32 ELR 10559 | Environmental Law Reporter | copyright © 2002 | All rights reserved

The Importance of Population Growth to Sustainability

Anne H. Ehrlich is Associate Director/Policy Coordinator at the Center for Conservation Biology and Senior Research Associate, Department of Biological Sciences, both at Stanford University. James Salzman is a Professor of Law at Washington College of Law, American University. The authors are grateful for the research assistance provided by Jamie Abrams.

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Introduction

If one surveys the range of challenges to sustainable development—from poverty, hunger, and desertification to collapsing fisheries and refugees—population growth reappears again and again as a root cause. Indeed, at a fundamental level, these forms of environmental degradation (and others too numerous to mention) cannot meaningfully be addressed without addressing population growth as well. This Article first explains why population growth warrants serious concern, both outside the borders of the United States and within, and then recounts the population commitments the U.S. government agreed to at Rio, Cairo, and Beijing. It then traces U.S. population trends, analyzes population policies over the last decade, and assesses whether these efforts are furthering the goal of sustainable development. While the U.S. government states that it has no population policy, the facts belie this claim. Over the last decade, the nation's population has grown more than over any 10-year period in U.S. history, with significant environmental impacts resulting both at home and abroad. This is due to a number of policies that have demographic effects—ranging from immigration regulations and restrictions on abortions to the tax code and foreign aid. In its preparations for Johannesburg, the government needs to deepen the nation's commitment to recent international agreements on population and development. Equally important, the U.S. government has not engaged in a serious consideration of the nation's carrying capacity and the related issues of resource consumption and development that this entails. Unless we confront these physical facts, and corresponding ethical implications, we cannot and will not establish a meaningful or effective policy for managing population growth in the United States.

Why Should We Care About Population Size and Growth?

One might wonder why the United States should care about population growth. After all, the population "problem" has traditionally been described solely as an issue for developing countries, particularly for countries with over a billion inhabitants such as China or India or wracked by poverty such as Bangladesh. As this Article explains, population growth should be of major concern to Americans for reasons both global and local. Population size and growth are a root cause of a wide range of pressing environmental problems, from climate change and ozone depletion at the global level to local concerns such as air and water pollution, traffic congestion, sprawl, and loss of local environmental amenities.

Wherever they occur, high fertility rates and rapid population growth can pose serious impediments to a country's development. The United States has a relatively high rate of natural increase for an industrialized nation plus a growing influx of immigrants. The result is a population growth rate above 1% per year. The U.S. 2000 Census found that the American population had increased by more than 13%—some 33 million people—between 1990 and 2000.¹ Along with greater pressure on local environmental amenities, when coupled with the high levels of consumption in the United States our growing population has contributed to problems beyond our borders, as well.

No poor country can be expected to increase its standard of living and raise its per capita income sustainably while wrestling with the problems of trying to feed and care for a rapidly expanding population. Experience has confirmed the importance of investing in family planning along with other human development programs, such as health and education, as part of the economic development process in developing nations. The longer basic development and reductions in birthrates are deferred, the more difficult they are to achieve, and the greater and more irreversible the cumulative environmental impacts of the process will be. Beyond purely humanitarian concerns, these trends in developing countries concern a wide range of direct American interests—immigration management, international political stability, degradation of ecosystem services such as climate stability, and loss of biodiversity.

Population Growth Around the Globe

The world population reached six billion in 1999 and is still growing at about 1.3% per year. The most recent medium projection from the United Nations (U.N.) estimates a world population of about eight billion in 2025 and 9.3 billion in 2050.² Despite the growing numbers, the rate of increase has been declining in most countries around the globe. As the U.N. body charged to monitor implementation of Agenda 21, the Commission on Sustainable Development, reports:

The world population growth rate has declined from a peak of 2[%] in 1965 to 1.7[%] in 1980 and to 1.3[%] in 2000. It is projected to decline to 1[%] around 2020 and 0.5[%] in 2050, with all of the population growth after 2025 occurring in the developing countries.

