A Developing Country Perspective on
Population, Environment, and Development

By Adil Najam
Population Research and Policy Review, Vol. 15 No. 1, Pgs. 1-17

Abstract: The subject of this paper is the political behavior of developing states (the South) on issues of population, environment and development. It attempts to understand why the South is so weary of international population policy in the name of the environment. It argues that the South's response is shaped by five inter-related concerns about responsibility, efficiency, efficacy, additionality, and sovereignty. That is, the developing countries a) do not want their population growth to be held responsible for global environmental degradation; b) argue that more efficient solution to the environmental crisis is consumption control in the North; c) believe that development remains a necessary condition for efficacious population control; d) are weary of the population priorities of the North distracting international funds from other developmental goals of the South; and e) are unprepared to accept any global population norms which challenge their fundamental political, cultural or religious sovereignty. It is maintained that these concerns have historically guided the positions of the South are remain valid and relevant today. Although, over the last two decades of North-South debate on the subject the nuances within these concerns have evolved, the concerns themselves remain valid and were apparent again at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Finally, it is proposed that although a grand North-South bargain around population - environment - development issues remains unlikely, both sides can gain much from trying to understand-even where they do not agree with-the other's concerns. The purpose of this study is not as much to defend the South's position, as to present it and the rationale behind it.

---

In ancient times, people were few but wealthy and without strife. People at present think that five sons are too many, and each son has five sons also and before the death of the grandfather there are already 25 descendants. Therefore people are more and wealth is less; they work hard and receive little. The life of a nation depend upon having enough food, not upon the number of people.
- Han Fei-Tzu, circa 500 BC

The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its poverty or its riches, upon its youth or its age, upon its being thinly or fully inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing, upon the degree in which the yearly increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an unrestricted population.
- Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, 1798

The causal chain of the deterioration [of the environment] is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide-all can be traced easily to too many people.
- Paul R. Ehrlich, 1968

The pollution problem is a consequence of population.. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.
- Garrett Hardin, 1968

The recent growth of popular interest in environmental issues has generated a renewal of concern about rapid population growth, which is seen as being largely responsible for global trends of environmental degradation (Hardin 1968; Ehrlich 1968; Meadows et al. 1972; Holdren & Ehrlich 1974; Brown 1981; Keyfitz 1989; Myers 1990). The causal relationship between the two seems intuitively obvious. Yet, it is being contested by a number of critical interests. Although some in the population community may consider such views peripheral to the mainstream debate, the prevalence and persistence of the dissension on the environment-population linkage may be gauged from the fact that in 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development, reached unanimous agreement on all issues except two-Antarctica and the causal significance of population growth (Shaw 1992). Again, at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) population remained the most contentious issue (Najam 1993a).

Most surprising is the reaction of the developing countries. On the one hand, many of them have very high population growth rates and are most immediately vulnerable to its consequences. At the same time, many of them support strong domestic population policies, which have been in place over long periods of time, and are vigorously-and sometimes coercively-enforced. Yet, at the international level, these same states seem hesitant, and sometimes hostile, to the notion of accepting a direct causal link between global environmental degradation and population growth. See Krasner (1985), Najam (1993a), Amalric & Banuri (1993), Mahbub-ul-Haq (1994).

This paper attempts to understand why the developing countries of the South are so weary of international population policy in the name of the environment.(4) It is essentially a study of the political behavior of Southern governments. It is argued that the South's response has been, and continues to be, shaped by five inter-related concerns:

Responsibility: For precedent and principle, the South resists any effort that implies holding population growth (largely in the South) responsible for global environmental stress. Hence, the insistence that "population growth in the developing countries is a national, not a global problem" (Mahbub-ul-Haq 1976: 124). The South has consistently held that the environmental crisis is of the North's making and has based its demands for assistance/reparations on that `history of guilt.' In accepting population growth as the causal motor of environmental degradation the South loses this perceived leverage.

