September 13 marks thirty years since the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo effectively denounced population stabilisation as a development goal.
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) argues it is time for a reset. "World population is still growing by about 90 million a year," notes SPA spokesperson Dr Jane O'Sullivan. "It is deepening poverty and food insecurity, and the natural environment simply can't cope.
"The change at Cairo was not because harms caused by population growth were disproven, but because a new ideology falsely claimed all promotion of birth control led to human rights abuses."
The world's governments did not agree to drop demographic goals entirely: the conference's treaty document, the ICPD Programme of Action, acknowledged the importance of population stabilisation for development and environment. However, the UNFPA, tasked with implementing it, became increasingly strident in condemning anyone voicing concerns about population growth as 'alarmists' and a threat to human rights.
"Henceforth, they insisted, family planning should only be provided for the sake of women's reproductive health and rights," says Dr O'Sullivan. "This demoted family planning programs from central pillars of national development agenda to minor activities of health departments."
SPA spokesperson Dr Jane O'Sullivan
UN population conferences had been held each decade since 1954, but none have been held since 1994, allowing the new ideological agenda to continue unchallenged by the emerging evidence of its harm.
Since 1994, funding for voluntary family planning programs dropped precipitately, both in international aid and domestic budgets. Fertility declines that were underway in several countries, such as Kenya, Egypt and Indonesia, stalled or even rebounded. In other countries, fertility has simply stayed high for much longer than anticipated. World population growth consistently exceeded UN's projections, with each new revision elevating the estimate of current population above previous expectations. The UN's new ideology had kept fertility decline out of the Millennium Development Goals, but a UK parliamentary report documented how population growth undermined all the MDGs.
Nor did the new agenda help women. Globally, the number of women with an unmet need for contraception is undiminished. Family planning veteran, Dr Malcolm Potts, reflected, "The ultimate tragedy is that the idealism at Cairo … has actually left women worse off."
"It's a popular myth that education and economic growth will make people choose small families without direct encouragement," says Dr O'Sullivan. "But cultural norms are hard to change, even when they are harmful. Rapid fertility declines have only occurred where voluntary birth control was actively promoted. None have happened since Cairo. High fertility countries are paying the price."
Still, the UNFPA remains steadfast in its assertion that the changes wrought at the ICPD have "worked like magic". The conjuring trick has been to deem population growth and fertility decline so unimportant that their dismal progress goes unreported.
Dr O'Sullivan says "it is time for the world's governments to reclaim the population agenda away from an ideologically captured UNFPA. A new UN Conference on Population and Development should record that fertility decline has proven to be a pre-requisite for reducing poverty. It should review the science showing sustainable food systems and limiting climate change to 2oC become infeasible if world population exceeds 10 billion. It might conclude population policy needs to address not only reproductive rights but the rights to food, shelter, peace and sufficient natural resources, all threatened by overcrowding. While coercive birth control is never acceptable, involuntary motherhood remains the greater scourge."
Dr O'Sullivan concludes "It is not true that birth rates are plummeting around the world. Lower fertility in rich countries will make little difference against the slow progress in high-fertility countries where most births now occur. Unless political will is refocused on ending world population growth, a new era of famines and violent conflicts seems inevitable."
