Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 00:30:09 EST
Subject: Re: 40% deaths environmental--rebuttal (fwd)
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I know that my response was broad but I my intent was to get to the
complexity of the overpopulation dilemma. It is difficult to get countries to
talk to each other about reproduction control because it is seen as a form of
culture control. Everyone is suspicious of everyone else. Each country sees
the population problem as "someone else's" problem. Suzanne
Dear Suzanne,
I think that it is not merely that each country sees the problem as
"someone else's" but that they see different problems and that
different groups within each society may well see different problems.
Very rarely in my experience, is the problem seen a matter of
reproduction control. In Uganda, where I live for part of each
year, the pressing problem at government level appears to be seen as
a problem of ensuring food security for a rapidly growing population
by improving agronomy and the internal marketing system. At the
local level of the village elders the problem is that of a scarcity
of land for one's children necessitating their moving to the towns.In
neither case is the pressing problem seen as that of absolute
numbers of population; it is far more a question of being able to
afford the intitial finance for a more intensive and commercial
agriculture. It is only at the academic level that the question of
an optimum level of population is considered. At the local level I
think that any consideration of population management will have to
ride pick-a-back on more immediate concerns such as AIDS control,
land ownership and small scale finance. The real question, I
suppose, is whether population levels are a problem if they are not
perceived as such.
Hugh
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