Efficiency: From the perspective of international environmental policy, the South insists that if the international concern about population growth stems from its effects on global systems then it would be more efficient to focus on consumption patterns. The argument is that whatever effects population may have, they are only in relation to consumption. As Ramphal (1994) stresses, once consumption is factored in, the 1.2 billion people living in industrialized countries place a pressure equivalent to more than 24 million living in the developing countries. Thus, it would be more efficient to focus on policies that curb consumption than on those that target procreation.

Efficacy: From the implementation end, developing countries argue that development is still the best contraceptive. Experience in both North and South shows that "people in the developed condition do not have too many children" (Keyfitz 1991: 39-40). The South argues, therefore, that if the international community is truly interested in curbing population growth it should spend its dollars on assisting economic and human development rather than simply enhancing contraceptive provision. Although the argument that economic growth will automatically slow population growth is contested (e.g., Harrison 1994), the assertion that social development will enhance the efficacy of population policies is now widely accepted (e.g., Brower 1994; Chhabra 1994; Harrison 1994; Lutz 1994; Ness 1994). The South builds on this emerging consensus to reinforce and rearticulate its enduring call that development (now more broadly defined) remains the best contraceptive (see Mahbub-ul-Haq 1994, Najam 1993b, Ramphal 1994).

Additionality: Programatically, the South remains concerned that greater donor assistance for population may translate to a lesser focus on development assistance. Ever since US President Johnson's 1965 statement that "less than five dollars invested in population control is worth a hundred dollars invested in economic growth," developing countries have doubted the motives behind the West's emphasis on population control. Developing countries want to be sure that in accepting donor priorities (i.e. population, environment, etc.) they would not be asked to forfeit their own (i.e. development). For the South, the end of the cold war means that the geopolitical strategic value of Southern states has diminished, and new claimants to the already shrinking international assistance pie have emerged. This has reinvigorated the urgency of the additionality argument for the South.

Sovereignty: Politically, the South sees no contradiction between actively pursuing population policies domestically, and resisting them internationally. It sees population as an issue of sovereignty and any interference from the international community as a breach thereof. While recognizing the domestic benefits of slowed population growth and pursuing policies to bring it about, the South is unprepared to hold its policies subservient to external pressure. As Stephen Krasner points out, "the South has maintained its unity, despite major differences among individual countries, even in an issue area where the North has offered additional resources" because "Southern resistance to Northern efforts to develop international population norms is not simply a product of specific national values, or evidence of a concern that antinatalism may be a ploy for subordinating development aid, but is also a reflection of the deep adherence of Third World states to the prerogatives of sovereignty" (Krasner 1985: 276-8).

The Population-Environment-Development Nexus

In fairness to its proponents, the argument has become far more sophisticated over time. The reigning view is best identified by the Holdren-Ehrlich (1974) identity(5):

I = P A T
(Environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology)

From the South's point of view, while the diagnosis suggests that both the number (i.e. population growth) and the rate (i.e. consumption patterns) are at least equally critical as motors of causality, the prescription focuses unduly on the first and not enough on the later. For many in the developing world, such a conceptualization adds insult to injury in that the focus on population as the main cause of environment degradation implicitly places the responsibility for such degradation on their doorsteps, even though the `benefits' have been reaped by those in the North.

Very often, then, the argument becomes merely a more sophisticated rehash of the more simplistic conception introduced earlier. For example, Nathan Keyfitz (1991: 77 & 44) writes:

In 1950 the world contained 2.5 billion people, and there was little evidence of damage to the biosphere. Now with over 5 billion there is a great deal of evidence with another 2.5 billion and continuance of present trends of production and consumption, disaster faces us. The planet cannot over a long period support that many people; yet an even larger number is threatened... Twice as many people cooking with the same wood stoves use up twice as much wood. Twice as many cars of a given kind and given condition of repair put twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Twice as many fish eaters require twice as large a catch. With all else constant, the requirements are the simplest possible linear function of the number of people.

