“Environmental sustainability will never be achieved without population control.” Discuss this statement.

There are many possible approaches to this question.

“Environmental sustainability” is treating the environment in such a way that it meets the needs of the present generation without limiting the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It includes not only a concern for resource use (for example, preferring renewable resources to non-renewable resources) but also a determination to avoid contamination (soil, water, air) and to prevent adverse human-induced impacts on the environment.

Population control is not limited to policies designed to limit birth rates, but may also be interpreted to include policies of migration, and even policies designed to influence where people are permitted to live (zoning, national parks) and, increasingly, how they live / how much they consume.

In general, the successful implementation of population control is likely to reduce demand for resources, and decrease the likelihood of adverse human-induced environmental impacts. Successful population control is therefore normally associated with an improvement in the degree of sustainability.

However, population control alone is insufficient to ensure environmental sustainability, so a number of other factors such as political will, society’s sense of its relationship with the natural environment, public awareness, and desire to see progress only in terms of economic growth, will also be important. Equally, continued population growth may not be an obstacle to long-term sustainability if new technologies are developed and recycling, substitution, and conservation are embraced.

Stronger responses are likely to consider more than one scale (local, national, regional, global), but this is not a requirement for full marks. It is possible to gain full marks if the response focuses on only one or two points, such as over-consumption in some societies, so long as it is done in a well-argued and well-supported way.

Answers that do not show an understanding of environmental sustainability should not move beyond band D.

Responses based on appropriate, well-supported ideas and examples, and which arrive at some conclusion about the statement are likely to be credited at bands E/F.

Marks should be allocated according to the markbands.

There were a number of candidates who looked at the question through the neo-Malthusian and Boserup debate with the better ones able to refer these theories to the concept of environmental sustainability. These argued that from the Malthusian point of view, population control was required and from the Boserupian point of view, technology and innovations were far more important. Again the better candidates backed up their argument with reference to case studies with China, India and Singapore frequently used. Some good answers took a regional focus and looked at environmental stability before and after population control with China being a popular choice here. The weakest scripts had very little knowledge and understanding of sustainability and were largely superficial or marginal with no examples or case studies. In the poorest answers there was little application and important aspects of the question were ignored (such as a discussion on population control). In almost all cases population control was exclusively considered to be control of birth rates.