21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

Uneven Earth
Where the ecological meets the political Search

Primary Menu

Population

“Neo-Malthusian promotion of family planning as the solution to

hunger, conflict, and poverty has contributed to destructive population
control approaches, that are targeted most often at poor, racialized
women.”
July 20, 2020

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 1/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

by Anne Hendrixson and Diana Ojeda

While often thought of as a given reality, definitions of population are highly political. They
are most often negatively associated with notions of “overpopulation” or “too many” Black,
Brown and Indigenous people, supposedly overly fertile women and poor people, as well as
some religious and ethnic groups. These ideas about population serve the purpose of
classifying people and marking them as in need of intervention, defining whose life and ways
of life are valuable or worthy of reproduction. In this line, it is important to question how
population numbers are calculated and how they are used, as they help shape possible
futures.

In relation to the environment and environmental conflict, population is often defined as a

problem in neo-Malthusian terms. Neo-Malthusianism builds on British economist Thomas

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 2/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

Malthus’s predictions of population-induced resource scarcity and violence. Neo-Malthusian

promotion of family planning as the solution to hunger, conflict, and poverty has contributed
to destructive population control approaches, that are targeted most often at poor, racialized
women.

Population control was an international development policy from the 1960s to mid-1990s. Its
policies have been based on top-down, coercive interventions. Such interventions are tied
with imperial strategies for restraining local populations. Examples include China’s one-child
policy, sterilization abuses in 1970s India and 1990s Peru, and the wide-scale dissemination
of long-acting reversible contraceptive methods in the global South as a condition of
international aid, like Norplant implants in Indonesia and elsewhere. Although the 1994
International Conference on Population and Development foregrounded sexual and
reproductive health and rights and women’s empowerment and moved away from
population control, it continues in practice. Population control is part of a troubled present,
and cannot be relegated to history as dated international development policy.

In the context of the global environmental crisis, neo-Malthusianism is on the rise. As we

have seen recently, the alarmism around population growth mobilizes fear in ways that often
promote fascist, racist and xenophobic discourses dressed in green. For example, human
pressure on the environment is cited as the reason for international migration, and, for some,
under this logic, walls, deportation and fertility control become desirable. It is not
uncommon to see media coverage that portrays humanitarian and political crises as a
population problem that is causing waves of migration to the global North, as can be noted in
the case of Syria. Feminist political ecologists challenge neo-Malthusianism because it
assumes that there are external limits to resources. This obscures the ways in which scarcity
and conflict are shaped by social and political factors.

Recent feminist writing gives us insight into the current population control efforts which are
promoted as a win-win for women and the environment. The Thriving Together campaign
sponsored by the UK-based, Margaret Pyke Trust’s Population & Sustainability Network, is a
case in point. The Population and Sustainability Network works to promote “family planning
for the planet”. Its Thriving Together campaign aims to bring together international
organizations that work on issues of human and environmental health. Their statement,
signed by 150 organizations declares: “Increasing human pressures are among the many
challenges facing planetary health. By harming ecosystems we undermine food and water
unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 3/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

security and human health, and we threaten habitats and species. Ensuring family planning
is available to all who seek it is among the positive actions we must take to lessen these
pressures”.

This quote is weighted with common assumptions about population and the environment.
“Human pressures” refers largely to population numbers in “poor rural communities in
developing nations” with “higher levels of fertility and more rapid rates of population
growth”. This is where the purportedly neutral container of “population” becomes racialized,
sexed, gendered, located, and classed. As is typical of population control conversations, the
targets are poor, racialized women in the global South, largely in African nations.

Thriving Together instrumentalizes contraception as a tool for women’s empowerment,

which they claim not only improves health but “advances education and life opportunities”
while at the same time it “eases pressures on wildlife and ecosystems.” It is an unrealistic
expectation that a contraceptive method could resolve serious structural issues such as these.
As advocates for reproductive justice, including access to safe and free or affordable abortion,
we are concerned that this approach has the potential to skew quality sexual and
reproductive health services in the service of environmental and economic agendas. Further,
when family planning is posed as a technical fix to multiple problems, it ignores the political,
social and economic character of environmental issues. In a depoliticizing move, these kinds
of statements downplay issues central to the current environmental crisis such as rising
1
inequalities and land grabbing, among others. At the same time, it leaves unquestioned the
abuses of carried out in the name of conservation, associated with sterilization, violence, and
even death, as a recent report against WWF shows.

