I have nothing against numbers; except that I very often don't understand them. However, in the case of population (as in just about every other case) numbers miss the point. This is not to say that they are wrong; just that they show, nearly always, an incomplete picture. What's more, numbers are not the antiseptic entities they are construed to be; at the end of the day they are politically derived. The irony is that the bright folks who have made a profession of hurling numbers at each other know (and sometimes acknowledge) all of the above, especially in the case of population numbers. However, the number-fights-much like food-fights in Chaplin movies-are easier to start than to end.
Furthermore, numbers are not just innocuously annoying. They can be dangerous. I, for one, shudder when I hear all the movers and shakers of the Cairo conference--from UNFPA's Nafis Sadiq and the U.S. representative Timothy Wirth to well-meaning NGO folks-talking about "quantified goals." Hasn't decades of ill-directed population adventurism taught us that goals and targets--as soon as they are quantified and entombed in numbers-can translate to coercion. Do petty field bureaucrats in Asian population programs who coerce women to forced sterilization, do so out of spite or inhumanity? Or do they do so because some globe-trotting, conference-hopping, know-all, either from an international bureaucracy or (worse still) an international NGO, convinced the governments of the world to set "targets" that were so unrealistic in the first place that they could not be achieved except through coercion?
Luckily, not everyone is hiding behind the numbers avalanche. The message coming out of the criticism from the South in general and from women in the South in particular is that population is not about numbers; it's about people. More importantly, that people are not the problem; the problems that people face are the problem. This is no different from the message that came out of Bucharest in 1974: "development is the best contraceptive" and "take care of the people and population will take care of itself." The fear is that Cairo, much like Bucharest, will echo the rhetoric without understanding the intent.
The debate about whether there are limits to growth, and if so what these limits are, is not just interesting, it is important. How many people can the world's finite resources support? Where will the world's growing population stabilize? How much food will be needed to feed this population? By how much will added populations hinder (or help!) economic development? These, and questions of this ilk, are NOT frivolous questions. Their answers may well determine the future of humanity on this planet. Yet, unless the answers we receive are peeled of their anti-septic numerical facade and seen in the scorching light of real life-with all its attendant misery, hunger and abject poverty-they will remain academic at best, and irrelevant at worst.
While this may come as a surprise to some academics, bureaucrats, and environmental zealots, real people do not decide to have less (or more) children because of whatever effects it might have on the greenhouse gas buildup, the destruction of tropical forests, or on national GDP. True, these and the many other negative implications of unrestrained population growth will eventually impact these very people and their offspring. But that must not distract our collective attention from why people make the decisions they make. At the human level the reasons are, very often, extremely simple. Yet, they are beyond the comprehension of the most intricate computer programs. However, the solutions are much more complex and require political will and understanding much more than complex technological savvy or simple condom distribution.
Women all over the world knew how to contracept long before Norplant came about. But as long as societies persist in treating women as second-class citizens whose value is determined only by their ability to produce and rear children (especially male children) the 'desire' to forego more pregnancies will remain exactly that-a dream-rather than becoming a 'willingness' to control fertility. In such a situation 'unmet need' remains a meaningless term which certainly cannot be equated with 'potential demand'. Similarly, for the poorest of the poor, the difference between having four children and five is not the difference between feeding four hungry mouths or five hungry mouths; it is the difference between eight hands to earn with or ten hands to earn with. As long as these numbers are true, all others will remain irrelevant.
The argument here is not 'against' family planning. It is 'for' prioritization. Better, safer, cleaner contraceptives will certainly help. But much more important than providing people with the means to contracept is to provide them with a reason to contracept. The challenge is not in convincing them that having fewer children will make for a better world tomorrow, but in assuring them that it would mean a better life today. The entire mind-set must move from the hardware to the software, from numbers to people.
The critical issue before Cairo in September and New York today, is that of defining the problem. If the problem is identified as the "uncontrolled growth of human numbers," then the solution is obvious: fertility control at any cost--through persuasion, incentives, or coercion. However, if we define it as the "problems of people which force them to take the fertility decisions that they take," then the solutions are obvious but not simple: the eradication of poverty, the emancipation of women, the provision of options, the gift of development-in short, the promise of a better life not just for the children of tomorrow, but for the children of today. It is that promise that posterity seeks from Cairo.
To view a full list of my recent publications, please return to my go back to my resume.