First, to clarify - it is the rate of growth that's decreasing, not overall numbers. In other words, the world's population is growing at a lower rate, but it's still growing. In fact, we need to feed, clothe, house, transport, educate and medicate 75 million additional people - 100 cities the size of Ottawa - each year.

Also, the annual rate of growth is unequal. It is low in the developed world (averaging 0.4%), and very high (well over 3%) in many of the poorest areas least able to deal with it. Half of the world's people are under the age of 25 (in some Third World countries, 45% are under15), so that even if replacement fertility rates were by some miracle achieved, the overall population would continue to rise, and for some time.

Recent UN studies estimate that global numbers peak between 2050 and 2100 at between 9 and 11 billion people. This, however, is an informed guess. The total might be higher, or it might be curtailed sooner by a variety of natural disasters.

Quite simply, there are insufficient resources to support the present population of 6.8 billon. Further increase will result in more misery and environmental degradation into the future.

Technology allowed humans to amplify their powers and to draw unprecedented resources from the earth. In the process this created equally unprecedented waste and environmental degradation. It's not technology itself, but our instinct for continual expansion and excessive consumption on what is a finite planet that is central to the problem facing humanity.

In the past two hundred years, rapid expansion of production, thanks to new technologies, has created the illusion that technology has almost unlimited power. Increased production allowed global numbers to expand six fold but at a high price to environments - land, sea, the air we breathe - on all of which we depend for survival.

Rather than putting blind faith in technology to support ever more people, we should aim to provide an adequate standard of living for present populations. There are now more poor people than ever before. When in 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb", he spoke of one billion people living comfortably, 2.5 billion in poverty. There are now 1.8 billion people with a decent standard of living and over 5 billion poor. What is more, those living in absolute poverty are rising faster than other segments of the humanity.

An indefinitely expanding population is biologically impossible. Biology teaches us that when a population of any organism increases exponentially it exhausts its nutrient base and contaminates its medium with wastes, much as the humans have done. It then reaches a plateau followed by a rapid decline. Technology might help the human growth curve increase faster, it might propel it to a higher peak but, come that plateau, it will experience catastrophic decline.

Faced with a huge and growing human population and diminishing resources, it is reasonable to consider whether there could be a more equitable sharing of the resources of the earth.

Such redistribution would need broad public will among donor nations, a global acceptance that there are enough resources to share equally and a reliable system to effect the sharing of these. It�s unlikely these conditions can ever be met. Wealth is typically based on natural resources, without which we could not eat, drink or breathe. As these once abundant resources are used up, humans tends more to seize and hold these resources than to share what they see as a diminishing asset.

In Egypt's Nile River, poor families spend all day trying to catch enough fish to sustain them that day. Old fishermen recall when fish were so abundant they could catch enough for their needs in a fraction of the time now required. Global fishing tells a similar story with all 17 of the world's major fisheries being fished at above replacement levels and nine in a serious state of decline. The world's total fish catch peaked in 1989. It is now falling in some areas such as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the point where fishing is scarcely a viable industry.

Given the environmental deterioration and decline in natural resources such as fish, it is not more likely nations will go to extremes to preserve their advantages than to give to other countries?

The 1995 "Cod wars" between Canada and Spain suggest that even relatively wealthy nations will react aggressively when faced with resource depletion. It also suggests that when resources are tight, to fight is more likely than to share. Combat was averted in the case of Canada and Spain, however poor areas of the world are increasingly falling into states of resource driven, semi-permanent warfare and social disintegration.

Water, an essential resource, is already a source of conflict as water tables fall in many parts of the world, including major food growing areas. Water shortage will be a major limiting factor in raising food production. The high-yield crops many believe will solve food needs require large quantities of water. To make matters worse, water that could be used for agriculture is being diverted to industrial use in many developing nations. Already annual percent increases of grain and meat production are well below the percent increase of the human population. Conflicts attributed to religious, ethnic and clan differences are as often conflicts over resources.

