(1994)
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Population control has long been a high priority for the United Nations, though promoted for different reasons, by different names, at different times. Currently, the population explosion is cited as the underlying cause of the human impact on biodiversity and on climate change. Population control entered the UN agenda as a eugenics issue by virtue of Julian Huxley's involvement with British Population Investigation Commission and the Eugenics Society. In 1954, the Rome conference promoted the concept of fertility as an economic factor. By 1974, the Bucharest conference integrated population and development issues with the developed nations insisting that population reduction was essential to economic development. When the issue emerged at the Mexico City Conference, it appeared as a matter of "women's rights” and freedom of choice. In Cairo at the September International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), population control was seen by some to be a matter of "women's empowerment by the state”88 while others saw population control as an essential requirement of sustainable development initiatives.89 The Cairo "Programme of Action” said: "...unsustainable consumption and production patterns are contributing to the unsustainable use of natural resources and environmental degradation as well as to...social inequities and poverty” (Chapter 3.1); and "Governments should establish the requisite internal institutional mechanisms... to ensure that population factors are appropriately addressed within the decision-making and administrative processes” (Chapter 3.7).90 The conference agenda focused on gender equality; the eradication of poverty; family in its various forms; children's rights; education; as well as population policies, human rights, and sustainable development. Population control is critical to the overall global environmental agenda. The Global Biodiversity Assessment concludes that: "A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 1 to 3 billion would be possible. An 'agricultural world,' in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people...."91 The cost of the various UN population programs discussed at the conference was estimated to be between $17 and $75 billion. The World Resources Institute (WRI) reported in the NGO Networker that Zero Population Growth was the NGO coordinating lobbying activities for the Cairo conference.92 |