harvested to supply Australia's cities and irrigation schemes rise in temperate coastal zones. Annual flows in these rivers vary widely between wet and dry years and, for a temperate climate, are among the most variable on Earth. Australian's have adapted to this variability using a wide range of strategies from building large dams and reservoirs, to reforming water pricing and introducing trading of water access entitlements. The lessons learnt from implementing these strategies are fundamental to preparing for the future.

'There are signs that climate change is adding uncertainty to Australia's highly variable water resource. Perth, in Western Australia, located on the margins between a large dry region and the wetter south west corner of the State is sensitive to climate change. Perth has experienced a decline in average rainfall of 15 per cent compared to the previous 70 years, resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in average stream flow into Perth's water storages.

'This long-term decline in water resources has already had serious economic consequences. Perth's water supply has had to be doubled in the past decade. New groundwater resources have been tapped and a new dam constructed. Demand management and water pricing reforms have complemented these water supply initiatives. A capital investment of some half a billion dollars has been required just to compensate for the reduction in available stream flows, let alone provide for growth.

'The causes of this change in rainfall patterns of the Perth region have not been conclusively identified to date. One current hypothesis links the coincident decline in rainfall in the Sahel region of northern Africa. The decline in rainfall in northern Africa reduces atmospheric heating, weakening the branch of the Hadley cell in northern Africa. This reduces heat transfer south in the Indian Ocean region with consequent weakening of the southern hemisphere jet stream shifting the main storm tracks slightly south. The shift is sufficient to cause a demonstrable, persistent decline in rainfall in the critical winter months for Perth. Whether this hypothesis is proven or not, it illustrates the importance of understanding the causes and thereby developing the ability to predict persistent climatic changes, whether natural or induced by human activity.

'Currently much of eastern Australia is experiencing an extended period of low rainfall lasting some 5 to 7 years putting the water supply systems supplying the irrigation areas of the Murray Darling Basin and the cities of Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Sydney and the Gold Coast under stress. Should this dry period persist for another few years it would have serious consequences. Substantial investment would also be required to protect and repair the environment. Irrigation communities would face huge adjustments caused by the reductions in reliable water supplies. Major investments in the cities would be required to provide reliable water supplies.'

He goes on to call for a profound rethink of water policy and water use in the face of these changes. It is manifestly obvious that increasing numbers of people in Perth and indeed in all our communities will make this challenge bigger and harder.

Ian Lowe and others believe that a compelling way to look at the sustainability of a given population is the per capita ecological footprint of a country. That's the amount of land necessary to meet human needs. It can be interpreted at different levels such as an individual person or a city and it includes the land required for food, consumer goods, housing, transport and waste processing. It factors in what we produce for export to pay for what we import to sustain our consumption. The findings are sobering if not frightening.

The estimate of the sustainable land use needed per capita has been assessed as 1.9 hectares. Currently, the global average is 2.3 hectares. China uses 1.6 hectares per person, but Australia uses 6.9 hectares, behind our role model the USA with 9.6 hectares. We are simply one of the most profligate user of resources on the globe, when measured against most indicators – per capita generators of greenhouse gas, waste to landfill and so on.

The message is plain to me. We can't claim to be on a sustainable trajectory at our current number of Australians with our current consumption habits. As the former Head of CSIRO Malcolm McIntosh put it in scientific terms, 'we have to stop knackering the country'. More recently, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, some of our best and brightest, have been saying the same thing.

In 2000 the ACF and the NFF released their estimate of the real cost of repairing the damage to our agricultural lands and waterways – it was $65 billion, a figure vastly in excess of the $340 million Rick Farley and I proposed in 1990 to turn around the problems with a Decade of Landcare. If you combine the Federal Government's Natural Heritage Trust, the National Action Plan on Salinity and other bits and pieces, we've allocated perhaps $5 billion to counteract these problems in the past eight years.

Neither can we simply put our faith in technology to solve our problems, with the obvious exception of climate change responses, where it is only the replacement of fossil fuel technology with renewable technology that will reverse a catastrophe in waiting.

Cloning a Tasmanian Tiger is not a substitute for biodiversity. Developing salt tolerant crops is no substitute for a healthy landscape.

With land clearing, salinity, water use, global warming – all the big environmental challenges we face as a nation and as a species, there is an obvious need to apply the much talked about but rarely adopted precautionary principle. If you don't have certainty about cause and effect, but you have a good solid idea, stop the damaging actions. Bob Carr recently mused that we humans are better at responding to disaster, than we are to avoiding it. As a consequence, adopting a precautionary approach only appeals to our intellect, not to our instinct. I sometimes wonder if we are inadequately wired to survive.