The South's Response

On the first count, the South responds by pointing out, for example, that the average Bangladeshi uses 2 milligrams of CFCs per year in comparison to the average U.S. citizen who uses 2 kilograms per year; as such the `environmental impact' of an extra Bengali, in CFC terms, is only 1/1000th that of an extra American. On the second, they reason that even if the policy focus is to be only on population and not on consumption, it makes more sense to do so in the North where one averted birth is likely to produce 1000 times the environmental `benefit' that it would in the South. Further, Southern commentators challenge the assumption that it is somehow `easier' to reduce population amongst the poor than to curb consumption amongst the rich. If environment is the main concern, they argue, would it be easier to change lifestyles (consumption) of the few who are very rich or the children preferences of the very many who are poor. Arguably, the lifestyle change involved in reducing CFC consumption for an individual in USA is no more difficult-in fact, it should be far easier-than changing the children preference demanded from a peasant in Bangladesh. See Mahbub-ul-Haq (1994), Najam (1993b) and Ramphal (1994).

While the question of efficiency relates to the relative importance of the various options to check environmental degradation, the issue of efficacy concerns the effectiveness of various means to curb population growth. Since the South nowhere questions the need for population policies per se-and actively pursues them domestically-the efficacy of such policies is crucial for implementation. This brings us to that critical question of why people in poor conditions have high population growth. Environmentalists tend to spend too much effort in arguing why population should be controlled, and population experts spend too much time in figuring out how it could be controlled, but way too little thought is invested in why people have as many children as they do. Falling mortality rates, old-age security, religion, and the sheer inertia of the demographic momentum are all valid and important factors, but they offer little in way of policy advice. For example, maintaining high mortality is ethically unacceptable, quick changes in social or religious preferences cannot be legislated, nor can changes in the nature of demographic momentum.

For the poorest, the difference between having four children or five is often not the difference between four hungry mouths to feed or five, but that between eight hands to earn with or ten. The rational cost-benefit analysis of childbearing decisions yields very different results where children become earning members before age ten, from where parents have to factor in the escalating costs of an expensive college education before thinking about that extra child. The fundamental, still un-bridged, gap between North and South in matters pertaining to population is that what people in the industrialized world see as a problem of `too many people' is seen by those in the developing countries as the problem of `too much poverty.' The most vivid exemplars of this persistent chasm remains the following (still relevant) quotes from Paul Ehrlich and Mahmood Mamdani:

One stinking hot night in Delhi. as we crawled through the city [in a taxi], we entered a crowded slum area. The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to busses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat, and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? All three of us were, frankly, frightened. since that night I've known the feel of overpopulation. (Ehrlich 1968: 15).

The fact is that a hot summer night on Broadway in New York or Picadilly Circus in London would put Ehrlich in the midst of a far larger crowd. Yet such an experience would not spur him to comment with grave concern about `overpopulation.' On the other hand, with a little more concern and a little less fear he would have realized that what disturbed him about the crowd in Delhi was not its numbers, but its `quality'-that is, its poverty. To talk, as Ehrlich does, of `overpopulation' is to say to people: you are poor because you are too many. People are not poor because they have large families. Quite the contrary: they have large families because they are poor. (Mamdani 1972: 14).

The difference between the South's continuing insistence on development being the best contraceptive and the US's Mexico City position that `sound economic policies' were the best contraceptive is subtle but profound. The South's call, at least in theory, has been for development at large, an improvement in the quality of life, an expansion of economic options available to poor; the US view at Mexico, on the other hand, was a political tactic, an ideological call for "a market economy. [which would] encourage a vital private sector."

