Sir Richard Jolly's argues that demographic entrapment does not exist
from his review of "Primary Mother Care and Population"
available from sales@spiegl.co.uk £7.50
Sir Richard is Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex, and sometime second in command at UNICEF, and Senior Adviser to UNDP.
Section Numbers refer to Primary Mother Care and Population on this website.
[] Sir Richard's footnotes. {} Master reference list on the website.
Editorial Note. Sir Richard, an old friend, argues that demographic entrapment, by the definition below, does not exist - and presumably cannot exist? It is up to you to assess the arguments of a distinguished development economist. If you you think Sir Richard's arguments are weak, this is not his fault. Thanks to the Demons, 'orthodoxy' has no better arguments. However, Sir Richard does have one most intriguing argument, albeit a false one. This is well worth careful reading!!
A 'Demon' is anything that holds the taboo on entrapment in place, and needs to change as it lifts. For example, "political correctness" is Demon 16 and the many problems of 1-child families are Demon 6 (Are they better or worse than the starvation and violence of entrapment?)
Sir Richard is anxious that this review should not go on the Web. I think that, in the interests of the world, and especially the trapped, it should. We should be grateful to Sir Richard for stating with such care what the arguments of 'orthodoxy' and political correctness (Demon 16) actually are.
Paradoxically, the fact that Sir Richard has so many arguments - I can count nearly 50 - suggests that none of them are valid! Even a single argument, where it sufficiently valid, would surely be enough to demolish the thesis that entrapment exists.
I have removed his general comments on the book - which give it high praise - and consider only his criticism of entrapment. I have also shortened it.
A community is demographically trapped, if, under present economic and technological constraints, it exceeds (1) the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem (too many people and not enough land), and (2) there is nowhere for people to go, and (3) the economy produces too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials. What happens there is abject poverty, stunting, starvation, and population-driven violence.
A community is also trapped, if, because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this unhappy situation before long.
Most important - for the technical notes on this definition See
The common way to avoid thinking about entrapment is not to consider (1), (2), and (3) together. For example, Sir Richard argues that entrapment does not exist because Singapore were a huge population has long outgrown the carrying capacity (1) of its tiny island, is not trapped. Off course it isn't, because it has a thriving export economy (3) - the problem is those communities which don't have one - and which are unlikely to get one before they have outgrown the carrying capacities of their ecosystems (1), and their opportunities for migration (2). As you will soon see, many of his arguments are based on leaving out factor (3).
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Some of his worst arguments are marked like this. See particularly. There are so many very bad ones that it is hard to choose. The fact that he has been able to get away with them for so long, shows that there is a grave misunderstanding of what entrapment really is.
Figure 1. "Demographic entrapment for medical assistants". One would have thought that Sir Richard would have understood this, but it appears that he hasn't!
Sir Richard. ...It is Maurice King's obsession with
Demographic entrapment
Given King's dedicated concern with this concept, one owes him a careful statement as to why some of us who admire his other work are both so sceptical of the concept and so much against his single minded promotion of it. I myself have written several times explaining my position and on at least two occasions have publicly spoken strongly against it. So clearly have others like the distinguished demographers Tim Dyson and John Blacker. [5] But this latest presentation deserves yet another summary of the arguments explaining why demographic entrapment is both empirically wrong, operationally misleading and at times as presented by King, ethically abhorrent.
First the concept. As King recognizes, demographic entrapment is essentially a modern day presentation of the Malthusian argument, that population growth will sooner or later run up against the limits of food production, or in its modem form, up against the limits of the earth's stock of resources. King, however has made it more extreme by arguing that much of Africa, India and other parts of the developing world are already trapped.[7] In earlier presentations. King has argued that this calls not only for much more attention to family planning but for extreme measures, such as withholding medical care from children so that more of them would die rather than face a future of starvation and violence.
Malthusian concerns have risen and fallen over the years. Though Malthusian concerns were strong in the 19th century when UK population growth soared, from about 8 to 30 million, the dire prospects forecast by Malthus failed to materialize. Instead, real wages rose, life expectancy rose and fertility rates fell sharply, eventually to become a sustained decline. [8] Malthusian predictions were also made, apparently, of Rwanda and Burundi at the beginning of the 20th century, also forecasting imminent starvation.