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The world's poorest countries tend to have the highest population growth rates, undermining their efforts to invest in human development, reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Of the 77 million people being added to the world's population each year, most are born in the world's poorest countries in Africa and Asia. Since there will still be significant annual increases in population in the developing world for some decades, the environmental and social implications remain farreaching for many poor countries, particularly where water is scarce, where population density is already high, and where land degradation and deforestation are most severe. . . .³

The Consequences of Population Growth

Until relatively recently, much of the international debate over environmental protection has consisted of mutual finger pointing—developed countries blaming developing countries for overpopulation, and developing countries blaming developed countries for overconsumption. Indeed at its most extreme, "sustainable development" has been characterized as a means to deny developing countries the same lifestyle and levels of consumption enjoyed by people in developed countries. But narrowly focusing on the North-South debate misses the obvious point—for social, geopolitical, and environmental reasons, both overpopulation and overconsumption must be addressed.

The environmental implications of a society's population and consumption are both inescapable and profound. Even the most austere human society necessarily consumes food, water, energy, fiber, and minerals; and each act of consumption has environmental consequences. As a result, the importance of maintaining levels of consumption and population within an environment's carrying capacity, of natural limits to growth, has long been recognized. The intellectual basis of this proposition was clearly laid out in 18th century England by Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population.⁴ Its modern foundations were established in the late 1960s and early 1970s by a series of books including Paul Ehrlich's "neo-Malthusian" The Population Bomb, E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful, and the Club of Rome's report, Limits to Growth.⁵ All of these works documented an inevitable confrontation between ever-expanding material demands and increasingly depleted finite resources, between growing pollution and the weakening ability of ecosystems to assimilate waste.

The relationship between consumption and a population's overall environmental impact is complex. A simple model developed in the 1970s, known as the IPAT identity, describes the interdependencies well. Expressed as a formula, I = PAT describes a community's overall environmental impact (I) as the product of its population size (P), its affluence or per capita level of consumption (A), and the technology and social arrangements that underly each unit of consumption (T).⁶ Note that the total impact of a society can be lowered by decreasing any of these three factors, so long as the others are not increased to offset the reduced factor. In the case of the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related compounds, the impact may eventually be reversed by changes in the technology factor alone—that is, by the ban on the use of the offending CFCs. This might result in a slight decrease in affluence since the substitutes are somewhat more expensive and may be less convenient. But the human-caused emissions of the major greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, which threaten to change the climate, raise the sea level, and, among many other things, play hell with agricultural production, are not so easily corrected. The increasing atmospheric concentrations of these gases are tightly tied to all three factors: affluence, technology, and population size and growth. Indeed, these emissions are byproducts of civilization's most basic activities, including agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and commerce.

Consequently, achieving the necessary reduction in greenhouse emissions will require substantial changes in all three determinants of human impact on the planet in the coming decades of the 21st century. Not least, it is imperative that the population explosion of the 20th century be brought to a close. Note, as well, that all three variables are interdependent. For example, a population's density and affluence will influence its choices of transportation and land management and the technologies with which it carries out the choices.

To illustrate how this interaction works, suppose that, as the U.N. projects, global population increases by 50% over the next 50 years. Assume, further, that per capita consumption remains constant (even though if global economic growth continued at around 3% over the next 50 years, there would be roughly a quadrupling of total consumption). To maintain the current level of environmental impact (which is widely acknowledged by the scientific community to be unsustainable now), humanity would need to improve the efficiency of its technologies so they did 33% less damage, on average. This is a tall order, considering that most ecosystem services affected by environmental degradation (such as climate stability and protection from ultraviolet radiation) are public goods, not exchanged in the marketplace and therefore creating no direct economic incentives for technological developments.

The IPAT identity is a simple model, but its implications are significant. It suggests not only that lessening environmental impact depends upon both population and consumption, but that where population and consumption can be reduced becomes critically important. A useful measure of environmental impact is commercial energy use, since most pollution and other environmental damage is caused directly or indirectly by the use of commercial energy. Thus, using per capita energy use as a rough index, it is estimated that one American consumes 45 times as much as the average subSaharan African, 17 times as much as the average Indian, [32 ELR 10561] and 9 times as much as the average Chinese.⁷ Furthermore, the U.S. population is growing more rapidly today than that of China.

