United Nations report. A United Nations agency has just published a report on global population growth and the appropriate policy for tackling this phenomenon. Two days ago, this column discussed the official silence on this subject (EUROPE 10026). The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has just published its 2009 report, whose message can be summarised as follows: to effectively fight against the dangers of climate change, women are in need of urgent assistance in reducing the number of children they have. UNFPA Coordinator Yves Bergevin from Canada, pointed out that world population growth is developing at a rate of an additional 1.5 million inhabitants a week. He also explained that a viable mode of consumption and production will only be reached and maintained if the population does not go beyond “an ecologically viable figure”. The UN agency does not advocate binding measures because experience proves that wherever there is equality between men and women, the education of girls and family planning becomes widespread and the birth rate (without any imposed constraints) falls from six or seven children per woman to two or three. In this way, humanity would be able to stabilise at around 9 billion inhabitants by 2050, as opposed to 6.8 billion today.
Contradictory reactions. This report has provoked reactions that are partly contradictory. Certain experts share its forecasts and conclusions. Others point out that education and family planning are part of a slow and gradual process which clashes with cultural, political and religious obstacles and is stagnating in many of the world's poorest countries. In Niger, the population will grow from the current 15.3 million figure to 58.2 million in 2050. Since 1994 (International Conference on Population and Development) education and family planning have been recommended as the road to go down, but for the mostpart results have been negligible or non-existent. One response to this observation is that rich countries are to blame for the difficulties because their per capita “ecological footprint” is 10 times greater than that of poor countries. According to this thesis, emerging countries (China, Brazil, India, etc) will never be able to reach the current Western level of consumption because there is not enough energy or raw materials in the world; it is the Western countries that have to cut back - their material consumption must be drastically reduced. On his side, Executive Director of UNFPA Thoraya Ahmed Obaid requested that the forthcoming Copenhagen summit on climate change introduce the emancipation of women and family planning among the “climate change adaptation mechanisms” that can benefit from international funding because “no other investment in development costs as little and brings so many wide-ranging benefits.”
Greater reflection. We can now see that even if the subject being discussed is climate, the fight against hunger in the world or the future of agriculture, the demographic question is now part of the global debate. This column will not take a position on the contending ideas on this question because the orientations still require definition and the measures to be advocated will rightly result from discussing the different opinions.
I do, however, believe that we need greater reflection: it must not be limited to the search for formulas that allow climate change to be controlled and famine to be fought. The question of humanity's place on the earth must also be included in this reflection. Historians point out that almost all civilisations are largely based on two convictions: the eternal and practically infinite character of nature; and the superiority of man, endowed with an immortal soul. We now know that the first conviction is false, and more and more people are questioning the second. The earth's resources are running out - water, air, animal and plant life are limited and the Earth is being over-exploited by man. Man's divinely decreed superiority is raising a number of doubts that are more or less explicit. Einstein's prediction that the disappearance of bees would lead to the disappearance of humanity is increasingly examined. We are now attempting to reintroduce bears and wolves into areas from which they were once hunted. The creation in Alaska of a zone as big as France reserved for white polar bears is being studied. The natural dignity of certain animals' attitudes compared to those of man (the only animal whose hatred and cruelty is mainly aimed at individuals of the same species) is often underlined, as is the nobility of certain animal behaviour (and we don't have to do resort to reading Gulliver's Travels to bear this out).
Everyone can believe what they want, but reflection regarding humanity's place in the natural world is not only appropriate but also crucial if we are to have a viable future.
(F.R./transl.fl)