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Monitoring The UN > The UN and Sustainable Development Population World population has increased enormously in this century and will continue to grow into the next, mostly in the developing countries, where one quarter of the population now lives in extreme poverty.1 Principle 8 of the Rio Declaration (UNCED 1992) called on the world to promote population strategies through what was termed "appropriate demographic policies." These policies are considered essential to sustainable development because of the relationship between overpopulation, poverty and environmental degradation.2 In many countries, rapid population growth is hindering development by placing immense burdens on the resources of families, communities, and governments. It is also placing intolerable pressure on the natural environment. The poor, whose fertility rates are highest, overwhelmingly rely upon access to natural resources for their livelihoods, for food, and for energy sources. When the resource base is called upon to support exploitation beyond its carrying or regenerative capacity, degradation results. Of greatest concern is the effect of growing populations on marginal and common resource areas, including drylands, rainforests, marshes, grasslands, hillsides and river valleys. All of these areas are ecologically fragile environments.3 As the number of people increases in countries where structural inadequacies already preclude the provision of basic services to a large proportion of them, the poor are thrown onto their own devices. More often than not, this means enduring a life of ill health, illiteracy, chronic unemployment or underemployment, and powerlessness. The majority are involved in some form of agricultural production. However, when land division proceeds to the point of non-viability, with plots becoming too small even for subsistence, the soil is overworked and becomes exhausted. As people seek out new land, they encroach further and further onto marginal areas, which are less productive in any case and extremely vulnerable to degradation. The combination of the overworking of crop land and the increasing pressure on ecologically fragile areas has resulted in staggering levels of soil erosion. In his 1995 essay, "So Many People, So Little Time," Ted Lewellen explains that: "The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that over eighteen million acres of cropland are lost each year to soil erosion...It is possible to minimize erosion through such techniques as terracing, mulching, planting different crops in alternate rows within the same field, and allowing long fallow periods. When populations are high and outputs are low, however, such time-consuming and expensive inputs may be neglected."4 Further degradation is caused by the relentless search for heating and cooking fuel, usually wood, all sources of which quickly become denuded, leading to further erosion. With creeping deforestation, soil erosion, loss of bio-diversity, and desertification, poverty is compounded5. Lower fertility in vulnerable regions would ease pressures on the environment. It would also enable families to break the cycle of poverty by making greater investments in the children they have. Providing the young with better nutrition, health care and education would enhance their income potential in their future. Income inequities and underemployment are already an impediment to true development. More unskilled and uneducated people entering the work force is only likely to push wages down, furthering existing inequities.6 Fertility Rates In the industrialized world, economic growth and modernization have created clear incentives to low fertility and small family size. In the developing world, however, the paucity of social and institutional services leads to high fertility and large family size in the interests of economic, even physical, survival. For the very poor, large numbers of children are thought to be necessary to ensure sufficient labour for family viability and to provide support for aged parents. Environmental degradation only strengthens this imperative. This continued high rate of fertility, combined with declining mortality rates under the influence of modern science, presents what many see as a demographic danger. On the other hand, as Ignacy Sachs points out in a work published by the United Nations University Press, efforts to encourage family planning in developing countries "are likely to prove deceptive if they do not come as part of a social development package, including the education of women, effective public health policies resulting in reduced infant mortality, access to subsidized, rationed or distributed food for those who cannot afford to buy the minimum ration, and some protection in old age."7 Executive Director of UNFPA, Nafis Sadik, stated at the beginning of the 1990s that mounting economic difficulties in the developing world would mean that: "...rapid population growth and pronounced imbalance in its distribution take on major significance. A doubling of the population within 25-30 years, as projected in many developing countries, means that greater pressure will be brought to bear on Governments to provide reasonable levels of health, education, employment, housing and related services. A reduction of population growth through fertility decline would greatly diminish the number of poor people. The World Bank, for instance, has estimated that rapid fertility decline would reduce the number of poor by 100 million by the year 2000 at the global level, and by 20 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, by 40 per cent in South and East Asia, excluding China, and by almost 70 per cent in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa."8 With the demographic balance shifting inexorably in the direction of the South, careful assessments of the population/development equation will have to be made if that region is to achieve sustainable development. Developing countries will need to find a way to make the necessary investment of public funds in their "human resources." Unless they can obtain relief from insupportable burdens of debt, however, those