Therefore, while the billion-plus populations in China and India obviously raise serious concerns over population growth and its environmental impact, at the margin population growth is a bigger issue in the United States than in China or India for the simple reason that an additional American's level of consumption is so much greater than that of an additional Chinese or Indian.

The scientific measure of "ecological footprint" illustrates the problem on a spatial scale. The ecological footprint is a calculation of the land needed to provide resources to satisfy a population's consumption needs. To provide its energy, food, and forestry needs, for example, the Netherlands' ecological footprint requires an area over 17 times its size. Hence the Netherlands would need the land and resources of 17 Netherlands to provide for its consumption.⁸ In simple physical terms, this indicates that the earth could not sustainably provide for today's more than six billion people consuming at the levels typical of industrialized nations, much less the projected 7.5 or eight billion people by 2025 or nine billion in 2050.

In addition to contributing to increases in poverty, resource consumption, and pollution, population growth plays a critical role in generating urbanization and migration, and (in certain instances) political instability. As a result of the continuing trend of internal migration from rural to urban communities (mainly in developing regions by 2010, for the first time in human history), more people will be living in cities than in rural communities. An estimated 150 million people were living outside the country of their birth at the turn of the century, including more than 1 in 10 in the United States. Including international and within-country migrants, the total number of people on the move world-wide may be as high as one billion.⁹

By exacerbating poverty and resource depletion, population increase has also spurred international migration of people seeking better social and economic opportunities. People forced to leave their traditional land because it can no longer support them have been described as "environmental refugees," and their numbers are rising on an unprecedented scale. Although small in numbers compared with internal migration, a new class of environmental refugees is having a significant geopolitical impact. One estimate in 1997 placed the number of such refugees at 25 million people. These people displaced for environmental causes outnumber the roughly 23 million refugees displaced by civil wars, political oppression, and ethnic and religious persecution.¹⁰ Often environmental refugees are subsistence farmers, impoverished and vulnerable to soil degradation and water scarcity, with little or no political influence. A stark example of this was when thousands of "boat people" sailed to the United States from Haiti, fleeing a nation whose ability to feed itself has been washed away as a result of extensive deforestation and soil erosion. Indeed, if global warming leads to rises in sea level in coming decades, the number of environmental refugees will grow far higher as low-lying coastal areas are submerged, forcing their current populations to move.

International Agreements

The Earth Summit

It was not until the Earth Summit in 1992, that the international community first explicitly acknowledged the implications of natural constraints on society's growth. Indeed the Earth Summit's guiding principle, "sustainable development," expressly conditioned today's development on the ability of future generations to meet their needs.¹¹ The Rio Declaration, the consensus agreement on principles adopted at the conference, addresses population growth in Principle 8, stating that "to achieve sustainable development and a higher quality of life for all people, States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and promote appropriate demographic policies."¹² This text reflects the compromise between the developing countries' concerns with overconsumption in the North and the developed countries' concerns with overpopulation in the South. What sort of demographic policies would be appropriate in this context, not surprisingly, was not addressed.

The blueprint to achieve sustainable development is contained in Agenda 21, the consensus strategy adopted at the Earth Summit. While the requirements of Agenda 21 are not mandatory, and would best be described as "soft" international law, it represents the most important international environmental law on sustainable consumption.¹³ Chapter 5 of Agenda 21 provides guidance on population policies. Recognizing the central importance of demographic trends to sustainable development, Chapter 5 calls for significant research on how socioeconomic factors and environmental [32 ELR 10562] factors cause migration and how the age structure of the population affects resource demands. It also stresses that analysis of demographic trends should be integrated with studies of ecosystem health, technology and human settlements, socioeconomic factors, and resource accessibility. Much of Chapter 5 is devoted to reproductive health programs, with goals of reducing maternal and infant mortality as well as accessible and responsible family planning programs. It was estimated that the cost of implementing these activities would total $ 7 billion per year and that national population assistance should be coordinated with bilateral and multilateral donors to ensure that population needs in developing countries are fully met.

