Page:Brundtland Report.djvu/100



1. In 1985, some 80 million people were added to a world population of 4.8 billion. Each year the number of human beinqs increases, but the amount of natural resources with which to sustain this population, to improve the quality of human lives, and to eliminate mass poverty remains finite. On the other hand, expanding knowledge increases the productivity of resources.

2. Present rates of population growth cannot continue. They already compromise many governments' abilities to provide education, health care. and food security for people, much less their abilities to raise living standards. This gap between nunbers and resources is all the more compelling because so much of the population growth is concentrated in low-income countries, ecologically disadvantaged regions, and poor households.

3. Yet the population issue is not solely about numbers. And poverty and resource degradation can exist on thinly populated lands, such as the drylands and the tropical forests. People are the ultimate resource. Improvements in education, health, and nutrition allow them to better use the resources they command, to stretch them further. In addition, threats to the sustainable use of resources come as much from inequalities in people's access to resources and from the ways in which they use them as from the she%r numbers of people. Thus concern over the 'population problem' also calls forth concern for human progress and human equality.

4. Nor are population growth rates the challenge solely of those nations with high rates of increase. An additional person in an industrial country consume far more and places far greater pressure on natural resources than an additional person in the Third World. Consumption patterns and preferences are as important as numbers of consumers in the conservation of resources.

5. Thus many governments must work on several fronts to limit population growth; to control the impact of such growth on resources and, with increasing knowledge, enlarge their range and improve their productivity: to realise human potential so that people can better husband and use resources: and to provide people with forms of social security other than large numbers of childen. The means of accomplishing these goals will vary from country to country, but all should keep in mind that sustainable economic growth and equitable access to resources ate two of more certain routes towards lower fertility rates.

6. Giving people the means to choose the size of their families is not just a method of keeping population in balance /…