Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

This is such a fascinating paper. Since 1868, the population of Ethiopia has risen from 7m to 112m.
An environmental disaster? No.
In the study area, land degradation has DECREASED with population growth. More trees, more vegetation, less erosion. Why? sciencedirect.com/science/articl…🧵

Because the overriding issue, as some of us have been trying to point out for a while, is not population but *policy*.
In 1868, land tenure was feudal, and people and their livestock were driven onto steep slopes and into destructive forms of land use. But …

… since then, there's been land reform, giving people equal shares, followed by policies to exclude livestock from much of the land, replant trees, stop indiscriminate felling and protect soil. The result has been a major improvement in people’s livelihoods AND in land quality.

It’s a remarkable but unsurprising riposte to the false, essentialist and sometimes racist claim that the fundamental environmental problem, which leads inexorably to disaster, is people - often “other people” or “those people” - breeding too much.

Btw, it now looks as if demographic transition is happening worldwide much faster than was previously anticipated. Population growth is slowing towards a halt.
The massive environmental threats we face are caused by other factors – notably consumption.
newint.org/features/2020/…

And the real population crisis? It’s not the rising number of humans, but the rising number of livestock, whose much faster population growth, driven by our demand for animal products, is lethal to the living world.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Oh, and something else that emerges strongly from the evidence (as detailed in Danny Dorling's article) is that the better protected from vicissitudes women are, the fewer children they have.
In other words, a strong welfare state is likely to DECREASE birth rates.

That's the exact opposite of the Thomas Malthus/Daily Mail/@MPIainDS (Iain Duncan Smith) narrative: that poor relief or social security encourage women to have children.
So ... curb your Malthusiasm.