UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
|
| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
|
"ICPD 94"
January 1994
Number 11
Newsletter of the International Conference on Population and
Development, Cairo, Egypt, 5-13 September 1994
AUTHOR PAUL KENNEDY POSES CHALLENGE OF 21ST CENTURY
The challenge posed by demography and technology overshadows all
others in shaping the future of the world, historian and
best-selling author Paul Kennedy said in a lecture in a series
leading to the 1994 International Conference on Population and
Development.
"It [the challenge] is the backstop to the Cairo conference
and to every other effort to improve our global condition as we
move towards the 21st century," Professor Kennedy told his New York
audience.
All human affairs -- environmental impact, modernization,
North- South relations, human rights -- have had a demographic
dimension that increased rather then decreased over time, Professor
Kennedy said, while the other major transforming force has been
scientific and technological invention.
Thomas Malthus, in his pessimistic, late-18th century "Essay
on Population as it Affects the Prospects of Humankind", said
agricultural production could not keep up with with a north-west
European population that was doubling every 25 years. He predicted
social instability, malnutrition and epidemics in England.
WHY MALTHUS WAS WRONG
Malthus was proved wrong about Britain, Professor Kennedy said,
because of increased migration -- "in the course of the 19th
century, 20 million left the United Kingdom alone" -- along with a
gradual increase in agricultural production and the astonishing
improvements in manufacturing technology now known as the
Industrial Revolution.
In other countries where there was a large population increase
and no industrial revolution, however, per capita levels and
standards of living were lower at the end of the 19th century than
at the beginning, Professor Kennedy said.
In today's world of high population growth the options of
migration and agricultural and industrial revolution seem again
limited, especially for people in the developing world, he said.
Yet, if no innovative package of reforms is instituted, conditions
are likely to become more serious for future generations.
Professor Kennedy, 48, is the author of 11 books, including
"The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and "Preparing for the 21st
Century." He holds a doctorate from Oxford University in Britain
and teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
In introducing him, ICPD Secretary-General Dr. Nafis Sadik
said she hoped his warnings about rapid population growth would
stimulate the international community to take early and decisive
action so that his somewhat pessimistic conclusions in "Preparing
for the 21st Century" might prove wrong.
Professor Kennedy said: "I think that the whole reason for
Cairo '94, the whole reason for the existence of a large number of
NGOs, as well as international organizations, the whole reason for
concern about population and environment, is to try and challenge
and to stimulate fellow human beings to think through intelligent
responses."
He urged reformers to claim the ethical and intellectual high
ground in their efforts to face the challenge he described.
"We need a definition of human security and human dignity.... We
have to admit that while we follow different belief systems and
cultural systems, there's something that transcends all of that,"
Professor Kennedy said.
"We need a global ethic at the basis ... because we cannot
argue with any lesser argument. We need to bring in the theologians
rather than exclude them.... These are not just technical fixes;
it's not just contraceptive devices, though they are significant.
It is more than that."
He described a theological discussion at Notre Dame
University, a Roman Catholic institution in South Bend, Indiana,
which concluded that "human dignity was an essentially moral
argument which meant that if a poor woman in East Africa already
with four or five children wished to get access to inexpensive or
free and safe contraceptives the better to be able to bring up her
existing children and not drag down her dignity, there was a
profoundly moral, Christian essence in responding to that."
Another response to the challenge was to give more publicity
to the good coming out of science and technology, including adding
courses on the relationship between science, technology and society
to school curricula, he said.
Among the developments that are not sufficiently well-known
but that engineers have written him about are impending
breakthroughs in solar energy, and photovoltaic power systems for
both the national and village levels, he said.
At the request of the Alfred Nobel Institute of Norway
Professor Kennedy inaugurated an annual spring lecture series in
Oslo in 1992 on topics relevant to the Nobel Peace Prize.
Theodore Kheel, chairman of the Eminent Citizens Committee for
Cairo '94, which sponsored the 9 December lecture, announced that
Professor Kennedy had also accepted a UN request that he head a
group to examine the entire United Nations system and recommend
changes for the 21st century.
The first lecture in the Eminent Citizens' series was given by
actress Jane Fonda.