cesil\caputo\3caputo

Contrasting projections and opposing theories prevent us from establishing whether the human race really will become so numerous as to risk global famine
I started writing about the ‘B’ bomb, where ‘B’ stands for Birth Rate, towards the end of the 1950s, at the beginning of my career in journalism. Even then, despite the destruction of the Second World War, people were brushing up Malthus’ theories and it was feared that soon the world would not have enough resources to feed its inhabitants and even less to guarantee them a reasonable standard of living. This thought has been with me on many journeys I have made. In 1967, I was sent to India to investigate into the sterilisation campaign for men launched by Indira Gandhi, which led organised crime in the large cities to abandon temporarily its criminal activities and to devote its time to sending all the under-privileged they could find to the state health centres, thereby cashing in on a special “intermediary prize”. Fifteen years later I was witness in China to the tragic impact of Deng’s campaign - one child per couple, which, according to the analysts, led to the killing of millions of baby girls by the parents who wanted at all cost to use their “voucher” for a boy. In Africa - by far the poorest of the five continents, and the one destined to grow most quickly, despite Aids and famine, I heard the preaching for the use of contraception fall on deaf ears, and this to women with seven or eight children often of different fathers: but even if they did not seem to care much for their survival, they meant to continue procreating. And to underline how full the world is of contrasts, I have often seen hundreds of millions of dollars used to save a handful of children under threat of death, Bosnians, Somalians, Rwandans or whatever. At the same time almost everyone agrees, however, that there are too many of these children and it is necessary to invest money to ensure that fewer are born.
So, I was not surprised when, in view of the 3rd World Conference of UNO on Population and Development in Cairo at the beginning of September, the alarmists’ trumpets sounded again. For some years now, we have been rocked in the illusion that the economic development and the growing participation of women in the production process, would help to lower the birth rate to acceptable levels before reaching a state of emergency. This has happened in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. In the industrialised world this evolution has been too radical, so much so that the aboriginal population of Europe risks being reduced as from the year 2000. But a detailed report from the American Secretary of State for Trade has proposed urgent intervention: despite the positive evolution at the beginning of the sixties, in a quarter of a century our planet will count eight billion inhabitants, and in half a century it could become completely uninhabitable.

Some details from this report may be useful to better understand the dimensions of the phenomenon. During 1994, the difference between births and deaths will be 87 million (more than the population of the united Germany). One hundred babies are born every 23 seconds, 88 of whom in developing countries. Every hour world population increases by ten thousand units, 1,461 Chinese, 1,907 Indians 2,250 other Asians and 1,910 Africans south of the Sahara.
Between today and the year 2010 the inhabitants of the Third world will grow to 1.2 billion units, which is the equivalent of the whole population of the developed world today. Six countries, India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nigeria, are solely responsible for half of the births. As can be seen, Asia is heavily responsible and gives no indication of reducing the problem despite the parallel effect of the anti-demographic campaigns and the ever-increasing rate of economic growth. Today, Bangladesh has an almost unbearable density of 935 inhabitants per square kilometre, five times that of Italy.
But the real ‘B’ bomb in the next millennium is stationed in black Africa, where the ‘baby boom’ gives no sign of dwindling and there seem to be the greatest cultural difficulties in slowing down the race. It has been calculated that from now until 2020 the number of women in the age of procreation will move from 114 to 280 million and the population (which even now is not capable of feeding itself adequately) from 572 million to 1.1 billion. Not even the presence within a short time of 40 million Aids sufferers seems able to influence this explosion, even if apocalyptic bellicose events like the civil wars in Angola, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and in other countries (at least seven million deaths in total) could pay a “tribute” that the demographers are obviously not able to calculate.
The demographers themselves, aware that they can predict neither wars nor pestilence nor even sudden moral change, concede that their predictions in the space of a quarter of a century can err in excess of 25%. If the education campaign for intelligent procreation promoted by the United Nations should be successful, the gap could increase even more. The predictions vary, so that the same United Nations has made three different projections for the year 2050, a low one of 7.9 billion, a middle one of 12 and a high one which hypothesising an inversion of the falling curve that is being drawn today, talks of 27 billion. It is clear that at this point we are dealing with abstract exercises, which do not take into consideration ( nor can they as a crystal ball would be necessary) a series of essential human factors.
But paradoxically, even a positive development in the birth rate would contain an element of danger. It has been proven that its reduction usually coincides with an improvement in the standard of living and with a greater demand for resources on the part of the population. The most recent alarm bell under this aspect comes from China, which for the first time in its history is on the point of losing its alimentary self-sufficiency and having to turn, with its 1 200 000 000 mouths to feed, to the international market.
This is what has happened. Before the “Fourth Modernisation” in 1978, which gave vent to the great economic development in China, only 7% of the production of cereals was used to feed domestic animals. With prosperity, the demand for meat multiplied so that in 1993 this percentage had increased to 20%, in the face of an agriculture which had by now almost exhausted its capacity to grow and seen its arable land gradually but inexorably reduced by industrial and living requirements. Given that to produce a kilo of chicken two kilos of cereal are necessary, four for a kilo of pork and seven for a kilo of beef, the prices of grain have reached the stars, and to avoid waves of panic, the government has begun to turn to foreign countries, posing one of the most disquieting questions that the international community has ever had to face: who is going to feed China?
Apart from the inevitable increase in demand, specialists predict that between now and 2020 (i.e. in the period in which the population will grow from 1.2 to 1.4 billion), a perverse combination of soil erosion, pollution, increase in temperature and other negative factors, will reduce the Chinese cereal production by 15%, while consumption could reach 641 tonnes, with a deficit of 378. This means that the People’s Republic would be forced to buy from abroad almost double that which is available in the whole world market. If this development should coincide with an analogous evolution in other Asian, African and Latin-American countries afflicted by over-population, the consequences for the whole world would be dramatic and the threat of hunger would be imminent.
Lester Brown, in an article for the Washington Post, has defined an apocalyptic scenario, with about ten nations which draw from the world market increasing quantities of food with few suppliers - the United States, Argentina, Canada, Australia - unable to satisfy demand even at raised prices.
Even in this sector, however, there is no shortage of optimists. Vaclav Smil points out that even at the beginning of the XIX century when there was less than a billion of us on the earth, Malthus predicted a future of starvation. None of that happened, because thanks to scientific progress, agricultural production has increased much more swiftly than population. Today he is convinced that the potential for improvement has not exhausted itself at all, and that the simple diffusion of more advanced technology from the developed to the under-developed countries, would adequately feed another 3 billion individuals. If, then, once the everpresent objections from the environmentalists had been overcome, the cultivated land were increased by 20%, there would be enough to feed another two and a half billion. If other steps were taken for granted in the improvement of seed, in the development of fertilisers and in the use of pesticides, the problem would vanish completely. To do all this in the most needy countries at acceptable costs for the poorest populations, Smil recognises, is, of course, another kettle of fish: but as regards the global capacity to satisfy the alimentary needs of even double the number of present inhabitants on the Earth, he has his doubts. The perplexities raised a generation ago by the Rome Club as to a possible exhaustion of prime materials (from crude oil to certain minerals) still remain. But in this sector the resources of science (and in the case of metals, of recycling) are enormous.

