Thursday, March 29, 2007
Genocide in Rwanda
In the second half of Collapse, Jared Diamond looks at modern societies starting with the massacres in Rwanda, just ten years ago.
Human population growth in East Africa, among the highest in the world, recently 4.1% in Kenya, resulting in a doubling of the population every 17 years, was a significant contributor to the horror. Africa’s population has been exploding recently for many reasons: The adoption of crops native to the New World (especially corn, beans, sweet potatoes, an manioc/cassava, broadening the agricultural base and increasing food production beyond what was previously possible with native crops alone.
Other factors are: improved hygiene, preventive medicine, vaccinations of mothers and children, antibiotics, and some control of malaria and other endemic African diseases; and national unification and the fixing of national boundaries, thereby opening to settlement some areas that had been fought over no-man’s lands.
Population problems such as those in East African are called “Malthusian,” after Thomas Malthus, the English economist who in 1789, said that human population would outrun the food supply. That would happen, Malthus reasoned, because population growth proceeds exponentially, while food production increases only arithmetically. Hence, a population will tend to expand to consume all available food and never leave a surplus, unless population growth itself is halted by famine, war, or disease, or by making preventive choices. Italy and Japan and China have made those choices. But modern Rwanda illustrates a case where Malthus’s worst case scenario seems to have been right.
Rwanda’s average population density is triple even that of Africa’s third most densely populated country (Nigeria), and 10 times that of neighboring Tanzania. Genocide in Rwanda produced the third largest body count among the world’s genocides since 1950, topped only by the killings in Cambodia, 1970sm and Bangladesh 1971. Tomorrow, Friday Funnies, then no posts for most of next week. I’ll be in NYC for Passover.
Human population growth in East Africa, among the highest in the world, recently 4.1% in Kenya, resulting in a doubling of the population every 17 years, was a significant contributor to the horror. Africa’s population has been exploding recently for many reasons: The adoption of crops native to the New World (especially corn, beans, sweet potatoes, an manioc/cassava, broadening the agricultural base and increasing food production beyond what was previously possible with native crops alone.
Other factors are: improved hygiene, preventive medicine, vaccinations of mothers and children, antibiotics, and some control of malaria and other endemic African diseases; and national unification and the fixing of national boundaries, thereby opening to settlement some areas that had been fought over no-man’s lands.
Population problems such as those in East African are called “Malthusian,” after Thomas Malthus, the English economist who in 1789, said that human population would outrun the food supply. That would happen, Malthus reasoned, because population growth proceeds exponentially, while food production increases only arithmetically. Hence, a population will tend to expand to consume all available food and never leave a surplus, unless population growth itself is halted by famine, war, or disease, or by making preventive choices. Italy and Japan and China have made those choices. But modern Rwanda illustrates a case where Malthus’s worst case scenario seems to have been right.
Rwanda’s average population density is triple even that of Africa’s third most densely populated country (Nigeria), and 10 times that of neighboring Tanzania. Genocide in Rwanda produced the third largest body count among the world’s genocides since 1950, topped only by the killings in Cambodia, 1970sm and Bangladesh 1971. Tomorrow, Friday Funnies, then no posts for most of next week. I’ll be in NYC for Passover.
