Population growth is critical to environmental change. The IPAT equation (from both Week 1 and 2 readings) is an equation that describes four variables that interact to produce environmental change: I

Papua New Guinea

William Riggs posted May 27, 2020 10:13 AM

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Greetings,

Given the IPAT equation, it appears that environmental decline (I) is driven by some combination of population size (P), level of affluence/consumption per person (A) and impact of technology use (T). This is a sliding scale; for instance, a significantly lower human population would be able to afford greater affluence per and greater technological use per capita with lower environmental decline. Similarly, a moderate human population with comparatively lower affluence and less technological use would create balance as well. It appears that what’s happening in reality is all three variables of the equation are rising simultaneously, resulting in detrimental environmental decline.

The developing country that I chose to compare the United States to is Papua New Guinea. For population I scaled the number down to 1 = 1,000,000. I used United Nations 2018 estimates: https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Highlights.pdf

For affluence, I used World Bank data for GDP per capita: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=US

For technology, I used millions of tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe) per capita. Source (US): https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption-statistics.html

Source (Papua New Guinea): https://books.google.com/books?id=MT8JBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT291&lpg=PT291&dq=papua+new+guinea+mtoe&source=bl&ots=v_kyELRc6P&sig=ACfU3U2wmMnLPc7KENxnwKr5vu2W9e73aQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjX0NDHhtTpAhWJiOAKHVxJA3kQ6AEwCnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=papua%20new%20guinea%20mtoe&f=false

I couldn’t find a universally accepted unit for measuring I in the equation, but no matter how you slice it, the United States’ number is orders of magnitude greater than that of Papua New Guinea.

Looked at in another way, I made this table based on 2016 information obtained from this website: http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/

According to the Australian Parliamentary Secretary of Pacific Island Affairs, Parliamentary Secretary of Foreign Affairs in 2012, Papua New Guinea had the seventh fastest-growing economy in the world in 2011. This prosperity came due to Papua New Guinea’s wealth in minerals, fossil fuels and natural resources such as timber and fish (Marles, 2012).

Deforestation is a major environmental issue facing Papua New Guinea. The rainforests of Papua New Guinea are among the largest in the world, ranking third behind the Amazon and Congo. As such, this has attracted many international logging companies to this lucrative natural resource. There seems to be very little international attention on this subject; the most recent data I could find for now are from 2001 which stated that Papua New Guinea’s rainforests were being degraded at a rate of 362,000 hectares per year. It’s estimated that by next year 83% of PNG’s accessible rainforests (53% of all forests on the island) will be severely damaged or lost (Burness Communications, 2008).

The issue does not appear to be related to population growth of affluence in Papua New Guinea; as stated in the previous paragraph, most of the issues related to deforestation come from foreign companies. In 2018 only about 55% of the rural population had access to electricity (The World Bank, 2019); since this represented 86.7% of the total population, this means that over 39% of the population has no access to electricity or technology (Knoema, 2019). Given Papua New Guinea’s relatively low population, high biocapacity reserve, and low ecological footprint, I do not believe that their indigenous population has much of an environmental impact on that nation at this time.

-William

References

Burness Communications. (2008, June 2). As Papua New Guinea Pushes for Payments for Forest Conservation, New Analysis Says Nation May Be Running Out of Forests to Protect. Retrieved from Science In Public: https://web.archive.org/web/20110927112154/http://www.scienceinpublic.com/png_forests.htm

Knoema. (2019). Papua New Guinea - Urban population as a share of total population. Retrieved from Knoema: https://knoema.com/atlas/Papua-New-Guinea/Urban-population

Marles, R. (2012, March 9). Raising the profile of PNG in Australia. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20140211201645/http://ministers.dfat.gov.au/marles/speeches/2012/rm_sp_120309.html

The World Bank. (2019). Access to electricity, rural (% of rural population) - Papua New Guinea. Retrieved from The World Bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.RU.ZS?locations=PG&view=chart