The United Nations Conference on Population and Development has been notable, among other things, for the way in which treatment of issues such as abortion and contraception have sidelined any concern for the rights of women. MARINA CARMAN argues that women must come first.
Very few would doubt these days that we face a very serious environmental crisis. Increasingly the world is plagued by pollution of air, seas, land, food and drinking water. We live in a world of ozone depletion, deforestation and global warming.
To those of us who don't hold huge shares in polluting industries or get paid huge amounts of money to sit around talking to other world leaders about the constraints of economic competitiveness, it is quite clear that things need to change.
They need to change now, and there are solutions. But, as environmentalists, we have to be sure of what we are fighting. We need to be sure that we have accurately identified the causes in order to find the right solutions.
The populationists (by which I mean those who see limiting population as a solution to the ecological crisis) argue that the cause of the environmental crisis is overpopulation. These ideas are not new.
Malthus, writing around the time of the industrial revolution in England, warned of impending environmental disaster and famine. He argued that people were increasing at a geometric progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc), but food increased only by arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.)
The tendency for human population to grow more rapidly than food supply was seen as the cause of poverty, hunger and other social evils, leading inevitably to "misery and vice". Malthus opposed any measure to alleviate suffering among the poor, aged or sick since such measures would merely permit the poor to survive and breed.
He argued: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague ... But above all we should reprobate ... those benevolent men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders."
Some contemporary Western environmentalists have adopted a very similar position in relation to the hunger and poverty in the Third World. They ascribe these social problems to "overpopulation" and argue against extending aid to poor nations. It only encourages more population growth, they argue.
According to one such theorist, Garrett Hardin: "It is unlikely that civilisation and dignity can survive everywhere; but better in a few places than in none. Fortunate minorities must act as the trustees of a civilisation that is threatened by uninformed good intentions."
To the neo-Malthusians, the demands of Third World nations for aid and a new economic order threaten to destroy the survival of "civilisation and dignity" for the "fortunate minorities" (the rich of the predominantly white, first world nations).
Although the arguments of populationists today tend to be more shrouded in rhetorical concern for family welfare or for the sustainability of the environment, the basic message and strategy are still the same.
Earlier this year on Triple J radio station, US population theorist Paul Ehrlich stated this quite bluntly when he said, "If you imagine the world's resources as a pie, wouldn't you rather have less people and a bigger slice?"
Maybe this is what Dr Maurice King was thinking of a few years ago, when he wrote in a reputable medical journal that where there is unsustainable population pressure on the environment, public health systems shouldn't orally rehydrate poor babies suffering from diarrhoea.
Apart from the anti-human nature of the population argument, its identification of "overpopulation" as the major cause of the environmental crisis is simply wrong.
David Suzuki once likened the environment crisis to a car driving at a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. To extend the analogy, the populationist solution isn't to try to slow down, stop or even swerve the car. You just throw a few people out the window.
Population is undoubtedly a real issue of concern, and there is certainly a need to address indefinite population growth.
In India now, 50% of the population is under 15. If the issue is not addressed soon, when these children reach child-bearing age, the consequences for the already poverty-stricken nation will be disastrous.
Populationists, however, make a crude link between population growth and environmental destruction. Often the two do occur together, and population will often become a factor in the destruction of particular environments. However, the relationship is not a simple case of population growth causes environmental destruction.
In places such as South Korea, population growth has as much as halved in the last 20 years, while simultaneously environmental destruction has followed the worldwide trend of a massive increase. Hunger and poverty remain in countries like Mexico, Thailand and India, where fertility rates have markedly declined.
It is also hard to argue that population growth is the cause of the problems when many types of pollution are higher in advanced countries than in underdeveloped countries where population growth is much higher. Additionally, where it is industries and companies which produce toxic wastes and emit ozone-depleting substances, citing overpopulation as the cause seems a little spurious.
Limiting population as a strategy for stopping environmental destruction rests on questionable arguments which identify population as a cause rather than a symptom. As a solution it is also inadequate because it doesn't address why population growth occurs.
In the Third World large families are often a matter of survival. Grinding poverty means that people have to resort to felling trees for fuel, to grazing land until it is barren and useless, to accepting contracts to dispose of first world toxic waste.