In the 1960s, extreme Malthusian arguments were revived in relation to developing countries. In one dramatic call for action, Famine 1975, [9] published in 1967, William and Paul Paddock argued that the serious prospects of mass starvation in less than a decade meant that the United States was not only 'the sole hope of the hungry" but that it must adopt a policy triage and "decide to which countries it will send food, to which countries it will not." Their book presented a number of country case studies with boxes each ending with a box for the reader to tick classifying the country as "can't be saved", "walking wounded" or "manageable", in the sense that there was enough time to allow local officials to initiate effective birth control practices and to carry forward agricultural research and other forms of development. They added, "Washington may dally and shuffle and procrastinate, but the Moment of Truth will come when the President must make a choice whether to save India or to save Latin America". [10]
King's presentation focuses on the shortage of land as population rises. Over the last decade, he has begun to add qualifiers to his earlier presentation of entrapment. Now, he is careful to add that entrapment will follow if there are too many people and not enough land and there is nowhere for people to go and the economy produces too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials. (King should also have added a further "awf'' - providing that international development assistance is insufficient to cover necessary food imports, an important qualification given the readiness of even reluctant donors to provide emergency food aid when famine strikes and hits the headlines).
Unfortunately, King pays no attention to the serious arguments against his concept, nor to the high population density countries which have demonstrated the possibility of meeting the needs of their population, often with substantial advances in living standards. Among these one can quote
More relevant than total population density is rural population density, defined as rural population relative to available arable land. But even these figures fail to demonstrate that King's list of entrapped countries are more dense than others. According to this measure, rural population density in Malawi is 458, in Rwanda 901 and in Sub-Saharan Africa 377. These are again much lower than rural population density in a number of other countries, for instance Puerto Rico (2,798), Sri Lanka (1,660) Bangladesh (1,209), Egypt (1,217), Vietnam (1031), Mauritius, (691), Malaysia (541), and Korea (522). 12 Note that several of these are net food exporters [13] with low rates of child malnutrition and child mortality. Though Bangladesh is hardly a country without serious malnutrition, it should be noted that like Vietnam, it is a country where child malnutrition has been falling - by more than 25 per cent over the 1990s. [14]
In short, population density fails as a predictor of poverty, let alone of forthcoming disaster. It is of course a relevant factor as one important element in analysing the agricultural options a country faces - and all other things being equal, very high densities present additional challenges for agriculturally-dependent countries.
A further difficulty with King's concept of "demographic entrapment" is that over the years his own presentation of the problem and the actions required to respond to it keep changing. King has changed the number and location of countries which he argues are trapped, [15] or soon will be, and he has changed, fortunately, the action he calls for in countries which he argues are trapped. Today, in Primary Mother Care, he appears mostly to call for the adoption of the one child norm and to argue for action to help communities get out of entrapment and achieve "disentrapment". [16] At the other extreme some ten to twelve years ago. King argued that countries that were entrapped should withhold actions like oral rehydration and immunization which saved children's lives. He attacked UNICEF for promoting and supporting the extension of such actions to developing countries - which led one Indian commentator to argue, with heavy irony, that if Maurice truly believed this, he should follow his argument to its full logical conclusion - and call for the abolition of UNICEF and its replacement with UNICKEF, the United Nations International Children's Killing Fund. As it has developed most tragically, HIV/AIDS has indeed led to many million of child deaths as well as adult deaths especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, setting mortality rates back to the levels of the 1980s or even earlier. Fortunately, King in Primary Mother Care now treats this as a genuine tragedy and proposes action to try to limit such deaths.
Perhaps the most bizarre feature of King's obsessions in Primary Mother Care are his identification of the taboos - the 25 demons - which, he argues in chapter 25, prevent demographers, development economists, the great foundations, IPPF, UN agencies and officials and others (including the present author) from admitting the truth about demographic entrapment, even though they are well aware of it. King attributes this reluctance to various demons, including those arising from pressures from the United States, the CIA and other behind the scenes agencies. To King, the UN is itself caught up in this conspiracy.
