412 CHAPTER ElEvEn ■ TransnaTional issues
vulnerable to monsoonal flooding; this settlement strips topsoil, decreases agricultural
productivity, and, especially when coupled with rising sea waters, dislocates millions
of individuals.
Accelerating demand for natu ral resources occurs in the developed world as well.
As the smaller (even slightly declining) population becomes more eco nom ically afflu-
ent, it increasingly demands more energy and resources to support its higher standards
of living. People clamor for more living space, larger houses, and more highways, cre-
ating more demand for energy and resources. Wealthier people, especially those in the
United States, also produce more garbage per person than in the developing world,
and much is not recycled, leading to a high demand for domestic landfill space and a
profitable business in exporting garbage to the developing world.
High population growth rates lead to numerous ethical dilemmas for state and
international policy makers. How can population growth rates be curbed without
infringing on individual rights to procreate? How can cultural barriers to birth con-
trol or to the value of female children be overcome? How can the developed countries
promote lower birthrates in the developing world without sounding racist or ethno-
centric? Can policies be developed that both improve the standards of living for
those already born and guarantee equally high standards and improvements for our
descendants?
Population becomes a classic collective- goods prob lem. It is eminently rational for
a couple in the developing world to have more children: children provide valuable labor
and often earn money in the wage economy, contributing to family well- being. Children
are the social safety net for families in socie ties where no governmental programs exist.
But what is eco nom ically rational for each couple is not environmentally sustainable
for the collectivity. The amount of land in the commons shrinks on a per capita basis,
and the overall quality of the resource declines. Over time, the finite resources of the
commons have a decreasing capacity to support the population: Adam Smith’s famous
“invisible hand,” when considered in the context of a commons, may therefore lead
not to collective benefit but to collective disaster.
What actions can be taken with res pect to population to alleviate or mitigate these
dilemmas? The biologist Garrett Hardin’s solution, using coercion to prohibit procre-
ation, is po liti cally untenable and pragmatically difficult, as China discovered with its
one- child policy. Relying on group pressure to force individual changes in be hav ior is
also unlikely to work in the populous states.^7 Leaving coercion aside, even if individu-
als may desire smaller families, family- planning methods may be unavailable to them.
But like the global environment, the connections, causes, and consequences of global
population growth and decline have proven not only interlinked but complex. In many
Western states, including Eu rope and Rus sia, as well as Japan, Korea, and China, the
population growth has not only slowed, but it is in decline, and the population is aging.