Go to Strategies for Funding Family Planning, Maternal Health Care and Battles Against HIV/ AIDS in Developing Nations as Options Expand, Political Environments Shift and Needs Grow: A Critique 
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Many Americans suffer from two serious misconceptions that are rare in the developed world. If these misconceptions could be eliminated, Americans would be far more enthusiastic about supporting international family planning (IFP). The difference between Americans and the rest of the developed world on the IFP issue (and many other important issues) would largely vanish. Americans could reap a huge return-on-investment from their IFP funding and similar returns on investment from related policy error corrections. Below is an attempt to clear away these misconceptions and to examine just how lucrative an investment in IFP could be to Americans - and to the rest of the world, not only financially but also in humanitarian terms.

~ ~ MISCONCEPTION 1 - Population growth doesn't cost money.
Economist Lester Thurow (95C1) contends that each 1% of annual population growth requires a capital investment of 12.5% of a nation's GNP (GDP) in additional infrastructure (educational-, industrial-, commercial-, and transportation- infrastructure, plus housing, land development, utilities etc.). The population growth rate in the developing world is 1.4%/ year (02U1). Thurow's correlation thus indicates that the developing world needs about $1.2 trillion/ year in new infrastructure - developing-world-class infrastructure - to accommodate its annual population growth of about 73 million people ($16,400/ additional person). $1.2 trillion/ year is an unaffordable sum for an economy struggling to pay the debt service ($270 billion in 1998) on an external debt of about $2.5 trillion (and increasing by about $1 trillion every 10-15 years) and where the median income is $2/ day/ capita - subsistence level. Roads cannot be built; meaning the imported fertilizer needed for agriculture becomes prohibitively expensive (as in Africa). Human capital (educated minds and skilled hands) cannot be generated, meaning all that much of the developing world can sell in the global marketplace is unskilled labor - something there is a massive glut of. Reducing population growth rates thus entails an economic benefit in terms of reduced need for infrastructure capital. This benefit is commonly called a "demographic bonus" (98B1).

There are serious doubts as to whether the developing world's growing external debt can ever be repaid. Forgiveness of debts is becoming increasingly common. If, somehow, the annual cost of infrastructure expansion ($1.2 trillion for the additional 73 million people per year, or $16,400 per new capita) can be reduced, the probability of debt repayment can only go up, and the need for future loans can only go down. The question then becomes what is the cost of averting a birth in the developing world? The answer to that question depends on how the process is carried out. Marketing the benefits of smaller families via radio- or TV "social content serial dramas" involves a marginal cost of only a few dollars per birth averted. But that only applies to areas where people have access to family planning services and can afford them. The largest population growth rates tend to be in the poorest areas where availability and affordability are significant problems. There, family planning and maternal health services must be provided by external sources (NGOs, local governments, and developed world governments). With this approach the cost of averting a birth climbs to around $100. The cost is perhaps half that with only family planning services (neglecting maternal health care), but organizations like EngenderHealth and Planned Parenthood doubt that this is workable. The costs of various other strategies, such as female education, run around $600 per birth averted. But clearly, any one of these strategies involves a cost that is negligible relative to the $16,400 in infrastructure expansion costs necessitated by a birth not balanced by a death. The benefit of IFP can come in the form of increased external debt repayments, more human capital, a larger middle class, more hope, less wretchedness, more imported fertilizer for hungry Africans and enhanced social-, economic-, political- and military stability of developing nations. These, in turn, offer significant spin-off benefits for the developing world - well beyond just increasing external debt repayment probabilities.

One reason why Americans are far more reluctant to provide financial support to IFP is that it is seen as just one part of the development- and humanitarian aid that the US and the rest of the developed world give to developing nations. This aid has been in the range of $50-60 billion/ year for some years. In recent years, US foreign aid in all forms has been dropping as Congressional leaders keep complaining that nothing by way of benefits seem to come of this aid. In the case of US foreign aid, about 97% is spent on projects aimed at accommodating population growth (i.e. building infrastructure that population growth necessitates), while the remaining 3% is spent of reducing population growth. What Americans fail to realize is that the bulk of this $50-60 billion/ year is being thrown at a $1.3 trillion/ year problem. What should the US expect when it throws $50-60 billion at a $1.2 trillion problem? Had 10% or so of this development and humanitarian aid been spent on IFP services, major reductions in population growth could have been achieved (see figures in the paragraph above) and a major portion of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure-growth burden could have been lifted from the backs of a world of folk earning a median $2/ day/ person. The results would obvious, and no one would be complaining about the lack of clear benefits - to the developing world - or the developed world (see below).

The above might have a hypothetical ring to some, so let's look at some case histories.

~ ~ Case 1 - South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan: Active family planning programs in South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan during 1960-1990 reduced fertilities from 6 to 2 (1.8 in eastern Asia). This is partly responsible for the impressive rise in East Asian savings and investment rates since the late 1960s. This is believed to have been a significant factor in these nations becoming the world's five fastest growing economies in the world during 1960-1990 (98B1). The net effect of the reduction in "dependency ratio" (dependents per worker) in northeast and southeast Asia was large enough to produce the entire decline in foreign capital dependence after 1970, by itself turning these regions from net debtors to net creditors on world capital markets (98B1). Between 1965 and 1990, the slowing of population growth accounted for as much as one third of the rapid growth in per-capita income in East Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan (98B3). Singapore's living standards are now higher than Germany's (04H1). It would be hard to deny that all this has produced significant material benefits to the US. For example, these nations provide the bulk of the loans to the US that enables the US to finance its current accounts deficit (which includes its huge trade deficit), and its staggering budget deficit. Without fertility reductions, these nations would have been far less stable and prosperous than they are today. One needs only contemplate the politically unstable regions of the globe - and all the problems and expense that this produces for the US. When these "Asian Tiger" economies began their active family planning programs they were all economically hard up, and the costs of family planning programs must have weighed heavily on the economic, social and political stability of these nations and created high-risk situations for them. A tiny investment by the US in these family planning programs in their earliest days could have made the difference between success and failure, with huge ramifications for the US.

In the mid-20^th century Pakistan and South Korea had similar populations and GDPs. South Korea developed an active family planning program, but Pakistan continued its high-fertility ways. Today, South Korea is the world's 12^th largest economy with median incomes about 20 times those in Pakistan. Pakistan, on the other hand, is plagued by poverty, illiteracy (72% for women), feudalism, slavery, political instability, and religious fundamentalism.

~ ~ Case 2 - Tunisia: Another nation with a strong commitment to family planning that has reaped a large "demographic bonus" (reduced costs of infrastructure expansion) is Tunisia (03N1). The total fertility rate in 2002 was 2.08, down from 7.2 in the 1960s. Its per-capita income is now $2070 - one of the highest in Africa. It is one of the fastest-developing countries in the world. Tunisia's stability is attracting foreign investors that have helped it sustain a 5% annual growth rate of GDP over the past six years (vs. 2.6% in Morocco and 3.1% in Algeria). Per-capita GDP data would show a far more striking comparison. Another benefit of the demographic bonus is a very low incidence of HIV/ AIDS. One reason for the success of Tunisia's overall population program has been its breadth. Much effort has also been expended on educating women and getting them into the workplace. Women now outnumber men in local universities. A 2005 report by Amnesty International tabulated about a dozen indicators of female well-being in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and found that Tunisia ranked first or nearly so in all of these indicators. Another reason for the success of the population program is the support it has been able to draw from Tunisia's religious leaders. Friday sermons in mosques are often devoted to reproductive health and related subjects (03N1). Data from the 2004 Tunisian census indicates a continuing slowdown in population growth and improvements in standard of living. The illiteracy rate was 46% in 1984, and 22.9% in 2004. For those between 10-29 years of age, illiteracy has dropped from 24.8% in 1984 to 6% in 2004 (04U1). By way of comparison, Pakistan's female illiteracy rate is 72%. (Its population grows 2.7%/ year.) (Global Intersections, 9/2000.)

It is interesting to compare Tunisia with its neighbor, Algeria. Both nations had about 4 million people in 1957. Tunisia, with a strong family planning program, now has 9 million people, while Algeria now has 30 million people. While Tunisia has prospered, Algeria has been ensnared in a long, bloody civil war and chaos, with over 100,000 killed (99G2). Hordes of North Africans and Middle Easterners from high-population-growth-rate countries are now pouring into Western Europe. There they are creating huge social, economic and political problems, including acts of terrorism. These problems could have been greatly reduced had Western Europe invested relatively modest amounts of IFP aid in North Africa and the Middle East. (Read more about the potential benefits of a proactive "brother's keeper" approach to reducing the frequency of armed conflicts in Ref. (06S1).)

