Education as the prime factor in development
“…One of the greatest inherent weaknesses of our development planning is that our planners have not attached as much importance to education as they did to population control, poverty alleviation, agricultural and industrial development which can be revealed from our past development plans. Since independence we had a two-year plan and 3 five-year plans till 1990. The main objectives of all the plans were population control, poverty alleviation, agricultural and industrial development. Though human resources development through education was included in the objectives of those plans, it was never a thrust sector. As a student of Development Planning, I think if Bangladesh could have attached top priority to education and human resources development in the seventies, we could possibly achieve more progress and development as education has a very high degree of negative correlation with population growth and very high degree of positive correlation with employment, poverty alleviation and technological advancement” (Muhammad Mustafa, “Education: Prime Factor of Development,” The Bangladesh Observer, Dhaka, Friday, 25 March 1994).
Demographic calamity in Eastern Europe
Economist Nicholas Eberstadt, in an article titled, “A Mystery: Less Birth, More Death,” documents an unusual phenomena in Russia and eastern European countries. Eberstadt describes “strange population trends” which have “gripped the former Soviet Union since the fall of communism in 1989.” A demographic calamity, in which fewer babies are being born and many more people are dying, has been observed. “From Leipzig to Vladivostok,” says Eberstadt, “birth and marriage rates are plummeting and death rates are soaring .… The “sudden sharp changes in birth and death rates are indicators of societies in extreme distress — societies unable to cope with health problems that were once routine.”
Official data record that the birthrate fell by “more than 20 percent in Poland, around 25 percent in Bulgaria, 30 percent in Estonia and Romania, 35 percent in Russia and more than 60 percent in Eastern Germany” from 1989 to the first half of 1993.”
The “surge in mortality in the former Soviet bloc” has even stricken “sturdy age groups” in comparatively well-off areas. “[T]he death rate rose by nearly 20 percent for Eastern German women in their late 30s, and nearly 30 percent for men of the same age,” Eberstadt reports. Further, during “1992 and 1993, Eastern Germany buried two people for every baby born.” Infant mortality has been reported as increasing in Russia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine.
Eberstadt warns that “significant and general increases in mortality always betoken social instability, governmental fragility or both.” Further, the “transition to an affluent market economy” will not be helped by a debilitated labor force.
“It is ominous,” he says, “that three of the countries in demographic crisis — Russia, Ukraine and Belarus — have nuclear weapons. For that reason if no other, policy-makers in Washington would be well advised to pay close attention to the population trends of the post-Communist regions” (International Herald Tribune, Thursday, 7 April, 1994).
Egypt described before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee
Egypt is the largest Arab state and one of the poorest in the region, with a per capita income of just over $600 a year. Moreover, rather than increasing per capita income as a result of their aggressive population reduction program, per capita income has slid from $660 per capita in 1990 to $600 in 1992 (Inventory of Population Projects…, UNFPA, 1989/90 and 1991/92, 175 and 166 respectively). Public-sector control over the economy and industrial production has led to massive inefficiencies, which undermine growth and stability.
USAID rationale: “U.S. economic assistance supports sustainable development as a way to strengthen Egypt as a stable and moderate power in the Middle East and as a key player in the peace process.”
USAID claims: “Managed assistance to Egypt encompasses a wide range of strategic aims: economic policy reform increased private investment and agricultural productivity, improved maternal and child health care and family planning services, broader participation in decision-making, and greater environmental protection” (“Carpenter outlines Middle East foreign assistance program,” testimony before House Foreign Affairs Committee panel, 12 April 1994).
Problem solving in Bangladesh
“An agro-forestry project in Awendo, a fertile chunk of 50,000 square kilometres of land in the south-western corner of Kenya, promises to solve the region’s fuel crisis.” The “brainchild of community development officer Oluoch Onyuka,” the project was started two years ago with the help of local women’s groups.
With the help of the Forestry Department, cheap, readily available and mostly indigenous seedlings were delivered. Women’s groups taught the residents the need to replenish depleted fuelwood. Onyuka persuaded the residents to plant a quarter of their land with trees and urged those whose lands bordered on rivers to plant more because they had larger areas of less arable land.
Within two years time, the area has become lush with a new forest cover. Says Onyuka: “The Awendo woman does not have to worry about firewood now. All she has to do is fell one or two mature trees, chop them into small pieces and leave them to dry for a few days.… Apart from replenishing depleted fuelwood, the project is proving handy for those building new houses. Until now, they have relied on the natural forests for building materials” (Robert Okinyiotani, “How a Community solved its Fuel Crisis,” The Daily Star, Dhaka, Tuesday, 19 April 1994)
U.S. political observer to ICPD receives award
Senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyoming), a U.S. political observer to the ICPD, has been named “Legislator of the Month” by the Population Institute. The Population Institute, headed by Catholic-baiter Werner Fornos, has a long tradition of supporting the coercive abortion and sterilization program in China.
