Compulsory population control mooted to avoid eco-disaster

24 July, 2007:

Compulsory restrictions on family sizes may become unavoidable if Earth is to be saved from disaster, the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a group in the United Kingdom that advocates restricting global population growth, has said.

The Optimum Population Trust, which calls for curbing global population growth to lessen the impact of humans on the environment, says that over the next 50 years the planet will have to deal with the largest generation of adolescents and teenagers in history.

Many of these will be unemployed young men who, in their frustration over their situation, may resort to violence. This will add to the already overwhelming burden the developing countries are facing as a result of population growth, says OPT.

In a report released in July 2007, John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT, said the United Nations’ projection of a world population of 9.2 billion in 2050 – up from 6.7 billion today – was a “highly optimistic” estimate and that the actual number may be many more.

The population of the 50 poorest countries in the developing world will double in size, a shift that will wipe out gains in agriculture, education, and health care faster than they can be made, says Guillebaud.

OPT projects that, by 2050, the world’s population will be using the biological capacity of two Earths. It says this will lead to a massive population crash through a combination of violence, disease, and starvation.

To prevent this, the OPT report advocates a mix of government policies to prevent women worldwide from having more than an average of two children.

Recommendations for developing countries include funding to provide women much greater access to contraception and abortions.

Despite the fact that fertility rates in nearly all European countries has dropped below two – demographers say the generational replacement level is 2.1 – OPT said that fears of a “baby shortage” are misplaced.

The report criticised the policy of some European governments offering citizens financial incentive to have children, saying it would only postpone the day when there are more retired people than workers.

Disagreeing with the OPT report, Donna Nicholson, a spokeswoman for the Scottish chapter of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said the problem that many developing countries face is not overpopulation but global inequality.

The United States produces enough food annually to feed the entire world, Donna Nicholson said. At the same time, the crippling debt facing many African countries drives them to cut back on education and health care.

Citing her experience working in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Donna Nicholson said the answer to solving poverty was not population control. “You can’t look at a woman in the Third World and say the problem is that she’s pregnant,” she remarked.

Josephine Quintavalle, head of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a British pro-life group, reacted by saying it is frightening that the OPT report was getting attention. Europe, she said, was facing a situation in which, in just a few years, more people would be over 60 years of age than under 60.

In the opinion of Josephine Quintavalle, unless European countries took urgent measures to encourage more people to have babies, the continent could skip an entire generation of children.