It is also interesting to note that Barbados and the Bahamas are now classified as part of the developed world. They too got their initial economic stimulus from bringing their birth rates down (04R1).

In the last hundred years, no nation on Earth has moved from the poor- and less-developed status to prosperous- and developed status until its total fertility rate (TFR) was reduced to 2.3 children per woman (97P2). The reason why the world's poorest nations of the world have been unable to advance economically since 1980 has been traced by Milanovic (05M1) to the greater frequency of armed conflicts in these nations. Another study (04P1) (See the table later in this document) found a direct link between population growth rate and the frequency of armed conflict. Combining these two studies shows an inverse relationship between economic advancement and population growth rate -explaining the observations (97P2) noted at the top of this paragraph.

~ MISCONCEPTION 2: Developing world Ills are the result of bad leadership.
In the analysis below it turns out that bad leadership in the developing world is a result, not the cause, of developing world ills. Americans, since the early 1980s, have simply confused cause with effect. The ramifications of this error have been huge and costly (06S1). If you cannot blame developing world ills on bad leadership you must blame them on something else. Once that "something else" has been correctly identified, the potential economic and humanitarian benefits of IFP to both the developing world and the developed world become obvious (04S2).

Some noteworthy characteristics of the developing world that distinguish it from the developed world are:

• Poverty, illiteracy, hunger, crime and over-crowding, environmental degradation,
• Sex/ race/ religious/ ethnic discrimination and oppression,
• Disease, maternity-related problems (mortality, sepsis, fistula, anemia), lack of health-care,
• Social/ political/ economic instabilities, hyperinflation, staggering external debt,
• Civil/ class/ religious/ ethnic warfare, genocides, democides, infanticides, slave labor,
• Torture chambers, death squads, communism, socialism, feudalism, and dictatorships.

These ills have been attributed to population growth and over-population by such entities as the World Bank, numerous government agencies of developed and developing nations, about 70% of the American people and probably an even larger fraction of non-governmental organizations globally. However most opponents of support for IFP still blame these ills on "bad government". For example, in an interview with Republican candidates for the 7th Congressional District (TX) (Houston Chronicle, 2/7/00) One said, "There's room for everyone.... It's a question of how we spend our resources," and blamed "oppressive regimes" for over-population in other countries. Another said the US would better serve the world by exporting "freedom and democracy." Another said better distribution is the key to over-population in certain nations, also implying government problems rather than more fundamental problems.

These views date back to the early 1980s, as US support for IFP was becoming less bipartisan. The Reagan administration proclaimed that the scale of natural systems is far greater than that of human activity. This "Cornucopian" theory implies that human activity cannot significantly degrade natural systems, and therefore that "over-population" is an erroneous concept and population growth has no significant consequences. This then requires an alternative explanation for the developing world's ills. The "bad government" theory was thus born as a corollary of the "Cornucopian" theory. These two theories appear to supply much of the basis of Reagan's statement, at the 1984 Second UN International Conference on Population in Mexico City, that population growth is a "neutral" phenomenon (01N1). These two theories apparently provided much of the basis for Reagan's views and policies on population issues, environmental issues and foreign policy issues. These same views and policies have persisted within most of the Republican Party to this day. All this is perhaps best seen as a reaction to a global outpouring of studies and research linking developing-world ills to population growth and over-population that first took serious hold in journals and public media in the mid-1970s and that has been expanding ever since (01S1).

Population growth and "bad-government" appear to be the only plausible explanations for the partial list of developing-nation ills listed above. Dealing successfully with these ills requires a correct choice between these two alternatives. A bad choice condemns billions of people to an eternity of such ills.

One way to evaluate the two explanations is to compare predictions of the two explanations with reality. Examining some rate processes is useful in this regard. A "bad-government" explanation offers no compelling reason for huge changes, over time, in the phenomena being explained. Why, for example, should developing-world governments be far worse in 2000 than in 1980, and why worse in 1980 than 1960? Over-population theory, on the other hand, predicts a major worsening of developing world conditions from 1960 to 2000. This is because growing populations during this time have increased the difference between population and carrying capacity - and by a far larger percentage than percent change in population.

Consider some key rate processes.

• UN's refugee count:
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 2 million (1951) (92K1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 2.5 million (1950s-1970s) (92K1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 8 million (1980) (92K1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~18 million (1992) (92K1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~23 million (1994) (UN High Commission on Refugees)
• Number of international refugees during 1955-95:
  ~ ~ ~ ~Exceeded total involuntary international migrants in all previous history (95K1).
• Economic migrants worldwide: (majority from developing countries)
  ~ ~ ~ ~100 million (far greater than in decades past) (95K1)
• Long-term migration from poor to rich countries:
  ~ ~ ~ ~Quadrupled since 1960s (94P1).
• Number of illegal workers in world:
  ~ ~ ~ ~5-30 million (1991) (far more than decades past) (91M1)
• Number on waiting list to live in US:
  ~ ~ ~ ~2.2 million (1990) (FAIR Immigration Report, 5/92);
  ~ ~ ~ ~2.9 million (1992) (FAIR Immigration Report, 5/92).
• Legal Immigrants to US:
  ~ ~ ~ ~0.6 million (1981); (94S1);
  ~ ~ ~ ~1.8 million (1991); (94S1).
• Illegal entrants to US caught near Mexican border:
  ~ ~ ~ ~0.7 million (1980); (not caught: 2.1-2.8 million);
  ~ ~ ~ ~1.3 million (1993). (Wall Street Journal, 1/6/95).
• Migration from Mexico to US:
  ~ ~ ~ ~Up 30% during 1994-96 (Wall Street Journal, 3/1/96).
• Illegal immigrants entering South Africa in past two years.
  ~ ~ ~ ~8 million (1994-96) (far more than in decades past) (Wall Street Journal, 4/2/96)
• Requests for asylum in First World:
  ~ ~ ~ ~100,000 in 1983 (93L1); 800,000 in 1992 (93L1).
• Requests for asylum in Western Europe:
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 30,000 in 1983 (93L1); 680,000 in 1992 (98H1).
• Requests for asylum in the US:
  37,000 in 1987 (98H1); 196,000 in 1996 (98H1).
• Number of internally-displaced people (worldwide):
  ~ ~ ~ ~Doubled to 25-30 million in past decade (97R3)
• Democides (indiscriminate state killing) and genocide:
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 7.3% of world's population in 20th century (97B1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~ 3.7% of world's population in 19th century (97B1)
• Wars (nearly all civil wars - 92% in developing nations):(95K1)
  (Since 1940, the rate of increase of wars during each decade is about 9 / decade.)
  ~ ~ ~ ~ Under 10 wars during the 1950s; (98R1)
  ~ ~ ~ ~ Over 34 wars during the 1990s (98R1)
• Developing World External Debt:
  ~ ~ ~ ~ Increases by $1 trillion every 10-15 years ($2.45 trillion in 1999).

These figures indicate high rates of degradation in developing nations over the past 4-5 decades - just what one would expect from a population-related explanation of developing-world ills - and just what would not be expected if "bad government" were the root cause of developing-world ills.

The past four decades have benefited, globally, from major increases in fertilizer use, rapid growth of large-scale irrigation, the "green revolution" and advances in medical technology that have kept global food supplies growing faster than the global population, and indicators of developing world health showing advances. Despite this progress, the indicators of wretchedness show the net rate of change in the human condition in developing nations to be negative. Apparently the negative factors affecting the human condition must be strong enough to outweigh all these advances.

"Bad Government" theory is one example of interpreting human history in terms of key individuals and major events, as some historians are inclined to do. But this gives the future a disturbing unpredictability and randomness that is unsettling in its lack of usefulness. Anthropologists (77H1), on the other hand, find that they can explain a large range of evolutionary changes in human culture - family, social, economic, religious, and political structures, traditions, and policies with environmental (material) determinism theory. This theory says that the evolution of human cultures reflects, primarily, adaptations to changing forms and degrees of environmental stress. The linkage between developing world ills and the environmental effects of population growth is one of many applications of environmental determinism theory.

Environmental determinism can explain such diverse observations as the origin of sacred cows in India, the origin of capitalism, and the numerous genocides in Rwanda in recent decades (04D1). The unique success of environmental determinism in explaining many aspects of numerous cultures (77H1) provides added support for its current application - the over-population/ population-growth origin of the ills of developing nations. Numerous public opinion polls indicate that a large fraction of Americans use environmental determinism on an intuitive basis, since few have ever heard of the theory.