If King is arguing that the UN, like many others including most demographers are unwilling to recognize King's version of "demographic entrapment" he is no doubt right. But the main reason is that they believe the concept is wrong, not because they secretly believe it to be correct but are afraid to acknowledge it publicly. [17] Indeed, in many places. King writes as if the UN is unwilling to speak openly about population problems and about the need for family planning. If King believes this, it is truly extraordinary.
Clicking on to the UN web-sites will make clear that many parts of the UN are highly aware of the need for the extension of family planning services and have long been engaged in supporting this as part of national planning and national health services. The UN and policy for population and development
Since 1969, UNFPA - now called, the UN Population Fund, has been actively engaged in the promotion of awareness of population issues, including problems presented by rapid population growth. It is the largest internationally funded source of population assistance to developing countries, providing support for countries to analyse their own situation and problems and support for the actions required to deal with them. [18]
Initially, this was a highly sensitive matter and the UN approached it with care. However, after the UN had organized the first world conference on population in Bucharest in 1974, developing countries became much more open on population matters. Within ten years, the number of countries which had some form of national population policy and family planning activities had increased from less than 20 to more than 100. [19] Today, there is hardly a country without such a policy and services - many and probably most receiving support from the UN itself- directly from UNFPA and probably indirectly from others like WHO and UNICEF.
As if this was not clear enough, one can note that every year the UN holds a World Population Day, to raise awareness of population issues and to stimulate groups within every country to ask about the adequacy of population policies and programmes in their own country. Three world conferences on population have been held and many others where issues of population and family planning have been an important element.
In every country, the UN and the World Bank are frequently engaged in meetings and conferences with government and other groups like university and health workers. It is hard to square all this with King's argument that the UN with demographers and others are in lockstep in denying the importance of population issues and the need for action.
It is true that the UN, while closely following China's experience, has never itself promoted the idea of a one child family policy. The first population conference in Bucharest in 1974 and the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, both ended with resolutions emphasising that all governments should "respect and ensure ..... the right of persons to determine in a free, informed and responsible manner, the number and spacing of their children".20 This appears to have been not only consistent with human rights but effective. Fertility rates have fallen in every region of the world and 56 countries comprising 44% of the world's population now have fertility rates at or below replacement level.
In fact, without adopting the coercive policies of China, many countries have reduced their fertility substantially and rapidly since the early 1970s. China's fertility rate today is 1.8 - the same as Norway's though higher than 14 other industrial countries and higher than in Hong Kong, Barbados, Singapore, Korea, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago and almost all of the 27 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The fertility rates in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Mauritius, though higher than China's, are also below replacement level. The one child family policy is evidently not the only way to achieve low birth rates.
Moreover, the one child family policy is not the only way to achieve a rapid reduction in fertility rates. China's fertility rate came down by 3.1 from 4.9 in 1970-75 to 1.8 today. In fact, more than 25 other countries have reduced their fertility rates by an even larger margin over this period, though starting and ending at higher absolute levels - including Kenya and Zimbabwe, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Thailand, Algeria, Jordan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Vietnam, several Caribbean islands, several of the oil states in the Middle East and several countries of Central America.
Sub-Saharan Africa.
The challenge in sub-Saharan Africa is however serious. Even if entrapment is a deeply flawed and erroneous concept, it does not mean that concerned citizens can sign a sigh of relief and get on with other pre-occupations. For those in Africa, and its supporters outside, the challenges of development remain as strong as ever, the more so in countries beset by HIV/AIDS, with high rates of population growth, often torn by conflict and often in desperate economic stagnation and decline. For citizens of the world, Africa remains - with some 14 least developed countries elsewhere - the continent with the greatest development challenges. This has long been recognized in the United Nations and the World Bank. Special programmes of support for the Least Developed Countries - today numbering some 49 - were called for in the first world conference on the LDCs in 1981 and in two subsequent conferences in 1991 and 2001. Unfortunately, the response by all but Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Netherlands has been deplorable. [22] More recently, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have devised their own programme - NEPAD, a New Partnership for African Development. So far, this has attracted strong rhetorical support and some promises - but much less evidence of enhanced levels of material support.
