Rapid Human Growth Seen in Virtually All Failing States

WASHINGTON -- Speaking at a symposium in the National Press Club here last July, the eminent environmentalist Lester Brown said he was pondering a question I don't believe he, nor anyone else, really wants answered: "How many failed states would it take to make a failed world?"

 The World Bank, which prefers to call them "fragile states," recently identified 26 countries that pose some of the world's "toughest development challenges," noting that all face similar hurdles: weak security, fractured societal relations, corruption, breakdown in the rule of law, and lack of mechanism for generating legitimate power and authority.

 Poor governance and extended internal conflicts are common among these low-income countries under stress, a new Bank report observes, but past international engagement has failed to yield significant improvements.

 The report emphasizes that to avoid "adverse spillover effects – such as conflict, terrorism and epidemic disease – the international community and the Bank need to find more effective ways" to assist these fragile states.

 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that failing countries present "unparalleled" danger to U.S. security and that they "serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons."

 Though the World Bank report points out that the countries it cites are home to nearly 500 million people, roughly half of whom earn less than a dollar a day, it does not single out spiraling human growth as a factor in their plight.

 The total world fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman; for the industrialized world, 1.6 children per woman. The omission of rapid population growth from the Bank's report is  a serious one considering that women average six or more children in eight of the countries it labels as fragile  – Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Somalia; five or more children in another eight – Congo, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Guinea, Nigeria, the Palestinian Territory, Sudan and Togo, and four or more in  six fragile states – Central African Republic, Comoros, Solomon Islands, Vanuatau, Haiti and Laos.

 Such high total fertility rates lead to disproportionately large youth populations  – an indicator, particularly in impoverished countries where educational and employment opportunities are few or virtually non-existent, of fertile ground for radical and terrorist group recruitment.

 While the segment of the total population under the age of 15 is 17 per cent overall for the more developed countries and 32 per cent overall for less developed ones, the proportion in fragile states is generally well above 40 percent.  Examples include: the Democratic Republic of Congo (52%), Palestinian Territory (46%), Afghanistan and Somalia (45% each), and Sudan (44%).    

 Two-thirds of the failing countries are projected to have population increases of 118 per cent or more by mid-century, a nightmare scenario considering that they are already mired in the quicksand of poverty and deprivation thus far resistant to rescue efforts by the global community.

 Nigeria, already the world's ninth most populous country with 135 million people, is projected to become the fourth most populous by 2050 with nearly 300 million people. Within the same time frame, the population of the Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated to skyrocket from the current 63 million to more than 183 million; Sudan, from 41 million to over 84 million, and Afghanistan, from 31 million to 82 million.

 The failure of the World Bank to even mention, much less discuss, rapid population growth as a root cause of the conditions engulfing virtually all fragile countries reflects a mindset that seems to be settling in among international circles. Population stabilization is fading as a development priority, perhaps because fertility declines in much of the industrialized world have created the false impression that rapid human growth is no longer a critical global concern.

 This illusion neglects to take into account the soaring human numbers in the poorest of the poor countries, where the provision of food, shelter, health care, education, employment and virtually all basic services is all too often problematic at best. The irony is that a variety of safe and effective family planning methods exist, but the political will to offer them falls far short of the need.

 The United Nations reports that 137 million women worldwide have an unmet need for contraception, another 64 million use traditional family planning methods that are less reliable than modern methods.  Overall 29 percent of women in the world's poorest countries lack modern family planning methods.

 Meanwhile, the World Bank's list of fragile states has expanded from 17 to 26 in only the last three years. No one pretends that substantially curtailing human growth will be the salvation of these troubled nations, but to preclude an issue that certainly must be factored into the equation is a glaring oversight.

 Demographers project a population of 9.2 billion by 2050, with 8 billion of that total living in the world's poorest countries. By then, it can only be hoped that Lester Brown's provocative question remains a rhetorical one.