Linking the obvious - Population, Environment and Health: Ibn Khaldun Got It Right!

The great fourteenth century Arab scholar and historian Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), in his monumental work on Islamic history called the “Muqaddimah”, offered insights about the nexus between population pressure, weather variation and environmental degradation, food security, and public health that are surprisingly relevant today:

“…The grain and harvest situation is not always good and stable from year to year. The amount of rainfall in the world differs by nature. The rainfall may be little or much. Grain, fruits, and the amount of milk given by animals vary correspondingly. Still, for their food requirements, people put their trust in what it is possible to store. If nothing is stored, people must expect famines.

The principal reason for the latter is the corruption of the air by overpopulation, and the putrefaction and the many evil moistures with which the air had contact (in a densely populated region). When the air is corrupted, the lung is afflicted with disease. The reason for the growth of putrefaction and evil moistures is invariably a dense and abundant civilization (people). This is the reason why pestilences occur much more frequently in densely settled cities than elsewhere, as, for instance, in Cairo in the East and Fez in the Maghrib.” – (The Muqaddimah first published in 1370 translated by Franz Rosenthal)

The emerging debate and discussion around environment and climate change is missing the link with population growth and population densities. There is growing realization that the environment is clearly being threatened because the use of natural resources is outstripping nature’s regenerative capacities leading to a state of disequilibrium. Human consumption, one of the most potent factors in destabilizing the environment, is in turn influenced by population numbers: increasing population numbers as we count 207 million Pakistani puts pressure on the environment when there is indiscriminate and extensive use of limited renewable or nonrenewable resources. Let us take the cue from Ibn Khaldun, and look at the impact of rapidly increasing population numbers and how these have impacted upon different facets of our environment, which in turn has affected the quality of life and health of our people.

Land Fragmentation, Climate Change and Food Insecurity – Pakistan’s natural resources are under increasing pressure from a rapidly growing population. Since Independence, our population has grown almost six times from 133 million in 1951 to the present 207 million. This rapid increase has placed an enormous pressure on arable land. With successive divisions among large families, landholdings have shrunk. The high demand for land to construct houses and industry has also made it more lucrative for farmers to sell their small agricultural land holdings to property developers.

Over the years, Pakistan has seen increasing weather variability due to climate change. Although we are not directly contributing to climate change, we are suffering from some of its worst impacts, which in our case are compounded by high population numbers. Our average yearly temperature has increased from 19.5°C in 1901 to 20.5°C in 2015, disturbing rainfall patterns and adversely impacting agricultural productivity, especially in rain-fed areas. Unpredictable natural calamities have further led people to move out to seek more stable livelihoods in the cities. A recent study by the Population Council illustrates how the 2010 floods resulted in large-scale migration from the worst-affected, mainly rural, communities to more secure urban areas, thereby swelling the population of urban centers. This unplanned urban ingress is placing even more pressure on already stretched resources including civic amenities such as health and education facilities in our sprawling towns and cities.

But perhaps most importantly, the country’s ability to enhance food production to meet the needs of a growing population is limited mainly because arable land has grown only slightly while non-arable land has increased due to water logging, salinity, overgrazing, and soil erosion, mostly linked with unsustainable land use. In fact, the share of arable land in total land area has declined from 43% in 1982 to 39% in 2015. This can be gauged from the fact that Pakistan’s wheat and rice production have not been not been able to keep pace with the growing population numbers. It is striking that Pakistan has gone from a wheat producing nation to one importing nearly 400,000 MT of wheat.

These trends do not bode well in our quest to lower maternal and child mortality, or to achieve the second Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating hunger by 2030. Total food insecurity in Pakistan is around 58%, and its immediate consequence is malnutrition, resulting in increasing prevalence of anemia among children and women of reproductive age. The number of anemic children under 5 years is 61percent while in women of reproductive age it is around 40 percent.

Quality of Water Air and Health Issues – Water stress and poor quality of drinking water are leading to public health challenges. UNESCO’s World Water Development Report ranks Pakistan 80th among 122 countries in terms of maintaining water quality standards, the lack of which is leading to millions of cases of diarrheal diseases and 250,000 deaths among children under 5 each year. It is estimated that around 40% of all reported diseases in Pakistan are due to polluted drinking water, and that water and hygiene related diseases cost the national economy US$380¬¬–883 million annually (Economic Survey 2015¬–16).

Pakistan is continuing to witness rapid deforestation because of growing demand for wood for housing and household energy purposes and use of land for agriculture purposes. According to the World Bank the total forest area in Pakistan, which was 3.28% in 1990, has dwindled to 1.9% in 2015.

As Pakistan’s population size increases exponentially, and per capita consumption of natural resources spirals, the environment will be the most apparent loser. We must confront the obvious unbridled pressure of a rapid population growth rate by enlarging the environment and climate change discourse to include population growth and create awareness of this nexus in our educational curricula and also by directly reducing population pressures by helping Pakistani couples avail family planning services and eliminating the unmet need for such services.