Effects of population growth and migration on agricultural development and the environment in the Third World.

Third World countries are destroying their environments partly due to pressure from developed countries for natural resources with which to make consumer goods partly due to pressure from their own urban elite to import such luxury items and partly due to their own population growth. Deforestation results directly from the rural populations need for fuel and indirectly from the increasing need for farming grazing land. The situation in Guatemala provides a good example of the relation between population growth and deforestation. In the past 2 decades population growth in Guatemala has been 3% per year with a present total population of over 9 million. Despite rapid rural-urban migration the population is still only 1/3 urban but rural population density has increased from 1.8 to 2.3 persons per hectare and per capita food production has declined by 20% during the 1980s. 84% of the rural population lives in poverty. The present total fertility rate is 6.0. If it declines to 4.8 by the year 2030 the population will then be 37 million; if it declines to 2.0 by the year 2030 the population will then be 24 million. Of some 10.8 million hectares only 48% are suitable for agriculture and 85% of this was already being farmed by 1979. 76% of all new farmland between 1964 and 1979 was in the forested northern area where 60% of the farms in 1979 were smaller than subsistence level. Practically no forests exist anymore in Guatemala and in Central America only El Salvador has a lower carrying capacity of land relative to its population. In the Sudan similar problems of high fertility (7.0) rapid population growth (3% per year) rapid urbanization use of marginal land and high migration rates (including the 11% permanently migratory nomads rural-urban migration and seasonal labor migration) compounded by drought famine and 1 million political refugees from Ethiopia Uganda and Chad have resulted in massive desertification. Nomadic pastoralists make efficient use of scarce water but sedentary agriculturalists reusing the same bit of land year after year especially since the introduction of "modern" 1-crop (millet) agriculture have been disastrous. The topsoil soon blows away and the desert takes over. To compensate for a 50% decrease in millet production more land has been taken for mechanized farming driving more and more farmers into the cities and more and more pastoralists into more marginal lands. Moreover since the only fuel in the country is wood the few forests that exist are also being destroyed. A 3-pronged approach to the problem of population growth and environmental destruction is needed. Ecological studies should examine the relationships between population density and land use; anthropological studies should examine population-environmental linkings; and social science methodologies must be used to study the intricate interrelationships of the different variables. With such an information base Third World countries would be in a better position to formulate policies regarding population growth and sustainable development.