Environmental determinism would say that wars are fought mainly over resources, and only begin after resource stresses become acute. It would indicate that, as man's material condition deteriorates, rivalries among national, ethnic, racial, class and religious groupings lead to conflicts over basic necessities. As conflicts grow increasingly desperate and bloody, government becomes increasingly difficult to administer; justice becomes too expensive to administer fairly (so only brutal dictatorships - "bad government" - can survive), and capital investments become increasingly risky. All this makes capital and other resources even scarcer, producing steepening downward spirals. All this says that bad government is an inevitable consequence of over-population and the scarcity of financial capital as a result of the drain caused by population growth. This makes it hard to name one as cause and the other as effect, but environmental determinism theory (77H1) makes this assignment clear.

Civilizations have been found to survive as progressive entities for no more than 800 to 2000 years in one place before they collapse. But three major exceptions to this stand out - civilizations that lasted far longer. All were located on major river deltas where mechanisms existed for soil-replenishment (55C1). If human history were to be defined by key individuals and major events (bad governments, taxes, etc.) instead of changing forms and degrees of environmental stress, then how do major river deltas and soil replenishment enter the equation? Is it all coincidence? And why would any multi-century limit on civilization lifetimes exist if the course of civilization depends primarily on such short-term phenomena as key individuals and major events (i.e. "bad government")?

"Bad Government" theory would predict that developing nations and their ills would be randomly situated about the globe, and that this random pattern would change in its detail over a time frame of decades as political leadership changed hands. Neither prediction agrees with reality. The overwhelming bulk of developing nations are in tropical climates. What does bad government have to do with climate? On the other hand, over-population and tropical climates are linked by the fact that about 90% of tropical soils have low productivity. Some tropical soil types have never hosted advanced civilizations. Also, tropical climates have longer histories of human settlement, and hence more severely degraded and eroded lands. Developing nations not in tropical climates almost invariably hosted major, old civilizations prone to large-scale erosion, deforestation, over-grazing and salination of irrigation systems, all of which yield enduring legacies of degraded, unproductive environments. What does modern-day bad government have to do with such minutiae of ancient history? On the other hand, such minutiae link well with the theory that over-population and population growth cause "bad government".

The use of environmental determinism to link developing world ills to the environmental effects of over-population and population growth did not start here. A large bibliography (97W2) lists many dozens of titles that do just that. Many other references ((99W2), (98H2), (00C1), (94H1) and dozens of reports and books by Worldwatch Institute) present voluminous data on the same issue. The belief that over-population and population growth are at the root of the ills of developing nations has been gaining far broader acceptance in recent decades. Publications of such organizations as the CIA (00C1), the RAND Corporation (98B1), (00A1), (00N1), (00U1), the National Security Agency and Worldwatch Institute (in numerous publications) see developing world ills in terms of environmental-determinism theory and over-population. For example, the CIA (00C1) notes that a key driving trend for the Middle East in the next 15 years will be population pressure. They point out that, even now, in nearly all Middle Eastern countries; over half of the population is under 20. "In much of the Middle East, populations will become significantly larger, poorer, more urban and more disillusioned." (00C1). The report concludes that "linear trend analysis shows little positive change in the region, raising the prospects for increased demographic pressures, social unrest, religious and ideological extremism and terrorism directed both at the regimes and at their Western supporters."

Former Indian Health Minister, Sripati Chandrasekhar feared that over-population would turn India to communism (01M1). His linkage between over-population and communism indicates that he believed in environmental determinism, even though he may have never heard of the theory.

Margaret Sanger, who founded the first family planning clinic 70 years ago, clearly believed in environmental determinism when she said that there are connections between rapid population growth, the status of women, governmental instability and world peace (01I1).

Even recent terrorist attacks against the US are being seen in terms of environmental determinism, e.g. "Terrorism thrives in an age of weakened states that have been undermined by population growth, resource scarcity and mass movements of people to cities, producing hordes of angry, unemployed young men whose attraction to radical causes increasingly cows relatively moderate governments in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia" (01C1).

87% of Americans believe over-population to be a problem, even in the US (10% believe it does not). 55% consider those problems "major" (Roper poll, 6/4/90). 71% of Americans believe that "too much population growth in developing countries is holding back their economic development" (vs. 55% in 1994) (Washington Post, 4/5/00). These linkages between population and "problems" and economic development are evidence that Americans overwhelming use environmental determinism theory to guide their thinking, even though few have ever heard of the theory explicitly. The intuitive logic of environmental determinism theory, along with numerous anthropological studies, also supports the theory.

Thomas Merrick (World Bank Institute) (02M1) analyzed the thinking and research on the relation between fertility and poverty over the past 1.5 centuries. Although he sees the relationship complicated by other factors, he concludes that "... it is important that policymakers understand the new evidence supporting the view that lower fertility does contribute to poverty reduction, and that public policies that help poor people better manage their reproductive lives have societal as well as individual benefits." He further concludes that a slower rate of population growth, combined with sound and equitable economic development and the reduction of gender inequality, appears increasingly likely to reduce poverty in developing nations. (This document would argue that gender inequality and the lack of sound and equitable economic development are not independent variables, but usually are consequences of the wretchedness caused by rapid population growth.)

A common challenge to the belief that over-population and population growth are the causes of developing-world ills is that increasing the number of people increases the amount of "brainpower" for solving problems that population growth creates (81S1) (96S2) (99E1). Obviously "brainpower" has not been able to reverse the net degradation of developing nations. This is mainly because the infrastructure growth required by population growth in the developing world consumes the financial capital that is essential for implementing the solutions (04S2) and few, if any, solutions require just increases in labor inputs. Even worse, "brainpower" tends, increasingly, to come up with short-term expedients that result in long-term degradation. A far more detailed analysis of this challenge and its near-sightedness is found in an appendix of Ref. (04S2).

Comparing Reagan's "Cornucopian" theory and its corollary, the "bad-government" theory, to reality presents these theories with other problems. It must be assumed that key natural resources exist in considerable over-abundance for these two theories to be credible. In numerous cases discussed in Ref. (01S1), this is not so. A few examples are summarized below.

~ ~ Case 1 - Sub-Saharan Africa: Africa is an entire continent with more civil wars, social disintegration, hunger, poverty and similar developing-nation ills than anywhere else. It is becoming hard for refugee hoards escaping one conflict to avoid entering the crossfire of other conflicts, or from precipitating conflicts wherever they go. Africa's food production per capita has been dropping for decades - the only continent for which this is true, though South America is close. Bad governments tend to receive the bulk of the blame. Africa's potential for food/ fiber production is said to be far greater than current production, supporting the "bad-government" theory. But Africa has some of the world's worst soils, and its population growth rate is the world's second-highest. (The world's highest population growth rate is found in the Muslim world, and its problems are similar to, or worse than, Africa's.) The capital drain caused by population growth and annual costs of making bad soils productive pushes the costs of food and fertilizer above what many Africans can pay. (Median per-capita income in developing countries is under $2.00/ day (Refs.11, 25, 26 of Ref. (00S1)) and the number of hours of labor needed in Africa to purchase a unit amount of chemical fertilizer is about 60 times that in Europe (02F1) - due largely to the shortage of transportation infrastructure.).

~ ~ Case 2 - Rwanda: The latest (1994) of several genocides in Rwanda claimed over 900,000 lives - 14% of Rwanda's population, overwhelmingly Tutsis. But in northwestern Rwanda at least 5% of the residents were slaughtered even though there were no Tutsis. Rwanda contained 2040 people per square mile, twice the population density of the Netherlands (a nation that has far better soils, far more fertilizer and far greater ability to import both food and fertilizer, i.e. more infrastructure in terms of roads, railroads etc.). The average Rwandan farmer worked 0.07 acre of land with agricultural practices not far removed from those of the Stone Age, and much of it on steep hillsides. By 1990, 40% of Rwanda's population was living on less than 1600 calories per day - famine level. A team of Belgian economists concluded that the outbreak of fighting "provided a unique opportunity to settle scores or reshuffle land properties, even among Hutus". Rwandans often argue that the war was necessary to wipe out an excess population and bring human numbers into line with the available land resources (04D1). The lack of infrastructure in terms of agricultural technology and transportation systems, the lack of resources in terms of level cropland and the relation of these to population growth and population size are all too evident in all of this. Since 1994, population growth in Rwanda has replaced the numbers lost in the genocides three times over.

