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POPULATION: Rising Growth Still an Issue, Says UNFPA

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2004 (IPS) - The U.N. Population Fund is dispelling a widespread notion – prevalent mostly in Western countries – that population growth has ceased to be a serious socio-economic problem primarily because of declining numbers.

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) is dispelling a widespread notion – prevalent mostly in Western countries – that population growth has ceased to be a serious socio-economic problem primarily because of declining numbers.

But this is not true, says UNFPA, which insists that "population growth is still an issue".

"Global population, now 6.4 billion, is still growing rapidly – currently by 76 million persons per year," according to the UNFPA’s annual ‘State of the World Population, 2004,’ released Wednesday.

By 2050, the United Nations projects the world will add some 2.5 billion people, an amount equal to the world’s total population in 1950.

"It is tragically becoming so-called conventional wisdom to declare that there is no longer a world population crisis," says Werner Fornos, president of the Washington-based Population Institute.

"This is a load of baloney sliced thick by elitist think tank denizens whose global vision is limited to their own backyards," Fornos told IPS. "We have been mesmerised by the positive news that population growth is declining even in some of the poorest parts of the world."

Fornos admits that there have been widespread population declines in the industrialised world. This phenomenon is a matter that requires serious policy decisions for those countries involved, related to a range of issues involving aging populations, social security, pensions and the retention of a viable, able-bodied workforce.

"But it is a preposterous pipe dream to believe that population reduction is the overriding demographic dilemma of our age," said Fornos, winner of the 2003 U.N. population award.

UNFPA admits that population growth has slowed since it peaked in the mid-1990s at around 82 million annually. The average family size has declined from six children per woman in 1960 to around three today, as family planning has become more accessible and widely used.

However, U.N. projections of slower population growth assume that more couples will be able to choose to have smaller families.

"But this will require greater investments to ensure wider access to reproductive health information and services, including family planning," says the 115-page study.

These conditions, however, are not likely to be met, predicts Fornos, because Western donors have fallen far behind in their pledges to fund population programmes endorsed at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.

He pointed out that UNFPA has estimated that global population will rise by another 2.5 billion by 2050. "Virtually, all of this growth is projected to occur in the world’s poorest regions. Twenty-four countries of Africa – the world’s least developed region – are projected to double their populations by mid-century," he said.

In an op-ed piece in the ‘International Herald Tribune’ last year, Ben Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argued that "a startling decline in fertility rates over the last several decades" is expected to result in a global population decline.

He said that fertility rates have continued to decline: from 6.0 children per woman to 2.9 – "and falling rapidly." This would lead, later in this century, to global population decline, he added.

"In a world brought up on the idea of a ‘population explosion’, this is a radical notion," he wrote. "The world’s population is still growing – it will take some time for it to actually start shrinking – but the next crisis is depopulation."

In its report, UNFPA says that donors have agreed to provide about 6.1 billion dollars a year for population and reproductive health programmes by 2005, a third of the total resources needed. Between 1999 and 2001, their contributions were only around 2.6 billion dollars; in 2002, it increased to 3.1 billion dollars.

"It is time to take stock," Safiye Cagar, UNFPA’s director of information, told reporters Wednesday. "The response of the international community has been inadequate," she said, because "donor countries have given only half the amount they agreed in Cairo 10 years ago, to implement the ICPD programme of action".

According to the UNFPA report, donor countries have fulfilled only 54 percent of the Cairo resource commitment for the year 2000 for family planning and reproductive health, and only 51 percent of the commitment for 2005.

But 10 years after Cairo, the report says, more than 350 million couples still lack access to a full range of family planning services, and complications of pregnancy and childbirth remain a leading cause of death and illness among women.

Additionally, the study said that five million new HIV infections occurred during 2003; women are nearly half of all infected adults, and nearly three-fifths of those live in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report also said that while fertility is falling in many regions, world population will increase from 6.4 billion today to 8.9 billion by 2050. "The 50 poorest countries will triple in size, to 1.7 billion people."

"If just half of the world’s military expenditures – now reaching about one trillion dollars annually – were diverted to humanitarian aid, including population and family planning assistance, there would be realistic opportunities to achieve the peace, stability and security that misguided leaders insist can be won by bullets, bayonets and bombs," Fornos said.

There must be a significant reversal in global attitudes, not the least of which is honouring humanitarian commitments, to avoid the nightmare of our epitaph reading: "They chose the risks of war because they lacked the courage to accept the risks of peace", he added.