SUSTAINABILITY, PART III: CLIMATE, POPULATION, AND UNCED+5

• Lindsey Grant
• October 1, 1997
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
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SUSTAINABILITY, PART III: CLIMATE, POPULATION, AND UNCED+5
An NPG Forum Paper
by Lindsey Grant
October 1997

Most major world environmental and social problems can be solved only if population policy is an integral part of the solution, but population growth is only occasionally identified as part of the problem and population policies are almost never proposed as part of the solution. I have given a private nickname to the phenomenon: “zip re-pop” — nothing about population. In June, the United Nations again demonstrated this blindered approach. If it were only bureaucrats’ nattering, perhaps it wouldn’t motto; but it was a UN meeting in 1992 that led governments to pledge action on climate warming, and the UN remains a sponsor of the effort. If it will not recognize the connection with population policy, hopes of doing anything about climate warming are remote indeed, and so are any hopes for successful action on the other environmental issues on the table.

The United Nations is a good place to observe the “zip re-pop” phenomenon. Last June, the UN General Assembly held a Special Session on Agenda 21, or “UNCED+5” — i.e. “UNCED plus five years.” (UNCED was the UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It passed “Agenda 21,” which is a list of environmental action proposals, most notably an agreement that industrial nations should cut their carbon emissions by 10% from 1990 to 2000 to help forestall further human impact on the climate.)

The June meeting was to be the triumph of “sustainable development.” A special UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) spent years preparing for the meeting, which was intended to summarize progress on “Agenda 21” and to initiate further action. What it did, rather, was to underline the problem of compartmentalized thinking. There were reports— separate little boxes — covering most of the world’s environmental and resource issues. There was even a box about population growth. That growth is an overarching issue and driver of the other issues. The connection was recognized in some of the other reports, but none of them suggested that population policy can be part of the solution.

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