As the formerly "rich" nations see their standard of living fall, and are in competition with newly industrializing nations such as China and Thailand, they will be less generous to the desperately poor nations whose populations are soaring (for example most countries in Africa). They will be inclined to struggle for at least their fair share of a diminishing resource pie, leaving the poor to their fate. Trends in foreign aid reflect this fact with aid spending declining countries even as need in the poorest countries is rising.

Whether greater prosperity leads to lower fertility levels is not certain. In fact, history shows that population has increased in times of abundance and diminished in hard times. Even if the theory has some validity, remains unlikely that poverty could ever be reduced sufficiently to trigger lower fertility levels given the projected growth of human population and the decline of natural resources due to depletion and environmental deterioration.

There is a high correlation between development and family size. Most people in poor countries support themselves by subsistence farming. They have large families to help with their work and to support them in old age. As their lives are relatively insecure, with poor medical support, they have many children assuming that some will die in childhood from disease, etc. When a society becomes wealthier, however, it offers more security and choices. Better medical care reassures parents that their children will grow to maturity and so they opt for smaller families. Savings permit them to buy more consumer goods, instead of incurring the expense of large families.

The renowned demographer, Nathan Keyfitz, argues that population growth can prevent societal developments that might lower fertility levels. In especially poor countries, population growth rates are persistently higher than the rates of growth of the GDP.
Data from the World Development Report on-line report noted that in 44 countries with a growth rate of more than 10%, while population rose by 11.1%, the GDP fell by 7.28%. Almost all 44 are low income, largely agrarian economies experiencing rapid population growth and associated extensive degradation of forests, rangelands and croplands. Simply to maintain standards of living, schools, factories and infrastructure would have had to be built as fast as population growth, which is not happening. Much of Africa's infrastructure built during the colonial era is now crumbling as Africans try to cope with many of the concomitant challenges of too high population growth - spiraling urban growth, high un/underemployment, and migration due to dire economic and ecological factors. Most worryingly food production has declined precipitously, often due to deforestation, erosion and desertification driven by population growth.

The cost of raising the standard of living of Third World countries to that of developed world would be astronomical and it is unrealistic to assume rich countries would expand aid levels sufficiently to raise the level of prosperity to where it might lead to a drop in fertility rates.

Third World poverty is inextricably linked to population growth. While other factors are involved, including responsible government and sensible spending priorities, halting runaway population growth is fundamental. Countries that are now experiencing a significant upturn in their standard of living (i.e. China, Thailand and Indonesia) have made done so in large part by stemming the growth rate of their populations.

There is everywhere a direct correlation between increased female education and declining birth rates. Desirable for its own sake, female education is a key, long-term factor in reducing global population growth. And yet there are an estimated 500 million women worldwide who either want no more children or wish to postpone pregnancy but have no access to family planning services. Of these, millions lack access to any birth control whatsoever. Globally, a quarter of all pregnancies are terminated each year, many illegally, with disastrous health consequences for women. As perhaps a third of all children born are unwanted, universally available birth control would have an immediate and dramatic impact on population growth. Simply by eliminating unwanted births current sky-rocketing numbers would be reduced by more than a third.

From the perspective of The Population Institute of Canada, there is no connection between the two. The Institute is concerned about the destructive effect of all humanity on the living Earth. Racism, on the other hand, is a very contentious issue within the human family.
However, when humans try to regulate their own numbers, various segments of the population might become concerned that they are being singled out for population reduction (such as inhabitants of impoverished regions in the third world) and this can give rise to accusations of racism. The same charge might arise when people from very poor regions are denied the opportunity to migrate to the wealthier regions of the world. Since the word �racism� is highly charged and almost universally disapproved, it can be used by opponents of population control to undermine family planning and birth control and by economic refugees trying to overcome barriers to their migration to industrialized nations whether or not they are needed in those countries.
Our motivation at PIC is our deep concern about accelerating environmental degradation caused by growing human numbers, expanding human activities, and by the application of ever more powerful technologies. We see human overpopulation as the direct cause of serious issues such as, declining fish stocks, soil erosion, loss of arable land, the increasing inability of agricultural technology to keep up with population growth, global warming and the spread of man-made toxins in the remotest parts of the world.� The causes of these problems have nothing to do with race or skin colour.�
We at PIC�find it deplorable that when environmental collapse comes, the poor will suffer the most, for those who do not have the financial resources to pay for the necessities of life will perish.�
It is our belief that rational persons of all races must work together to address the crucial and directly linked issues of human overpopulation and environmental degradation. We maintain that it is essential to anticipate and act to prevent an environmental collapse that would threaten civilization worldwide.