~ ~ Case 3 - Environmental Marginalization: In Zimbabwe, white farmers initially got all the level, bottom-land farmlands, while black Africans got the steep, rocky hillsides to farm - where extreme erosion rates on low-grade, highly erodible soils limit cropland lifetimes. Considering Zimbabwe's high population growth rate, the recent bloody conflicts over croplands were easily predictable. And it is far from clear that any government, however capable, could have prevented that bloodletting. A nearly identical problem occurred in the post-World War II Philippines leading, in the 1980s, to groups like the Marxist New People's Army which threatened US interests (00N1). If there is so much potential cropland in Africa or the Philippines, why are environmentally marginalized farmers unable to find anything other than steep, rocky, erosion-prone hillsides?

Even in developed nations like the US and Canada, potential croplands are said to greatly exceed croplands in use. But even there, virtually none of the undeveloped cropland (plus some croplands currently in use) can be farmed sustainably. That's why the US created the Conservation Reserve Program. Why would it be different in developing countries where population pressures on the land (and soil erosion rates (01S1)) are far greater?

~ ~ Case 4 - Horn of Africa: Government-by-local-warlord in Somalia and elsewhere on the Horn of Africa might surely be cited as the cause of this region's ills. But look deeper. Rains that fall on Ethiopia, Somalia, etc. come out of the west where the water in them fell and transpired from leaves of vegetation five or so times on its way east across Africa. Overgrazing just south of the Sahara Desert means far fewer plant leaves to transpire moisture back into the atmosphere. This translates into prolonged and increasingly frequent droughts in eastern Africa, translating into hunger, social disintegration, increasingly violent conflicts over food, natural fiber and water - all that is needed for the evolution of warlord-governments. What other type of government could possibly survive the stresses of large-scale hunger?

~ ~ Case 5 - The Gaza Strip: Aquifers in the Gaza Strip can sustainable produce 65 million cubic meters/ year (05U1). They are Gaza's only source for fresh water. Present pumping rates exceed the sustainable rate by 50% (based on an extrapolation correcting 1995 data (05U1) for population growth). The result is invasion of seawater into Gaza Strip aquifers. Many hydrologists believe that Gaza Strip aquifers have already passed the point of no return (05U1). Tests show increased salinity levels to, in some cases, greater than 1500 ppm of chloride, making the water unsuitable for drinking (1993 data). Salt levels today must be much higher.

Contemplate now the proposed peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians in the light of the above - or the contention that the problems of Palestinians are simply the result of "bad government". Within a decade or so, Gaza's only water supply will be too salty for human consumption or even irrigation. Do the Israelis really believe that, after the peace treaty goes into effect, or after the "bad government" is replaced, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are going to die by the thousands from salt-water ingestion without putting up some sort of struggle? Do Palestinians in the Gaza Strip really believe that terrorism has any conceivable hope of solving their water supply problems? Israel is almost certain to have serious water problems by then also. Instead of dealing in mindless, visionless, callously indifferent, unworkable peace treaties or "bad government" theories, would it not be better for the Israelis and Palestinians to face their fundamental problem together and figure out some way of financing and developing a program of family planning that could bring Gaza's population down to a level of harmony with its aquifers? Not just water problems could be solved. Problems of infrastructure funding could also be solved; enabling Palestinians to develop the human capital needed to contribute something other than unskilled labor (market value: about 40 cents per hour) to the global marketplace.

~ ~ Case 6 - Turkey/ Syria/ Iraq: Turkey builds huge dams to feed its growing population, insuring far less downstream water for Syria and Iraq's rapidly growing populations that already suffer from water scarcity. Even in 2004, Turkey's increased water withdrawals as a result of its huge GAP dam project on the Euphrates River reduced flows to Iraq from 30 to 10 km³/ year (04R2). Demands for irrigation water in Iraq greatly exceed the available capacity (04R2). Soil erosion, over-grazing, deforestation, desertification and salination of irrigation systems have been on-going in the region for centuries. In nearby Jordan tap water in Amman (Jordan's capital) is now available only one day per week (01S2).

How would replacing "bad" governments in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Jordan stem the disintegration of that region? Where are the vast tracts of unused, fertile land, the broad rivers and deep aquifers that would have made the countless disputes over these key resources academic? The large amounts of unused or misused basic high quality land- and water resources that are required to explain the above by a bad-government theory simply do not exist, and a huge volume of literature supports this contention (01S1).

~ ~ Conclusions: Reagan's "Cornucopian" theory and its corollary, the "Bad-Government" theory, clearly suffer from comparisons to reality. They also suffer from a dubious pedigree. In contrast to the over-population/ population-growth theory and its voluminous supporting documentation, these two theories rest on little more than conjecture. Support of serious research appears to be non-existent. Yet these theories form the basis for denial of over-population and population growth as the reasons for the developing world's ills. This, coupled with developed nation policies of non-involvement in developing-nations' governments, thereby produces "do-nothing" policies that condemn billions of people to an eternal downward spiral of ever-increasing wretchedness, wars, genocides, social-, economic-, political- and military instability, and all the other life-is-cheap trappings of over-population and population growth. It also inflicts costs on developed nations far greater than the costs of the family planning services needed to address population growth in the developing world.

Shallow conjectures that see developing-world ills in terms of individuals and major events (e.g. "bad-government") only insure that these ills spiral out of control over time. There is probably no other single mistake that could have such extreme long-term consequences in terms of both the scale and the depth of wretchedness created - and that could have such deleterious effects on the future of mankind.

~ ~ FUNDING IFP - Some Returns on Investment
Above it was argued that reducing population growth rates in the developing world could greatly enhance the amount of money the developing world is able to repay on its $2.5 trillion external debt. The cash value of this enhanced repayment could cover the costs of supporting IFP hundreds of times over. But there are numerous other rewards from an investment in IFP. A few are described below. What needs to be recognized is that family planning services cost so very little relative to the costs resulting from such services being unavailable or unaffordable.

Case (1) - China: China has taken extreme measures to reduce fertility to 2.0 children/ woman. This has been accomplished mainly in urban areas where only 200 of 1278 million Chinese live. In rural China, where one billion Chinese live, a 1996-98 study (99H1) found fertility remaining at around 4. This helps to explain why:

• Chinese have poured into Tibet, Manchuria, eastern Turkestan and Mongolia (95K1) and made the natives small minorities in their own counties;
• Between 200,000 and five million Chinese worked in Russia on work visas in 2002, causing Russians to feel threatened;
• China had 24 border disputes with its neighbors in 1997 (97W3);
• China is plundering Tibet's remaining forests;
• China's imports of food, fiber and oil are exploding, raising commodity prices globally;
• Boat-loads of desperate Chinese illegal immigrants keep appearing along the Pacific coast of the US and Canada;
• China's leaders are so concerned about growing social unrest that they take harsh measures to suppress any hints of it.
• Massive overdrafts of ground- and surface waters in China are forcing China to build dams in the upper reaches of the Mekong River, threatening water supplies in one of Southeast Asia's most important waterways (04V1) and several of China's neighbors.
• Human pressures on China's land, mainly in the form of overgrazing and deforestation, have caused China to lose 36,000 square miles to desert since the 1950s (04H2).

Future Chinese territorial expansion ("demographic aggression") could hardly go anywhere else but to Taiwan, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea, India, Outer Mongolia, Russia, and other areas where wars would likely be precipitated. These wars could easily involve the US, and cost the US vastly more than the money saved by not being supportive of China's family planning programs.

Those who have studied Chinese soil-erosion, cropland urbanization, deforestation, desertification, dam siltation, irrigation problems and numerous similar carrying-capacity issues (01S1) knows how close to the edge of major instabilities China is. Once this is understood, it is easy to understand why China's leaders have resorted to draconian measures to maintain order and reduce population growth. The problem is that draconian measures to reduce population growth tend to create backlash, as they did several decades ago in India. Reducing population growth by efforts to point out the economic and social benefits of smaller families would probably produce far better long-term results than the draconian methods that China is presently involved in. The assistance of the developed world in selling the idea of small families to the Chinese could easily reap benefits to the developed world far in excess of the cost of such aid (06R1). Over-population and population growth have made human life cheap in many regions of the Far East. Western policies based on the notion that human life is dear (the basis of US resistance to supporting family planning efforts in China) only serve to make human life in the Far East even cheaper.

Case (2) - Private Financial Flows to Developing Nations: Private financial flows from developed nations to developing nations in 1997 were $270 billion (ENN Direct, 10/15/99) (triple the amount in 1992). Social-, economic-, political- and military instabilities in developing nations subject these financial flows to considerable risks. Population growth, and the economic costs of accommodating it, creates a large fraction of these risks to these accumulated capital flows (over $1 trillion during the past decade alone). Any reasonable estimate of such risks produces a dollar cost that could easily finance the entire shortfall in IFP funding hundreds of times over.