Thriving Together’s narrative leads to environmental conservation policies which too often
consider people to be environmental threats and overly fertile. These ideas translate into
tight restrictions on the actions and movements of people who live in places which are seen
as ecologically strategic.

In contrast, a feminist take on population critiques the troubling ways in which some
individuals and groups are targeted as the root causes of poverty, environmental degradation
and conflict. As stated in A Renewed Call for Feminist Resistance to Population Control, we
call for ways in which climate change can be tackled at the same time that we challenge

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 4/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

racism and social injustice, including issues of sexual and reproductive health. There cannot
be environmental justice, including climate justice, without social, racial and gender justice.

1 Note: Land grabbing is used to define the land transactions that followed the financial
crisis of 2007-2008, as countries, private companies and individuals in the Global North
started to acquire massive chunks of land in the Global South. Speculative trends and
neoliberal policies worsened this situation, resulting in big changes in land use, tenure and
ownership. The notion has expanded since then to include the multiple ways in which very
few rich people have been appropriating natural resources (using diverse strategies such as
debt, violence and public policy) at the expense of the rural and urban poor.

Further resources

Ian Angus and Simon Butler. 2011. Too Many People?: Population, Immigration and the
Environmental Crisis. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.

Systematically challenges the idea that “overpopulation” is the cause of environmental

problems and climate change and calls to account the worst contributors to
environmental destruction.

Betsy Hartmann. 2016. Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population
Control, 3rd edition. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.

Critiques population control and alarmism from a feminist, social justice perspective.

Anne Hendrixson, Diana Ojeda, Jade S. Sasser, Sarojini Nadimpally, Ellen E. Foley & Rajani
Bhatia (2019): Confronting Populationism: Feminist challenges to population control in an
era of climate change, Gender, Place & Culture. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2019.1639634

Argues for renewed feminist attention to population control in the context of climate
change.

Diana Ojeda, Jade S. Sasser & Elizabeth Lunstrum (2019): Malthus’s specter and the
Anthropocene, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1553858

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 5/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

Confronts the discourses linking climate change and the idea of the Anthropocene,
which often advance neo-Malthusianism and suggests population control to address the
challenges of climate change.

Anne Hendrixson leads PopDev, a feminist program challenging population control in all
its forms through critical research, publications, and social justice advocacy. Anne is a
writer and teacher who seeks to uncover the ways that population bomb thinking manifests
in environmentalism, security discourses and sexual and reproductive health advocacy
today. Contact: popdevprogram [at] gmail.com

Diana Ojeda is Associate Professor at the Center for Interdisciplinary Development Studies
at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Diana is a feminist geographer who does
research on the relation between environmental issues and dispossession. Her recent work
pays closer attention to the role of gender in the expansion of oil palm plantations in the
Colombian Caribbean. Contact: dc.ojeda [at] uniandes.edu.co.

Cover image made from an original photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

Posted in Resources for a better future

Tagged feminist political ecology, international migration, limits to growth, neo-
Malthusianism, overpopulation, population, reproductive justice, reproductive rights, sexual
and reproductive health

Previously: Littoral Drift: Coastal currents

and industrial echoes mingle to shape the
landscape in Southern France

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 6/7
21/7/2020 Population – Uneven Earth

0 Comments Uneven Earth 🔒 Disqus' Privacy Policy 

1 Login

 Recommend t Tweet f Share Sort by Oldest

Start the discussion…

LOG IN WITH
OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

Be the first to comment.

✉ Subscribe d Add Disqus to your siteAdd DisqusAdd ⚠ Do Not Sell My Data

unevenearth.org/2020/07/population/ 7/7