Cairo Conference on Population and Development

The broad issues raised by Agenda 21's discussion of demographic trends were the subject of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994 and its ensuing Program of Action.¹⁴ The program established broad goals and specific targets over a 20-year period. A lengthy document, the Program of Action sought to curb population growth not by setting numerical targets and focusing on birth-control efforts but, rather, by addressing the underlying social issues—improving people's education, health, and social standing (particularly young women's) on the theory that this would lead to smaller families.

Several elements of the Program of Action were of particular relevance to the United States. First, the program emphasized the linkage made at Rio between poverty and social and gender inequities with population growth and distribution. The program committed countries to reduce patterns of unsustainable consumption and production, consistent with Agenda 21, and stressed the need for population stabilization, calling on countries to give these issues greater attention.

Second, the Program of Action recognized the important, though indirect, influence of population policy on a wide range of domestic policies. As a result, it charged States to integrate population issues into all policies relating to sustainable development, regularly review development strategies, and create domestic institutional mechanisms to ensure that population was considered in the decision-making and administrative regulatory processes of government agencies.

Third, like Agenda 21, the Cairo conference placed particular emphasis on the empowerment and status of women and called for the shared responsibility of men and women in the nurturing of children and the full education of women to ensure their participation in the development process. Countries were urged to empower women by establishing mechanisms for women's participation in the political process, eliminating discriminatory practices against women, improving women's earning potential beyond traditional female occupations, eliminating violence against women, and ensuring that women can fully participate in the workforce even while engaged in child-rearing activities. To achieve these objectives, the Program of Action called for investment in human resource development by providing education, skill development, and family planning services. It called on governments to facilitate the compatibility of parenting and working through means such as day care facilities, better health insurance, paid leave, and flexible schedules.

In the area of reproductive rights and reproductive health, the Cairo conference called on governments to make reproductive health services available to all people. These services should include counseling, education, prenatal and postnatal care, and treatment of infertility, sexually transmitted diseases, and reproductive health illnesses.¹⁵

Developed countries were called upon to assist developing countries and economies in transition by sharing technology and expertise, providing "national capacity-building for population and development and transfer of appropriate technology and know-how." This explicitly included raising additional resources to meet continuing international needs in the broader areas of population, reproductive health care, and development, beyond the familyplanning services that had traditionally been provided by aid to developing nations since the 1960s. In particular, it was agreed that developing countries would pay two-thirds of the costs needed to implement the Program of Action, and the industrialized world would provide the rest (estimated at $ 5.7 billion annually).

The Cairo conference's recognition of population growth as a factor in global unsustainability represented an advance over the retreat from this concern expressed at the U.N. population conference in 1984 (discussed infra). The return of the U.S. government as a major supporter of efforts to provide access to means of family planning and reproductive health was also a welcome change. Largely in response to two decades of research findings on the social and economic factors associated with lower fertility, the Cairo conference also greatly broadened the scope of concern and action far beyond the provision of birth control. The conference focused on women's rights, education, and reproductive health as positive if not essential contributions to successful development and social well-being. This broader view proved more acceptable to societies and religious groups with traditional attitudes toward childbearing.

Early family planning programs were established within health service organizations with a view to integrating such services with existing maternal and child health services. Such attempts were not always successful, though, because conventional health facilities were often already overloaded and not all health workers were sympathetic with family planning goals. So the two functions became separated in many countries, leading to a widespread impression that birth control was deemed more important than health, especially in places where the family planning program was better funded and staffed than the health system.¹⁶ The Cairo conference, heralded by the principles propounded in the Rio Declaration, mandated reintegration of the two sets of essential services.

