    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 12, 1999]
    [Page 1757]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Statement on World Population Growth
    October 12, 1999

        Today we mark the day that the world's population reportedly reaches
    6 billion. It took just 12 years--from 1987 to today--for the world's
    population to expand from 5 to 6 billion people. We should be thankful
    that people today live longer and healthier lives than ever before. But
    over the next few years, this rapid growth and its effect on our
    environment and quality of life will pose difficult challenges for all
    of us.
        In 1994 the United States helped forge a consensus at the
    International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt,
    on a comprehensive approach to stabilizing world population growth. We
    agreed to work with other nations to help prevent the spread of HIV/
    AIDS, to improve the status of women, to enhance educational
    opportunities for children, and to support voluntary family planning and
    related health care.
        My administration has made important strides in meeting these
    objectives. At home, we have increased funding for family planning and
    reproductive health services, which have helped reduce teen pregnancies
    and abortions. Overseas, we have invested more than $5.5 billion in over
    100 countries on health and population initiatives and on women's
    empowerment.
        We have also worked to protect our environment and ensure that it
    can sustain the development needs of a growing population. We are
    learning that technology can help developing countries grow while
    bypassing some of the environmental costs of the industrial age. We must
    promote that technology so that we can address both climate change and
    the challenge of providing clean energy for all the world's citizens.
        Finally, we have recognized that the best way to stabilize
    population growth is to fight poverty and to build healthy, growing
    economies in the developing world. The debt relief package the world's
    wealthiest nations agreed to in Cologne this year will help us do that.
    Last month, I went even further, announcing that the United States will
    forgive 100 percent of the debt owed us by the world's least developed
    countries if they will use the savings to address basic human needs. And
    I committed the United States to a new effort to accelerate the
    development of vaccines for diseases that devastate the developing
    world.
        As we mark this day, the central question we face is not simply how
    many people will live on this planet, but how they will live. We must
    refuse to accept a future in which one part of humanity lives on the
    cutting edge of a new economy, while another part lives on the edge of
    survival. And we must work for the day when all people have the
    education, health, security, safe environment, and freedom to lift their
    lives.