[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 28, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E67]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE EUROPEAN POPULATION FORUM 2004

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JAMES C. GREENWOOD

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 28, 2004

  Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, the global community, particularly the 
poorest countries of the world, face significant problems in the area 
of reproductive health and family planning. A critical shortage of 
international funding for family planning exacerbates severe threats to 
maternal and child health. To examine current population developments, 
the European Population Forum 2004 was held January 12-14, under the 
auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the 
United Nations Population Fund. I encourage members of this body to 
take note of the following statement written by Werner Fornos, 
president of the Population Institute and recipient of the 2003 United 
Nations Population Award. The following article, which appeared in the 
International Herald Tribune on January 14, 2004, sheds light on the 
dangerous and false belief that population growth is no longer the 
global concern it was a decade ago.

         [From the International Herald Tribune, Jan. 14, 2004]

                            A Global Concern


                    A Population Crisis Still Looms

                           (By Werner Fornos)

       As the European Population Forum in Geneva draws to a 
     close, coming to grips with high fertility rates remains a 
     daunting international challenge, particularly in the poorest 
     countries of the world where population growth continues to 
     outstrip resources, place pressure on the environment, and 
     exacerbate social disintegration. Despite encouraging recent 
     reports from the United Nations, human growth remains an 
     issue that requires priority attention around the globe if 
     there is to be realistic hope for achieving sustainable 
     development.
       Only 3 years ago, the United Nations estimated that by mid-
     century the planet's human population would have risen from 
     about 6.2 billion to 9.3 billion. More recent figures project 
     the 2050 population to be 400 million less than the previous 
     estimate. When the numbers are examined more closely, 
     however, we find that the population of the industrialized 
     countries is estimated to remain constant through 2050 at 
     about 1.2 billion. Virtually all human growth will occur in 
     the developing world, where the population is expected to 
     increase from the current 5.1 billion people to 7.7 billion.
       Considering that developing countries bear the brunt of the 
     earth's grinding poverty, desperate hunger, disease, 
     illiteracy and unemployment, the recent downward revision of 
     demographic figures does not warrant celebration. In fact, 
     some developing countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali, 
     Niger, Somalia, and Yemen, are likely to quadruple their 
     population by mid-century.
       Over the past 40 to 45 years, the world's population has 
     doubled. But annual population growth has been decreasing 
     since the 1990's, from a high approaching 90 million to less 
     than 80 million. These declines have spawned a pervasive myth 
     that population growth is no longer a matter of global 
     magnitude--a myth that is spread, unsurprisingly, by the same 
     crowd that 10, 15, and 20 years earlier insisted that 
     population growth was never a problem in the first place: 
     religious extremists and reactionary political ideologues.
       The irony of the myth is that this year marks the 10th 
     anniversary of the International Conference on Population and 
     Development. That meeting, in Cairo, established important 
     quantitative goals for the next 20 years, including efforts 
     to ensure that every pregnancy is intended; to protect women 
     from unsafe abortion; to promote education for all and to 
     close the gender gap in education; to combat AIDS; and to 
     bring women into the mainstream of development.
       A key concern, however, is that expenditures for 
     implementing family planning and reproductive health programs 
     have fallen well short of the $17 billion that the Cairo 
     meeting estimated would be required by 2000.
       Industrialized countries were expected to come up with one-
     third of that total, or $5.7 billion, but by 2001 had 
     contributed only $2.5 billion. Developing countries and 
     private sources, expected to spend $11.3 billion on 
     population activities by 2000 had contributed only $7 billion 
     by 2001.
       Global goals for drastically reducing poverty, maternal and 
     child mortality, illiteracy and hunger will be mere wishful 
     thinking unless and until population growth is substantially 
     lowered. For this to happen, the international community must 
     clearly understand that to achieve an improved quality of 
     life for all, now is the time to accelerate population 
     stabilization efforts, rather than retreat from them.

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