A good small opinion piece stating the obvious for the person who has their eyes wide open; Europe & North America (the Global North) wants to reduce population of other nations, just so more resources are available for their own populations.
This cry of "world does not have enough resources to sustain billions more people" & hence, we all need to start working on family planning & reduce world population is a complete lie. Ironically enough, European & North American countries incentivize human breeding in the guise that they need to increase their population, whereas, people in Asia, Africa, & Latin America are subjected to family planning lectures & medicines.
If the Global North is looking at its finances for the future & seeing a huge shortfall, & plugging that shortfall means that more tax-paying citizens & their industries needing labour are required, & since, it is so worried about the developing world not being able to sustain their growing populations, then why not open up the immigration process. Why not make the immigration process easier & hassle-free, so more people from the developing regions can move to developed European & North American countries, to help further develop their host countries & their own individual social, & financial, well-being. It's a win-win solution for all. But, no, that's not what the West wants.
As the author correctly states in the conclusion that all this talk of overpopulation & unsustainable population growth for the developing countries, is "because some other nations want those resources for their own people instead."
As I always say that population growth is not the problem for the increasing unsustainability, & hence, population control won't solve the problem, but, the actual problem lies with the unsustainable & disproportionate use of available resources. As the author points out in the piece, the West uses a lot more resources, proportionate to its population, than the developing countries of the world. Hence, the real solution lies in controlling the use of resources. Can the West do that; reduce the unsustainable use of resources?
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When you arrive in Europe for the first time, the first shock you get is seeing how overpopulated the place is, especially the western part.
A small country like France, which is 5 times smaller than the Democratic Republic of Congo, has about the same population – 67 million inhabitants. The UK is smaller than Gabon, but has a population of more than 60 million inhabitants, compared to Gabon’s population of just over 1.5 million. The worst example is a micro country like Belgium (just over 30000 km square, 167 times smaller than the Congo) which has a population of 11 million. That’s 365 people per km square, compared to the DRC’s rate of 30.
The first question you ask yourself is how they manage to feed themselves in a resource-poor continent like Europe? Why do they have so many kids when Europe is already the only continent to send more than half a billion economic and political refugees to other richer places of the world during the last five centuries? Is it because of the high fertility rate of their men or because of the cold weather which forces them to spend lots of time inside with only one activity left … copulation!
For many people concerned about overpopulation, Africa takes the centre of attention because of the recent growth of its population. But the concept of overpopulation is a fraud and a convenient ideology, because it ignores impact per capita (per one person) and focuses on simple numerics.
In reality, the USA consumes 25% of the world’s resources while its population is only 5% of the total. The west as a block - the USA and Europe - represents slightly less than 15% of the world’s population, but its consumption far outstrips most of the rest of the world, with one study finding that the US, Europe and Japan together suck up 80% of the world’s natural resources.
Africa, as a whole, has a population smaller than China, and a total GDP which is half that of a small country like France. Considering that it’s an already overpopulated continent, it’s surprising that many European countries give incentives to families to make more babies. And, for an already underpopulated continent, Africa is crowded with western overpopulation experts giving money to NGOs and governments to stop population growth. In the meantime, China is abandoning its one child policy to boost its population.
It is only in Africa that we talk about having population reduction funded by western NGOs and governments. Is it because Africa does not have resources to feed 2 billion people? No. It’s because some other nations want those resources for their own people instead.
I hope you won’t bite on this new covert war on the poor – another distraction from the real culprits. The world is overpopulated, so let’s have less rich people. That should be the real agenda.
Mawuna Remarque Koutonin is the editor of SiliconAfrica.com and a social activist for Africa Renaissance.
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