Wealthier parts of the world can afford to gather and analyze information on the impact of unrelenting population growth, especially in the Third World. This analysis shows that humanity is rapidly undermining the ability of the earth to sustain even current population levels and is the major reason many countries are failing to achieve reasonable economic well-being. It would be irresponsible not to share this information with others who need and could most benefit from it. Ultimately, however, each country must decide for itself if and how this information is used to shape public policies.

Many factors contribute to widespread misery in poorer developing countries. They include deficient health and educational facilities, unequal distribution of wealth, government corruption, misguided economic policies, overemphasis on mega-projects or the military rather than on basic human needs, the low status of women, etc.

All of these interact with the population factor but not one negates the importance of population growth which exacerbates many problems (as many problems contribute to population growth). It is a serious mistake to underestimate the effect of population growth since all efforts to solve social, economic and environmental problems will fail if excessive population growth is ignored.

There are many complex and interrelated reasons why the human population has risen to such an astronomical number, from an estimated population of 5-10 million eight thousand years ago to 6.8 billion in the early twenty-first century expanding to an estimated 9 billion by mid-century..

The problem of overpopulation is different in developed and developing countries.

In most rich countries the population has stopped increasing, in some it is decreasing. In Canada population increase is due to immigration; otherwise its population would be stable.

However, in poor countries population is increasing at a rapid rate. The UN estimates that over 3 billion will be added the globe in the next 50 years. An estimated 95% of this will take place in the developing world. There are many cultural, religious, social and economic reasons to explain this, but for those who do not want any or more children, the most tragic is the lack of available contraceptives.
Historically, women and children have borne the brunt of problems caused by overpopulation. The statistics are staggering. The number of women living in extreme poverty has increased by 50% in the past 20 years. Seventy percent of over 1.5 billion people living in extreme poverty are women and children. Eighty percent of the world's refugees are women and children. Alleviating the population problem would have enormous benefits for hundreds of millions of poor women a high proportion of whom if given the choice would have fewer children.

Another factor that has permitted population to rise to such high levels has been the energy subsidy that humans have benefited from in the form of hydrocarbons. Coal, oil and gas have propelled technology - notably regarding food production - enabling mankind to prolong life as it supported ever larger populations.

The implicit assumption in this question is that family size is determined solely by the choice of women. As noted, hundreds of millions of women around the world have no access to any sort of family planning. Even where family planning is available, many women have scant input into deciding the size of their families. Her husband, or her in-laws, is likely to have more say in the matter than she does. In many societies there are strong social and religious pressures on women to have more children than they personally might choose, and the pressure to produce a son is often great. In some cultures where the social standing of women is low, having many children is a way to gain status and thus is less of a free choice.

Population growth can result in situations every bit as coercive as any created by governments. Overpopulation contributes to fewer opportunities, less education, more unemployment, and more conflicts over resources which frequently result in the displacement of people and attacks on non-combatants. If no effort is made to encourage voluntary family planning now, some governments may later find themselves in situations where strict methods such as those adopted in China may be seen as the only option.

China, with its huge population, is in the forefront of countries that have move determinedly to halt relentless population growth; in the interest of the public at large, having adopted a "Two Child" policy that denies individual choice regarding family size and penalizes those who fail to comply with what critics regard as draconian regulations.

Whatever the pros and cons of such methods, few would deny that they are worse than the anarchy that engulfed Rwanda, where severe population pressures may have contributed to explosive social tensions leading to genocide. Rwanda never made any serious efforts to deal with its population problems even though it has one of the highest birth rates in the world.

These have historically been the leading incentives encouraging people to have large families. However, we have entered a new era brought on by the quadrupling of population in this century and by the projected fifty percent increase over the next fifty years. Growing shortages of many resources suggest that human numbers will outstrip economic growth by a considerable margin, leading to more poverty. This raises the question: "What are the rights of children being brought into an overcrowded world?"

