The Population Summit: Reflections on the World's Leading Problems

Abstract

It is difficult for social scientists to maintain an academic position on the consequences of population growth against religious or political agendas. Reform lacks both imagination relevance and specificity. Reform should give priority in Africa to very real issues such as widespread tribalism political corruption and the lack of decent quality schooling for children rather than to high birth or AIDS-related death rates. In other parts of the world reform should involve defining how many workers are needed for support of children and the elderly with dignity. Crises force technological solutions to man-made practices affecting for instance ozone depletion. The published papers of the 1993 Population Science Summit in New Delhi address a variety of issues about the relationship between population natural resources and the environment. This article discusses some of the issues presented in the published papers: the planning framework reform as a subjective or epistemic system rather than an objective or ontologic system and doomsday scenarios. The Summit planning framework recognizes that population growth is too high that solutions involve zero population growth and an increased standard of living with equality for men and women is desired. The 25 papers by 32 authors focus on the urgency of the population problem resource use demographic transition in a gender perspective family planning and reproductive health and future policy needs. Demographers and intellectuals confuse value commitment to slowing population growth with objective scientific argument. The Summit papers are subjective and a reflection of beliefs and opinions rather than scientific findings. Few recognize that later in life Malthus considered gluts or oversupplies of materials the cause for doom. Environmentalists posit shortages as a critical problem while instability in civil society and the level of general poverty are much more pervasive and serious.