December 5, 2002	Thursday	Ramazan 29,1423

LONDON: International help is falling desperately short in the fight to contain population growth, says the new state of world population report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

A result is that population growth in the world’s poorest countries is skyrocketing while much of the developed world is below replacement level.

“Our major problem is resources,” Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of UNFPA said at the launch of the report on Tuesday. In the immediate there is a desperate shortage of condoms. But money is needed to alleviate poverty and to promote education, particularly among women, she said.

Alex Marshall, editor of the report said that the global requirement of condoms is about eight billion a year. But international suppliers working through UNFPA have been able to supply only about one billion condoms a year, he said. That leaves a severe shortfall “not just in the 49 least developed countries but in others, too,” he said.

According to the UNFPA executive director, there is no shortage of supply. “But we need the resources to meet the demand.”

The report recalls that at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, nations committed themselves to the goal of universal access to reproductive health by 2015. Countries agreed that one-third of the $17 billion annual requirement for basic reproductive health and population programmes in 2000 was to come from the international community; two-thirds was to be provided by developing and other countries.

In the year 2000, total expenditure was $10.9 billion, $6.1 billion short. Donor countries contributed $2.6 billion, less than a quarter (24 per cent) of total expenditure, and less than half (46 per cent) of their commitment. Developing countries contributed $8.3 billion, 76 per cent of the total spent and about 73 per cent of their commitment, says the report.

Developing countries that have invested in family planning, smaller families and slower population growth have achieved higher productivity, more savings and more productive investment. Fertility declines accounted for one-fifth of the economic growth in East Asia between 1960 and 1995, says the report.

Investments in health and education, and gender equality are vital to the “population effect” on economic growth, the report says. It argues that addressing population concerns is critical to meeting the Millennium Development Goals of cutting global poverty and hunger in half by 2015, reducing maternal and child deaths, curbing HIV/AIDS, advancing gender equality, and promoting environmentally sustainable development.

The report projects that the world population will grow from the present 6.211 billion to 9.322 billion by 2050. Over this period the population of the developed world will decline from 1.196 billion to 1.181 billion.

The population of Ethiopia, for example is expected to increase from 66 million to 186.5 million, of Somalia from 9.6 million to 40.9 million and of Uganda from 24.8 million to 101.5 million.

In contrast, the population of Europe is projected to fall from 725.1 million to 603.3 million. The population of Bulgaria, for example, will decline from 7.8 million to 4.5 million, of Italy from 57.4 million to 43 million, of Spain from 39.9 million to 31.3 million, of Germany from 82 million to 70.8 million, of Russia from 143.8 million to 104.3 million.

However, the population of the US is expected to rise from 288.5 million to 397.1 million. But this projected increase takes into account new immigration and a substantial growth among the country’s recent immigration population.

Among the most populated countries, the population of China is set to rise from 1.294 billion to 1.462 billion and that of India from 1.041 billion to 1.572 billion. The population of Pakistan is set to more than double from 148.7 million to 344.2 million, while that of Bangladesh from 143.4 million to 265.4 million.

According to the UNFPA report, the population of West Asia including countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates is projected to more than double from 196.6 million to 423.9 million.

But the soaring population growth in the poor countries can be checked, the report says. “Given a real choice, poor people in developing countries have smaller families than their parents did,” the report says. “This downturn in fertility at the ‘micro’ level translates within a generation into potential economic growth at the ‘macro’ level.”—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.