They are born into a deteriorating spiral of overpopulation, environmental degradation and lack of opportunity. Many of in the Third World work long hours are malnourished and receive little or no education. The problem of population growth in developing countries is also one of migration from rural to urban areas, typically mega-cities with sprawling slums.

Rural areas can no longer support burgeoning populations. Many rural environments have been seriously degraded. Farms have been sub-divided into ever-smaller plots when passed on from previous generations. This causes people to swarm into overcrowded urban areas in a desperate search for jobs. They provide a cheap, easily exploitable source of labour for manufacturers who are increasingly moving their operations to the newly industrializing economies of the developing world. With an enormous pool of unemployed eager to replace any dissatisfied workers, employers are able to get away with appalling abuses.

That destitute parents have seemingly valid reasons for wanting large families does not alter the fact that consequent population growth has a deleterious effect on the environment, employment opportunities and social and political stability.

Of course, the developed world should curb its consumption, but there’s no reason for developing countries to wait for us to take responsibility for their problems.
The developing world would be wise to use the industrialized world's errors as a lesson on the difficulties of solving problems once they arise, rather than as an excuse for inaction. Many poor nations already have severe pollution problems (from sewage, industry and cars) and insufficient clean water for their people. All also strive for a higher standard of living, which fundamentally means more consumption and more pollution. By the year 2020, developing countries will account for 60% of the world's energy consumption. The population problems of developing nations will only compound their pollution problems, and prevent many from improving their standard of living.

First, we must acknowledge that the circumstances under which population growth took place in industrialized countries and in developing countries were very different.

At the time when the populations of the European nations were growing the most rapidly, they were industrializing, building up an infrastructure and producing an increasingly educated workforce. They could either produce the resources necessary to support their populations themselves, or they could import those resources through trade or plunder.

The medical advances that reduced child mortality rates occurred in conjunction with socio-economic conditions favouring smaller families. Furthermore, "surplus" workers often emigrated to the Americas or to Australia. Along with the rapid population growth that occurred in the "New World" as a result of this immigration, went the building of an infrastructure of farms, roads, industries, schools etc.

Medical advances (i.e. immunization against killer childhood diseases) were transported to developing nations that had not undergone any of the scientific, social and economic transformations of the west. These largely agrarian societies frequently lacked a well-developed infrastructure, an industrial base, and an educated work force. In most cases, social conditions favouring large families still prevailed, including a low status and limited opportunities for women.

Consequently their rate of population growth soared, rising by as much as a factor of ten. Even at the height of Europe's population boom, its population never doubled in as few as 24 years as we have seen in Africa, and the total number of people was much smaller. Great Britain underwent periods of tremendous population growth, but its population is now stabilizing at nearly 60 million. Nigeria's population of over 115 million is projected to reach 300 to 400 million by 2050. Even if Nigeria never achieves the level of consumption of Britain (a catastrophic population crash seems more probable), the impact on the environment of those extra hundreds of millions of people will be tremendous. While certain areas of the world are still undergoing runaway population growth, the continents that had received previous generations of immigrants are themselves now much more densely populated, and are also experiencing increases in unemployment, resource scarcity and competition from newly industrializing nations. They are not eager to receive more immigrants. Hundreds of millions of people in the developing world face bleak employment prospects in their own countries and a very uncertain welcome should they seek to emigrate.

Economic growth in most of the developing world has lagged far behind the growth of population. Rather than spur development, this rapid population growth has impeded development and depleted resources.

And what about those rich countries with large populations? Holland, for example, cannot boast of being self-sufficient. It is rich because it has been very successful in importing goods from outside for less than the goods it sells. We could say, in other words, Holland has been borrowing carrying capacity from outside its borders. This advantage is by no means assured in the very competitive global economy, where an unexpected shift in fortunes could significantly increase poverty in some countries that are now deemed prosperous.

We at PIC would like nothing better than for all the people on Earth to have secure, prosperous and healthy lives. However, the assumption that prosperity stabilizes or reduces population is questionable, and growing human numbers threaten the prosperity of all by undermining the living Earth that sustains life.