In short, the South had been calling for development, the US was trying to push a particular brand of economics. At the 1994 Cairo conference, the US position reverted back to its earlier pro-population control agenda. The South's insistence on a development agenda, however, remained intact and has influenced the ICPD documents, most notably in the changed nomenclature of the conference itself-the fact that Cairo was not a conference on population alone but one on population and development is itself indicative of the enduring importance that the South has placed on framing the population question within a larger developmental agenda. See Najam (1994), ICPD (1994).

Having said the above, the dilemma posed by Keyfitz (1991: 39-40) is one that planners all over the South are wrestling with: "population growth can prevent the development that would slow population growth"; the question is how to break the circular chain of "poverty-many children-poverty." The scholarly debate on the subject remains inconclusive. From the point of view of the developing countries, however, the case for development being a good (although not the only) contraceptive is still supported more robustly by the evidence than the case for contraception being a good development strategy.

It is the South's insistence that development is the most effective check for rapid population growth and the South's fear that in their zeal to focus on population (and the environment) the donor nations of the industrialized world will divert resources from development assistance to population programs, that raises their concerns about additionality. In raising this point, the South articulates its skepticism about the motivations behind the North's concern for population growth and also illustrates its preference for developmental, as opposed to contraceptive, solutions. What it is seeking here is a reassurance that international priority for population (or environment) policies will not come at the cost of domestic priorities for economic development.

This concern had arguably subsided during the 1980s. Since the US policy reversal at Mexico meant that population was no longer the priority for the major international donor, a concern about additionality on the part of the recipient became moot. However, the end of the cold war has rekindled the fears as was evident at both UNCED, 1992 and ICPD, 1994. A world without superpower antagonisms is also a world with very different perspectives on `development assistance'. Coinciding with a global economic recession, massive debt accumulations, trade imbalances, and a new negative flow of resources, this gives three signals to the South:

1-the size of the (`aid') pie is getting smaller, not bigger;
2-there are more claimants (former Soviet bloc nations) to the pie; and
3-in a uni-polar world, major donors have rapidly diminishing political/strategic use for their support.

Finally, there is the issue of whether the South is being hypocritical in vehemently opposing population policies internationally while actively pursuing them domestically, or whether it is merely `blackmailing' the North for more development assistance? The answer, on both counts, is "No." An explanation of the South's behavior can be found in the paramount importance that all states, and particularly the weak states of the South, place on sovereignty.

Sovereignty is an artifact not merely of land controlled, but of people represented. To relinquish control over people, and how people make their most intimate decisions, is to relinquish control over state sovereignty; no nation-South or North-is yet ready to do so. Developing countries see no contradiction in supporting massive population programs domestically and resisting population policies internationally. In the first they are responding to what they believe to be an important local problem. In the second, they are resisting what they consider to be external interference in how they run their own affairs. Krasner (1985: 277) explains the point:

An explicit theme of many Third World arguments, and one that explains why even developing countries with ambitious domestic programs have rejected efforts to generate international principles and norms in the population area is that such norms would encroach on state sovereignty. Population control involves changing the behavior of individuals. Some governments support such programs; other reject them; many are indifferent. But LDCs [less developed countries], which rely heavily on de jure sovereign powers, do not want there prerogatives to be constrained by new international antinatalists norms and principles.

...at Bucharest, a world population plan of action will be proposed that will take aim, whatever may be said to disguise it, at the sovereignty of nations. (Quoted in Demeny 1985: 99).

Another way to understand the South's behavior in supporting domestic population policies but opposing international ones is to use the framework advocated by Amalric & Banuri (1993) which views the population problem as not one, but three separate issues. At the local level, they argue, the central aspect revolves around the health of the mother and the children and the resource problems of the commons; at the national level it turns around the links between population growth and (economic) development, with particular focus on the consequences for capital formulation, employment, and the capacity of the government to purvey social services; at the international level the growing focus is on the links between population growth and global environmental degradation. In essence, the South rejects (and has consistently rejected) the international debate and its concomitant causal linkage between population growth and environmental degradation. It has concentrated, till now, on the national level where the emphasis is on economic issues and has only begun, in the wake of ICPD, to focus on the local level. At both these levels, the legitimate role for the international community is that of providing assistance, not policy guidelines.

