In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond presents three societies that utilized their natural resources and population control measures successfully for a time. They are the island of Tikopia in the southwestern Pacific, the New Guinea highlands and Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate. Each of these three societies innovated thoughtful solutions to manage their environments. They also effectively prevented their populations from rising. The following represents how these peoples kept their population numbers down.
All three societies employed abortion and contraception to limit their populations. Additionally, lone individuals practiced abstinence or celibacy. But as we have experienced in our present day societies, these techniques are not enough by themselves. So the following immoderate measures came into effect; none of which I can recommend.
Infanticide was a feature within each of the three examples presented by Diamond. Now, I’m sure we could manage this technique within our own society. Just introduce a squalling infant into a fine dining establishment and supply each table with a club. But I’m not clear that we could attain common agreement to its use.
Tikopia, Diamond mentions, has a history of suicide which is a minor population control method. Again, I’m not sure that this is a lesson we could employ. It is possible that we could convince our depressed teenagers to cut deeper in times of famine. But our results may not be effective enough to count this as a consistent policy.
New Guinea had the additional technique of warfare to control its population. In the highlands, competition for land among a multitude of tribes guaranteed almost constant bloodshed. Tikopia went one better than New Guinea by employing total genocide of individual tribes. Diamond records an incident where the Nga Ariki clan exterminated the entire Nga Ravenga clan during a famine. But to be fair to the abilities of the New Guinea warriors, a highland tribe may have committed genocide during New Guinea’s long history of constant warfare, we just don’t have a record of it.
Because the Tokugawa shogunate controlled a more cohesive society with a single leadership, their people did not have the option of inter-tribal warfare. Instead, “during the Tokugawa Period, there were 154 famines, of which 21 were widespread and serious.”* Hardly an improvement over war and genocide; but Tikopia and New Guinea had their shares of famine as well.
So there you have it. The keys to long-term sustainability and population control: infanticide, suicide, genocide, warfare and famine. I’m not sure that we could get a society to voluntarily plan such an internal policy, though I am sure that it’s what we would end up with in the absence of other solutions.
There are other factors that make the lessons of these three societies impracticable for the rest of the world today. First, each of the three environments were unusually rich in soils and vegetation. The rest of the world has less to work with, guaranteeing even more trouble than these societies encountered. Second, all of these locations are isolated islands, allowing them to develop in a relative vacuum. Only later did they experience external pressures. Third, each of these small, isolated situations was eventually invaded by outsiders who were aggressively expansionist in terms of both ambition and population. In the face of these invaders, all three societies drastically altered their population growth and environmental sustainability.
Given both the techniques that these societies chose to control their populations, and the exceptional nature of their environments and locations, I am not sure that the lessons they provide for population control can be applied to the world‘s current population predicament.
Diamond, Jared. Collapse. “Opposite Paths to Success,” pp. 277-308. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.
*Bendan, Lao. "A Chronology of Japanese History." A Chronology of Japanese History. Self, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2013.
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