The Human Development Report 2003 (23) sets out a detailed analysis of what is needed to halve poverty in developing countries in the decade or so until 2015. This includes a careful analysis of the needs and actions for achieving each of the 7 goals - for reducing hunger and extreme poverty, for achieving universal primary education, for promoting gender equality and empowering women, for reducing child mortality, for improving maternal health (including access to reproductive health care and contraceptives), for combating HIV/AIDS and for ensuring environmental sustainability.
These goals have an unprecedented level of international consensus, having been agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000, attended by 147 heads of state and government. This of course is no guarantee that the commitments will all be honoured, though the past record of achieving goals set globally is certainly better than many commentators and cynics seem to think. In addition there is a critical Goal 8 - to develop a new Partnership for Development ..
This report - and many others - makes clear that the challenges are indeed great but that no country of the world is entrapped. It also makes clear that action in the area of reproductive health and population is important, but as part of a larger set of urgent and necessary policy and programmes, neither a panacea, nor a priority above all others. The challenge is to encourage all countries to adopt far more ambitious plans for development along these broader but still focused lines and to mobilize the international support for their achievement. It focuses on women's empowerment and girl's education as a critical part of the whole of development, including inter alia issues of population and family size. [24] This is the positive agenda deserving support against which arguments about demographic entrapment become a message of distraction and despair. [24]
Comment
(Some of it written in Kinshasa by candlelight)
"...King's obsession..." Whether or not I am am obsessed by demographic entrapment, makes no difference whatever, to whether or not it exists - which is the point at issue.
If one is in fact exploring a phenomenon as difficult as entrapment more or less single-handedly, obsession is exactly what the task requires!
...unless these sections were dropped..." The delegates of Oxford University Press argued hotly about the earlier version which was sent to them. They appear to have been worried about what was said about AIDS making disentrapment easier. This has since been made even clearer. They agreed to publish it provided it was cleared by their assessor, John Guillebaud, who refused to accept the figure below showing "The population policy lockstep" and arguing that demography in particular is corrupt. John would like to have had it changed to "demographers mis-represent the data".
I declined to accept this, since the demographic entrapment of much of a continent is the major challenge to demography. Never to discuss it can only mean that demography is corrupt!! This has veen a very costly stand on principle. I have spent several years on this book. It is very well regarded, and much needed - but there is nobody to distribute it. MacMillans want all mention of entrapment removed, etc! Such are the ramifications of the taboo.
I think particularly of Arnold Jeke, head of the Population Unit in Zomba, Malawi - the entrapment "basket case". He was asked by Colin Bullough, one of the editors, if he had ever heard of "entrapment"? He had not. Since he presumably holds a postgraduate degree, the demography his teachers presented him with can only be described as corrupt, since entrapment is about the only thing he really needs to understand. To argue that his teachers merely "misrepresented the data" is nonsense
I argue that to emphasise that demography is "corrupt" is so important that I decided to publish the book myself. Incidentally, I argue that, such is the power of the Demons, there are no corrupt individuals, there are only corrupt disciplines and institutions. See
Lockstep is a method of marching in very close file, so that each person's advancing leg is under that of the person in front, such that if only one person breaks step, the whole squad falls over. The US demographer Jason Finkle used it when he pointed out there is now such a tight consensus on global population policy, that nobody in the diagram dare step out of line and advocate any alternative policy. The most notable feature of the consensus is that nobody ever discusses demographic entrapment.
Sir Richard frequently refers to the UN agencies, or their products such as NEPAD, as if they absolute standards of impartial integrity - wereas they are in fact thoroughly "lockstepped" in that they never mention entrapment.
"...the politically censored version..." I am much concerned by why demographic entrapment is so taboo, and argue that 25 'Demons' are responsible. Demon 3 argues that, if the South has to reduce its fertility to avoid starvation and violence, we in the North should modify our resource consumption, and lead sustainable lifestyles. Since the United States (Demon 21) is likely to be most disturbed by this Demon, it would make good political sense for it to try to keep entrapment as taboo as possible, lest its luxurious lifestyles be further questioned. Substantial evidence is provided that this is in fact happening. There is great reluctance to admit it. Not only was John Guillebaud very reluctant to criticise the United States, but TALC (Teaching Aids at Low Cost), wanted all mention of the United States removed before it would distribute any copies. A Definitive Edition and a Politically Censored Edition had therefore to be prepared.
