TThis year on October 12, according to the United Nations, the world's population will reach (according to other organisations it has already reached) 6 billion,
having doubled in just forty years. Each additional billion since 1960 has been added in ever more rapid succession (14, then 13, and now just 12 years), whereas it took 33 years to add the third
billion and 123 to reach the second. But the good news is that better health services, declining mortality rates, better education, delayed childbearing and other factors have substantially slowed
the rate of growth over the past few decades.
Worldwide, women are now having just half the number of children their mothers did. In 61 mostly advanced industrialised countries, women's fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level of
2.1 children each. And in a few nations like Italy, the population is even projected to decline.
The problem is no longer a population explosion but what demographers call "population momentum'' represented by the 1 billion people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 24 now entering their peak
childbearing years and destined to drive global population to between 7.3 (a low projection) and 10.7 billion before it finally levels off in the mid-21st century. More than 95 percent of this
population growth will occur in poor developing nations with neither the housing, jobs, social services, or health services to support it.
These demographics assure that even as we succeed in slowing fertility rates, we will continue to experience the myriad pressures of scarcely sustainable population growth for at least another few
generations. That pressure will further exhaust already depleted natural resources, intensify social and political conflicts, and exacerbate threats to human health posed by poverty, overburdened
public services, and underbuilt physical infrastructures.
Every 20 minutes the world gains 3,500 people but loses one more plant or animal species. More than 800 million people are already malnourished, but we must somehow feed an additional 78 million each
year. Yet in the 65 nations where population growth is highest, food production has been declining for the past fifteen years.
Meanwhile, unsustainable rates of consumption and patterns of economic growth now spreading from North America and Europe to rising middle classes in the developing world are dramatically reducing
the portion left for those at the margins who, for lack of education, employment, and access to reproductive health, are still raising families too large for them or their societies to sustain.
Meeting in Cairo in 1994 for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 179 nations agreed to an ambitious plan of action. They emphasised that given adequate information and
access to reproductive services, most women freely choose to have fewer children than their mothers. Beyond these immediate needs, the Cairo consensus emphasised that little can be achieved in either
population stabilisation or sustainable development unless and until women are accorded equal rights with men · education, empowerment, equity, and equality, including participation in the political
process where such priorities are established. The delegates pledged to increase spending on population and related programmes to USD 17 billion a year by 2000 and USD 22 billion by 2015. Two-thirds
of the total was slated to come from developed nations and one-third from developing countries.
The first year after Cairo, a total of USD 9.5 billion was raised, of which 2 billion came from developed countries, the largest increase in a decade. But the trend since then has been one of
decreasing support. Of the USD 5.7 billion pledged by developed nations for 1999, just 1.9 billion has been raised. Industrialised countries are just one-third of the way toward fulfilling their
commitments, developing countries about two-thirds.
Leading the retreat has been the United States, which despite its large dollar contribution is among the world's most parsimonious development assistance donors in relation to the size of its
economy. Clinton administration efforts to secure funding have been hamstrung by a small but influential congressional minority of abortion and foreign aid foes who have tarred the UN Population Fund
with the false accusation that it has aided China's coercive one-child policy. Unfortunately, they play a pivotal role not only in American politics but in population and development programmes
worldwide. They are joined in their resistance to the Cairo consensus by a small group of conservative Roman Catholic and Muslim developing countries, including Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Guatemala,
Nicaragua and Argentina, strongly supported by the Vatican.
At a UN Special Session on Population held in late June to review implementation of the Cairo agreement, conservatives sought to reopen key portions of action plan by inserting language restricting
abortion, demoting the importance of family planning, and asserting parental control over children's health and sex education.
Media mogul Ted Turner and computer magnates Bill Gates and David Packard have recently endowed foundations with several billion dollars earmarked for reproductive, maternal and child health services
in the developing world. While this is a heartening development and sets an important precedent, it cannot compensate for a wholesale abdication of responsibility on the part of major governments.
Freitag, 17. September 1999