In the Third World children are the most important economic and social asset. They provide security. Many births are necessary to guarantee survival of some to adulthood. The family unit is made to substitute for non-existent health and welfare systems and other economic and social supports. Opportunities for employment and education for women are limited.
Population growth rates of less than 0.5% in industrialised nations show that where the "insurance policy" of large families is not needed, where real choice exists, population growth will decline.
The problem is not that poor people are uneducated, irresponsible and need to have family planning systems installed or even forced upon them, as it is often presented.
People will decide not to use artificial contraceptives for a number of reasons, not just lack of access. There are fears of side effects or the risk of infertility, insensitive staff at clinics, wanting more children, as well as cultural ideas and practices which discourage women from using contraception or taking on roles outside the home.
Often the technologies on offer are not what women would choose for themselves, and even when provided free would not be top of the list of priorities for those who do not have the essentials of food, water, land and freedom.
Additionally, the provision of contraception in areas without adequate reproductive and general health care and without addressing the strains on women's health brought about through the burden of domestic duties and simply finding food and firewood to survive, may indeed have adverse effects.
The real problem, which population control strategies tend to divert attention from, is one of poverty, of inequality on a world scale.
While the priority continues to be profit — while the wealthy countries and transnational companies continue to eat up the major share, to dump grain and burn stockpiles to keep world market prices high, to continue trade and debt arrangements which keep the Third World poor — population will continue to be a problem and the environment crisis will continue to worsen.
The argument that "overpopulation" is the cause of the environmental crisis has as little validity as the claim that "overpopulation" is the cause of hunger. For example, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation calculated that in 1985, world production of cereals and root crops — the primary sources of food — was enough to guarantee twice the minimum requirement of protein and calories for every person on the planet. Yet in that same year, 40 million people died from hunger and a further 340 million suffered from malnutrition.
The potential already exists to vastly increase the amount of food and resources and the quality of life of all people on the planet. And if this were the priority, further technological developments could be pursued to provide for all.
The populationists don't question the allocation of resources or the existing priorities of the system. Instead they aim to grab the biggest piece of the pie through nationalist, racist, class and sexist methods of population control.
One quite common idea is to close the borders of industrialised nations like Australia. Not only does this promote xenophobic assumptions that migrants are the problem; it also doesn't address international environmental issues such as pollution, ozone depletion and global warming, which don't stop at national borders.
Other proposals attack the poor at home. In some states in the USA bills have already been passed to prohibit increases in welfare benefits to recipients who have additional babies while on the dole, and to cut cash assistance for a child born more than 10 months after the mother's application for the benefit.
It is clear who are targeted: those in the Third World, the poor, blacks and immigrants. The means is through attacks on women and attacks on reproductive rights.
In the Western world, the struggle of women to maintain some degree of control over their bodies free of church and state control has highlighted the need for legal access to safe methods of abortion.
In arguing an anti-populationist position, we argue against the imposition of abortion, contraception and family planning on the Third World. But religious groups championing the rights of the foetus over the rights of women will often argue along anti-populationist lines.
A recent example of this is the pope uniting with some fundamentalist Muslim states to call for all references to abortion to be withdrawn from the documents for the Cairo conference. However, the difference between the two approaches can be seen on the issue of choice.
Reproductive rights include access to abortion, to birth control information, safe contraceptive methods and the provision of effective sex education. Equally basic is the freedom from compulsory sterilisation.
We don't deny a woman's access to abortion, to family planning and even to sterilisation, as the religious groups do, but pose it as a matter of choice.
Populationist strategies are not about choice. They are concerned with reducing numbers by any means, even those that are blatantly coercive and in violation of human rights.
Both the UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities) and the UNDP (UN Development Program) have stated that population control in the Third World is a top priority. Moves have already been made to link aid to the Third World with the implementation of population control programs.
The population programs of the UN, under the guise of family planning, are not about expanding women's choice. Women have been sterilised without their knowledge, let alone their consent.
Compulsory sterilisation has been imposed on the Third World and minority groups women since World War II as part of the US government's projects. In the late 1970s R.T. Ravensholt, director of the US Office of Population, stated that the US was seeking to provide the means to sterilise a quarter of all Third World women.
