SOUTH BEND (Indiana): World Bank President Robert S. McNamara today [May 1] made an urgent appeal for global birth control measures, warning that wars and disastrous famines would result if the population growth remained unchecked.

In a prepared address at Notre Dame University — America’s best known Roman Catholic education institution — he declared “there is a need to develop a realistic sense of urgency in all countries over the population problem”. “The threat of unmanageable population pressures is very much like the threat of nuclear war,” he said. “Both threats can — and will — have catastrophic consequences unless they are dealt with rapidly and rationally.”

Mr McNamara, who was US Defence Secretary for seven years before assuming the World Bank Presidency a year ago, proposed no specific birth control schemes. He said it was up to Governments to provide information and make family planning programmes available to their people, always leaving the right of decision in the hands of the individual family.

The World Bank head said the developing nations faced a dilemma ... “A treadmill economy tends to emerge in which the total national effort will exhaust itself in running faster and faster merely to stand still,” he commented.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2019