"...King defines demographic entrapment..." as the problem of communities exceeding the carrying capacity of their local ecosystems in a way which ends with starvation and violence.
"...King's version of demographic entrapment..." [4] It is not so much my version as the fact that there aren't so far any others - would that there were. A sufficient number of able people agree with me to reassure me that I am in fact "rational."
"...limits of the earth's stock of resources..."I am not interested in the Earth's stock of resources - I am interested in the carrying capacity (food producing ability) of local ecosystems.
The only resource I mention is grain, and then in answer to the question as to whether the world as a whole is trapped, I merely say "Perhaps?". See Section 2.11.
"...Tim Dyson and John Blacker..." Sir Richard does not say that Jack Caldwell, the most distinguished demographer of Africa, told me that he thinks that "Most of Africa, except perhaps Ghana" is demographically trapped.
"...India..." is worrying in that, although India can just feed itself now with high rates of malnutrition, its population is expected to increase by 50% and exceed that of China, with water is an even greater constraint than land. India with a population of just over one billion already has more than 3.2 people per hectare - UK = 2.4. The population is projected to rise to 1.36 billion by 2025 which would take them to over 4.3/ha, and on current trends to 1.6 billion by 2050 or over 5/ha. However it may have sufficient exports to exchange for the necessary grain to prevent starvation, and therefore not be trapped.
It could be that India itself is aware of its entrapment in that its present BJP government - hitherto very reticent in matters of population - is calling for "incentives and disincentives" for a 2-child norm. Will it soon be calling for a 1-child norm?
"... much of Africa..."Besides Figure 'X' (29.1), which is alarming in the extreme, we have the opinion of the continent's most eminent demographer, Jack Caldwell - that most of it is trapped!. It is impossible to argue that, Rwanda, for example is, not trapped.
"...withholding medical care from children..." I can truly say that if I were starting again, I would not start with the awesome dilemma that, in a severely trapped community, one more child mouth to feed is less for someone else. {55}I argued that measures for child survival don't necessarily have to be applied, because they can make the condition of a community worse. The individual doctor should, of course, always treat the individual patient. In a later paper {54}we pointed out that there is only a dilemma where there is a practical decision to be made, and that the practical decision is where to apply new new funds - to family planning or to child survival, and in what proportion?
This is Demon 13 - The high status of the child in western liberalism. Significantly, African colleagues particularly Fred Sai, and the late Olikoye Ransome-Kuti had no difficulty with this.
Tragically, in Malawi, we are now seeing the end-stage of "child survivalism" and the end stage of "the child survival revolution" - ever smaller land-holdings, and ever greater malnutrition and ecological destruction. This end-stage is merely another aspect of entrapment and is totally taboo to the UN agencies.
I sometimes wonder if I should have waited until I had got entrapment "tidy" - where I like to think it now is - before venturing into print. Unfortunately, it is only by the cut and thrust of venturing into print that one makes any progress. Incidently, that first paper of mine {55}that caused Unicef so much distress is still commonly used to promote discussion by students. I am also told that it caused Unicef to do something about family planning - for the first time ever!
"...Malthusian concerns have risen and fallen over the years..."Remarkably, they are now at an extraordinarily low ebb, despite Figure 'X'. This shows that Malthus is very much alive and well in Africa. The decennial International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) expected for 2004 has been cancelled. I argue that this low ebb is politically contrived by Demon 21 (The US Department of State), particularly through its domination of the UN Population Division. See.
"...the dire prospects forecast by Malthus failed to materialize..." The fact that Malthus was wrong about 19th Century Europe, does not mean that he will always be wrong. He is certainly correct for Rwanda now, and also seems likely to be correct for much of Africa.
"... Rwanda..." Malthus is certainly hard at work in Rwanda see Section 2.7
"...In one dramatic call for action..."Unfortunately, the fact that the Paddocks got it wrong, does not remove the awesome portent of Figure 'X'.
"...Over the last decade, he has begun to add qualifiers.."I have now been studying Entrapment for 15 years, It would be remarkable if my understanding of it had not increased over this time.
"... emergency food aid..." Emergency food aid has inevitably to be emergency food aid. It is quite impractical to think of a country, still less a continent (Africa) relying on emergency food aid indefinitely. Not only are there difficulties
supplying enough food aid for long enough, but it would destroy the culture of peasant communities in the process.
