Problems With Current U.S. Policy.

Policymakers rarely contemplate long time periods and connections between disparate sets of issues, especially controversial ones. Nonetheless, at the dawn of the new century the world faces a host of environmental and security risks strongly connected to the growing size of human population and the increasing affluence of some, but not all, of that population. Among the greatest policy challenges is that there is no framework for dealing with these issues on anything but a makeshift, stop-gap basis, addressing each environmental problem only when it becomes so acute that doing nothing is no longer politically viable. The organization of both congressional committees and executive departments by topical sectors makes it difficult to address interconnections such as those that link environmental and population change.

As problems like water scarcity, the depletion of fisheries, and human-induced climate change become more widely recognized in the coming decades, however, governments will increasingly be asked to develop systemic approaches and win-win strategies that go beyond short-term amelioration of environmental deterioration. Future changes in global population will contribute significantly to the need for such integrated, long-term approaches to environmental problems.

Although the global rate of population growth peaked 30 years ago, human population has grown by nearly two thirds since then. The ratios of people to fresh water, forests, cropland, fish, and the atmosphere have grown in tandem. According to accepted hydrological benchmarks, fewer than 4 million people lived in countries experiencing chronic scarcities of renewable fresh water in 1955, despite the rapid population growth of the time. Less than half a century later, despite slower growth, the population of people living in water-scarce countries has grown to more than 165 million, a figure that could grow to between 1 billion and 2.2 billion, depending on future rates of population growth, in the next 50 years.

What applies to water applies to many other natural resources critical to life, health, and economic development, although they may not be as readily quantified. Scarcities of natural resources should concern policymakers, because they not only hamper economic and social development, they also threaten global security by contributing to conflict where institutions are ill-equipped to mediate among groups competing for critical resources.

Nondemographic factors also deserve attention in addressing natural-resource scarcity: more responsible consumption, innovative substitution, and pricing systems that discourage waste, for example. But such efforts can reach points of diminishing returns unless the underlying numbers of human beings requiring natural resources for basic needs and aspirations eventually reach stable or declining levels.

This characterization of the population-environment connection necessarily simplifies a complex and controversial set of relationships. The key point is that policies that result in lower trajectories of population growth are likely to increase the chances of success for comprehensive approaches to environmental problems in the coming decades. Policies--or policy vacuums--that result in more rapid growth are likely to make these problems even more intractable and thus dampen the long-term success of targeted policy responses.

Unfortunately, misperceptions about population contribute to an impasse that discourages environmentalists, opinion leaders, and policymakers from marshaling environmental arguments on behalf of sound population policies. The view that such policies amount to rich countries attempting to "control" the populations of poor countries through incentives or coercion dies hard. Few policymakers understand that population policy is primarily about expanding the capacity of women and men to manage their own reproduction as they choose--with slower population growth a mere bonus. Fewer still seem to be aware of the action program--agreed to in 1994 by 179 nations--to make this capacity real and universal early in the 21st century.

One outcome of such misunderstandings is that Congress is scaling back Clinton administration requests for funding for international population assistance. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers bilateral programs through the governments of developing countries that request such assistance, is increasingly hamstrung in providing family planning assistance abroad. Similarly, Congress recently prohibited further U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund on the misguided claim that the agency's work supports reproductive coercion in China.

Key Problems

* Continued world population growth tends to exacerbate both localized and global environmental problems that will demand serious policy responses in the coming century.

* Despite growing recognition that population is one among several key factors in environmental problems, its role remains controversial.

* Most people and policymakers are unaware that there is an international consensus that grounds population policy in human rights and development, emphasizing building the capacities of women to manage their own lives.

By Robert Engelman, Population Action International

Robert Engelman directs the Population and Environment Program at Population Action International in Washington, D.C.