[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 41 (Monday, October 18, 1999)]
[Page 2015]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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.