"...high population density countries..." This is Argument 17. Sir Richard entirely forgets that the crux of entrapment is communities exceeding the carrying capacities of their ecosystems before they are sufficiently economically developed to link themselves up to the rest of the world so as to provide the exports which can be exchanged for food and other essentials. The cause of exceeding their carrying capacities is rapid population growth see Vanga
With sufficient economic development almost any population density is possible. The problem is the race between population and development, with population losing that race.
At present, this population density argument is not listed in Section 29.8 as being one of the 16 arguments which development economists use to to avoid confronting demographic entrapment. I had not previously imagined it could be so used, since it is so obvious. I have therefore just inserted it as Argument 17.
"...rural population density relative to available arable land..." Much depends on the quality of the soil and the rain falling on it. Thus very high population densities are possible on the high quality volcanic soils of Rwanda and Indonesia with abundant rainfall. The leached sandy soils that were once rain forest support much lower population densities - see
"...predictor of poverty, let alone of forthcoming disaster..." The critical predictor of a disaster is for a community to exceed the carrying capacity of its ecosystem, and for it to have nowhere to go, and for it to have too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials - demographic entrapment. This is the predictor of disaster not population density alone.
"...challenges..." The challenge is of course, avoiding demographic entrapment.
"...actions required... keep changing..." If one studies a powerful taboo intensively over many years, it would be remarkable if one's ideas about did not change. Nevertheless they have been remarkably stable for at least 10 years. It was eight years before I located Demon 21. See. My understanding of entrapment continues to develop, and long may it continue to do so. For example, in the last few days have I have posted a minimal improvement in the definition of entrapment on this website. See
"...UNICKEF..."I let this speak for itself. I might add that I spent 5 years constructing a system of Primary Child Care, which was so well received that it is now having a second edition with WHO.
"....Perhaps the most bizarre feature of King's obsessions ..."This is Sir Richard's only 'interesting' comment. If one argues that there is no such thing as entrapment as defined above, there can be no taboo, because something that does not exist cannot have a taboo. Since the taboo also does not exist, there can be no 'reasons' for it. It is proving very useful to call these 'reasons' its 'Demons'. So no wonder Sir Richard has trouble with 'Demons' - while at the same time being powerfully influenced by the taboo, which, since it surrounds something he does not recognize, he cannot - openly - admit to!!! Paradoxically, he is powerfully in thrall to (dominated by) the very Demons whose existence he denies. For more on Demons, see.
I am now writing this in a health meeting in Kinshasa. None of the participants have had any difficulty with 'les Dèmons' - or with the reality of entrapment, although there is - very properly - much doubt as to how much of Congo(Zaire) might be trapped. Le Medicin chef for the North Kivu - which the Belgians had long considered trapped - almost 'fell about my neck' and implores me to visit it. Le piège demographique, and depiègement (in Kituba kukatula kigonzo) have been discussed with great vigor and not a trace of 'aggro' (anger). It is proving much easier to discuss entrapment in Congo than in London or in The Institute of Development Studies in Sussex - Sir Richard's base.
"...pressures from the United States..." I have just shown the conference (in Kinshasa, see above) a 'PowerPoint' of the 'bloody good good knee'. Several Americans here have said that they completely agree with my politics. The evidence for incriminating Demon 21 therefore continues to mount.
. "...as if the UN is unwilling to speak openly about population problems..." The UN fails absolutely to speak about the gravest of all population problems - demographic entrapment. It fails to grasp the intensity of the family planning is now necessary, or the scale of the fertility reduction that is now required for disentrapment. The UN does not do nearly enough about family planning.When he was senior adviser to the UNDP, Sir Richard once asked me: "Supposing you are right about entrapment? What difference would it make to what we are already doing in family planning, education, etc.". I replied: "It would add immensely to the scale and the urgency of what UNDP is now doing". There was no reply.
"...in lockstep..." What they are in lockstep about is their unanimity in failing to recognise demographic entrapment.