Case (3) - Peace-Keeping and Emergency Aid: Donor-nation expenditures on international peacekeeping and emergency humanitarian aid cost the West about $10 billion/ year (ENN Direct, 10/15/99). Again, over-population and population growth are a large share of the root causes necessitating this aid. For example, Serb leader Milosevic was told around 1991 that the Kosovars have said they will win their battle against the Serbs "in bed". (Kosovo's birth rate then was 9 children per family - a rate Serbs could not match.) It was predicted that Muslims would soon be a majority, not only in Kosovo, but also in Belgrade. (Santa Barbara (CA) News Press, 4/24/99) (Kosovo went from 98% Serbian Christian to 99.5% Albanian Muslim in less than 70 years.) Milosevic apparently saw Serbia being backed to the wall and felt compelled to defend Serbia in the only way Milosevic knew. Instead of assuming the issue was none of its business, the West could have provided a few decades of family planning services to that region. The cost would have been a small fraction of the costs of waging war against Serbia and then enforcing the peace in the region for many years.

All the while, Albania sends boatloads of wretched, hungry, desperate, largely Muslim refugees to Italy, Greece and wherever else it believes their boats can sneak past the border guards. The overpopulation in Muslim Albania has been obvious for decades, as has been the changing attitudes toward family planning in a rapidly growing portion of the Muslim World. (See elsewhere in this document.) All those border patrols on guard for interminable decades are probably costing the West far more than the family planning that could do so much to greatly alleviate, if not eliminate, both the cost problem and the wretchedness problem.

A study by Population Action International (04P1) has made the relationship between population growth rate and the probability of civil armed conflict fairly quantitative. Their results are given below.

*Likelihood of an outbreak of a civil conflict in a given decade.

The correlation between external debt and population growth rate is also strong. Of the 41 countries designated as "heavily indebted poor countries" by the World Bank, 39 fall into the category of high-fertility nations, where women, on average, bear four or more children. Similarly, the 48 countries identified by the UN as "least developed" are all expected to triple their population by 2050 (02H1).

Case (4) - A Link Between Population Growth Rate and Terrorism: A few years ago, two studies by the National Security Agency and one by US Army Intelligence found a solid link between the ratio of younger men to older men and violence in general. Such violence may take the form of internal (criminal) violence or external violence in the form of war or terrorism. As a result of very high fertilities (i.e. high population growth rates), this young-men/-old-men ratio is now very high in the Middle East. The situation there is exacerbated by high Arab unemployment rates, around 30% in the Saudi middle class (also a reflection of high population growth rates). Since it is difficult to marry without a job, this translates into a lot of dissatisfied single young men, including the educated middle class. This may be why we have seen so many educated terrorists.

The Muslim World: The bulk of the world's supply of terrorists are Muslims, mainly those of a religious fundamentalist outlook, and mainly of Middle East origin. Note the following:

• The region supplying the bulk of the world's terrorists has the world's highest population growth rate (3.5%/ year).
• The region has a predominantly and increasingly arid (and hence fragile) environment with a history of severe land degradation spanning well over a millennium.

Even Saudi Arabia, with its oil wealth, is running a large national deficit and is unable to keep up with the infrastructure needs of rapid population growing- plus the huge and growing costs of keeping terrorists (in this case Islamic fundamentalists) at bay. This translates into severe shortages of financial capital and a resultant lack of investment in human capital (e.g. education), jobs and hope, among numerous other things. The CIA (00C1) notes that a key driving trend for the Middle East in the next 15 years will be population pressure. They point out that, even now, in nearly all Middle Eastern countries, over half of the population is under 20. "In much of the Middle East, populations will be significantly larger, poorer, more urban and more disillusioned" (00C1). The CIA report concludes that "linear trend analysis shows little positive change in the region, raising the prospects for increased demographic pressures, social unrest, religious and ideological extremism and terrorism directed both at the regimes and at their Western supporters" (00C1). In the last two decades, the Middle East's share of world trade has fallen from 13.5% in 1980, to less than 3.4% in 2000. GDP among Muslim countries dropped 25% during that time. Since the population about doubled in that 20-year period, per-capita GDP has fallen by over 60%.

Looking at the Middle East from this perspective it becomes clear that the more the West engages in military reprisals against terrorism the more wretched, hopeless and disillusioned Muslims become, and the greater the risks for the already scarce critical resource: capital for infrastructure (including human capital formation). The strategy of military reprisals is apparently to force wretched, disillusioned, mostly young folk without hope to whimper less noticeably. But the real result is frequently to increase the number of people willing to train for, and engage in, suicidal attacks. Both sides need to consider the inefficiency and counter-productivity of their respective strategies and search for alternate strategies, ideally strategies that get at the roots of the problem. Former US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky stated at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conference (http://csis.org/schollchair/020212.htm) that "history gives us absolutely no confidence that either a politics-only approach to Middle East peace or a military-only approach to terrorism is going to work." General Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan's president) said on a BBC News interview of 12/6/04 that:

• The war on terror has made the world less safe.
• The war on terrorism is not addressing the underlying causes of the conflict.
• The social grievances, political disputes and social inequities than gave rise to extremism and helped recruit terrorists were not being addressed.
• More effort is needed in fighting illiteracy and poverty, and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• We are fighting the war on terrorism in its immediate context - not in its strategic, long-term context.

The mistake that was made by the US is clear here. We imagined the ills of the Middle East to be due to bad leadership so we proceeded to take out this leadership - only to discover that this doesn't get us anywhere. The rest of the world tried to tell us that but we didn't listen. Environmental determinism theory predicts what the CIA predicts. As per-capita infrastructure shrinks and financial capital grows ever scarcer, life becomes more wretched and cheap; the struggle for resources and existence becomes more desperate, vicious and bloody. This produces civil unrest and warfare among tribal, ethnic and religious groupings. This makes the environment less safe for financial capital, making already severe shortages of financial capital even worse. The losers in these struggles for resources, e.g. women, are reduced to little short of domestic animal status. Minorities are subject to persecution or worse. Governments, facing increasingly angry populaces and increasingly severe shortages of funds, find government increasingly hard to administer, so only brutal dictators or the equivalent warlords and theocracies can maintain their hold on power for long. Warlordism in Afghanistan created the environment that set the stage for the Taliban theocracy, which, in turn provided an environment where training camps for terrorists could proliferate. One reason why Islamic fundamentalism is rising throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world is the social services, medical care and religious education that hard-line Islamic groups provide as alternatives to failed services of failed states (03I1). In essence, they are growing by filling vacuums that high population growth rates and the resultant shortages of financial capital created.

In such environments only the naïve and gullible could believe that democracy could work. Islamic parties, grouped under the Muslim Brotherhood, are the only force with the organization, capability and ambition to take power if democracy were to become an option in much of the Arab world (03I1). For those who have forgotten, the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1930s, helped give birth to every Muslim radical movement from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to the Palestinian's Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Lebanon's Hezbola (03I1). Thus any attempt at democracy would likely lead to one-time elections and triumphs for radical Islam. It happened in Algeria in 1992, forcing the army there to void the election results and to resume its dictatorial rule. The resultant civil war there claimed more than 100,000 lives (03I1). Turkey, too, has had to use its army to avoid the threat of becoming a theocracy. The only semblance of democracies in the Muslim world is in Egypt and Mali. But Egypt's democracy has a long way to go to rise to the standards of the developed world (04S1). Egypt must struggle to keep Islamic extremists at bay. Were it not for massive US aid that is used to subsidize food for Egypt's growing masses, it seems unlikely that democracy would survive past the next elections. (Mali's situation appears to be unique (04T1).)

High population growth rates in the Muslim world threaten not only the stability of that world but also peace and stability in adjacent nations. Israel's surface waters have been reduced to dirty trickles and its aquifers are shrinking so badly that seawater is intruding. (Only 2% seawater ruins an aquifer.) The population growth rate of Palestinians is huge - around 4%/ year. It is inconceivable that the Israelis could raise their water allocations to the Palestinians at anything like this rate. Thus Palestinian wretchedness and hopelessness must continually increase, regardless of any peace settlement. The rate of terrorism can hardly do anything but reflect the growth in wretchedness. High population growth rates in the Muslim world (with its 1.3 billion Muslims) and its badly degraded land are giving rise to "demographic aggression" and this is producing conflicts all along the border between the Muslim- and non-Muslim worlds, e.g. Lebanon, Albania, Armenia, the former Yugoslavia, Russia, Chechnya, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Sudan and other northeast African countries, Nigeria, Mauritania and Algeria. Even France faces the possibility of a Muslim majority. Muslims are streaming into England at every opportunity. Muslims in the US now constitute a recognized voting block, and the INS is so under-funded and under-staffed that US borders are all but transparent to terrorists.

