Roy Brown

The Day of Six Billion

Roy Brown is a founder Board Member of the World Population Foundation. Along with his wife Diana Brown who is IHEU's representative to the UN at Geneva, Roy Brown has received the Distinguished Humanist Award of IHEU Member Organisation Council for Secular Humanism at Chicago in May ‘99.

The Population Bomb

According to the UN Population Fund, world population reached six billion on October 12th this year. The past few years have seen human population growing faster than ever before- despite the success of family planning programs world-wide. It was only as recently as 1960 that population first reached three billion. We have added a further billion in the twelve years since 1987 and world population is still growing at the rate of one new Germany every year, or another China every twelve years.

In 1798, in his Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus recognised that population growth would always press against the available food supply. He argued later that the only way to break free from this pressure was for people to exercise moral restraint, a message that has been echoed more recently - and repeatedly - by Pope John Paul II. But moral restraint alone never has and never will stop people having sex. In reality, it is only the miracle of modem contraception that has made it possible - in theory at least - to break free from Malthus' bleak prediction. We can now satisfy our natural sexual urges without the risk of unwanted pregnancy- for the first time in history separating sex from procreation. This freedom, which most of us now take for granted, has been one of the most important factors in releasing us from poverty and women from subservience. It is a freedom, however, that the poor in developing countries still do not fully share - and the poorest one billion of us not at all. For them Malthus still reigns supreme.

Paradoxically, the recent rapid growth in world population has been partly the result of people having fewer, and therefore healthier, children. Over 50% of women worldwide now use contraception, and as a result average fertility has declined from over six children per woman thirty years ago to around 3.5 today. But even if total fertility rate were to fall immediately to replacement level (2.1 children per woman) rapid population growth would continue simply because more young people than ever are now reaching child-beating age. Regardless of the future success of family planning programs, world population will probably reach 9 billion by 2050, either because women continue to be trapped in a cycle of poverty, high fertility and high maternal and infant mortality, or because they have fewer, healthier children, more of whom survive to reproduce. A number of developing countries are already well on the way to achieving the so-called demographic transition to smaller, healthier families, but some, notably in Africa, are still trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty.

The impact of these rapidly growing numbers will be profound. The Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank, warns that environmental degradation, already a problem in many countries, will accelerate, water shortages will become critical in many of our largest cities, per-capita world food production will decline, and increasing numbers of people will face starvation. These are not simpleminded scare claims but are based on calm and thoughtful research and painstaking analysis. To add to the problem, per-capita resource consumption will continue to accelerate as developing countries play catch up with the west. Yet even our current patterns of resource consumption- including fresh water- are unsustainable. If we continue on this path the consequences for future generations will probably be catastrophic.

Until recently it was widely believed that poor people had large families in order to have someone to look after them in their old age. Recent research, however, has shown that this view is overly simplistic. Women in the majority of developing countries consistently report that on average they would rather have had one or two children fewer than they actually bore. This has been a remarkably consistent finding and one that appears to be independent of the social, cultural or religious background of the women concerned. There are many reasons for continuing high fertility including the abandonment of traditional methods of birth spacing such as prolonged breast-feeding, the inferior status of women, child marriage, and the lack of any modem means to control conception. A major factor is the repression of women, with consequent son preference and lack of all kinds of life choices including reproductive choice.

It has been shown that simply making contraception universally available - giving women the choice - as part of a basic program of primary health care for mothers and children, would not only greatly improve their lives but would reduce world population growth to manageable levels. Yet it isn't happening. Continuing and unwanted high fertility remains a massive human problem. The lack of means for women to control their own fertility is trapping millions in a savage spiral of poverty, ill health and early death. Over 500,000 women die every year from pregnancy-related causes, many from the effects of unwanted pregnancies. Withholding modem contraceptives from poor women is a blatant denial of the rights enshrined in the Teheran Declaration of 1968 which recognised "the right of individuals and couples to deride freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to enable them to do so."

The International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 marked a watershed in our understanding of what needs to be done. For the first time the wide variety of interest groups: women's activists, demographers, environmentalists and development economists found common cause. As Dr Naris Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA and chairman of the conference said: "The focus has shifted from human numbers to human needs". One hundred and eighty countries signed up to the Cairo Programme of Action with only the Vatican and four other states expressing reservations. Instrumental in achieving this unprecedented level of agreement was the finding that simply enabling couples everywhere to avoid unwanted pregnancies would go most of the way towards stabilising world population. The Cairo Conference even agreed the costs - $17 billion annually by the year 2000, of which 2/3rds was to come from the developing countries, and 1/3rd, or $5.7 billion a year, from the rich, industrialised nations of the North.

