Population Expert Warns of Global Overcrowding
Contact: George Manlove at 581-3756
Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute in Washington. D.C. this week warned audiences throughout state and at UMaine on Tuesday that failing to manage alarming population growth in poverty-stricken nations likely will be “the ultimate global blunder, from which there is no recovery.”
On campus at the invitation of Bahman Baktiari, associate professor of political science and director of the International Affairs Program, Fornos says counties including Germany, Austria, and Italy are experiencing declining populations, and even Mexico, whose average family size was seven children in 1972, has voluntarily reduced family sizes to fewer than three. And China is undertaking efforts to stem its population growth.
Countries including India and Africa, however, which are among the fastest growing populations in the world, have not undertaken significant efforts to curtail birthrates, and are encouraged to do so by neither the United States, which founded the United Nations Population Fund decades ago but has withdrawn funding, nor the Vatican, because of birth control issues.
The world population is now 6.5 billion and growing by 76 million a year, Fornos says. The world cannot support so many people, he says.
To create an image for his audiences Tuesday, Fornos compared the state of Maine, with its 1.3 million people, to Bangladesh — about the same size geographically, but with population of 150 million and expected to double in the next few decades.
Failing to acknowledge the population crisis, he says, is a “reprehensible retreat from reality.”
The population crisis already has depleted natural resources including food, fresh water and agricultural land suitable for farming, and has triggered massive healthcare problems and social disintegration of equal seriousness, Fornos says.
He suggests four ways to approach the problem, which Fornos says has largely to do with “rogue male” behavior: eradicate female illiteracy; provide full employment opportunities, with pay, for everyone, especially women; reduce infant and maternal mortality; and provide universal knowledge about ways women can postpone or avoid pregnancy.
Fornos encouraged his audiences to actively show their support for Maine’s four congressional delegates, who all have supported the work of the Population Institute.
In fact, Sen. Olympia Snowe and Rep. Tom Allen serve on the institution’s advisory committee. Because of disagreements over perceptions of birth control, Fornos says, the Bush Administration and a majority of congressional Republicans have opposed funding for the U.N. Population Fund.
“If there is going to be an improvement, a turnaround, it is going to be done at your initiative,” Fornos told UMaine students.