For Southern states, viewing the population debate largely from the national level, sovereignty becomes the premier focus. As developing country delegates at ICPD and the follow-up session of the UN General Assembly stressed repeatedly, the implementation of population policies remains a sovereign right of nation states and there is no prospect of anything changing that in the foreseeable future (ICPD 1994; ENB 1994). Is the South against population policies?

The danger in the South's arguments is that they can be too easily misconstrued into implying that the developing nations are `against' population policy per se. However, as the evidence of population programs within the South demonstrate, this is not the case. Importantly, there is the underlying argument that runs through the entire discourse: slowing the rate of population growth is ultimately good for the developing countries themselves. This, more than any pressure from the international community, is why so many developing countries operate large population programs, and between them spend more on population than all international assistance combined. Commenting upon the seemingly confrontational stance taken by the South at the 1974 World Population Conference, Finkle & Crane (1975: 109) had pointed out that "the developing nations will not turn away from their demographic dilemmas merely to spite the West." That statement is still valid. The issue, for the South, is not whether to control population, but why and how.

In its report The Challenge to the South, the South Commission (1990: 213) stressed that "the containment of the population explosion. is to be sought through development in the South and through a fairer distribution of income." However, it added that "while family planning measures are vitally necessary, they are more effective as economic security and living standards improve. Poverty must be eradicated, for only then will it be possible to create the conditions in which people are more likely to see virtue in smaller families" (emphasis added). Writing in 1972, Mahbub-ul-Haq (83; 134) made an eloquent case for the South(7):

The importance of the population problem is generally recognized in the developing countries but these countries often get impatient with the virtuous lectures that the rich nations try to give them on this subject. They feel that the ever rising level of affluence in the rich nations place a far greater pressure on the world resources than the increase in population in the poor lands and that it is hypocritical of the industrialized world to be so concerned about the physical limits of this planet when it is so unwilling to do anything serious about the present maldistribution of world income and resources. They know that the problem has to be solved, they are aware that it cannot be solved quickly, and they are suspicious that the pressure that is sometimes exerted on them by the developed nations to take their population problem seriously merely serves to ease the collective conscience of the developed world. The sure solution to the problem of population is to be found in the solution to the problem of poverty.

Population growth is a developmental issue, not a clinical problem. No one will deny today that top priority must be given to reducing high rates of population growth in the developing world. The differences are on strategies, not on objectives. Family planning must be regarded as an integral part of the new models of sustainable human development. Divorced from such development models, and pursued as condom-distribution programs with a single-minded zeal to meet "unmet demand," they will fail... We cannot slip a condom on poverty.

The South at Cairo

In a post-Cairo statement, Ambassador Nicolaas H. Biegman (1994: 15) of the Netherlands has opined that "there was no `Southern' and no `Northern' approach [at Cairo], and this made the Conference such an outstanding exception in the ever-lengthening series of big UN gatherings." The diplomatic appropriateness of such sentiments aside, a careful analysis of the concerns expressed by developing country delegates during the ICPD process demonstrates that not only was their a distinct `Southern' approach at Cairo, but it was consistent with the South's historically persistent approach to population, environment and development as already outlined in this study.

For example, in its position statement to the third ICPD preparatory committee meeting, the Group of 77 and China (the representative caucus of over 130 developing countries in the UN system) laid out the basis of the South's essential position in terms no different from those used at Bucharest and Mexico City (G77 1994):

The link between economic growth and population issues cannot be taken up solely from the technical standpoint, restricted to demographic aspects. This is in fact the major political challenge of our time.. The right to development as a fundamental human right has to be unequivocally [sic] as a principle enshrined in this context.