The assumption that development and prosperity will lower fertility is based on the demographic transition theory. However, the demographic transition theory has been contested in recent decades by those who assert that the early proponents of the concept had based it on historically incorrect assumptions about the industrialized countries of Europe where the fertility transition to small families had occurred, not with economic development and prosperity as is widely accepted, but in the midst of desperate poverty and very high infant mortality (Abernethy, 1993). Birth rates in western countries fell during the great depression of the 1930s, and the post-war baby boom occurred at a time of unprecedented prosperity—both contrary to the assumptions of the demographic transition theory. Furthermore, the wealth of many oil-rich countries has not made a dent in population growth rates. In the midst of the oil boom in the second half of the twentieth century, the population of Saudi Arabia exploded from 3.2 million in 1950 to 18.3 million in 1995 (UN statistics, as cited in de Villiers, 1999), and continues to increase rapidly.

It is true that, in the developed world, more opportunities for women in the workforce and economic growth have contributed to a reduction in birth rates. However, in the poorest regions of the world, where almost all the increase in global population in the twenty-first century will occur, the demographic transition has largely failed to take effect.



The prospect of greater prosperity pales in the face of growing environmental constraints and dwindling supplies of natural resources.

Many signs of human-caused environmental distress such as, collapsing fisheries, global warming, deforestation, and the loss of agricultural land through soil erosion and desertification suggest that human demands greatly exceed the levels that the living Earth can support sustainably. Furthermore, there is evidence that demand for many natural resources is beginning to exceed supply. This will lead to higher prices, choke off economic growth, and reduce prosperity. For example, the global production of oil and natural gas may be peaking in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The steady growth of supply of these vital resources fuelled economic growth throughout the twentieth century and human population kept pace by quadrupling from 1.5 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000. Shortages of other fundamental resources will add to the grief, for example, the UN World Water Development Report (2003) predicts that, at worst, as many as seven billion people in sixty countries could face water scarcity by 2050.
Clearly, population growth undermines the very resources that provide the foundation of future prosperity. On a positive note, there is increasing evidence that fertility declines in developing nations do not have to be preceded by western-style industrialization. Surveys show a widespread desire for smaller families throughout most of the developing world. The best way to hasten the global decline in fertility is to meet the enormous unmet demand for contraceptives.

This does not solve the problem of global overpopulation; it spreads it around. The global population is increasing by about 75 million annually. At this rate, it would take little time to fill up the less densely population areas.

It is important to remember that regions with less human population are not empty, but are filled with a variety of life forms that enrich ecosystems and the biosphere. Growing human numbers are extinguishing species at a faster rate than the two previous major extinctions: the first one was precipitated by the coming together of the continents and the second by the impact of a large asteroid colliding with Earth.

People in countries like Canada with a large land area and relatively few people tend to believe that they have no problem with overpopulation. These assumptions are based on a false premise that the potential for growth is equitable with the crude statistic of land area. The reality is that much of the land is barren and incapable of supporting a large population. Furthermore, whatever population lived in these barren areas would leave a large “ecological footprint.” Most food would have to be shipped in, requiring both land surface for agriculture elsewhere and large amounts of energy for transportation and space heating.

The majority of Canadians, however, accept the myth over the reality. Despite evidence to the contrary - the collapse of the cod fishery, the crises in the salmon fisheries, the Walkerton water fiasco, the ever-lengthening list of endangered species, national parks under siege - they continue to believe that theirs is a land of almost limitless resources. The myth is in fact an integral part of Canadian national pride.

From the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, North America has been the destination for many of the world’s peoples seeking better lives for themselves. The difference between the present and the early sixteenth century is that North America is now quite densely populated and its inhabitants have consumed much of the natural resources that made the region relatively prosperous. It is likely that the population of North America already exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of the land.
Global overpopulation must be resolved in the areas where it occurs. The problem should no longer be exported.

Anyone from a developed country who has traveled to India and seen its throngs of destitute people, its ubiquitous beggars, and the squalor of its sprawling slums would hesitate to call it a success story.

