The Foreign Service Journal, April 2012

Western world. Crime, drugs, disease and instability are all highly exportable. The Battle over Birth Control How did we lose the population bat- tle? Back in 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote in The Population Bomb that the planet faced mass hunger and upheavals due to overcrowding. But these predictions were dismissed by ex- perts and leaders who believed the world could utilize modern agriculture techniques such as the Green Revolu- tion to keep up with the growing pop- ulation. Later, family planning was dragged into a cultural and religious war that erupted in the 1980s, when anti-abor- tion activists successfully conflated fam- ily planning with abortion. In fact, population experts say that an addi- tional $3.9 billion in funding for family planning could prevent 22million abor- tions a year. Social conservatives sometimes maintain that when people have access to birth control, they become more promiscuous. A turning point in that debate came at the 1994 Cairo Popula- tion Conference, when Nils Daulaire, who served as senior international health adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1993 to 1998, and other Clinton administra- tion officials joined with representatives of other donor countries to support proposals to boost aid for family plan- ning programs. The hope was that such programs, and efforts to empower women through education and health care, would limit births. Instead, the U.S. delegation was blindsided by an unholy alliance against family planning led by Muslim, Catholic and evangelical Protestant leaders. Putting aside their doctrinal differences, these groups decided to work together to block international ef- forts to provide family planning to hun- dreds of millions of families and to protect the rights of women. Opposition to family planning was around long before then, of course. Some opponents claim birth control is meant to limit the number of people of color, part of a scheme by Europeans and Americans to retain world domi- nance. Other opponents of contracep- tion are in a population competition, seeking to bring more Muslims, Chris- tians or Arabs into the world and in- crease their clout. We saw the latest skirmish in the family planning wars in February when the Obama administration ordered Catholic schools and hospitals to pro- vide birth control to employees as part of their health insurance. The Roman Catholic Church, conservative Chris- tians and Republican presidential can- didates all attacked the proposal, even though the vast majority of Catholic women have used contraceptives at some time during their lives. Under fire, theWhite House backtracked, rul- ing that health insurance companies would pay the $600 per year cost of birth control. But as the world failed to facilitate or encourage the use of birth control, and modern antibiotics helped millions of babies survive childhood, poor coun- tries found themselves with hundreds of millions of young people who lacked classrooms, books, training, food and jobs. In Cairo one evening last year, I found six young men in their 20s seated on a bench behind the register at my hotel. All were university graduates but still had to work the night shift at $1 per day doing nothing. No good job was available without family connections, they told me. The tragic impact of overpopulation is becoming more and more apparent all over the globe. As many as three bil- lion people have no regular access to toilets, or even to a latrine. They sim- ply defecate in the open. Insects and animals then spread diseases. Population growth also means farm- ers have to divide their land into smaller and smaller parcels to give to their many children. Those that get no land go to marginal holdings, such as steep hillsides and flood plains, to grow food. When storms hit, even those areas are washed away, along with the fertility of the soil. Growing populations sell their tim- ber, leaving hillsides vulnerable to ero- sion and flooding. The megacities of China need electric power, so coal-fired power plants are built, spewing pollu- tion that leaves millions coughing. Food Fights In February 2011, the highest food prices on record increased the global ranks of the hungry to one billion peo- ple. To feed billions of mouths, farmers resort to chemicals and other tech- niques, leaving soils depleted and yields declining. Despite such efforts, every day 160,000 children die of hunger, ac- cording to Shenggen Fan, director gen- eral of the U.S.-funded International Food Policy Research Institute. As the global population continues to bur- geon, that horrific toll will only mount. There are various reasons that food production has not been able to keep up with population, despite the eu- phoria over the Green Revolution. China and India now both consume more meat; droughts related to global warming have hit China, Australia and Pakistan, among other countries; U.S. ethanol production consumes 40 per- 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 2 When billions of people fall into poverty, despair, disease and conflict, these problems soon cross borders and affect even highly developed nations.