NEWS
Population: myth and reality
The Cairo International Conference on Population and Development
The Cairo International Conference on Population and
The polarization of wealth and poverty in India is further
Development (lCPD), held in September 1994, gave us a
compounded by the religiously sanctioned graded division of
misconstructed equilibrium. Now that there has been a year for
the society. The majority ‘low’ castes bear the nation’s great
the heat and dust to settle down, it is pertinent to look at the real
issues. The carefully cultivated controversy on rather
poverty and deprivation.
Another central issue that was ignored by the Cairo
subordinate issues helped the conference to avoid discussion of
Conference is the population density dimension. Scientifically
the central issues on population-resource use conflict:
speaking, most developing countries have extremely low levels
overconsumption. The controversy over abortion which
dominated reporting of the conference was essentially a
of population in relation to the size of their countries or their
respective carrying capacities. In contrast, most industrial
Western domestic problem moved to the UN stage to divert
countries are heavily overpopulated. Western Europe is four
attention from this issue.
times more densely populated than Africa. The Netherlands,
Over the past decade it has become glaringly obvious that
Belgium and Japan have the highest population densities in the
the population-resource conflict cannot be resolved without
world. (In the developing world only Bangladesh and the Indian
addressing the problem of unsustainable patterns of
states of Kerala and West Bengal could match them in density.)
consumption. But how long is it going to take global (read
The UK’s population density is double that of China and five
Western) policy-makers to acknowledge that it is economic
times that of Kenya – an ‘acute population problem country’.
privilege and technological power that is at the heart of the
Developing countries do have a higher population growth
resource depletion and not simply population size. The total
rate, but this is an absolutely normal feature of population
resource consumption of twenty average families in the
dynamics. These countries are simply following the pattern of
developing world is less than the consumption of just one
demographic trajectory that occurred in the West following the
average British family (with two children). An average
so-called Industrial Revolution. This population explosion in
Northern citizen consumes seventeen times more copper, for
Europe had multiple devastating effects on the global
example, than an average person in the South. In the case of
community, the least pardonable of which was the virtual
aluminium the difference is a factor of twenty against the South.
annihilation of the societies of the American continents,
India uses less paper for printing all its school text books than
Australia and New Zealand and the irreversible occupation of
the Scandinavian countries use for producing pornographic
their nations (pre-Columbus ‘America’ had a greater
literature. The one-fifth of the human population that occupies
population than tiny Europe). The developing countries
the North consumes 80 per cent of the world’s resources, and if
certainly do not have scope for repeating such crimes today
we have to save the world from an irreversible resource crisis,
the world should focus its attention on the North.
and therefore their population densities will be stabilized within
their own carrying capacities.
The industrial economies play a devastating role, not only
But the key to managing population growth is not so much
in consumption but also in discharging polluting wastes. The
sterilization as improving the socio-economic milieu. In this
per-capita emission of greenhouse gases by the US population,
respect the southern Indian state of Kerala provides a model for
for example, is twelve times more than that of South Asia. Thus
the entire world. Although the state has a population density
by depleting the resource base and impairing the environmental
that exceeds chronically overpopulated Western Europe, it has
space, the Northern economies are provoking an irreversible
achieved stability in population growth. This stability was
crisis. The 57 million babies that will be born in the North in
reached by achieving fairly good standards in health care, child
the 1990s will help accelerate this twin crisis into a catastrophe,
care, literacy, women’s education and land redistribution
while most of the 911 million babies born in the South in the
through social engineering and government planning, despite
same period will simply stay alive, if they survive at all.
the provincial economy being heavily dependent on other states
The inequity works not only between countries but within
of India and on remittances from the expatriate workforce in
countries as well. In India, for example, 1.5 per cent of the
the Gulf countries. By contrast, the market miracle that
population, numbering about 12 million, hold about 65 per cent
capitalist fundamentalism insists on would now further
of the nation’s private wealth, while 30 per cent of the
population, amounting to the total population of all Western
frustrate the efforts of developing countries to improve their
social milieu, and thus promises to distort further the
European countries, live below the poverty line set by the
demographic picture.
standard of a meagre Rs 195.50 ($US 6.5) per capita per month.
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Radical Philosophy 73 (SeptlOct 1995)
s.
Faizi