The Critical Message Behind Ben Gurion University Professors’ Prestigious Publication

A complex model assessing potential environmental policy options empirically demonstrates the futility of addressing ecological challenges without stabilizing population

Promotion at Israeli universities is almost entirely based on the quantity of our publications. Israeli academics working in the environmental field can be prolific but because of the constraints in the format and space imposed by peer-reviewed journals, innovative research about critical challenges is not always prioritized. And yet, every so often a scientific article comes out that really matters.

This month, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Ben Gurion University has done just that, publishing in Nature Sustainability, perhaps the most vaunted journal in the environmental field. Their key finding: Even if Israel adopts heroic policies, the country is on a trajectory to fail, with steady increases expected in our carbon, land and water footprints.

The article’s title: “Effects of demographic and technological trends on the mitigation of Israel’s environmental footprint”, may be dispassionately understated. But the implications of the empirical findings of the BGU scientists (Tal Cordova, Meidad Kissinger,, Na’ama Teschner, Dor Chen, Zeev Stossel, Oren Goldfischerm, Shiri Nitzan-Tzahor and Raziel Riemer) — cannot be overstated.

The article is important because it shows, analytically, using precise quantitative modeling, what the actual results of different abatement and mitigation alternatives will be. Their model calculates the effects of ambitious policies (versus moderate or even no policies at all) designed to reduce consumption in a range of categories. Specifically, the impact of different approaches to decreasing electricity, transportation, water, food, construction and fuel for heat  are assessed for three critical “dependent variables”: the  nation’s future greenhouse gas emissions, the land and water footprints (“where the land footprint is the area used and the water footprint is the amount of water consumed”).

The data show that the Israeli economy already relies on 28,691 km² of land — a larger area than the country’s entire land mass. It also consumes 2,654 million m³ of water, within Israel (domestically) and abroad (in imported food) which also exceeds present capacity. And it is well to remember that Israel’s population is projected to double over the next 35 years.

It’s not that improving environmental performance doesn’t matter. The model shows that increasing renewable energy will contribute to a greater reduction in greenhouse gas emissions than any other single measure; Preventing food waste and reducing beef consumption have the most potential to reduce total land and water footprints.

But it won’t be enough. The analysis finds that:

“without strategies for dealing with demographic trends, the potential for substantial reduction in natural resource use (land and water footprints) and GHG emissions is limited, even with drastic environmental load mitigation measures.”

The implications are clear and the Ben Gurion team doesn’t blink when articulating them:

“Countries with positive demographic trends should extend their mitigation measures beyond technological advancement and behavioral changes and consider also sustainable demographic policies. These should focus on individual empowerment and can range from education to incentives and subsidies, some of which have already proved successful.”

 To some, this conclusion may seem self-evident. Intuitively “more people” means “less nature”;  it also means more consumption and more pollution. But to fully understand the significance behind the new publication and its unabashedly clear policy recommendations, it is important to understand the historical context in which sustainability research takes place today.

The interplay between the environment and population pressures used to be at the heart of the environmental agenda. During the 1970s and 1980s, green NGOs spoke constantly about the ecological consequences of high population densities: the inevitable disappearance of habitat and biodiversity; the rise in emissions;  the consumption of natural resources. The issue was sufficiently germane for US Republican President Richard Nixon to speak about the imperative of addressing overpopulation in his 1970 State of the Union address.

But during the 1990s, an unholy alliance materialized with a coalition of developing countries, the Vatican and even feminist organizations setting out to silence environmentalists who spoke so openly about the need to stabilize the world’s population. A phenomenon of “population shaming” emerged, where sustainable demography advocates were suddenly targeted as  “racists” and eugenicists”, falsely accused of only wanting to limit the number of people with dark skin. Rather than stand up for the simple scientific truth about unlimited growth and the numerous ecological catastrophes already caused by population pressures, many environmentalists and green organizations simply found it easier to retreat and take on other, less controversial issues.

Of course, this in no way changed the fundamental dynamics. The world’s population has more than doubled since Nixon spoke openly about the challenge fifty years ago. There are now more than 8 billion people living on an increasingly crowded planet. And the UN projects that there will be at least 10 billion in fifty years before we might see some leveling off.

The intensity of such population pressures is probably more than this planet can bear. The ecological crises faced around the world today are increasingly severe: 70% of the animals living in the wild have disappeared; greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere steadily rise; the signs of global warming, violent weather and sea level rise indisputable… and dangerous. Scarcity is becoming more acute.

It seems at times that collegiality can also be a scarce resource in Israeli universities. But as a faculty member at rival Tel Aviv University, I am delighted to salute my southern colleagues from Ben Gurion University. By tackling a sensitive topic of research, and courageously sharing their findings in such an eminent journal, they not only point our country in the right direction, but they send a critical message to the world: Quantity of life is already supplanting quality of life; And there can be no sustainability without population stability.