Yet five years after the Cairo conference reached this historic agreement a combination of religious opposition and lack of funding still continue to block progress. Only 35% of the funds committed by the rich nations has so far been forthcoming. The biggest laggard in dollar terms and the biggest donor are in fact one and the same - the United States. US population assistance has fallen from a peak of $530 million in 1995 to $384 million for each of the years 1997 to 1999. The United States' "fair" share in terms of GNP, however, should be about $1.5 billion a year. Japan is another major donor falling far short of its fair share. France and a number of other European countries such as Spain, Italy and Ireland, where Vatican influence is strong, are also major culprits.

Firstly, there is a problem of public perception. A range of efficient methods of contraception have been widely available in the northern, industrialized countries for about 30 years. As a result, populations in those countries have more or less stabilized. Indeed there has been some concern that the birth rate in some countries is currently below replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. In general, however, populations are not yet falling, and the scale of the problem may have been overstated. The aging population of Western Europe will pose problems but they are unlikely to be insoluble. If in the West we worry about population at all, it is to worry that populations are in decline. This misconception is remarkably widespread; the New York Herald Tribune as recently as January this year spoke of the declining world population!

A more important problem however, is that opposition to the provision of population assistance is very well organised. The Vatican has managed to create the impression that contraception is a controversial subject and that population assistance to developing countries (for example, the funding of family planning programs) should be discouraged. While his message may be morally bankrupt and widely disregarded by Catholics in every country where people are given the choice, the Pope's words still carry enormous political weight. Western governments, rightly or wrongly see John Paul II as the spiritual leader of the west and owe him a debt of gratitude for his role in the defeat of Communism. As a result politicians of all stripes - as a breed naturally risk-averse - have been unwilling to stand up and be counted on this issue. Following the Vatican's lead, Christian fundamentalists in the United States have succeeded in blocking spending by Congress on population assistance programs administered by both the United Nations Population Fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The Christian-dominated US Congress has opposed spending on population assistance by cynically linking contraception with abortion. The two issues are not only separate but it is clear that increased spending on contraception directly reduces the demand for abortion. These policies have actually led to an increase in the number of abortions worldwide! The real agenda of the Republican opponents of population assistance has recently been exposed, however, and it is not merely opposition to abortion. One of them, Rep Chris Smith of New Jersey, recently referred to modern contraceptives as "baby pesticides".

The Vatican is not by any means the only opponent of investment in population programs. Many western economists, trained in the neo-classical world-view of infinitely substitutable resources and fearful of any interference in the workings or the free market also resist any kind of spending on social programs - particularly if it has to come out of their tax dollars.

Despite the almost overwhelming evidence of the negative effects of

continuing high fertility both on quality of life and on the environment, opposition to spending by the donor nations on population programs remains strong and actual contributions continue to fall. Our failure to address this problem, despite an unprecedented international consensus on what needs to be done, is a massive indictment of both governments and the opponents of reproductive rights and family planning.

There is something we can all do. Get involved. Write to the press, lobby your members of parliament, give talks to schools and clubs, expose abuses, explain the facts. Humanists, unfettered by transcendental beliefs and "higher" agendas, have a crucial role to play in fighting for women's rights and for increased spending on sodal welfare, including population assistance. There are a number of non-governmental organisations working to increase understanding of these complex issues who can provide useful factual material. In addition to the Worldwatch Institute, there is Population Action International in the United States (a superb source of information on all aspects of the population issue), Population Concern in the United Kingdom and the World Population Foundation in the Netherlands.

The Worldwatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC

20036-1904, USA. Tel: (001) 202 452 1999. Fax: (001) 296 7365.

www. worldwatch.org

Population Action International, 1120 19th St NW, Washington DC 20036, USA. Tel: (001) 202 659 1833. Fax: (001) 202 293 1745. www. popact.org

Population Concern, 325 Highgate Studios, 53-79 Highgate Rd, London NW5 lTL, England. Tel: (0044) 171 241 8500. Fax: (0044) 171 267 6788. www. populationconcern.org.uk

World Population Foundation, Amperestraat 10, 1221GJ Hilversum,

Netherlands. Tel: (0031) 35 642 2301. Fax: (0031) 35 642 1462.

www. wpf.org