Earth Summit Ignoring Population Rio De Janeiro, June 10th, 1992 (IPS) -- the director of the united nations fund for population activities (unfpa), nafis sadik, decried the lack of concern over population problems at the united nations conference on environment and development (unced) taking place in rio de janeiro. "less than ten developing nations acknowledge the connection between population and environmental problems in their statements to the earth summit," sadik said wednesday. "two decades ago, the first u.n. conference on environment was held in stockholm, and population was not included in the agenda; it still is not being properly addressed in rio,'' she added. the unfpa director said that solving population problems will be a key to implementing sustainable development -- one of the earth summit's major goals. currently, the world's population is growing by 97 million people per year, and it is projected there will be 6 billion people sharing the planet by the year 2000. sadik said that 'agenda 21' -- unced's comprehensive plan for improving and protecting the environment for the coming century "is not perfect, but is a good guide to the necessary changes." sadik hopes that the global agenda for the next decade will also address fundamental aspects of population problems and unjust social systems. there is a direct relation between poverty, population and environmental destruction, she said. "there is a clear connection between the number of inhabitants, the amount of natural resources, the per person consumption, and the waste produced by consumption," she added. sadik pointed out that a unfpa study of 82 countries shows a direct relation between declining birth rates and increased per capita income. colombia, fiji, indonesia, south korea, sri lanka, mauricios, mexico, tailand and tunisia were pointed out as having successfully implemented population control policies. other countries with lower birth rates include, botswana, cape verde, egypt, kenya and zimbabwe. speaking alongside sadik was alvaro umana, former costa rican energy minister and member of the governing council of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (unesco). umana cited costa rica as an example of government investment in social spending, particularly education, reflected in lower birth rates. "in latin america," he said, "women without education have on the average 7.6 children, whereas women who have completed secondary school average 3.6." both sadik and umana agreed, however, that ultimately every woman and couple must have the option to decide just how many children to have. source: en.unced.general, 13 June 1992. Back...