Let me recount a cautionary tale about what might happen if we get this wrong. Professor Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and Professor of Physiology at UCLA, spoke last year of the causes for the collapses of ancient societies, and identified five causes, acting together or alone. One was environmental damage, and he used as an example Easter Island which is the most remote habitable scrap of land in the world, in the Pacific, 2000 miles west of the coast of Chile, and 1300 miles from the nearest Polynesian island. Polynesians came from the west, around AD800, settled it and it was so remote that after they arrived at Easter Island, nobody else arrived and no-one left so the story is uncomplicated by relations with outsiders. There weren't any. Easter Islanders rose and fell by themselves.

The Island has a relatively fragile environment, with only 40 inches of rain per year. It's most famous because of the giant stone statutes - weighing up to 80 tons. They were carved in a volcanic quarry and then dragged up over the lip of the quarry and then 13 miles down to the coast and raised up vertically onto platforms. All this was accomplished by people without any draught animals, without pulleys, without machines. And yet when Europeans arrived at Easter in 1722, the islanders were in the process of throwing down the statues, the Island society was in a state of collapse.

 Easter Islanders were typical Polynesians, and the cause of the collapse became clear in the last 15 years, particularly from palaeobotanical work and identification of animal bones in archaeological sites. Today Easter Island is barren. It's grassland, there are no native trees whatsoever on Easter Island. It's not a likely setting for the development of a great civilisation, but studies identifying pollen grains and lake cores show that when the Polynesians arrived at Easter Island, a tropical forest that included the world's largest palm tree and dandelions of tree height covered it. And there were at least six species of land birds, 37 species of sea birds - the largest collection of sea birds anywhere in the Pacific.

When the Polynesians settled Easter, they began to clear the forest for their gardens, for firewood, for using as rollers and levers to raise the giant statues, and then to build canoes with which to go out into the ocean and catch porpoises and tuna. In the oldest archaeological sites, one sees the bones of porpoises and tuna that the people were eating. They ate the land birds, they ate the sea birds, and they ate the fruits of the palm trees. The population of Easter grew to an estimated about 10,000 people, until by the year 1600 all of the trees and all of the land birds and all but one of the sea birds on Easter Island itself were extinct. Some of the sea birds were confined to breeding on offshore stacks.

The deforestation and the elimination of the birds had consequences for people. First without trees, they could no longer transport and erect the statues, so they stopped carving statues. Secondly, without trees they had no firewood except of their own agricultural wastes. Thirdly, without trees to cover the ground, they suffered from soil erosion and hence agricultural yields decreased, and then without trees they couldn't build canoes, so they couldn't go out to the ocean to catch porpoises, there were only a few sea birds left.

Because they didn't have pigs, the largest animal left to eat after the disappearance of porpoises and tuna were humans. And Polynesian society then collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism. The spear points from that final phase still litter the ground of Easter Island today. The population crashed from about 10,000 to an estimated 2000 with no possibility of rebuilding the original society because the trees, most of the birds and some of the soil were gone.

Diamond rightly thinks that one of the reasons that the collapse of Easter Island so grabs people is that it looks like a metaphor for us today. Easter Island, isolated in the middle of the Pacific Island, nobody to turn to for help, nowhere to flee once Easter Island itself collapsed. In the same way today, one can look at Planet Earth in the middle of the galaxy and if we too get into trouble, there's no way that we can flee, and no people to whom we can turn for help out there in the galaxy.

He finished by wondering what the Islander who chopped down the last palm tree said as he or she did it. Was he saying, ' Do we care more for trees than for our jobs?' Or maybe he was saying, 'What about my private property rights? Get the big government off my back.' Or maybe he was saying, 'You're predicting environmental disaster, but your environmental models are untested, we need more research before we can take action.' Or perhaps he was saying, 'Don't worry, technology will solve all our problems.'

This true story is remarkably similar to Dr Suess's story of the Lorax, which my kids read obsessively. If Australia goes the way of Easter Island, I suspect it will be against their fierce resistance.

We need a clear-eyed, compassionate population policy, looking squarely at our environmental bounds; we need a political capacity to give effect to such a policy which almost certainly means rethinking federalism and our allocation responsibilities for natural resource use and protection; we need national leaders serious about achieving genuine sustainable development rather than mindlessly asserting it. We need a scientific community, not just describing the fate of our environment, strongly advocating the precautionary approach and the measures needed to bring us onto a sustainable footing. Without these steps we are continuing and accelerating the cashing up of our natural capital. We need to alter our relationship to the environment away from the present dominance of private property rights over the collective right to healthy soils, clean rivers and unpolluted air.

As an old English proverb put it so well:

The law goes hard on man or woman who steals the goose from off the common.
But lets the greater sinner loose who steals the common off the goose.