funds will not be available. They will not be able to break the debilitating grip of poverty on their people that contributes to high population growth rates, or provide incentives to lower fertility. In that event, global environmental sustainability will face severe impediments in the next century.9 What is the United Nations Doing to Meet the Population Challenge? Between the 1960s and the 1990s, as evidence mounted of the link between population size, structure and distribution and development and environmental health, the world community and the United Nations attempted to arrive at an approach to the population question that would satisfy the political, ethical and moral concerns of all countries. The notion of direct government "intervention" in population matters, such as the setting of targets for growth rate reductions, did not meet that prerogative. What was agreed, however, was that Member States would make demographic considerations an integral element of their sustainable development thinking. The provision of reproductive health services would be encouraged, but family planning and contraception would be made available only upon request.10 Population Programme of Action The significance of the population question to global environmental viability was reflected in United Nations designation of the Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, as a subsidiary body of the General Assembly, conferring on the Cairo conference an importance comparable to the landmark United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.11 The outcome of the ICPD, its Programme of Action, guides current United Nations work in the field of population. It also reflects a conviction that raising living standards will slow population growth rates and their attendant implications for development and the environment, and that the best approach to population matters involves a comprehensive approach aimed at addressing all of the basic needs for a life of choice. Paramount are social justice and equity, the eradication of poverty, the empowerment of women, and the provision of universal access to reproductive health services.12 In a speech for World Population Day, July 10, 1998, Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme summed up the position of those in the United Nations working on population matters when he said that: "Issues of religion, ethnicity, gender roles and morality often tend to shroud in controversy a balanced consideration of the population dimension of sustainable development. When viewed in the light of the universal values of caring for future generations' well-being, respect for human rights and dignity, protection and improvement of the human environment, and reduction in poverty, inequity and waste, it seems to become more amenable for effective action."13 ICPD + 5 On 30 June to 2 July, 1999, the United Nations will hold a General Assembly Special Session to review the first five years of implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action.14 Principal Population Actors Within the United Nations, population policy-making and oversight capacity are the responsibility of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD), established in 1946. The CPD collects demographic statistics from Member States and arranges for research into such issues as fertility, mortality, morbidity, migration and urbanization. In the context of sustainable development, it considers appropriate policies and programmes to assist developing countries with their population strategies. The CPD is also charged with co-ordinating the implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action. Population work in the field is conducted through the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), established in the late 1960s to channel international financial contributions to the integration of population factors into United Nations development work. UNFPA works with Member State Governments, non-governmental organizations and other national and international bodies to further the ICPD Programme of Action "on the ground," and to promote greater investment in human welfare. It also assists governments in incorporating demographic factors into their sustainable development strategies at all levels of society.15 UNFPA Address: United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Link to CPD section on this site for fuller explanation of the Commission and UNFPA, as well as for World Population figures and work in the area of HIV/AIDS. See poverty issue piece for further information on the effects of rising populations on ecologically fragile areas. Popin: An information service on world population. It began operating in 1981. Its Internet site includes current United Nations population estimates and projections. The UNFPA web site is extensive, informative and accessible. It includes access to documentation on the CPD, the ICPD Programme of Action, press releases on various meetings held, and information on current work of the United Nations in ICPD-related activities: http://www.unfpa.org/ICPD/ICPD.HTM Archives: Sadik, Nafis, "Global Development Challenges: The Population Dimension." Change: Threat or Opportunity? ed. Uner Kirdar. New York: United Nations, 1992. Lindahl-Kiessling, Kerstin and Hans Landberg. eds. Population, Economic Development, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Lewellen, Ted. Dependency and Development: An Introduction to the Third World. Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1995) Colombo, Bernardo, Paul Demeny and Max F. Perutz. eds. Resources and Population: Natural, Institutional, and Demographic Dimensions of Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Demeny, Paul and Geoffrey McNicoll. eds. The Earthscan Reader in Population and Development. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1998. 1 Alexander King, "Europe
and the World: Cooperating with Nature," Europe by Nature: Starting-Points
for Sustainable Development (Amsterdam: Conspectus Europae, 1992) 29;
and Nafis Sadik, "Global Development Challenges: The Population
Dimension," Change: Threat or Opportunity? ed. Uner Kirdar (New
York: United Nations, 1992) 13-19. |
