Poverty Reduction Stymied by Population Growth
Washington, DC - February 5, 2007The world will fail to achieve the targets set in the landmark Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) unless population growth is curbed, says a new report from the United Kingdom’s All-Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. The report’s findings underscore the fact that access to family planning and reproductive health services is not only a fundamental right but also essential to achieving a wide-range of commonly shared goals, including eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing maternal and infant death, combating HIV/AIDS, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals are a series of measurable goals and targets for reducing poverty, hunger, illiteracy, discrimination against women, and environmental degradation by 2015. Unfortunately, “[t]he evidence is overwhelming: the MDGs are difficult or impossible to achieve with the current levels of population growth in the least developed countries and regions,” according to the report.
Return of the Population Growth Factor details how the rapid pace of population growth in the developing world is making it much more difficult to reduce poverty and improve standards of living. Afghanistan’s population has more than tripled since 1950 and is projected to triple again—to 97 million—by 2050. The populations of Kenya, Niger, Tanzania and Uganda, among others, have more than quintupled since 1950 and are continuing to grow rapidly. With high rates of population growth, these countries face increasingly strained financial and natural resources. And, in turn, providing necessities like food, clean water and basic health care to their citizens becomes an insurmountable challenge.
The UN took a giant step towards achieving the MDGs when it added universal access to reproductive health care as a target under the 5th MDG (Improve Maternal Health). However, as this new report makes clear, access to basic family planning and reproductive health care is greatly limited in parts of the developing world. “[M]any poor countries find themselves without adequate supplies of condoms, pills and the popular injectable contraceptives to meet today’s needs, let alone the far greater numbers that will be needed 5 and 10 years from now,” according to the report.
In testimony before the All-Party Parliamentary Group, Robert Engelman, Vice President for Research at PAI, said “We live in a world facing higher energy costs, human-induced climate change, and real risks of increasing food insecurity, poverty and civil conflict.… [S]upport for international family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights [is] only a fraction of what is needed.”
To meet the goals set forth in the MDGs, world leaders must step up efforts to make family planning and reproductive health services available to every woman and couple who wants them. The future of the planet depends upon it.
Population Action International (PAI) works to improve individual well-being and preserve global resources by mobilizing political and financial support for population, family planning and reproductive health policies and programs.