The population bomb

As the United Nations population conference in Cairo continues, many people tend to concentrate on the more controversial issues such as abortion, sex education and gender equality and forget the most crucial issue: that with the current growth rate of the world's population we are getting ever closer to the limit of the earth's carrying capacity. And what will happen if the line is crossed is everybody's guess. A disaster on a level never known to us before is not inconceivable.

Indeed, the world's booming birthrate has reached an alarming figure in the last several decades. Three babies are born every second. That is more than 250,000 every day. In 1993, the world added 87 million people to its population and the total now stands at nearly 5.6 billion.

Yet there is some good news. Since 1986 the population growth has been slowing down. The average annual growth rate has declined from 1.75 percent to 1.56 percent. Last year, for example, the population growth turned out to be a million less than expected, thanks largely to a startling fertility decline in China, home to more than one-fifth of the world's population.

According to demographers, the world's population will continue to grow until after 2200 to reach 11.6 billion. But whereas fertility levels have declined in many developed countries, what has happened in the developing countries is another story. Of last year's population increase, 94 percent occurred in the poorer developing nations which are now home to about 4.3 billion people, or 78 percent of the world total.

But what most haunts the experts is that there are enough indications that the growing population is outrunning that of the earth's carrying capacity. Food output will surely not be able to expand fast enough to keep up with population growth.

It is interesting to note the words of Lester R. Brown and Hal Kane written in their latest book entitled Full House. Supported by an impressive bulk of data, the authors conclude that "food supply is the most immediate constraint on the earth's population carrying capacity". They further note that "the food sector is the first where human demands are colliding with some of the earth's limits: the capacity of the oceanic fisheries to supply fish, the availability of fertile new land to plow, and the ability of the hydrological cycle to supply irrigation water".

According to Brown and Kane, biology will neither provide nor promise any dramatic breakthroughs in raising yields and thus there is little hope for restoring rapid growth in food output. And "... the impact of these collisions will reverberate throughout the economy". The authors conclude that "food security will replace military security as the principal preoccupation of national governments in the years ahead". Wars over food resources could become a frightening reality.

Of course, one could question the validity of those projections. But pessimistic as they may be, those projections should ring the alarm for our planners. We have to anticipate the worst scenario. Although our family planning and population policies seem to be on the right track, as proven by the continuing decline in our population growth rate, what about our food policy? Are we correct in the way we manage and cultivate our land? How far have we progressed in dealing with the threat of food scarcity in the future? What is the projection of our future consumption?

There are hundreds more questions to answer and plans to be made if we really want to be on the safe side of the population issue. Otherwise we may fall victim to an explosion of this population bomb.