Population Curbs Key to a Brighter Future

James Flanigan’s article, “Poor Environment Mirrors Poor Economy” (May 31), points out the important relationship between economic progress and environmental preservation in developing nations.

Nations cannot be expected to give priority to environmental issues when their people are struggling to survive.

Both the development of Japan and Korea share one important factor that Flanigan didn’t mention: They managed to greatly reduce their population growth rate.

In the decade following World War II, Japan cut its fertility rate (the number of children a woman would have, on average) in half.

Korea has done the same thing by making voluntary family planning readily available and offering incentives for smaller families. Korea’s fertility rate is now 1.53.

In contrast, population growth in most developing countries has now reached crisis proportions. In many African countries the population is doubling every 25 years or so.

More than 1 billion people do not have access to adequate food or water, and the shortfall is growing. For developing nations to improve their standard of living and protect the environment they depend on, population growth must be addressed.

However, we don’t need to look to the Earth Summit for solutions: The 1989 United Nations forum in Amsterdam produced a strategy that could stabilize the world’s population by the middle of the next century.

It calls for developed nations to commit just 4% of their foreign aid budget to international population programs. The U.S. currently commits about 2%, and both Reagan and Bush have blocked funding of the world’s two largest providers: International Planned Parenthood and the U.N. Population Fund.

The best thing the United States could do for the global environment would be to rediscover what we learned in the ‘60s: Coming to grips with global population growth is critical to the future of all nations.

JAMES BRUCKER

Los Angeles