This course will take a multidisciplinary look at the complex and contentious relationships between population, the environment and economic development.  Two hundred years after Thomas Malthus wrote his famous treatise on population, the debate continues.  Does population growth spell environmental disaster? How should it be controlled? What are the implications for economic growth, well-being, and social justice?  Critical global issues such as environmental degradation, restrictive family planning policies, international migration, and food security are all implicated in these persistent and often explosive debates.  During the semester, this course will examine the leading theories for understanding the interactions between population growth, environmental quality and economic development, as well as case studies and policy questions from around the world.  Among the issues covered will be debates over the earth’s carrying capacity, demographic transitions in the Third World, relationships between fertility levels, gender equality and development, national immigration policies, poverty and resource degradation, food security, and the role of technological change and social institutions.
 

Instructors

Carolyn Trist
199 McCone Hall
crtrist@redshift.com
Office hours: Thursday 3:00-5:00

Wendy Wolford
199 McCone Hall
wwolford@socrates.berkeley.edu
Office hours to be announced

Required Texts

Cohen, Joel (1995). How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: W.W. Norton & Company
Trist and Wolford (2001). Population, Environment, and Development Reader.  (In two parts. Available at Copy Central on Hearst at Euclid)
 

Course requirements

country profile    15%
discussion section   15%
in-class midterm exam   30%
take home final exam    40%
 

Course Outline for Part I  (January 17th to March 12th)

January 17. Introduction
    Cohen: Chapter 1

January 22.  World Population at the Millennium

    Reader: “Y6B: The Real Millennial Threat;” US News and World Report (1994)“10 Billion for Dinner, Please;”     National Research Council (2000) Introduction to Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World’s Population. Duden (1992) “Population.”

January 24.  The Population Question: Historical Origins and Recurring Debates

    Cohen: Chapters 5 and 6
    Reader: Malthus (1798) excerpt from An Essay on the Principles of Population, Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1990) “Why Isn’t Everyone as Scared as We Are?” from The Population Explosion, Simon (1981) “What are the Real Problems?” from The Ultimate Resource.

January 29.   Demographic Transitions: Explaining Population Growth and Decline

    Cohen: Chapter 4
    Reader: Cain (1986) “The Consequences of Reproductive Failure; Caldwell (1999) “The Bangladesh Fertility Decline: An Interpretation.”

January 31.  Fertility and Development in the Third World

    Reader: Ashford (1995) “New Perspectives on Population: Lessons from Cairo,”  Sen (1999) “Population, Food, and Freedom.“

February 5.   The Politics of Population Control

    Reader: US News and World Report (1994)“Population Wars;” Bandarage (1997) “Politics of Global Population Control” from Women, Population and Global Crisis.

February 7 International Migration and the Environment

    Reader: “Refugees: Exporting Misery;” “International Migration” from NRC (2000); Massey (1999) “International Migration at the Dawn of the 21st Century: The Role of the State;”  Vlachos (1996) “International Migration and Environmental Refugees.”

February 12.  National Immigration Policies and Politics

    Reader: Tactaquin (1999) on Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
    On reserve: Bouvier (1995)“How many Americans?.”

February 14.   Population Growth and the Global Commons

    Cohen: Chapter16
    Reader: Hardin (1968) “The Tragedy of the Commons;” “Tragedy of the Oceans” from The Economist (1994).
    On reserve: Myerson (1998) “Population, Development and Global Warming: Averting the Tragedy of the Climate Commons;” Agarwal and Narain (1991) “Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism.”

February 19. Population and Natural Resource Sustainability

    Guest Lecture: Professor David Zilberman, Agricultural and Resource Economics
    Readings to be announced.

February 21.   Introduction to the Family Production Function

    Guest Lecture: Professor David Zilberman, Agricultural and Resource Economics
    Readings to be announced.

February 26.  Success and Failure in Family Planning

    Guest Lecture: Professor Malcolm Potts, Bixby Professor, School of Public Health
    Reader: Potts (2000) “The Unmet Need for Family Planning;” Potts and Walsh (1999) “Making Cairo Work.”

February 28. Politics and Philosophies about Population Growth and Family Planning

    Guest Lecture: Martha Campbell, Ph.D. Center for Entrepreneurship in International Health
    Reader: Campbell (1998) “Schools of Thought: An Analysis of Interest Groups Influential in International Population Policy.”
    On reserve:  Potts (1997) “Sex and the Birth Rate: Human Biology, Demographic Change, and Access to Fertility Regulation Methods.”

March 5. Population, Poverty, and Environmental Degradation

    Reader: “Population, Poverty, and the Local Environment” from Scientific American 1995; Williams (1995) “Modernizing Malthus;” Leach and Fairhead (2000) “Challenging Neo-Malthusian Analyses.”

March 7.  Local Resource Degradation and International Trade: Two Case Studies

    Reader: DeWalt et al (1996) “Population, Aquaculture and Environmental Destruction: The Gulf of Fonesca, Honduras.”
 

March 12. Mid-term Exam
 

End of Part I
 

 *  *  *  *  *  *
 

Topics to be covered in Part II:
•  Revisiting the classic debates
•  Perspectives on land use and labor since World War II
•  Food security, production and distribution
•  Absolute and relative consumption levels
•  Is technology the answer?
•  Economic solutions to environmental constraints
•  The role of the state, property rights, and civil society