The Population Issue Absent at the Summit

By Halle Joern Hanssen

Somewhere on the road between Rio and Johannesburg, the population issue must have gotten lost. In Rio, population commanded priority. It had its own chapter in the final document, and there were many references to its importance for sustainable development in many other chapters. Here in Johannesburg, the population issue, however, has been relegated to something minor and just mentioned in a couple of paragraphs.

Observers say this is not incidental, but relates to the fact that in recent years, efforts to limit the world’s population has been attacked by fundamentalist groupings and conservative governments.

It concerns, first and foremost, the important issue of women's rights when it comes to abortion and, in general, the overriding issue of gender.

An "unholy alliance" has emerged between the United States and some other conservative, mainly Muslim governments on these issues. A consequence of these policies was the recent U.S. withdrawal of financial support for UNFPA's programmes. The reason given was that UNFPA might use U.S. contributions for family planning activities that included abortion.

While U.N. officials refuse to be concrete in their comments on these issues, Mari Simonen, director of the Technical Support Division of UNFPA, admits that "since Rio, there has been some going back on these issues".

The message to the summit from the U.N. Global Panel on Population is a strong call to place the issue of human population at the core of the sustainable development agenda. If not, the efforts to improve human wellbeing and preserve the quality of the environment will fail, it says, adding that the Johannesburg Summit must heed the principles of the Rio Declaration and take full account of how important the interaction between population and society and nature is.

In its report, the panel sends strong warning signals along two very different lines.

In the rich countries the problem of an ageing population will, in the next 50 years, be a problem of size with almost 40 percent of the population over 60 years old. In many of the same countries population growth will be minimal, will stagnate or decline. All this will have difficult and far-reaching implications with regard to the economic, employment and social policies. European studies show that in the member countries of the European Union for the next 40 to 50 years there will be an annual and accumulating deficit in the work force of some 1.5 million people.

In the developing countries, on the other hand, the population will continue to grow. African countries will be heavily affected, many with growth rates between 3 and 5.8 percent. The impact of HIV/AIDS in the same countries is not, however, fully taken into consideration.

The global environment is closely related to both demographic trends and patterns of consumption and waste. Developed nations, with a stable population, are now the driving force in global environmental degradation. They are responsible for most of the harmful emissions and generate the bulk of the global waste. With 20 percent of global population, these nations account for 85 percent of private consumption. In contrast the world’s poorest 20 percent account for only 1.3 percent of private consumption.