According to the Population and Development Review, despite recent improvements to its food supply, India is not producing enough food to adequately feed its people. While the country's food production has increased substantially in the past fifty years, the overall quantity has barely kept pace with population growth.

India's current population is a little under 1.1 billion, of which at least 450 million live in absolute poverty and cannot afford an adequate diet. Some 480 million of its people are illiterate, and 73.1 million of its children under 5 years of age are malnourished. Four thousand two hundred of those children die every day. Population pressure has already destroyed a great deal of India's natural heritage and placed its famous tiger on the brink of extinction.

When India became independent in 1947, it had a population of about 300 million. The populations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (which were part of India at independence), add up to over 1.3 billion people today. Even if many of India's people were destitute at independence, the total number living in misery would have been much smaller than it is today. Imagine how well off India would be now if it had come to grips with its population problem. Rather than struggling just to keep its people fed, it could have provided them with housing, education, job opportunities and a decent quality of life. Instead, India is still forced to rely on large amounts of aid from the west and Japan.

Governments are generally more concerned with short-term problems and immediate crises than with long-term issues. The management of the AIDS crisis by many nations does not inspire confidence in the political will of governments to recognize and deal with problems. Governments are also subject to political and religious pressure. The forces against family planning services are often much more powerful than those in favour of it. Conservative forces have managed to keep many governments from putting family planning and population issues on the agenda. Population growth is still a sensitive issue internationally, and it is only recently, at the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in September of 1994, that the international community has shown a high degree of consensus on the need to reduce global population growth. However, few if any nations have yet begun to meet the commitments they made in Cairo in terms of increasing expenditures on global family planning.

In order for progress to be made on population issues, governments must be pressured by concerned citizens.

Politicians do not lead. They follow the will of their electorate.

We offer these three explanations:

A/ Trashing our medicine chest: All life forms on Earth depend to a greater or lesser degree on other life forms for their existence, reproduction and survival. The more complex the organism, the more it needs other, "lower" life forms. The inter-relationships are extremely complex and much is still to be discovered. To understand all the inter-relationships that weave the web of life would require the combined knowledge of bacteriologists, soil scientists, agronomists, arbologists, mathematicians, marine biologists, entomologists, physicists and more.

There are an estimated 30 million species in the world, but less than 2 million have been identified and given scientific names. It is estimated that 30,000 species are threatened with extinction. Almost a quarter of the world's mammals face extinction within 30 years, according to a United Nations report on the state of the global environment. The report cites various facets of human activity as the major cause for the decline of biodiversity. Human beings are crowding out other forms of life.

A large proportion of our medicines and pharmaceuticals are derived from plants, and we are almost certainly wiping out as yet unstudied species from which humans could benefit medically.

B/ The proliferation of monocultures: The need to increase food production at all costs has also led to a loss of genetic diversity of agricultural plants, as exemplified by large-scale monoculture (cultivation of a single crop). Extensive monoculture of genetically similar plants gives rise to the danger of enormous losses caused by a single plant disease to which the crop is susceptible: the Irish potato harvest in the 1840s, starving to death a fifth of the country's population.

Since 1900 about three quarters of the genetic diversity of domestic agricultural crops has been lost, FAO estimates. Without constant infusions of new genes from the wild, geneticists cannot continue to improve staple crops. Cultivars (cultivated plants) need to be reinvigorated every 5 to 15 years in order to give them greater resistance against diseases and insects, as well as to introduce new yield-enhancing traits, such as increased tolerance for drought or saline soils. The most effective way to do this is to interbreed domestic varieties with wild ones.
C/ Unknown treasures: Scientists are very aware of the extent of the research there is left to do in order study all of the Earth's species. An ignorance of nature has been compared to walking through a museum in which all of the pieces of art are turned toward the wall. Insofar as our understanding of nature goes, much of its artwork is still turned toward the wall. But we are not just walking through nature's museum with inadequate knowledge -- we are vandalizing its priceless works. Some people believe that because we don't know how many species there are and exactly how they will be affected by human activity, we need not worry about how we are disrupting ever-increasing numbers of ecosystems. In other words, vandalism is acceptable if the vandals don't precisely understand what they are destroying

Since the dawn of agriculture mankind has devised increasingly ingenious methods of producing food. Couldn’t technology be construed as "playing God"? Almost all religions approve of genetically engineered plant varieties as a means of ensuring enough food for everyone. The research involved in genetically modified foods involves experimenting with the transplantation of genes from one organism (such as a fish) to a completely unrelated organism (such as a tomato plant).

