A Greater Australia: Population, policies and governance - CEDA

Section 1.2A significant contribution to the environmental quality theme was made by a book publishedin 1984 by the Australian Conservation Foundation. 17 It contained four chapterson renewable and non-renewable resources, environmental quality and degradation,and environmental amenity. It concluded that a transition to more sustainable ways ofusing the environment depended on a reduction in population growth. A 1992 reportby the Population Issues Committee of the National Population Council, which hadbeen asked by the prime minister to examine the major issues that could arise from theincrease in Australia’s population, reached some similar conclusions:• Population growth has a major impact on ecological processes and systems, naturalcapital as an amenity, the ability of environmental processes to absorb wastes, andbiological diversity, and these effects are not reflected in market prices.• Australia’s population concentration into large, low density cities has led to air andwater pollution and consequent public health problems, and to marine pollution, theloss of bushland and wetlands, reduced housing affordability and a declining qualityof life.• “…national ecological integrity would be best served by an active population policythat resulted in a reduced rate of population growth.” 18Harding states that this was: “The first government commissioned study to recommendthat population-environment linkages should have a centrally important placein discussion of population/immigration in Australia.” 19 However, the dominant view ofAustralia’s population issues over the last several decades has tended to marginalisethe role of population growth in environmental degradation.Defining population-environment problemsIn the population-environment debate there has been considerable disagreementabout which environmental problems can properly be regarded as caused by populationgrowth rather than by factors such as overseas demand or poor environmentalpractices. For example Fincher, a geographer, wrote in a 1991 report for the thenBureau of Immigration Research that:“Domestic population growth may cause congestion of recreation or wildernessareas. This can be managed, and indeed new recreation and wilderness areas canbe (respectively) developed and identified. It also needs to be emphasised that thedevelopment of our tourist industry is partly driven by the demands of overseasresidents and the investment of foreign capital, as our agricultural industry has been.The demands of overseas, would-be tourists and business people are transformingmany of our recreation and wilderness sites, as much as the demands of thedomestic population.”“Claims of direct or simple links between population numbers and agricultural sustainability,or the land degradation which prevents agricultural sustainability, areoften far too simplistic. Land degradation in Australia is the product of damagingfarming practices which have occurred through the past 100 years, and have beenresponses to the demands of export markets and foreign investors as well as tocalls on local farmers to feed the Australian people. Large population size was not,and is not, the cause of this situation – in fact it has been argued that populationlevels were, in the past, too low and that inappropriate farming methods developedin part to compensate for this.” 20A Greater Australia: Population, Policies and Governance30