Senator Simpson, who serves as assistant Republican leader or party whip, was scheduled to receive his award at the Institute’s Diplomatic Round Table to be held in the U.S. Capitol. An original cosponsor of the International Population Stabilization and Reproductive Health Act, he made the following continents in congressional testimony on behalf of that measure: “Of all the challenges facing us in this country and around the world, none compares to that of increasing population growth. All of our efforts to protect the environment and to promote economic development by the staggering rate of growth in our world’s population .… Unchecked population growth has and will continue to have direct consequences for the global economy and the international standards of living.”
Senator Simpson is also the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy. He is the author and lead sponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration and Asylum Reform Act of 1994. Under the language of that legislation, people fleeing coercive population programs in other countries will have a much more difficult time in achieving political asylum in the United States.
“Senator Simpson is a shining example of the fact that the quest for world population stabilization is not a politically or ideologically motivated issue,” said Fornos. He described the Wyoming Senator as “understand[ing] that unchecked world and national population growth will continue to degrade the environment and standard of living worldwide.” He believes that the United States must take a more active role in efforts to limit the world’s population growth and to provide universal access to family planning services (“Population Award to Party Whip,” POPLINE, vol. 16, May/June 1994).
Counselor Wirth ‘goes Hollywood’
Actress/activist Jane Fonda and NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield, along with U.S. Global Counselor Tim Wirth and Alan Durning, executive director of the Northwest Environmental Watch briefed the Environmental Media Assn.’s breakfast meeting recently.
The audience of filmmakers, TV writers and producers were asked Monday to incorporate the global issues of overpopulation and overconsumption into their storylines.
Billionaire Ted Turner, chairman of Turner Broadcasting Systems, announced an incentive to accompany next year’s EMA awards. He offered a prize of $10,000 for the best incorporation of the issue of overpopulation into popular entertainment, including feature films, prime time TV, children’s TV programming and music video. “What we put out across our airways can influence people,” Littlefield told the crowd of about 200. “We want to raise awareness and motivate you to do something for this cause.”
Wirth stressed the need for expanded family planning and a broader range of reproductive services for women, as well as the importance of educating men to realize that masculinity is not achieved by fathering a child, but by raising one. “There is not a single issue more important today than overpopulation,” said Wirth, “the numbers are truly frightening.”
Fonda added to the tone of hysteria, “Cities are collapsing under the weight of our numbers,” she said. Durning, author of “How Much is Enough?: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth,” suggested the federal tax system be overhauled to include taxes on the use of natural resources (Beth Laski, “ Overpopulation tops EMA awards agenda,” Daily Variety, 12 July 1994).
Women’s ordeal in New Delhi
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in New Delhi conducted a research project which has created scars and hardships for over thousands of women. Norplant inserts were implanted in the women during IMCR’s phase III trials carried out between August 1983 and September 1985.
In spite of evident side effects including excessive and irregular bleeding, headaches and speech problems, as well as social ostracism, ICMR continued with Phase IV trials on an additional 10,000 women. In addition to menstrual disorders, “experts have cautioned that Norplant is known to have caused…endocrinological disorders, obesity and nervous disorders.”
One of the women, Shahjahan Begum of Churiwalan, of Delhi, described her ordeal: “I bled continuously for four years. Right after the implant my bleeding became irregular. Then I became weak and irritable.” At the other end of the spectrum, Sathyamala of Saheli, a Delhi-based women’s organization said, “Norplant causes amenhorrea, the cessation of mensus.”
A counselor with the IMCR unit in Kasturba Hospital in Delhi admitted that complete information, which could have warned the women about side effects, was not given.
Many of the women did not speak the language; many were unable to sign the document because they could not read or write. Some of the women, like Snehlata of Delhi’s Kinara Bazar, say they were not asked to sign consent forms. In most cases, medical tests were not conducted to screen out women with special medical problems who should not take the drug.
In addition, journalist Rahul Shrivastava claims: “Aggressive patronizing was also part of ICMR’s strategy. Haresh Pathare of the ICMR unit attached to the JJ Group of hospitals says, “Poor women remove the Copper T (IUD) or stop taking pills whenever they want. With Norplant, the control is in our hands. It cannot be removed without surgery” (Rahul Shrivastava, “Norplant: Anatomy of an ordeal,” The Pulse, Dhaka, 15 April 1994).
Optimism about population growth
The semi-arid Machakos district in Kenya has been transformed. Formerly an area characterized by soil erosion and food shortages, scientists from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, have confirmed the contribution of population growth to economic and social development, technology change and environmental sustainability under the right policy conditions, that is, granting small farmers the role of investment. The study used conventional date, oral history, and the photographic record from 1937 (M. Tiffen, M. Mortimore, F. Gichuki, More People, Less Erosion, Environmental Recovery in Kenya, In association with John Wiley and Sons, 1994).
