International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Population Matters
1. Population Matters warmly commends DfID for having clearly grasped the central role of population growth in perpetuating, indeed exacerbating, poverty, and inhibiting development, in the poorest countries. Until populations stabilise, all other programmes (in education, agriculture, water, health, forestry, biodiversity, etc) are to a greater or lesser extent simply “running to stand still”; and will be overwhelmed by rising numbers of people if population growth continues “indefinitely”, (ie until ecological and resource degradation/depletion cause it to stabilise through increased mortality rather than decreased fertility).
2. Thus the joint initiative “FP2012” with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the most important single global aid development in the year. Nonetheless family planning, in the framework of sexual and reproductive health services, together with the essential accompanying programmes for women’s education and empowerment and the promotion of cultural change in favour of smaller families, are still only a small percentage of the total aid programme; we hope this percentage will continue steadily to increase.
3. Recipient Governments are unlikely to see the point of this, and will resist such programmes as long as they perceive, and donors present, the “population” problem as purely a matter of SRHR—a sub-set of health of concern only to Health Ministries. There is as yet no evidence that at the highest level most African Governments have understood the unique importance of population growth as a multiplier of almost all the problems faced in all of their Departments, and hence its claim to special priority among their programmes. The UN system does not help (cf Annex below, referring to a meeting where the Deputy Prime Minister and many UN Agency Heads shared the platform).
4. However, the fact that the President of Africa’s largest country, Goodluck Jonathan, actually proposed a two-child policy this year (albeit in unfortunate terms) shows that understanding is rising; and with its high standing throughout the continent, DfID could make a conscious effort to encourage this, both among recipients and donors. It can not be left to the UNFPA alone; and would be almost zero-cost. We hope they can continue to extend their lead across the board in this crucial area.
Annex
Email from Roger Martin to Mr Jose da Siva, Director-General FAO, 26 June 2012. TEXT BEGINS: I attended your session in Rio on FAO’s “Zero Hunger Challenge”, and naturally agreed with your vision, and with everything you said. But the unmentioned elephant in the room was population growth, as your spokesman recognised afterwards.
I was astonished that any discussion of, for instance, the Niger crisis could ignore the fact that Niger has the fastest growing population in the world. Already it cannot feed half its 16 million people; and the UN medium projection for 2050 is 55 million (cf attached chart, not printed). Globally, the range of the UN 2050 projection is between 8.1 and 10.6 billion—a range of 2.5 billion (the entire population of the planet in 1950), depending on what we collectively do about it meanwhile. So population is a variable to be tackled, not a “given” to be accommodated.
Clearly it will be less impossible to avert mass starvation the nearer to the bottom of the range we can stabilise our numbers; and surely no-one believes Niger could feed 55 million in 38 years’ time, even without climate change, desertification, depleting aquifers, land grabs and rising energy costs? Indeed unless it can reduce its growth rate, all other programmes will at best be “running to stand still”, until they are overwhelmed by rising numbers. Stable populations are, after all, an essential (though of course far from sufficient) condition for bio-physical sustainability. Kofi Annan agrees; and only an irrational taboo stops many others saying so.
The solution is simply very high priority and funding for voluntary family planning, women’s education and empowerment, and wider social education programmes. These should surely be a significant element in any realistic food security programme. As UNICEF said, “Family planning could do more good for more people at less cost than any other known technology”. And the forthcoming Bill Gates/DfID “FP2012” event on 11 July makes it topical. At my last preparatory video-conference in DfID, the FP team in Niger were delighted that their innovative pilot project (combining travelling clinics with “husband schools”) had greatly reduced fertility rates, and were desperate for funds to roll it out country-wide. Yet the Niger President’s comments at your meeting in Rio showed no awareness of this, presumably because family planning is still routinely marginalised as purely an issue of reproductive health, rather than a central part of the solution to Niger’s most pressing structural problems.
It does all those poor women and children, facing a grim future, no favours to observe the taboo. I do hope FAO can help break it.
October 2012