People Need More Than More People : Why U.S. must take a strong line at the Cairo population summit later this year

At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, leaders from many nations met to develop joint strategies to save the world’s threatened natural resources. That high-profile U.N. conference proved to be an international embarrassment to the U.S. delegation; then-President George Bush, one of the conference participants, refused to sign the biodiversity treaty agreed to by more than 100 other nations.

The United States now has a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the world community: at the U.N. conference on population and development that convenes in Cairo in September.

In preparation for that meeting, delegates from 170 nations this month are drafting a document that is expected to win final approval in Cairo. The accord will serve as a blueprint for international agencies and nations in designing and funding effective population programs.

The relentless growth in world population--now at 5.7 billion, double that of the late 1950s--increases pressure on remaining arable lands; the number of people may outstrip the planet’s ability to feed them. Obviously, much rides on the strength of the draft being hammered out at U.N. headquarters.

The U.S. delegation now meeting with its counterparts at the United Nations understands the urgency. Led by State Department counselor Timothy Wirth, the American delegation, along with key allies, is promoting new approaches to family planning based on important insights from past successes and failures.

Specifically, broad support is growing for a move away from coercive programs to those that focus on expanding health services--including contraceptives, prenatal care and sex education for girls and adolescents-- and, importantly, on changing the fertility rates of men as well as women.

In many countries, men often have second families, meaning that on average they have far more living children than do women; yet population programs historically have been targeted at women, almost to the exclusion of men.

It hardly needs stating that this new approach makes sense. But strong opposition, for example from Nicaragua, Honduras and some African nations, could result in a much weaker, less effective consensus document. It should not.

*

Troubling Trend

Total world population (in billions)

5.291 (1990) Source: Worldwatch Institute