A Groaning Planet
A new study underscores the urgent necessity to expand birth control in nations still burdened with rapidly growing populations, but it also raises the specter that, for many of the affected nations, population already is overwhelming resources and it is too late to stave off deterioration of the already low standard of living.
The study is by Lester R. Brown, president and senior researcher, and Jodi L. Jacobson, researcher, with the Worldwatch Institute, the remarkable Washington institution that continues to provide unique insights into global problems.
There is a timeliness to this study because of the declining investment in population research and contraceptive development just when a significant effort is required to improve family-planning programs. Worldwatch estimates that, in real terms, funding has declined by one-third in the decade beginning in the early 1970s. There remain policy-makers in Washington who insist that population is not a problem. The Reagan Administration has crippled some of the most effective global programs, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
The publication of the study coincides with new global-population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The population in the year 2000 will be 6.2 billion--an increase of 27% over the total for 1985. In the last decade of this century the developing nations will add 828 million people. On average, there are 4 1/2 births each second.
Two new and alarming trends were uncovered in the Worldwatch study:
--There is a new polarization of population growth rates “driving roughly half the world toward a better future and half toward ecological deterioration and economic decline.” The slow-growth region, where the standard of living is improving, includes North America, Western and Eastern Europe, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
--Perhaps irreversible decline threatens some nations because “once populations expand to the point where their demands exceed the sustainable yield of local forests, grasslands, croplands or aquifers, they begin directly or indirectly to consume the resource base itself.” In these circumstances, strife and disorder are much more likely, according to the study.
Mexico and Egypt are cited as examples.
Mexico has been praised for its population-control program, but it came too late to make population manageable. The population continues to grow at a rate of 2.1 million a year. A million young people enter the job market each year, but the economy cannot create enough jobs, and depleted land and declining water supplies have left the nation dependent on farm imports. Egypt is adding 1.2 million people a year while its economy, like Mexico’s, is burdened with an enormous debt and its fertile land is declining as urban areas spread and force increased food imports. Tension in both nations is further exacerbated by the disparity between rich and poor.
“In addition to Mexico and Egypt, scores of developing countries are faced with politically destabilizing economic crises,” the report concludes. “Mounting stresses may cause fragile political institutions to give way, leading to an age of disorder.”
Many Third World nations have failed to understand that slowing growth was not enough. For many, the only alternatives are to stop population growth or risk declines that would see, ultimately, death rates rising instead of falling.
