A New Understanding of Population and Development

Over-population: A Misguided Concern

From the 1950s onwards, some observers of development and environmental issues in developing countries concluded that rapid population growth or overpopulation was the underlying problem, and lower fertility the obvious answer. The urgency of the situation seemed to demand urgent programmes to promote contraception. The analysis was mistaken and the strategy based on it was misguided.

Narrow Family Planning Campaigns

The analysis which linked population with resources and economic growth oversimplified the complexity of the interactions among them and the influence of other factors. It laid stress on population numbers; the result was that numbers, rather than people, tended to become the object of population programmes. The analysis emphasised fertility reduction and stressed contraception, at the expense of other factors which influence family size.

Targets for family planning recruits and quotas for providers followed, sometimes with serious consequences for human rights. Some programmes used coercive or near-coercive methods to obtain their ends. Some focused on rapid delivery of just one or two cheap methods of contraception, ignoring the wide variety of family situations and human needs. Programmes of this type often encountered rejection and created a serious backlash against family planning itself – a resentment that still survives in some places today.

On the other hand, many years’ experience and research have shown that family planning programmes which focus on meeting individual needs, with good counselling and a wide choice of contraceptive methods, gain credibility and broad acceptance by encouraging choice and making sure that consent is fully informed.

Population – Consumption – Technology – Environment

Population, consumption and technology are so inextricably related and determine the nature and scale of human impacts on the environment.

At different times and places, one factor may have a greater effect than others. When economic growth and technology stagnate, population growth will be more important. At times of rapid economic growth and changes in consumption, strategies for resource use and technologies for dealing with waste have a greater effect.

These three frontline factors are affected by many other aspects of society. These include gender issues, levels of inequality and poverty, freedom of markets, democracy, and rules about the use of commons like the oceans and atmosphere. All of these factors interact with one another and with the physical environment.

Social Development for Women

The new understanding on population and development is concerned first and foremost with impact on people, especially women, poor families and poor communities. Poverty, poor health, high fertility, inequality and lack of development opportunities for women intensify many types of environmental problems – and vice versa.

Like affluence, poverty has an environmental cost. Population growth among the poor increases the numbers of people seeking land for farming and housing. In all parts of the developing world, they are forced to open up for farming unsuitable land on steep slopes, in semi-arid areas, or in forests. In cities where rents are high, the only housing available to the poor may be on dangerous hillsides, near unhealthy swamps or in crowded slums with no sewerage or clean water.

Affluence may actually increase the effect of poverty on the environment. Demand from rich countries and people increases pressure on scarce resources. Luxury or cash crops may take up the best land and wage labour replace subsistence farming – but small farmers still scratch out a living on environmentally fragile land. Many of them are women, growing food for the family.

Among the poor, it is women who have to cope with the effects of environmental degradation. Women must walk further and further to get wood and water when marginal land is taken over for farming, trees and shrubs are cut down, fuelwood grows scarce and rainwater runs off instead of replenishing wells. Women must try to make good the damage in their homes caused by urban grime, overcrowding and infestation. Women must nurse the sick or take them to district clinics when polluted air, water or food cause health problems. When women fall sick themselves, on the other hand, they often have no time to go for treatment.

Yet women often have no choice in land use – they may not even be allowed to own or inherit land – or in allocation of common resources such as wood or water. For their own sake, and the sake of more effective development, women’s stake in the environment must be recognised.

The Rights of People Today

The traditional view of population, environment and sustainable development emphasised responsibilities towards future generations. The new view stresses the rights of the present generation.

There is no incompatibility between these two approaches. On the contrary, it is only by fulfilling rights today that our responsibility for tomorrow will be met. When all women and men are free to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive lives – including the size and spacing of their families – when women have equal rights and full access to education, then families will be smaller and population growth will slow. An estimated 350 million couples are without access to a full range of family planning information and services; 120-150 million would be using contraception today if they were informed and had access and support.

The rights to health, including reproductive health, education, and equality between men and women are fully recognised by the international community. Bringing those rights to reality is a development end in itself.

But there is strong evidence that they also bring with them many benefits for individual quality of life and for sustainable development. They will certainly result in smaller but healthier and better educated families, and slower population growth. This will help to speed up economic development, increase the capacity of communities and countries to meet environmental challenges, and reduce the burden of health and education expenditure.

World population passed its peak growth rate of 2.04% a year back in 1965-70. The peak in annual additions was passed in the late 1980s, when the total was growing by 87 million people every year. Since then, thanks to falling fertility in several parts of the world, population growth has slowed faster than expected, and the United Nations Population Division has revised its projections downwards.

But the additions to come are still daunting. Over the 1990s, over 800 million people were added – more than all the Americas, more than all Africa, more than East and West Europe. The United Nations Population Division’s medium projection expects further rises of more than 780 million per decade in the years 2000-2020, with the total reaching 9.4 billion by the middle of the 21st century.

The local and global benefits of slower population growth strengthen the argument for giving the highest possible priority to reproductive rights, women’s rights and female education, both in national budgets and in international assistance. It is not a question of using them as a means to an end: they are ends in themselves. But they are also powerful allies in the broader effort for sustainable development.

The realisation of individual human rights, including women’s rights is integral to a sustainable future.

Source: Adapted from: Population and Sustainable Development: Five Years after Rio, UNFPA, New York, 1997, pp. 1-7.