If God does not oppose any of the artificial things we use to control our environment, such as lighting, power dams, airplanes, surgery, computers, chainsaws and air conditioning, why would He oppose "artificial" birth control?
Furthermore, it is quite permissible in most religions, to "control" death by use of diagnostic tests, vaccinations, blood transfusions, surgery and medication. So why should we not be allowed to "control" births in order to achieve the preservation of the extraordinarily beautiful and wonderful natural treasures God has bequeathed to us? Do we not have the obligation to ensure that we don't ruin His creations? This cannot be accomplished without incorporating population control into all related aspects of public policy.

About two hundred years ago, Thomas Malthus, an English economist and clergyman, predicted that the growth of human population would soon outstrip the food supply. Although his prediction may ultimately be correct, he was off on the timing.

In the past two centuries, there have been numerous famines, food shortages and conflicts over resources, but we have not yet had a global food shortage. Theoretically we have enough food in the world to feed every person if we were to take the total amount of food available and divide it by the total number to be fed. However, this equation assumes a perfect system of distribution. Even under the best of circumstances, the system of food distribution can never be totally efficient. In reality, the distribution systems in the most needy areas are generally inadequate and in many cases are deteriorating through neglect or conflict. We need a food surplus in excess of the theoretical requirements, and furthermore this simplified theoretical advantage is dissolving rapidly as land deteriorates and population increases.

Earlier analysts dismissed as doomsayers cannot be blamed for failing to foresee the tremendous increase in grain production of the "green revolution", or the spectacular technological developments (fish finders, satellite mapping, factory fishing boats) that would, for example, increase fish catch by a factor of 4.6 between 1950 and 1989. Technology is not a magic wand. It would be a mistake to extrapolate from the increases in food production that occurred from the mid-1940s to about the mid-1980s. Yet scientists warn us that those trends are changing significantly. Technology was able to increase the fish catch tremendously, even to the point of depleting many of the world's fisheries, but it cannot bring back the fish. Currently, the total world fish catch ranges from 96 to 98 million tons a year, down from its peak of 100 million tons in 1989 (a 9% per capita decrease from 1989 to 1994). Technology enabled us to ignore the damage done to fish stocks by overfishing, until we reached the point of collapse, as in the case of Canada's Atlantic cod fishery.

There are good indications that we are reaching the point of no return in our grain producing capacity as well. After expanding at a rate of 3% a year between 1950 and 1984, the growth of grain production has slowed to scarcely 1% annually from 1984 until 1993, while population increases by 1.7% annually. Since 1984, the annual percent increase in grain production has been smaller than the annual percent increase in population, and grain production has declined by 12% on a per capita basis. Furthermore, high yield crops require large amounts of water, and in key food growing areas the demand for water is reaching the limits of the hydrological cycle to supply irrigation water. Additional fertilizer on currently available crop varieties increasingly has little or no effect on yields and its continuing heavy use contributes to soil degradation. No new technologies (in irrigation, fertilization, breeding or genetic manipulation) promise to lead to quantum leaps in grain output. All of the most productive lands are already under cultivation, and extensive areas have already been degraded through erosion, salination and other factors. Furthermore, water tables are falling in most parts of the world.

It takes a half-hectare of land a year to feed a varied diet to one person, but worldwide only one-quarter of a hectare per person is available, this will drop to one-eighth hectare by 2035 if current trends continue.

Moreover, the impending peaking of the production of conventional petroleum and natural gas, should result in much higher prices of those vital resources. This will hurt agricultural productivity and raise the cost of transportation.
Given the many negative trends we see developing in disparate areas, it would seem prudent to heed the warnings of the scientists.

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