What is most disgusting about this horrible, expensive, fearful, bloody mess is that a relatively modest investment in IFP services would tell the Middle East populace that we care about them and seek to make them rich as our strategy for minimizing terrorism. Hearts and minds could change dramatically and quickly, long before the needed reductions in population growth and increases in wealth have been achieved. Acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists seem unlikely to diminish over time under the current US strategy. Mistakes now being made in responding to terrorism could wind up putting Islamic extremists in control of the entire Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, creating economic and military problems far more difficult and serious than those the US faces today. In 2004, nearly half of the $1 trillion of global military spending was by the US (Wall Street Journal, 6/8/05, p. A1).

Case (5) - IFP Investment Opportunities in Africa -
Per-capita food production has been dropping in Africa for about three decades, while it has been increasing in the rest of the world. The three main reasons for the global increase over the past 4-5 decades are:

1. Huge increases in consumption of chemical fertilizers,
2. Huge increases in large-scale irrigation systems and
3. The "Green Revolution" (which requires chemical fertilizers and, often, irrigation to be successful).

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 2.5% of global fertilizer consumption and 2% of the world's irrigated lands (04L1). As a result, the depletion rate of soil nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorous Potassium - NPK), for Sub-Saharan Africa caused by low-input/ subsistence farming is estimated to be 40-60 kg. of NPK/ ha./ year (P. A. Sanchez, Science 295 (2002) p.2019.) (04L1) (02F1). In the early 1960s, fertilizer use in Sub-Saharan Africa was about 5 kg/ ha/ year, compared to 10 in India and China. In the 1990s, China was using 240 kg/ ha/ year and India about 110, but Sub-Saharan Africa was using about 8. It is vital that we understand this huge difference. In Europe, urea costs about US$90/ tonne. Shipping it to a port in Kenya or Mozambique raises the price to about US$120/ tonne. Getting it into the African interior with its primitive transportation infrastructure raises the price to $500/ tonne in eastern Uganda, and $770 in Malawi. These rates are 6 times greater than prices in Asia, Europe and North America. In terms of cost per hour of local labor, chemical fertilizers cost about 60 times more in Africa than in Europe or North America.

The problem is compounded by the fact that Africa has some of the world's worst soils. Sub-Saharan African farm soils are also poor in organic matter, making them less fertile and more erosion-prone, but farmers cannot raise livestock (an organic matter [manure] source) because of population pressures on the land. Also, instead of putting manure and crop residue in soils, people must burn them for fuel because they cannot afford to import oil (02F1). Shortages of organic matter in soils reduce drought resistance and increase inorganic fertilizer runoff. For this and other reason, low organic matter worsens the economics of inorganic (chemical) fertilizer use (02F1). Shortages of organic matter and nutrients also greatly reduce the efficiency of water use, making the economics of irrigation marginal (02F1). Genetically improved grains are also dependent on fertilizers to produce their "miracles."

Infrastructure causes of much of the fertilizer cost problem. Much of Africa has less than 10% of the road density of India. India has 1004 km. of paved road per million people, China has 803; Ghana has 494; Uganda has 94; Ethiopia has 66 (02F1). Africa has the world's second-highest population growth rate and this demands huge amounts of capital for new infrastructure to accommodate new Africans - thus the high taxes, the scarcity of roads and rail lines and thus the prohibitive cost of importing fertilizers and the lack of irrigation systems (02F1).

We could ignore all of the above facts and blame Africa's food problems on "bad leadership" and thereby subject Africans to an eternity of hunger, civil strife, and social, economic, political, religious and military instabilities. However then we would also be ignoring the Islamic fundamentalists who are taking advantage of these problems and instabilities to gain converts in much of the northern half of Africa. We would also be ignoring Africa's staggering external debt and the probability that it will never be repaid to the developing world. We would also be ignoring the risk that Americans and others will be drawn into peacekeeping efforts in Africa. It has already happened once in recent memory, and could easily have put the US into anti-genocide efforts in the Sudan, Rwanda, the Congo and Mozambique. It is only through massive amounts of US foreign aid to Egypt that Egypt avoids takeover by Islamic fundamentalists. We would also be ignoring the hordes of desperate Africans pouring into Europe and causing all manner of social, political, religious and economic problems there. We would also be ignoring the entreaties of foreign leaders like those in Pakistan, Egypt, the UN and elsewhere to focus on the underlying causes of terrorism rather than engage in heavy-handed, futile, and largely counterproductive military approaches to terrorism.

Ethiopia's food situation is typical of the rest of Africa, but with a noteworthy twist. It also suffers as a result of bad advice from international lenders and other advocates of globalization. These external influences encouraged huge increases in food production via genetic improvements etc., while discouraging government activities (subsidies, tariffs, etc.) in all the other aspects of the overall agricultural system that countries like Viet Nam and China lavish so much attention on (storage systems, transportation infrastructure, tariffs, market development, finance, etc.) High population growth rates also left Ethiopia starved for the financial capital needed for overall agricultural system development. As a result, in good crop years, local crop prices collapse due to infrastructural inadequacies (transportation). Farmers are then unable to cover production costs and are unable to borrow, so they go bankrupt. In drought years, farmers meet the same fate due to crop failures. The result has been huge areas of croplands lying idle while millions of Ethiopians starve (03T1).

It would be impossible to assign a dollar cost to all of the above near-sightedness, but one thing is certain - that cost would be factors of hundreds or thousands greater than addressing the underlying cause of Africa's ills and investing a relatively tiny amount of capital in supplying Africa with family planning aid and thereby lifting a burden of some hundreds of billions of dollars per year in unaffordable infrastructure growth from the shoulders of folk earning a median of less than $2/ person per day. Note that nothing has been said, thus far, about the humanitarian or moral issues involved in all this.

Case (6) - Investing in Irrigation Systems - The Right Way -
Irrigated croplands provide 30-40% of the world's cropland-based food supply on a weight-basis (00W2), and 59% on a dollar-basis (97C1). Irrigation expansion contributed over 50% of the increase in global food production during 1965-85 (96G1). The world's irrigated land area grows at a net rate of 1.2%/ year -33,000 km²/ year (48,000 created less 15,000 abandoned due to salt build-up and waterlogging) (00W2). This rate is down from 3%/ year during 1950 to the mid-70s, 2.0%/ year during 1970-82, and 1.3%/ year during 1982-94 (99P1). Productivity of the world's irrigated land does not grow 1.2%/ year however. Per-unit-area degradation due to increasing salinity, and abandonment due to water-supply reallocation to urban uses both detract significantly from this rate. Per-capita irrigated area has declined 5% since 1978 (96P1).

Despite the obvious importance of the world's irrigation systems to mankind, the amount of attention being paid to the sustainability of existing systems and to the potential for future expansion of these systems is shockingly negligible. Non-sustainability is largely the result of expediencies that increase current food supplies while risking, and reducing, future food supplies. The two principle expediencies are neglecting to deal effectively with salination, and consuming water supplies beyond their sustainable limits. Other expediencies are described below.

Virtually all irrigated lands, other than those in monsoon climates, need ways to avoid salt-buildup in soils. Declining productivity and abandonment result from salt build-up. While data are lacking, irrigation experts believe that few of the world's irrigation systems provide for salt control (typically underground networks of drainage tiles) thereby threatening a sizeable portion of global cropland productivity with decline and destruction - invariably permanent (74F1). Even the World Bank does not require that the irrigation systems it funds include salinity-prevention features (95J1). Secondary salination, alkalization and water-logging influence as much as 50% of the world's existing irrigation systems (FAO and UNESCO data). The threat is greater in developing nations, which lack the financial capital to invest in drainage systems required to prevent salination. Because of the staggering external debt loads of developing nations, the capacity to secure future loans is bound to shrink. Salinity effects take several decades to become apparent, and a large fraction of the world's irrigation systems is relatively new. As a result of these two facts, rates of productivity-degradation and abandonment of irrigated lands are certain to increase in coming decades.

An alternative to drainage tiles for preventing salt buildup due to rising water tables is alternate-year fallowing. But as population pressures on the land increase, this strategy for sustainability becomes increasingly hard to defend from the interests of short-term expediency.