"...first world conference on population in Bucharest in 1974..." Whatever the population debate may have been in the past, it has never been more silent than it is now. Despite the urgency of confronting Figure 'X, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) expected for 2004 has now been cancelled. This was to have been the sequel to the Cairo conference in 1994. Demon 21 has been very active indeed!
"...there is hardly a country without such a policy and services..." Indeed, yet even in such tightly trapped countries as Rwanda and Malawi, there is never any discussion of the need for the intensive family planning necessary for disentrapment. Demographic entrapment remains tightly taboo to IPPF - International Planned Parenthood Federation.
"...respect and ensure ..... the right of persons to determine...have, the number and spacing of their children...". Unfortunately, the human rights movement has never debated the conflicting interests of the individual versus those of the community in deciding how many children a couple should have. This is why the consensus that most urban Chinese have reached, that the only responsible family size is one hild only, is such a commendable human achievement. See
"...China's fertility rate today is 1.8..." In 1970 China's total fertility was about six. Had China not instituted its one-child policy in the 1970s, its fertility rate would not have been as low as it is now.
"...The one child family policy is evidently not the only way to achieve low birth rates..."No, but it may be the only way to reduce them sufficiently fast. Consider the case of Rwanda where total fertility is 6.8 and which has already exceeded the carrying capacity of its ecosystem.
"...UNFPA funding amounts to about $250 million per year..." This is only a small fraction of what is needed, particularly in Africa.
"...though starting and ending at higher absolute levels..." Where the fall in fertility ends seems likely to be very important indeed - if indeed it has an end.
"...the challenges of development remain as strong as ever..." In fact , they are probably probably more difficult than they ever were, with periods of 'de-development' too often canceling previous gains, as in Mobutu's Zaire, Mugabe's Zimbabwe and Idi Amin's Uganda. If development is ever going to catch up with population, population growth is going to have to be curtailed by every legitimate means possible.
"...unfortunately, the response by all but Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Netherlands has been deplorable..." This is hardly surprising. If development plans had realistically dealt with 'disentrapment', instead of having been the pastiche that they were, the response would probably have been overwhelming.
"...NEPAD, a New Partnership for African Development..." This too is hardly surprising, since it makes no mention of population whatever - an extraordinary omission in view of Figure 'X'.
"...halve poverty in developing countries in the decade or so until 2015... " The very worst poverty is that of the demographically trapped. Any realistic attempt to relieve poverty, especially the severest poverty has to address disentrapment.
"...hunger and extreme poverty..." These are at their worst among the demographically trapped, for whom disentrapment is essential.
"...universal primary education..." Unfortunately, alone this does not reduce fertility fast enough for disentrapment.
"...ensuring environmental sustainability..." The demographically trapped are among the most vigorous destroyers of their environment - as in North Kivu. The rapid reduction of population growth necessary for disentrapment is therefore crucial to environmental sustainability.
"...no country of the world is entrapped..." If demographic entrapment is taboo to the UN agencies, of course no UN documents mention it!
From Sir Richard's end-notes
"...where fertility has not even started to fall in one country in three..." My data is from: Guengant J, May JF, Impact of the proximate determinants on the future course of fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. Workshop on Prospects for Fertility Decline in High Fertility Countries. Population Division, United Nations. I will check the this up. However, even one country in five is bad enough for the countries involved!
"...Malawi, where fertility rates have not fallen Kenya and Uganda are net agricultural exporters..." I presume it than that food aid which is frequently required in Malawi, is not counted as a trade import. I have not examined the entrapment status of Uganda and Kenya.
"...corrupted by US policy and marching "in lockstep... I have just been lecturing in Kinchasa, where incidentally there is no taboo on entrapment. After my lecture a group of some US officials said that they agreed with my politics! Yet more evidence implicating Demon 21.
"...more harm than good..." I argue that a maintaining the taboo on entrapment and perpetuating the lockstep, deprives communities of the assistance they urgently need, and does immense harm.
"...increasing soil fertility in sub-Saharan Africa (Box 4.3),..." Both the methods suggested - increased fallows and green manures - require additional land, which is often in short supply.
"...women's empowerment and girls education..." I suggest that the whole book is empowering. Female education appears in Figure 22-7 and is such a large part of the conventional wisdom that little need be said about it. Unfortunately, it does not act fast enough for disentrapment.
