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The earth's population will approach an unsustainable total of 10.5 billion unless contraception is put back at the top of the agenda for international efforts to alleviate global poverty.
So says a British Government report that is challenging world leaders to put the contraceptive pill and the condom back at the centre of their efforts to alleviate global poverty, tackle the scourge of starvation and even help to avert global warming.
Gordon Brown has staked his future premiership on leading the world in tackling global poverty. But the report by an all-party parliamentary group on population, development and reproductive growth, chaired by a Labour MP, says he will fail if he does not put contraception at the heart of his plans.
Since the 1970s, when coercion was used in India and China, family planning has become almost a dirty word among campaigners calling for global action to tackle the world's problems.
But the report warns that eight United Nations targets for reducing poverty in the developing world will be missed unless world leaders do more to stop soaring birth rates.
The report says the developed world will have to tackle the religious ideology of the neo-cons in the White House against contraception and calls for an end to the so-called "global gag rule", reintroduced by President George W. Bush. The rule had put non-governmental organisations outside the United States "in an untenable position", forcing them to choose between safeguarding the health and rights of women and losing US funds.
Chairwoman Christine McCafferty said there would be a 50 per cent rise in the world's population by 2050 unless family planning was made more freely available in the developing world, where 99 per cent of the growth was expected to take place.
The report says there is "overwhelming" evidence the UN's millennium development goals will be missed if population growth is not curbed. The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, combating HIV/Aids and ensuring environmental sustainability.
The worst case scenario predicts, unless growth is checked, that the earth's population could soar out of control to more than 36 billion over the next three centuries.
"Once population growth gains a certain momentum, it is difficult to slow," says the report. "As a result of rapid population growth a generation ago, China has a growing number of young married women of childbearing age and even though most are having fewer than two children, China still has eight million more births than deaths every year.
"In Africa, the diversion of attention from population has occurred with extremely serious long-term implications."
The population explosion has led to a huge increase in the numbers in extreme poverty living on less than US$1 a day. In 1990, 44.6 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in extreme poverty and this grew to 46.4 per cent in 2001. But because of population growth, the number of people in extreme poverty grew from 231 million to 318 million, an increase of 38 per cent or 87 million people.
"The rapid pace of population growth in much of Africa and some other parts of the world means, despite global efforts we are not even succeeding in keeping the numbers living in extreme poverty stable," says the report.
But many countries that lowered their birth rates such as South Korea have eradicated or greatly reduced poverty. "Continued rapid population growth in today's poorest countries presents a serious barrier to meeting the millennium target of poverty reduction."
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, said population growth was also contributing to pressure on rain forests, whose destruction was contributing to climate change.
Richard Ottaway, the Tory vice-chairman of the group, said: "You are not going to alleviate poverty and ensure gender equality in developing countries of the world unless you improve access to family planning programmes on quite a substantial scale. Population is running at 6 billion to 7 billion and it will certainly go to 10 billion unless action is taken.
"This is not the developed world telling the undeveloped countries what they ought to be doing. None of the poorest 50 countries think their populations are too small and 80 per cent think they are too high."
Describing the 1990s as a "lost decade', the report say the focus on population growth was lost as other priorities including tackling Aids moved up the agenda.
There had been many national programmes to combat population growth but they waned after the action to coerce women backfired. China's one-child policy and forced sterilisation in India caused an outcry and a loss of momentum for family planning.
The report says many African and Asian women still think family planning is more dangerous than having another child or will cause infertility in later life.
- INDEPENDENT