Water consumption by agriculture (almost entirely for irrigation) accounts for 82% of human-based water consumption (96P2). Thus irrigation is the primary reason why many of the world's rivers no longer reach the oceans during at least parts of the year (99P1). It is also the primary reason why the number of lakes and the sizes of inland seas are shrinking so rapidly, and why the number of endangered lakes is now so large as to pose a threat to up to one billion people (01A1).

Partly because of this depletion of surface waters (and partly because of advances in pump technology), irrigation water comes increasingly from groundwater. As a result, groundwater tables are dropping globally, despite the fact that 97% of the earth's liquid freshwater is in aquifers (00S1). As a result of this draw-down, coastal aquifers are suffering seawater intrusion. Only 2% ocean water makes an aquifer useless. As freshwater supplies shrink, and as urban demands for water expand, irrigation water is being increasingly reallocated to urban use. In the late 1990s, at least 400 million people lived in regions with severe water shortages. By 2050, this number is expected to be 4 billion (98S2). Thus large-scale reallocations of irrigation water to municipal- and industrial uses seem certain in coming decades. The rate of irrigated land abandonment due to water reallocation was apparently not counted in the above-mentioned 15,000-km²/ year loss to salinity. A review of compiled data (01S1) suggests a present rate of abandonment of irrigation systems due to water reallocation to urban use of roughly 7000 km²/ year.

Growing water scarcity is prompting irrigators to seek ways of conserving water, but all of these have their limitations. Use of wastewater is one strategy. But salinity rises by 300-400 parts per million while passing through the urban circuit, and is not reduced by any of the usual sewage treatment processes (77A1). So more than once through the urban circuit causes significant problems with salinity. Drip-irrigation is another strategy. It does not entail salt accumulation in the root zone (93P1) and, relative to furrow- or sprinkler irrigation, cuts water use by 30-60% (96P1). The problem is the added financial capital intensity in developing nations where infrastructure capital is already too scarce to even afford drainage tiles for avoiding salination. Perhaps for this reason, global use of drip irrigation accounts for less than 1% of the world's irrigated area (97P1). Heavily government-subsidized irrigation water worldwide also works against the apparent (not real) economics of drip irrigation.

Filling of dam backwaters with erosion sediments also threatens irrigation. The world's dam backwaters are filling with sediment at 1%/ year (87M1) and several times that in the world's more densely populated regions. Sedimentation rates are now 8 times higher than in the mid-1960s (UNEP release of 12/4/01) so the 1% figure from the mid-1980s may now be too low. A US Geological Survey study notes that new dam construction might increase the (global) dam storage capacity by 0.33%/ year over the next 30 years (98S1). This suggests that global dam-backwater storage per-capita should drop 2%/ year in coming decades - even as per-capita water consumption increases twice as fast as population (98S2). Also, dam site supplies are shrinking, greatly increasing the cost of new dams - costs already so high that developing nations must finance them largely by increasing their already staggering external debt.

Irrigation systems, too, are heavily government-subsidized worldwide, so growing financial demands on (and indebtedness of) developing nations - where population pressures are greatest - represent yet another serious threat to irrigation. Government subsidies also result in wasteful uses of both irrigation water and urban water supplies - creating more serious threats to irrigation.

The problems of salinity and water supply are coupled. Increasing human pressures on the land, and diminishing water supplies force irrigators to try to increase production from each drop of water. But doing this increases salinity, resulting in an ever-steeper downward spiral of positive feedbacks.

The above-mentioned sustainability problems are summarized below.

• Salinity-induced productivity declines;
• Salinity-induced irrigated land abandonment;
• Shrinking surface-water supplies;
• Shrinking groundwater supplies;
• Irrigation water reallocation to urban use;
• Growing problems with finding sites, building and financing dams;
• Siltation of dam backwaters;
• Threats to funding sources for government subsidies;
• Wasteful uses of water, and
• Water-supply-salinity positive feedbacks.

All these threats mean that irrigation systems, their water supplies, and the food they produce are non-sustainable. Further, non-sustainability is certain to increase, particularly in developing nations where water supplies are tighter, financial capital needed to reduce salinity problems is scarcer, external debt increases by $1 trillion every 10-15 years, and where high population pressures on the land worsen positive feedbacks and prevent fallowing. Expanding irrigation systems to meet the needs of growing populations is growing increasingly hopeless when the future productivity of current systems is subject to such a formidable array of problems as summarized in the above list. An example illustrates. During the time it took to build Egypt's Aswan dam, Egypt's population grew by an amount that required all the output of the new irrigation systems that the Aswan dam allowed for. Yet building more Aswan-scale dams in the face of growing water needs and withdrawals of upstream nations is pointless.

Consider an alternative. Abandon the hopeless current strategy of throwing massive amounts of money (aid and loans) at accommodating the irrigation infrastructure needs of growing populations in developing nations. Instead, invest a relatively small amount of capital in family planning services in the developing world and reap the following benefits.

• Reduced need for irrigation system expansion,
• Reduced need for overdrafts of already shrinking aquifers to supply irrigation needs,
• Reduced need for overdrafts of already shrinking aquifers to supply urban water needs,
• More capital available for irrigation infrastructure, e.g. drainage systems and drip irrigation systems, both of which can largely eliminate salination-induced degradation and abandonment of irrigation systems - problems that threaten the existence of most current irrigation systems.
• Slower growth of water evaporation from dam backwaters, already a major drain on global supplies,
• Reduced external debts of developed nations - debts already unlikely to ever be repaid,
• Less need for efforts to extract maximum productivity from each drop of irrigation water - a major source of salinity problems.
• Reduced rate of filling of dam backwaters with erosion sediments,
• Reduced need for developing nations to subsidize water consumption - subsidies many developing nations cannot afford without falling further behind in filling new infrastructure needs.

~ ~ CONCLUSIONS
In the early 1980s, a tragic error in judgment was made when the US president proclaimed that the scale of the world's natural systems vastly exceeds the scale of human activity. This forced an equally tragic corollary that developing world ills were a result of "bad leadership." This is not to say that bad leadership is absent from the developing world - only that this bad leadership is an effect, not a cause, of developing world ills. This erroneous corollary spawned numerous equally tragic policy decisions resulting in counterproductive military adventures, misallocation of aid and loans to developing nations, the loss of international good will, expansion of terrorism worldwide, and needless growth in the social, political, economic, religious and military instability throughout the developing world with the resultant increase in wretchedness and hopelessness for billions of impoverished people. It is time to make amends and set things right - not by the expenditure of vast sums of money, but by making small investments in family planning services in the developing world - investments that are certain to pay huge dividends (both financial and humanitarian) to all concerned, and restore the global respect that the US once basked in and advance the economic well-being and levels of hope for all the people the US has let down.

~ REFERENCE LIST
55C1 Vernon Gill Carter, Tom Dale, Topsoil and Civilization, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK (1955) 292 pp.
74F1 Martin M. Fogel, "Comments on the Symposium from a Hydrologic Perspective", in Irrigation's Impact on Society , T. E. Downing and M. Gibson, editors, University of Arizona Press (1974) pp.169-71.
77A1 Avil Agarwal, "The Rising Cost of Making Deserts Bloom", New Scientist, 10/13/77, pp. 96-7.
77H1 See, for example, Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures, Random House New York, 1977, 239 pp.

81S1 Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ (1981).
87M1 K. Mahmood, "Reservoir Sedimentation: Impact, Extent and Mitigation", World Bank, Washington DC, 1987.

91M1 W. D. Montalbano, Pittsburgh Press, 11/10/91.
92K1 Hal Kane, "A Deluge of Refugees", WorldWatch, Nov.-Dec. 1992, pp. 32-33.
93L1 Paul Lewis, "A Huddled Mass of 44 Million", New York Times, 11/10/93 or shortly before
93P1 Sandra Postel, "Facing Water Scarcity", in Linda Starke, editor, State of the World 1993, W. W. Norton and Co., New York (1993) pp. 22-41.
94H1 Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflicts: Evidence from Cases", International Security, 19(1) (1994), pp. 5-40.
94P1 Population Action International, study reported in Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 6/14/94.
95C1 Joel E. Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? W. W. Norton, New York (1995).
95J1 Wm. I. Jones, "The World Bank and Irrigation", World Bank, Washington DC, 1995.
95K1 Hal Kane, "What's Driving Migration?" WorldWatch, 8(1) (1995) pp. 23-33. Also see Hal Kane, "The Hour of Departure: Forces that Create Refugees and Migrants", WorldWatch Paper 125, June 1995, 56 pp.
96G1 Gary Gardner, "Shrinking Fields: Cropland Loss in a World of Eight Billion", World Watch Paper #131 (July 1996) 56 pp.
96P1 Sandra Postel, "Forging a Sustainable Water Strategy", in Linda Starke, editor, State of the World 1996, W. W. Norton and Co., New York (1996) pp. 40-59.
96P2 Sandra L. Postel, Gretchen C. Daily, Paul R. Ehrlich, "Human Appropriation of Renewable Fresh Water", Science, 271 (1996) pp. 785-88.
96S2 Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1996.

