New Needs Without New Means To assessthe impact of any societyon the environment, the formula I=PAT can be used as a guideline (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990). I = Impact; P=Number of people A= Index of affluence or average con- sumption of resources per person T= Technologyor indexof the environ- mental disruptiveness of the tech- nology used Ehrlich and Ehrlich (1990) concluded that allnations, rich orpoor, have apopu- lation problem. In rich nations, the rate of population growth is low, but the multi- pliers A and T are large. In contrast, the multiplierP is very large in poor nations. The total impact on the environmentcan be decreased by loweringone of the three factors (P, A or T) as long as the other two do not increase to offset the difference. Although I do not disagree with the Ehrlichs' conclusion,I do not beliwe that Somaliahas an overpopulation problem. Somaliais the same size as Texas and has one-third of the population. In my view, Somalia is affected by a syndrome that couldbe called "new needs without new means." After years of European occu- pation, Somalis have learned to eat what Europeans eat and wear what Europe- ans wear. As a consequence, the average consumptionof resourcesper personhas increased (multiplier A). The Western lifestyle was introducedintothe country, but Western know-how and technolo- gies were not. SinceWestern technology was not available, the use of inappropri- ate technology (e.g., destruction of for- ests to obtain charcoal) was inevitable. After independence, Somalia became a net importer of Western products. To buy these products, Somalis had to sell their livestock. Selling livestock had an unexpected negativeimpact on the envi- ronment. Year after year, the imported products became more and more expen- sive, and Somalishad to sellmore of their livestock to buy the same commodities. Consequently, the pastoralists had to in- crease their herds, causing the land to be overstocked and overgrazed. In the future, the West has two choices in dealing with countries like Somalia. The first is to share technology (1988) quoted a World Bank conclusion of 1984: "unless corrective measures are taken the external resource position of Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to become disastrous in the next few years." The former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, put it in this way: "Africa's debt burden is intolerable. We cannot pay. You know it and all our other creditors know it. It is not a rhetorical question when I ask, should we really let our peo- ple starve so that we can pay our debts" (Timberlake 1988).Since these countries will not be able to pay their debts, recolonization could be an attractive alternative for the West. However, in the long run, this will make life harder for both sides. EJ References Ehrlich, P.R., and Ann H.E. Ehrlich. 1990. Population Explosion. New York, New York Simon and Schuster Inc. Herlocker, D. 1989. "Range Survey and De- velopment in the Central Rangelands of Somalia." Final report, unpublished. Hoben, A. 1988. "The Political Economy of Land Tenure in Somalia." In Land Society in Contemporary Africa, edited by R.E. Downs and S.P. Reyna, 192220.Hano- ver, New Hampshire: University Press of New England. Holt, RM. 1989. "Resultsof the Agropastoral Development Program in CentralSoma- lia, 1985-1988." Final report, unpub- lished. Howze, G. 1989."Soao-EconomicSurveyof Somalia." Final report, unpublished. Immigration and Refugee Board Documen- tation Centre. 1989. "Information Pack- age on Somalia." Ottawa, Ontario: Immigration and Refugee Board Docu- mentation Centre, January. Ministry of Livestock, Forestry and Range. 1988. "Somali Livestodc Statistics, 1988- 1989." Mogadishu, Somalia. Unpub- lished. Stoddart, L.A., A.D. Smith and T.W. Box. 1975. Range Management. New York, New York McGraw-Hill. Timberlake, L. 1988. Africa in Crisis. London, England: Earthscan Ltd. with them. The second choice is to give them loans to buy Western products. Debt is already a serious problem for many African countries. Timberlake Nations of Immigrants: Australia, the United States, and International Migration Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992 Edited by Gary P. Freeman and James Jupp Reviewed by Nobuaki Suyama Comparative immigration policy is in fashion. A comparative perspective al- ways givesinnovative, freshviewpoints This book explores the similarities and differences between Australia and the United States, two major imrnigrant- receiving countries whose official lan- guage is English. The title suggests that these countries are not only receivers of immigrants, but that they have been founded and developed by successive generations of immigrants. Although this concept has been popular in the United States, it is a relatively recent one in Australia. This is perhaps because everyone in the "meltingpot" is no more or less American than anyone else, althoughittooka longtimeto placeblack citizensonthe samefooting.On the other hand, Australia startedas Britain's penal colony and retained British attitudes. Australians were predominantly "Brit- ish" and non-British settlers were ex- pected to conform. The book consists of four parts: the politicsregarding intake and control, the economics of immigration, settlement policy and newcomers' social integra- tion. The chapters included are, on the whole, quite good and will be useful to students of comparative politics, immi- gration and ethnic affairs. However, it is a pity that with the exceptionof the chap- ter on microeconomic analysis, the oth- ers do not pursue an integrated comparison even though various con- tributors make occasional references to the other country. Even a chapterjointly written by an American and an Austral- ian (Freeman and Betts) deals with each country's case under a separate heading. 14 Refkge, Vol. 13, No. 1 (April 1993) © Authors, 1993. This open-access work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits use, reproduction and distribution in any medium for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author(s) are credited and the original publication in Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees is cited.