"...family size in relation to the various challenges facing poor families..." Mama Mbewe (our Malawian village Mother) and I will discuss this in the next printing.
End-notes
1 Primary Mother Care and Population: politically censored edition, edited by Glen Mola, Jim Thomton, Michael Breen, Colin Bullough, John Guillebaud and Frank Addo, published privately by Maurice King, Knowledge Engineer (Spiegl Press, Stamford, UK) 200.
2 Stop Press, preceding the Foreword in Primary Mother Care and Population.
3 Foreword
4 Chapter 29 The Population Demons.
5 See the quotations in Chapter 29, Section 29.9.
6 World Bank, World Development Report 1984, (Oxford University Press, New York) p80.
7 In Primary Mother Care King argues also that a community is also trapped if, because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this unhappy situation [of entrapment] before long. This surely would cover King's view of India a decade ago, though it would seem not today. Letter to Kofi Annan, Chapter 29
8 ibid, p57.
9 William and Paul Paddock, Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive, (Little Brown and Co.,Boston, 1967) p 206-29 quoted in Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, (Norton, New York) 1976, edition edited by Philip Appleman, including contemporary opinion and critical essays.
l0 ibid p. 232.
11 All population densities from World Bank, World Development Indicators 2002 (World Bank, Washington DC) 2002, p 18-20.
12 ibid p134-136.
13 The World Bank, World Development Indicators 2002,(World Bank, Washington) 2002 also suggests that Malawi, where fertility rates have not fallen Kenya and Uganda are net agricultural exporters. Figures obtained by comparing data in tables 4.5 with 4.6, pages 220-226.
14 UNICEF, Progress since the World Summit for Children: a statistical review (UNICEF, New York) 2001, p 4
15 Primary Mother Care seems to admit some of these changes. He now says that "our concern is again with Africa, where fertility has not even started to fall in one country in three. By my count, there are in fact 9 countries where fertility rates have not fallen, about one in five of the 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and less than one in five of the 50 countries in Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, fertility rates have fallen from 6.8 to 5.4, most of the fall being over the last decade. (See HDR 1992 which shows the fertility rate for Sub-Saharan Africa as 6.5).
16 See Primary Mother Care, section 2.3.
17 King is honest enough to quote John Blacker, who says: "I feel some duty to say that your depiction of the world's demographers corrupted by US policy and marching "in lockstep" is unutterable rubbish, laced with a strong tot of paranoia" Primary Mother Care, section 29.9. A column later. Blacker adds, "I have sometimes wondered whether you [King], with your extremist stance, haven't done more harm than good."
18 UNFPA funding amounts to about $250 million per year, about two thirds used for reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health, to refine approaches to adolescent reproductive health etc. and nearly one third for developing population and development strategies and helping countries build capacity for population programming. The rest is used for advocacy to mobilize resources and political commitment for population activities. See the UNFPA website www.unfpa.org
19 See United Nations, Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, Review and Appraisal of
the World Population Plan of Action: 1984 Report, United Nations, New York, 1986.
20 United Nations, Report of the United Nations World Population Conference 1974, E/CONF. 60/19 (UN, New York, 1975), p. 11
21 Data from Table 5, Demographic trends, in UNDP, Human Development Report 2003, (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003), pages 250-253.
22 Luxembourg has also provided 0.26 of its GNI to the least developed countries but it is in absolute terms a very small donor.
23 UNDP, Human Development Report 2003, (Oxford University Press, New York) 2003. See especially the overview and the Millennium Development Compact. Chapter 1 sets out the background to the goals and chapter 2 Priority challenges in meeting the goals. Chapter 4 deals with public policies to improve people's health and education, including reductions in child mortality, expansion of education for girls and other actions in reproductive health and the provision of contraceptives which over time lead to a lowering of fertility and smaller families. There are also interesting boxes on increasing soil fertility in sub-Saharan Africa (Box 4.3), on military spending or education (Box 4.5) and on policy priorities and technical interventions (Box 4.7) which deals with reducing child and maternal mortality, including reproductive health.
24 As one final comment on Primary Mother Care, the emphasis on women's empowerment and girls education is not only underplayed but so also are the issues of family size in relation to the various challenges facing poor families in both rural and urban areas.