The `development as a powerful contraceptive'-or efficacy-argument was imbedded within the very name of the Cairo meeting and is ubiquitous throughout the Program of Action (ICPD 1994). More specifically, during the General Assembly debate, the ambassador from Malta pointed out that a selective approach, which emphasizes the implementation of a restrictive demographic orientation and sacrifices the developmental perspective, would be detrimental to the success of the Program of Action; Egypt added that in order to implement ICPD decisions the focus of the UN Population Commission should shift from demography to development; Bangladesh summed the view of the South succinctly by simply stating that "the goals of the ICPD will fall short if poverty is not eradicated." See ENB (1994).

On additionality, the only assurance the South was able to get was in the objective of "increas[ing] the commitment to, and the stability of, international financial assistance in the field of population and development by diversifying the sources of contributions, while striving to avoid as far as possible a reduction in the resources for other development areas" (ICPD 1994: para 14.10b, emphasis added). However, the conference also recognized the claim of former Soviet bloc countries to population and development related funds.(12) The urgency of diminishing international funds and increasing claimants was not lost on developing countries who repeatedly stressed the importance of the North fulfilling its financial commitments. Zimbabwe explicitly raised the additionality concern by stressing that the international community must provide "new and additional" financial resources to ensure adequate implementation; China repeated the sentiment and added the concern about conditionality, stating that no country should attach any conditions to its donations made in the field of population and development. See ENB (1994).

Finally, sovereignty gained a new salience at Cairo as existing concerns about political sovereignty were joined by new concerns about cultural and religious sovereignty which were brought to fore by the discussion on abortion and reproductive rights. In fact, all the states who expressed reservations on the final document did so around some formulation of the sovereignty argument. Many, amongst those who did not register reservations, did make a point of explicitly clarifying that in their interpretation of the ICPD decisions no element of sovereignty-at any level-had been ceded by states, who remain solely responsible for deciding which population and development policies best suit their particular social, cultural, developmental, and religious conditions. Particularly strong statements in this regards were made by Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria-all three amongst the ten most populated countries in the world. See ENB (1994).

Conclusion

On responsibility and efficiency the South's arguments are less contested today even though there is no indication of policy change on consumption patterns in the North. On efficacy, the South's argument remains that `development is the best contraceptive' although development is now more broadly defined, encompassing human and social-as opposed to the merely economic-dimensions. On additionality, new threats have begun to emerge around the double threat of a diminishing pool of available resources and new claimants to its bounty.(13) On sovereignty, the earlier concerns have remained unchanged and been added to by new concerns about cultural and religious sovereignty as international policy attempts to move into the more intimate domains of issues such as reproductive health and abortion.

In sum, important differences persist between the North's and South's perception of the population-environment-development nexus. From the South's perspective, the ideal international policies would be those:

where international assistance is built, not on the implicit rationale of placing the responsibility for environmental degradation on the `mounting multitudes', but on sharing the responsibility for managing a threatened planet (responsibility);
where population control measures in the South are complemented with equally comprehensive consumption control measures in the North (efficiency);
where the focus of population policy is not as much on providing people with the means to contracept (i.e., the hardware: family planning) as with reasons to contracept (i.e., the software: human and social development) (efficacy);
where increased international support is provided as assistance, not as conditionality, and does not detract resources from other developmental priorities (additionality); and
where international population policy implies no more than providing assistance for domestic programs, designed and carried out entirely according to national priorities, with no implicit or explicit interference in policy design or implementation (sovereignty).

Moreover, despite the rhetoric of Cairo, a massive transfer of resources from North to South for broadly defined development is also unlikely; whatever transfers will be made are likely to be narrowly directed at contraceptive and family planning-like activities. A conservative political shift and the continuing economic problems in the North-combined with public disdain for international assistance and the diminishing geostrategic importance of the South-is likely to further constrain the actual amounts of any North-South resource transfer.