With a little peace from those demographers whose priorities are to encourage a wider diffusion of contraceptive devices, which are today only available to half the women of reproductive age, progress is being made in convincing that the most important factor is that of education.
It is necessary to make couples want, or rather, make them have a particular need to bring into the world a smaller number of children, just as has happened in the industrial world. In many areas of the world the high birth rate is a logical and natural reaction, apart from being instinctive, in socio-economic conditions that award families with many branches.
With the widespread urbanisation of the Third world, disturbing on the one hand, yet beneficial in this case, this viewpoint is changing.   In cities, children can still contribute occasionally to the family income, by cleaning shoes, selling newspapers or washing windows, but they must also be fed with food no longer available in the house but to be bought at the market.
For the urban woman, possibilities to work increase, which make maternity leave even more penalising from an economic point of view: for example, in Bangladesh, where Muslim tradition does not permit them to work in factories, the widespread diffusion of working at home in the sewing business, has led to an immense reduction in the birth rate in some regions.
But because women can be “distracted” by producing one child after another with no solution of continuity, a basic factor is education.
A study from the World Bank, shows that where women are virtually excluded from secondary schools, they have on average seven children per head; where at least four out of ten reach school at the age of fourteen, the number of children is reduced to three.
Besides this, the children are treated better, looked after better and raised better, and certainly receive a better education, thus giving life to a virtuous circle that in the last analysis could resolve the problem. Unfortunately, the road is long as the rate of illiteracy among women is almost three times that of males, and in most of the developing countries, the gap tends to increase.
All this shows that the vehement controversy that took place at the Conference in Cairo mainly between religious leaders and lay people, but also between different demographic schools of thought, is to a great extent pretext.
With the figures we have before us, to think of using the interruption of maternity, costly and risky as it is, as an instrument for birth control is absurd.   In the long term, the only real possibility is, indeed, to put in motion the virtuous circle spoken of earlier, and of which the diffusion of private property of land and a greater number of jobs for women are an essential component.
In other words, even in this case market forces, and an increase in liberty, seem more effective than resorting to punishment (China) or even to encouraging sterilisation (India and other countries).
Certainly, we need more time, but probably in her grandiose and often tragic manner, even in this case Mother Nature will lend a hand.

Italian Leadership^®

This pages are maintened by
GTM Grafica
Service & Network

gtmgraph@coloseum.com