Ecologists Laud Assad For Helping Stem Human Overpopulation

The accomplishment is the result of a determined policy on the part of Mr. Assad and his government to reduce the number of people, a group that drains worldwide food resources.

London, June 27 – Environmental researchers praised Syrian President Basher Assad this week, saying he and his regime have done more than anyone else over the last few years to help reduce the threat of human overpopulation.

A spokesman for the Malthus Foundation, an environmental think tank focused on issues of food supply, told reporters the organization intends to present Assad with an award for his efforts, which have resulted in the population of Syria shrinking from 22 million in 2011 to 16 million today, a drop that portends a reduced global demand for food.

“Going from 22 million to 16 million in just a few short years represents more than a twenty-five percent reduction,” noted Malthus Foundation Pop-Redux Project director Jen O’Seid. “The original figure might not be 100% accurate, but we do know that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been permanently removed from the population, and about three million have left the country and are unlikely to return anytime soon.”

“That accomplishment is the result of a determined policy on the part of Mr. Assad and his government to reduce the number of people, a group that drains worldwide food resources,” she continued. “In the short term, the upheaval of war has hurt Syria’s domestic food production, but the main effect of that phenomenon is felt only in Syria itself, as the country’s food exports are not significant from a global perspective.”

O’Seid said her organization would like to award Assad the Malthus Prize for Sustainable Food Policy, presented every four years to a person or organization deemed to have made the most significant strides in shrinking the gap between the global food supply and human demand for food. “In previous decades we have focused more on citing the important works of people and groups working to increase food production,” she explained, “but our board of trustees decided it must also recognize the efforts of those contributing from the opposite end of the equation, the ones doing to most to reduce human demand for food. The most effective and lasting way to do so is to remove as many hungry mouths as possible from the population. In the last four years, no one has done so more efficiently than President Assad.”

Observers voiced regret that earlier pioneers of human population reduction could not be awarded the Malthus Prize in their own time. “The prize is not given posthumously,” said Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, who has been following the situation in Syria closely and tweeting almost daily about Israel instead. “Unfortunately, that means such achievers as Stalin, Pol Pot, and many figures in the 1990’s Hutu government of Rwanda will never achieve this level of recognition.”