97B1 Fred R. Bleakley, Wall Street Journal, 11/4/97, reporting on a study by Gerald Scully of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
97C1 Pierre Crosson, "Will Erosion Threaten Agricultural Productivity?" Environment 39(8) (1997) pp. 4-9 and pp. 29-31.
97P1 Sandra Postel, "Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity", Cadillac Desert PBS Series http://www.pbs.org/kteh/cadillacdesert/home.html http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/ea/lo.html
97P2 David Poindexter, "Population Realities and Economic Growth," Population Press, 4(2), Nov/Dec 1997. http://www.popco.org/irc/essays/essay-poindexter.html.
97R3 Curtis Runyan, "No Asylum for Refugees", Worldwatch, 10(6) (1997) p. 6 (reporting on the 1997 World Refugee Survey).
97W2 Timothy C. Weiskel, "Environmental Aspects of International Security: Some Preliminary Sources", 1(6) (1997), http://www.ecoethics.net/bib/1997/otcc-006.htm.
97W3 George F. Will, "Dealing with the Dragon", Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 4/20/97.

98B1 Rodolfo A. Bulatao, "The Value of Family-Planning Programs in Developing Countries", RAND MR-978-WFHF/RF/UNFPA (1998) 79pp.
98H1 High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's Refugees 1997-98: A Humanitarian Agenda, UN, New York, Oxford University Press. 298 pp. http://www.unhcr.ch.
98H2 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Jessica Blitt, editors, Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, inc., (1998) 256 pp.
98R1 Michael Renner, "Curbing the Proliferation of Small Arms", in Linda Starke, editor, State of the World, 1998, W. W. Norton and Co., New York (1998) pp.131-48.
98S1 William K. Stevens, "Water: Pushing the Limits of an Irreplaceable Resource", New York Times, 12/8/98.
98S2 Paul Simon, "Are We Running Dry?" Parade Magazine, 8/23/98.

99E1 Nicholas Eberstadt, "Six Billion Reasons to Cheer", Wall Street Journal, 10/12/99.
99G2 Georgie Ann Geyer, "Population Growth Is the Pivotal Issue in Economic Development", The Salt Lake Tribune (From the UN web site, 6/4/99).
99H1 Steven Harrison steven.harrison@utoronto.ca, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Toronto, around 1999.
99P1 Sandra Postel, "Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?" W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1999, 312 pp.
99W2 Jane Willms, "Environmental Scarcities, State Capacity, and Civil Violence", Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of Toronto http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/state.htm (1999).

00A1 David M. Adamson, Nancy Belden, Julie DaVanzo, Sally Patterson, "How Americans View World Population Issues: A Survey of Public Opinion", RAND MR-1114-DLPF/WFHF/RF (2000).
00C1 National Intelligence Agency, CIA, "Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with Non-government Experts", (70pp, unclassified) (reported on in New York Times, 12/18/00) (also see http://www.cia.gov/nic/pubs/index.htm or http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/index.html#link2 ).
00N1 Brian Nichiporuk, "The Security Dynamics of Demographic Factors", RAND MR-1088-WFHF/RF/DLPF/A (2000) 52 pp.
00S1 J. Joseph Speidel, "Environment and Health: 1. Population, Consumption and Human Health", Canadian Medical Association Journal, 163(5) (9/5/00) pp. 551-6.
00U1 (Author Unknown) "Opinions that Count: How Swing Voters in Congress view Global Population Issues", RAND, RB-5041 (2000) http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB5041/.
00W1 World Resources Institute, World Resources 2000-2001, World Resources Institute, 10 G Street NE, Washington DC 20002 (2000) 389 pp.

01A1 Associated Press article on the International Conference on Conservation and Management of Lakes meeting in Japan, 11/12/01.
01C1 Anthony H. Cordesman, Terrorism, Asymmetric Warfare, and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Praeger, 2001, 456 pp.
01I1 International Planned Parenthood Federation, Western Hemisphere Region, in a release of 11/20/01.
01M1 Douglas Martin, "Sripati Chandrasekhar, India's champion of population control", San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/01.
01N1 Larry Nowels, "Population Assistance and IFP Programs: Issues for Congress", Congressional Research Service Issue Brief IB96026, 2/21/01, 10pp.
01S1 Bruce Sundquist, "The Earth's Carrying Capacity - Some Literature Reviews", January, 2001, 7.4 MB. (Reviews the global literature on the degradation of soils, croplands, forest lands, grazing lands, irrigated lands and fisheries).
01S2 Paul Simon, Chicago Tribune, 10/12/01.

02F1 Heidi Fritschel, "Nurturing the Soil in Sub-Saharan Africa", IFPRI, 2020 News and Views, July 2002.
02H1 Carl Haub, "Poverty Fuels Developing World's High Birth Rate", in 2002 Population Data Sheet, Population Reference Bureau (2002).
02M1 Thomas W. Merrick, "Population and Poverty: New Views on an Old Controversy", Int'l Family Planning Perspectives, 28(1) (2002) 10 p. www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2804102.pdf .
02U1 US Census Bureau, International Data Base of 10/10/02, http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/popproj.html.

03I1 Youssef M. Ibrahim, "Democracy in Iraq? Be careful what you wish for", Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 3/30/03 (also in the Washington Post).
03N1 Gautam Naik, "As Tunisia Wins Population Battle, Others See a Model", Wall Street Journal, 8/8/03.
03T1 Roger Thurow, "Behind the Famine in Ethiopia: Glut and Aid Policies Gone Bad", Wall Street Journal, 7/1/03.

04D1 Jared Diamond, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", Viking (2004) 576 pp.
04H1 John Harwood, "Competitive Edge of U.S. Is at Stake in the R/D Arena," Wall Street Journal, 3/17/04.
04H2 Chris Hawley (Associated Press) "U.N. to combat growing deserts", Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 6/16/04.
04L1 R. Lal, "Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security", Science 304 (2004) pp. 1623-1627.
04P1 Population Action International, "How Demographic Transition Reduces Countries' Vulnerability to Civil Conflict" in PAI's publication The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict After the Cold War, 2/11/04 http://www.populationaction.org/resources/factsheets/factsheet_23_securityDemog.html.
04R1 William Ryerson, "PMC-Ethiopia's two radio serial dramas are causing great behavior changes", Ethiopian Reporter, 6/16/04. Contact William Ryerson, President, Population Media Center, 145 Pine Haven Shores Road, Suite 2011, P.O. Box 547, Shelburne VT 05482.
04R2 Abdulatif Mohamed Jamal Rashid - Minister of Irrigation in 2004 in Iraq, "Importance of Boosting Water Infrastructure in a Developing Country", in Sunanda Kishore and Christopher Head, (Independent Consultants working with the World Bank), "World Water Week: Report on the Seminar on Financing Water Infrastructure," World Bank and the Stockholm International Water Institute Stockholm, 15 August 2004.
04S1 Gerald F. Seib, "Arab Democracy: The Real Question Resides in Egypt", Wall Street Journal, 6/16/04.
04S2 Bruce Sundquist, "The Controversy over U.S. Support for International Family Planning: An Analysis", Edition 5, August 2004.
04T1 Yaroslav Trofimov, "Islamic Democracy? Mali Finds a Way to Make it Work", Wall Street Journal, 6/22/04, p. A1.
04U1 (Unknown) "Tunisia: Illiteracy Rate Continues to Drop", Al-Bawaba www.albawaba.com, 12/21/04.
04V1 Michael Vatikiotis, "China's Growing Clout Alarms Smaller Neighbors", Wall Street Journal, 6/16/04, p. A12.

05M1 Branko Milanovic, "Why did the Poorest Countries Fail To Catch Up?" Carnegie Papers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Number 62, November 2005, 31 pages. http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/CP62.Milanovic.FINAL.pdf.
05U1 (Unknown) "The Water Conflicts in the Middle East from a Palestinian Perspective", Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (2005) www.arij.org/pub/wconflct/ (visited 4/29/05).

06R1 Bill Ryerson (Population Media Center) Information provided in his critique of earlier editions of this document.
06S1 Bruce Sundquist, "Could Family Planning Cure Terrorism?" Edition 5, September 2006, 33 pp.