POPULATION - Time For Governments to Keep Their Promises January 97
In September 1994, the United Nations held an international conference in Cairo, to try and find ways to stem the rapid growth of the Earth's population and meet everybody's basic needs. In the short time since Cairo, the world's population has increased by 210 million, comparable to the populations of Brazil and France combined.
The number of people on Earth is rising faster than ever before in history, mainly because the basic needs of the world's people are not being met. And that population--especially the richest third--is consuming vast quantities of our natural resources. If this trend goes on, our planet may well reach the stage where it is simply unable to support us any longer.
Rates of population growth are highest in developing countries. But it is not just numbers that cause the problem. While population levels are rising more slowly in developed countries, levels of consumption are not. Each additional citizen of the US, for example, will consume at least 10 times as much during his or her lifetime as the average Kenyan.
The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo stressed that the key to stabilising world population is to lower birth rates, and the key to doing that is to invest in health, education and the empowerment of women. Governments agreed in the Cairo Programme of Action that by the year 2015 everyone on Earth should have access to:
* reproductive health care, including family planning and sexual health care; and,
* primary education schooling for all children 6 to 11 years old.
Governments also committed to significantly reduce the death rates for infants and mothers, and to increase the life expectancy for everyone to 75 years or more.
The good news is that the international community has accepted the importance of investing in these areas as the best way of stabilising our global population. At Cairo, governments promised to draw up national plans of action to meet these needs, and also agreed to increase their spending on sexual and reproductive health care services in developing countries to US$ 17 billion a year by the turn of the century.
The bad news is that while some of the more farsighted governments have been regularly increasing the amount they spend on population programmes, most have been painfully slow producing the money or, even worse, have significantly reduced their funding. For example, the Netherlands recently increased its spending on global population programmes by 30%, while the US--previously the world's largest donor for population assistance--has drastically cut back its spending commitments.
Also proposed at Cairo, and at the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen, was the '20:20 Initiative,' whereby developed countries would commit 20% of their development aid, and developing countries 20% of their national budgets to meeting basic human needs. This would ensure that everyone on Earth has access to primary health care, family planning, basic education, food, clean water, and sanitation, all of which would make a big difference to the global population situation. However, only a handful of governments have so far committed themselves to the 20:20 Initiative.
The problem is that while governments can agree on solutions, most are unwilling to pay for them. They need to hear from their citizens that their spending priorities must changeÑand soon.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please write to one or more of your representatives in your national parliament or congress. Ask them to urge your government to:
* Contribute its fair share, based on national income, to meet the cost of providing the world's family planning and reproductive health care needs, estimated at Cairo as increasing to US$ 17 billion a year by 2000.
* Implement a national plan of action, as agreed at Cairo, to meet the health, education and economic needs of all people, particularly women and girls.
* Commit itself to the 20:20 initiative proposed at Cairo and the Social Summit.
BACKGROUND
The Problems and the Solutions
Why is the population growing?
Right up until the nineteenth century, the population of the Earth remained well below a billion people. The industrial revolution changed all this, bringing huge technological advances and rapid increases in living standards to the minority of the Earth' population known today as the 'developed world'. As technology spread, providing improved medical care and material living standards to more and more people, the planet's population began to increase at a rate unprecedented in human history. The main reason for this rapid increase in numbers is that while death rates have been dramatically reduced by improved health care and sanitation, birth rates have declined much less dramatically. Today, there are over 5.7 billion people in the world, and an extra 85 million are added every year. The United Nations predicts that if little action is taken, there could be more than 14 billion people on Earth by the year 2100.
Why is population growth a problem?
* for the environment:
Every single person on Earth is consuming the planet's natural resources. Up to a certain point this consumption remains sustainable, nature replaces what is used. However, with nearly six billion people on the planet, the strain on the earth's natural resources is clearly evident. As populations expand, oceans and rivers are polluted with our waste, forests are destroyed to provide us with fuel or room to live and farm, roads and settlements are built in areas of pristine wilderness, and increasing amounts of energy are consumed, generating greenhouse gas emissions which threaten to de-stabilise our climate.
It is not merely the number of people on the planet that harms the environment. Consumption levels are equally problematic. In developed countries, though population levels are often relatively stable, levels of material consumption are continuously growing. The average citizen of a developed country will consume at least ten times as much in his or her lifetime than someone from a less-developed nation. The average citizen of the US, one of the world's richest countries, accounts for 25 times more green-house gases being emitted into the atmosphere than the average citizen of India. One billion of the world's poorest people each use less than 13 gallons of water per day while US citizens each use, on average, 100 gallons per day.
