We must return to the population factor: and solve it

By Frosty Wooldridge

Year in and year out, the human race adds another 80 million of its species onto this planet.  The onslaught continues without pause and in fact, accelerates.  Humans add 1 billion people every 12 years.  They continue on their way from 7 billion in 2012 to 10 billion within 38 years. 

While the mainstream media ignores the equation, Mother Nature and the rest of the planet respond with climate destabilization, species extinction, desertification, melting glaciers and mass starvation levels of humans around the planet.

Marilyn Hempel, director of www.populationpress.org, brings top writers to the forefront to start the conversation.  She said, “Academic analysts, the news media, and the international community have frequently engaged in divisive debates over population and international family planning, with periods of attention and funding followed by years of neglect, particularly in the last decade.”

In this forum, these four experts give their ideas on humanity’s predicament: Martha Campbell, John Cleland, Alex Ezeh and Ndola Prata.

“On 31 January, 2007,” said Campbell. “The All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development, and Reproductive Health of the U.K. Parliament issued a report, Return of the Population Growth Factor: Its Impact upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The report, the product of extensive hearings and analysis of written and verbal testimony, cited overwhelming evidence that “the MDGs are difficult or impossible to achieve with current levels of population growth in the least developed countries and regions.” It recommends a substantial increase in support for international family planning, particularly for the 2 billion people currently living on less than $2 per day. The report does not argue that population is the only, or even the leading, factor in achievement of the MDGs. Instead, it presents a compelling case that continued neglect of family planning in developing countries will severely undermine crucially important goals.”

The Population Pendulum

“In the 1960s and ’70s, many developing countries adopted national population policies and family planning services,” said Campbell. “Although some Asian policy initiatives incorporated coercive elements, most family planning efforts were entirely voluntary and proved remarkably successful. Initiatives relied on both public and private sectors to provide modern methods from voluntary sterilization to condoms, with appropriate information. Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of married women in developing countries using contraceptives jumped from <10% to 60%, and total fertility rates fell from six to about three.

“Despite these successes, surveys continued to indicate that many women in developing countries wanted to space their children or limit childbearing altogether, but still did not have access to the most effective contraceptive methods. When the world’s scientific academies, including the American Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London, gathered in New Delhi in 1993, they concluded that “humanity is approaching a crisis point with respect to the interlocking issues of population, environment, and development.” The academies agreed, “the goal should be to reach zero population growth within the lifetime of our children.”

“The United Nations 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, noted the need to slow population growth in developing countries, but the political emphasis of their Program of Action was on holistic approaches to reproductive health. Many women’s advocates at the ICPD criticized promotion of family planning to reduce population growth as inherently coercive.

“The Program of Action estimated that by 2005 the cost of meeting the broad agenda set out at Cairo would be $25 billion annually (adjusted for inflation), with one-third to be provided by international donors. It was a bold agenda, but it lacked sufficient political traction. Many of its goals proved unattainable in resource-poor settings and attention to family planning was largely ignored. By 2004, the investment by developed countries in international family planning had fallen to 13% of the target set by the ICPD.”

Population Growth and Millennium Development Goals

The evidence provided and analyzed in relation to the MDGs included the following points.

MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. It will be almost impossible to reach the target of halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015 without a large-scale recommitment to family planning. In sub-Saharan Africa, partly as a result of rapid population growth, the number of people living in extreme poverty rose from 231 million in 1990 to 318 million in 2001. The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) pointed out that almost 1.5 billion young men and women will enter the 20-to-24-years age cohort between 2000 and 2015, and if they don’t find jobs “they will fuel political instability.”

MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education. Voluntary limitation of family size is also essential for developing countries striving to meet the MDG of eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2015. Children in large families, especially girls, are less likely to enter school, more likely to drop out, and are sick and hungry more often than children from small families in the same community. In the poorest countries as a whole, two million additional schoolteachers are required each year to keep up with population growth and to maintain the current, inadequate levels of primary education. Uneducated girls marry earlier and tend to have more unintended pregnancies, setting up a pernicious cycle of sexual inequality and high fertility.

MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women. The ability to choose if and when to have a child is central to the autonomy of women. Sir David King, the Science Adviser to the U.K. government, told the group that with respect to fertility decline, “There is little doubt in my mind that female empowerment to control fertility is a key part of that equation.”

You may contact Marilyn Hempel at www.populationpress.org

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