While this prognosis may seem pessimistic, it is no more than a realistic view of the future given past experience and present conditions. That international policy action on population is unlikely does not, however, mean that all international efforts in the field of population, environment and development are futile. The focus, however, will have to shift from attempting to `create' international population policies to `supporting' domestic population policies. The first is unwise and prone to conflict because at the individual level it impinges upon the most intimate of personal decisions and at the national level it challenges fundamental state sovereignty. The later, however, is an advisable-and even efficient-course of action because nearly all countries with high population growth rates are already pursuing strong domestic population programs which provide the international community opportunity to demonstrate their support for them.

Having said the above, there should be no illusion about this being an `easy' strategy. Few in the South really believe that such an attitude is forthcoming. There is no indication whatsoever that the North is ready to adopt a supportive but hands-off and non-interference policy as far as its foreign assistance dollars are concerned. Despite all the talk about national sovereignty or the rights of communities and individuals, international donors are no more prepared to stop interfering in the decisions of recipient states than states are prepared to do so with communities and individuals. Until an international climate of such mutual trust and confidence is established, a minimum first step for both North and South would be to try to understand, even where they do not agree with, the concerns of the other. In trying to foster such understanding, this paper has attempted not as much to defend the South's position as to present its persistent concerns and explain the rationale-from the South's viewpoint-behind these concerns.

Acknowledgments: I first developed many of the arguments in this paper while doing research at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Mass. These have since been refined, reframed, and expanded. I have benefited from comments on earlier versions from, and/or my discussions with, Dr. Tariq Banuri (Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Pakistan), Dr. Michael Brower (then, Union of Concerned Scientists), Prof. Robert O. Keohane (Harvard Center for International Affairs), Dr. Jesse C. Ribot (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies), and Prof. Lawrence E. Susskind (Department of Urban Studies and Planning, M.I.T.). This, however, does not imply that they necessarily share all the views expressed here. I have also benefited greatly from comments by anonymous reviewers.

