By Roy Brown

As long ago as the inaugural IHEU Congress in 1952, the Humanist community had seen population growth and the need for effective family planning programs as major issues for the world. A resolution passed at that first Congress stated:

(IHEU congress 1952)

When our founding fathers expressed that concern, world population stood at around 2.5 billion and was growing at about 50 million a year. Neither the pill nor any other modern contraceptives had been invented, and neither the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) nor the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) had yet been born. Much has happened in the world since 1952, but despite wars, floods, famines, the scourge of AIDS, and huge investment world-wide in family planning, world population continues to grow at more that 1% per annum. This year world population reached 6.4 billion and is growing at 76 million a year: an amount equal to the entire population of the United States every four years.

Yet, 35 years after the foundation of UNFPA and the expenditure of billions of dollars on population assistance, there are still 200 million of the world’s poorest women without access to contraception. The problem remains, quite simply, lack of funds. And yes, we can blame the usual culprits: the Vatican, tied in knots by its inability to admit its own historic errors, and the US administration pandering to the prejudices of the religious right who apparently believe that every condom manufactured is an invitation to promiscuity.

Until 1994, efforts to fund family planning programs were plagued by loud disagreement between the various competing interest groups.

Free-market libertarians argued that population growth was a good thing because it created more consumers for their goods and services. Any associated problems could be solved, as human problems always have been, by human ingenuity and new technology.

Feminists argued that concern with population growth was inadmissible because it was "treating women’s bodies as tools of demographic policy".

Economists from both north and south argued that "development is the best contraceptive" and that exhausted resources could always be replaced by alternatives; it was simply a question of market economics.

Third world governments argued that concern in the west with population growth in developing countries was neo-colonialism, and anyway misplaced. The real problem was the over-consumption of the earth’s resources by the rich countries of the north.

Environmentalists warned that the earth had only finite resources and we were running closer and closer to the limits. Market economics won’t help when the wells run dry. Reducing population growth and reducing western levels of consumption (anathema to the economists) were both vital for the future of the planet.

This lack of consensus – and the lingering belief among many Vatican-influenced governments (including France) that contraception was still vaguely immoral – was then used as an excuse by many of the richer countries to avoid supporting family planning programs in the poorer countries.

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 changed everything. A consensus was reached to focus on the reproductive health and rights of women. The breakthrough was achieved because research had shown that enabling women to decide when and how often to get pregnant would reduce population growth faster that even the most ambitious top-down target-driven government program of population control. Voluntary family planning in Taiwan, for example, had reduced their population growth faster than the draconian one child policy of mainland China. The Cairo conference agreed a 20-year plan of action with the objective that by 2015 every couple of child-bearing age would have access to a full range of reproductive health services including contraception. The program was to be funded two-thirds by the developing countries themselves and one-third by aid from the richer countries of the north.

In August 2004, a global round-table NGO conference called "Countdown 2015" was held in London under the aegis of UNFPA to assess progress in the implementation of this ambitious program. It attracted over 600 delegates from more than 100 countries. In the words of Frans Baneke, Executive Director of the World Population Foundation:

Unfortunately, only half the funds committed by the donor countries in Cairo ($9 billion this year) have been forthcoming. A major reason for the shortfall was explained by Steven Sinding, General Secretary of IPPF:

The shortfall in funding has been little less than catastrophic. Over half a million women are still dying every year from pregnancy-related complications, with many more millions condemned to lives of ill-health and grinding poverty by too many unwanted pregnancies too many children to be adequately clothed, nourished and cared for.

Following the conference, The Economist, deviating for once from its "population growth is largely positive stance, published a fair and balanced article that highlighted the bigotry and black propaganda of the "right to life" lobby and its world-wide influence, concluding:

Meanwhile, what of the environment? Many of those concerned by the effects of population growth on the environment and natural resources have been dismissed as "doomsayers" by the libertarians. And for many years throughout the 1980s and 90s, as new oil fields were discovered and new agricultural techniques adopted, it had seemed that the libertarians might just possibly be right. But the new discoveries and new technologies didn’t solve the problem, they merely pushed the impending crises further into the future. Our planet and its resources remain finite. Let us look at just one key limiting resource: fresh water.

In August 2004, at the International Water Symposium in Stockholm the 1300 delegates were told of the water crisis facing much of Asia – with India and China, the world’s most populous countries, among the worst hit (New Scientist, 28th August 2004).

In India the green revolution of the 1960s and 70s has been followed by a "tube-well revolution". Over 21 million of these deepbore wells have been sunk, using cheap (£600) pumps to raise water from as deep as 300 metres. Their effect has been dramatic. The pumps bring 200 cubic kilometres of water to the surface every year, much of it used to irrigate thirsty crops such as rice and sugar cane, turning India from a land of famine into a major rice exporter. But the honeymoon is almost over. Only a fraction of this water is being replaced by the monsoon rains. Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells are now dry and millions of the shallower tube wells have already dried up. In Tamil Nadu, 95% of the wells owned by small farmers have dried up and some villages stand empty. In Gujerat, one of the worst-hit states, the water table is falling by 6 metres a year.

Elsewhere in Asia the story is no different. As tube wells proliferate, water tables are plunging in Pakistan, Vietnam and Northern China. The Chinese government warned recently that water shortages will soon make the country dependent on grain imports. Arguments over access to water are a potent source of trouble between Israelis and Palestinians.

Suggestions that the water crisis can be solved by investing heavily in desalination plants are merely the pipe dreams of the ignorant. There is no possibility that a shortfall of thousands of cubic kilometres of fresh water a year can be made up by desalination.

Continuing population growth causes a whole host of such problems – from energy production to pollution, over-fishing and climate change – as we push our planet to the limits.

According to the latest UN projections, world population is likely to continue increasing until at least 2050, peaking at around 9 billion.

The world must wake up again to this problem. Fifty years ago our founding fathers did not know the answers. Now we do. Draconian policies of population control are not necessary. The key to containing population growth is simply to give women control over their lives.