In 1952, David Rockefeller compiled a report for President Eisenhower which concluded that a rise in the birthrate in the poorer nations would create instability and endanger US access to important resources. Through US-funded projects, by 1979, 35% of women of child-bearing age in the US colony of Puerto Rico had been sterilised.
In 1988 a military strategy document of the Reagan/Bush administration defined Third World population growth as a threat to US national security and argued for "draconian measures" to be taken. The 1991 report on world population by the UNFPA stated:
"Sterilisation has made significant inroads in the third world. The largest number of sterilisation users, 152 million, are in Asia and the Pacific. In Panama and Puerto Rico, 80% of childbearing women could be sterilised in the near future. Other methods of growing importance include injectables and the number of women using contraceptive implants is expected to increase from one million to over 17 million in the next decade."
Women have also been encouraged to use injectable and implanted long-term contraceptive products with known side effects, without even being informed of the dangers. Inadequate follow-up health checks, inadequate support services and poor quality of care compound the effects of new products and techniques introduced without regard for their impact and effects over time.
Examples of this include immunological contraceptives, which introduce bacterial or viral carriers that link onto hormones so that the immune system mistakes natural pregnancy hormones and reacts against them. The dangers of such vaccines are quite high in terms of immune disturbances, allergies or exacerbation of infectious diseases.
These vaccines are also often administered without explanations of the dangers and have undergone limited testing before being released for human trials. They cannot be turned off.
The Norplant contraceptive implant is six matchstick-size silicon tubes filled with a slow-release synthetic hormone, which are inserted under the skin of the upper arm by a minor operation. Research centres in Bangladesh are claiming that such methods, which are irreversible by the "acceptor", are being used on poor women, leaving them little or no control over their fertility.
Women got responses such as requests for payment of US$50 before the implant would be removed. When asked to respond to these allegations, staff at one of the centres responded, "All biomedical advances in the world were made through trial and error."
In the US, despite the fact that fertility rates are lower in families on the dole, bills have been introduced to provide subsidies for welfare recipients who accept Norplant; to give bonuses to people on the dole or below 125% of the poverty line who undergo sterilisation; and even to make Norplant insertion a condition for social benefits.
Medicaid will often pay for the insertion of Norplant but not for removal unless there is a proven medical reason. Doctors claim that an operation lasting 15 to 20 minutes is all that is needed to remove Norplant. It is effective for five years after implantation, but 85% of women have Norplant removed within that period. Many have reported needing an operation of over two hours. Others report serious bruising, scarring and nerve damage, and even that the capsules moved around in their body.
The alarming rate of sterilisation amongst black and Hispanic women in the US and Aboriginal women in Australia is also evidence of the hegemony of the Malthusian logic of population control.
Allan Chase in his book The Legacy of Malthus says that 63,678 people were compulsorily sterilised between 1907 and 1964 in the US. He quotes federal judge Gerhard Gesell as saying in 1974, in a suit brought on behalf of poor victims of involuntary sterilisation: "Over the last few years, an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 low-income persons have been sterilised annually in federally funded programs". This rate, as Chase points out, equals that achieved in Nazi Germany during the 12 years of the Third Reich.
The extreme right-wing connotations of the populationist argument are unmistakable. We are facing an international ecological problem of the direst proportions. It requires change, but not the sort that the neo-Malthusians suggest.
There is a saying that "It is the privilege of the rich to watch catastrophes from a balcony". The populationists simply try to scramble up onto the balcony, instead of throwing their lot in with those down below, to try to tear it down and solve the problem in solidarity.
We can't solve the environmental crisis by turning against those outside our national boundaries or the marginalised within them. Ordinary people the world over need to work together to find solutions which suit the needs of working people, of women, the Third World, the poor, instead of big corporations and their friends in government. The mass of ordinary people need to demand the whole pie, and the right to decide by democratic means how it is apportioned.
We can't solve the environmental crisis unless we are clear about the causes. Overpopulation is not the cause. It is a symptom, albeit a very significant one. Time and time again it has been shown that where women are empowered through such means as education and where living standards are increased, population growth rates fall. The environmental crises cannot be solved without changing the global economic and social system which produces poverty and inequality.
[This article is abridged from a talk presented at a Democratic Socialist Party forum in Sydney on September 13.]