Footnotes

1 - Nor is the call for making population control an explicitly stated goal of governance and policy a new development. The ancient Greeks certainly did not view the arrival of every child simply as a blessing. Hesiod argued that one son was enough. Plato and Aristotle envisaged the state's policing marriage and eugenically eliminating excess and unfit children. By the same token, as many examples can be cited of explicit pronatalist policies being advocated both by scholars and governments for a whole variety of reasons. See McLaren (1990).
2 - Meadows et al. (1992) remind their readers that there is little reason to celebrate if the predictions of their earlier work, The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), have not yet materialized. They argue that the thresholds of resource limits are nearer today, and are now more likely to collapse suddenly. Paul Ehrlich (with Anne H. Ehrlich 1990) defends the alarmist predictions of his earlier work, The Population Bomb (Ehrlich 1968), with similar arguments. The essential case for not becoming complacent merely because humanity has, till now, demonstrated remarkable adeptness in the face of ever-rising populations is made by Nathan Keyfitz (1991: 43) who stresses that "simply supposing that relations among past values of the variables will hold in the future can give absurd results." Keyfitz (1991: 40) also points out that "an ecological crisis can come suddenly, like a point of singularity, when the underlying curves are smooth."
3 - Julian Simon (1981) considers population to be "the ultimate resource." This argument, too, boasts of an ancient lineage. In 59 B.C. Julius Caesar legislated land allotments to fathers of three or more children, while Roman Emperor Augustus promulgated laws in 18 B.C. and 9 A.D. which pressured widows to remarry and punished celibacy and childlessness. See McLaren (1990).
4 - For the purpose of this discussion we will consider the `South' to be a single (though not monolithic) entity representing the developing countries. This paper uses the term `South' (which is a political concept) in lieu of terms like `Third World' or the `Developing World' (which have generally been construed as economic concepts). For more on the concept of the `South,' see Najam (1993a).
5 - In its various formulations, this approach has been advocated as the theoretical synthesis of the population-environment linkage (UNFPA 1991; Harrison 1992) and applied empirically to specific environmental questions (Myers 1990; Bongaarts 1992). Although the I=PAT approach is currently the most widely held view on the subject, it is not necessarily the only one. Another approach is advocated by Shaw (1989 & 1992) which argues that to date rapid population growth does not qualify as an ultimate cause of global environmental degradation, rather it is a proximate factor and that distortionary social, economic, and political factors are, in fact, the ultimate causes.
6 - For one thing it tells us nothing about the direction of the relationship between technology (T) and the environmental impact (I) or that between A and I. Also, if the South is correct in the importance of development as a contraceptive then a drop in P may be difficult without a corresponding rise in A and T, and is likely to leave I little changed. For a commentary on the limitations of the I=PAT identity see Shaw (1992) and Amalric & Banuri (1993).
7 - Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq is currently chief author of the UN Development Program's annual Human Development Reports. He has remained one of the leading representative intellectual leaders of the South for the last 25 years, and is therefore a creditable exemplar of the South's views on the subject.
8 - Reservations to the final documents were recorded by Afghanistan, Argentina, Brunei, Djibouti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Holy See, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Malta, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The Holy See which had refused to join the consensus at the 1974 and 1984 population conferences, announced that it was joining the Cairo consensus "in an incomplete, partial manner." It supported the emphases on linking population and development, on the protection of the family and on empowering women through improved access to education and health care, but stated that the texts of other chapters had implications it could not support. Although the partial consensus accepted by the Holy See is regarded by some as an important achievement of ICPD it should be noted that the number of states officially recording reservations at Cairo was higher than at Bucharest and Mexico City.
9 - At Bucharest the South, led by China, had surprised the North by the intensity of its concerns about the proposed Plan of Action and forced it to be substantively redrafted; at Mexico City it was the United States that surprised conference organizers by changing its position at the last minute and proposing that population was a "neutral phenomenon" (see Finkle & Crane 1975 & 1985; Johnson 1987).
10 - By necessity, UN conferences cover a wide range of issues and incorporate a wider range of interests. All too often, the result is ambiguous language delicately crafted to accommodate all interests and all parties. However, the post-conference General Assembly debate (and the conference plenary debates) provide state representatives the opportunity to highlight the concerns and interests most important to them. It is instructive to note that the issue of abortion which was seen by so many as the main highlight of ICPD, thanks to the Vatican delegation and the Western media, was far less prominent when nations recounted issues of the greatest interest to them at the General Assembly. See ENB (1994).
11 - The terminology in the Cairo Program of Action is much diluted and crafted to be acceptable to both North and South: "Demographic factors, combined with poverty and lack of access to resources in some areas, and excessive consumption and wasteful production patters in others, cause or exacerbate problems of environmental degradation and resource depletion and thus inhibit sustainable development" (ICPD 1994: para 3.25). Note the use of `demographic factors' as opposed to `population growth'; as at UNCED this choice reflects a delicate balance. It accommodates the South's insistence that the population variable of importance to the environment is distribution with respect to natural resources rather than sheer numbers. More importantly, the paragraph makes clear the South's view that population becomes a causal factor in terms of environmental degradation only in relation to poverty on the one hand and over-consumption on the other.
12 - In Chapter 14 (on `International Cooperation') the ICPD Program of Action defines one of its objective as "to increase substantially the availability of international financial assistance. [to] developing countries and countries with economies in transition" (ICPD 1994: para 14.10a, emphasis added). However, the South was able to have it stated that "countries with economies in transition should receive temporary assistance for population and development activities" (ICPD 1994: para 14.15).
13 - It is likely that the majority won by the Republican party in recent elections to the US Congress will exacerbate this concern. With the Republicans being traditionally unsympathetic to global institutions and initiatives it is being projected that US funding for ICPD implementation would be one of the casualties (Shepard 1994). If so, then the international assistance pie available to the South would shrink even more.

References