* for people:
Put simply, the more people there are on the planet, the less natural resources are available for each of them. In some countries, most of them among the world's poorest, the population doubles roughly every 20 to 25 years. In countries that already have inadequate levels of housing, health care, education, sanitation and other basic services, this means that supplies of these services need to double in the same time period just to maintain current inadequate levels. In this way, population growth negates the effect of economic and social advances. People in countries with high rates of population growth frequently suffer as they compete for housing, water supplies and space on the land.
What can be done to stabilise population?
Traditionally, efforts to stabilise the world's population have concentrated on providing contraception and family planning services to those who otherwise would not have access to them. This is a vital service, the UN estimates that at least a third of al pregnancies in developing countries, like many in developed countries, are unwanted. Preventing them through voluntary family planning could bring the average fertility throughout the developing world down from the current four children per family to three. When the world reaches an average fertility of two children per couple, the population will begin to stabilise.
However, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development marked a shift in attitudes and approaches. While provision of family planning remains important to stabilise population, governments also agreed that one of the key ways to ensure a stable population is to invest in the health, education and empowerment of women. It is women who bear and care for the children, and who have the most to gain from the availability of contraception.
Education for women and girls is now recognised as a crucial step towards stabilising population. Evidence shows that educated women are less likely to have as many children, and are more able to take control of their own fertility. However, education must also be combined with primary health care, for both mothers and children. If women know that their children will survive into adulthood, they will often choose to have fewer. It is also crucial that women are provided with economic opportunities and alternatives to full time motherhood.
A combination of all these factors is the key to stabilising the world's population. At Cairo, and at the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, governments committed themselves to take action towards these goals, both nationally and international. At Beijing, they also agreed that in principle women should have access to family planning regardless of the religious or cultural dictates of their country, that they should not be penalised for seeking illegal abortions, and that all women should have the right to refuse unwanted or unsafe sex.
What are governments doing, and what more should be done?
Governments meeting at Cairo agreed that the cost of implementing the Cairo Programme of Action to provide comprehensive family planning and reproductive health care services to everyone on Earth will rise to US$ 17 billion a year by 2000. Governments agreed that while 75% of this money should come from the national budgets of less industrialised countries, the remainder should come from the 'donor nations' of the industrialised world. However, no targets were set for the contribution levels of individual countries. What is certain is that most nations must increase the amount of money they spend on sexual and reproductive health services.
The governments of less industrialised countries collectively spend more than twice as much on their militaries than they do to provide their citizens with food, clean water, primary health care and basic education. Meanwhile, population programs receive less than 2% of the total development assistance of donor countries. This will need to rise to over 4% to provide the necessary funding. The bar graph enclosed in this Action Kit shows recommended levels of donor country contributions based on each countries Gross National Product the fairest way of dividing up the payments.
Some nations have responded. For example Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom have significantly increased their development assistance spending on sexual and reproductive health care, but only Norway is paying its fair hare of the $17 billion target based on national income. Most of the world's governments are far from doing so.
The 20:20 Initiative
At the Social Summit, in March 1995, a proposal was advanced that would provide a means of ensuring access to basic services for everyone on Earth, including basic health care, family planning and primary education. The '20:20 initiative' would involve developed nations spending 20% of their development assistance, and developing countries 20% of their national budgets, on these basic services. Adoption of the 20:20 initiative by governments would be a major boost to efforts to stabilise population growth and meet women's needs.
Since the Social Summit, the number of governments endorsing at least the principle of the 20:20 initiative has been growing, though it is still small.
Governments who have publicly endorsed the 20:20 initiative:
• Australia * Germany *Norway *Belgium * Guyana *Spain* Denmark *Ireland * Sri Lanka *Netherlands *
The International Conference on Population and Development: Programme of Action Selected Objectives:
* universal access to reproductive health care, including family planning and sexual health by 2015;
* universal access to primary education by 2015; countries should try to close the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005;
* infant mortality rate below 35 per 1,000 live births and an under-five mortality rate below 45 per 1,000 by 2015;
* reducing maternal mortality rates by one half of the 1990 levels by the year 2000 and halve it again by 2015;
• increasing life expectancy at birth to 75 years or more by 2015.