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Five years after the Cairo conference, representatives of over 170 countries and 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) met to reaffirm the Program of Action and adjust/implement its goals and targets.¹⁷ Most notably, the review called upon governments to increase expenditures on population and development. It also urged increased efforts to safeguard the rights to privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent of youth. The meeting proved divisive, with a number of countries opposed to ensuring access to safe abortions in countries even where the practice is legal. The role of family planning and scope of parental control over children's health and sex education were also contested. The Vatican played a lead role in opposition but so, too, depending on the issue, did developing countries such as Guatemala, Morocco, and Sudan. Indeed, Argentina, Nicaragua, and other countries filed reservations to the recommendations reached by consensus.¹⁸ Both developed and developing countries have failed so far to meet their funding commitments, with annual contributions at only $ 1.9 billion a year, one-third of the pledged amount.

It is too soon to say whether the Cairo conference has had a significant impact in slowing population growth. The demographic trend toward lower fertility that became very clear by the late 1990s has been underway since the 1970s, although discernible declines began later in some very poor regions such as subSaharan Africa. Furthermore, falling fertility has been almost as pronounced in industrialized nations as in developing nations. Nonetheless, full implementation of the Cairo consensus could almost certainly accelerate this trend and bring growth to an end sooner and with a smaller peak population.

Beijing World Conference on Women

One year after Cairo, in 1995, the Beijing conference examined policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty. The conference was important to population growth because of the correlation between lower fertility rates and the status of women (education level, economic status, etc.). Thus, if adopted, the main goals of the conference's declaration—revision of laws and administrative practices to ensure women's equal rights and access to economic resources, providing women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions, ensuring equal access to education, increasing women's capacity to participate in decisionmaking and leadership—would be expected, over time, to lower average family sizes.¹⁹ Of particular relevance to population, the declaration pledged to increase women's access throughout their lives to appropriate, affordable, and quality health care, information, and related services.

U.S. Population

As described above, because of its high levels of consumption, population growth in the United States raises substantial environmental concerns. Since the Rio conference, the U.S. population has grown by about 12%. Indeed, the Clinton Administration's high-level advisory group, the President's Commission on Sustainable Development, created to provide advice on the implementation of Agenda 21, declared that "the United States is today the only major industrialized country in the world experiencing population growth on a significant scale."²⁰

The U.S. Bureau of the Census (Census Bureau) reports that the U.S. population reached 281.4 million in 2000, an overall population increase of 32.7 million people or 13.2% since 1990.²¹ This is the largest increase in a 10-year period in U.S. history, even surpassing the "baby boom" increase of 28.0 million.²² The majority of Americans live in the 10 most populous states and, mirroring the global trend of urbanization, more than 8 out of 10 Americans live in a metropolitan area (a statistical increase over a decade earlier).²³

In 2000, the average number of children born per woman in the population, known as the total fertility rate (TFR), in the United States was the replacement rate, 2.1,²⁴ and the TFR has been at or below that level for nearly 30 years. Yet the population is continuing to grow significantly, in part because of the "population momentum" caused by the higher birthrates of previous generations,²⁵ and in part because of immigration.

Immigration is currently contributing roughly one-half of the annual population growth. The natural increase (births minus deaths) of the U.S. population is 0.6% annually (without taking immigration into account), but the population is growing at approximately 1.2% when immigration is included. In contrast, Europe as a whole has an annual growth decline (also without counting immigration, which is also much smaller proportionately) of about 0.1%.²⁶ The Census Bureau estimated that 28.4 million foreign-born persons were living in the United States in 2000, totaling [32 ELR 10564] 10.4% of the total population.²⁷ In contrast to trends in other industrialized nations, growth of the U.S. population has clearly accelerated in the last decade. Population size projections by demographers vary, under differing assumptions about future immigration and fertility trends, but assuming no significant change in either factor, most indicate a population of significantly more than 400 million by 2050,²⁸ and no hint of an end to growth in following decades.

The sustainability of the current population of the United States can be questioned on a variety of grounds; whether an increase in the number of Americans within one-half century of nearly 50%, even with no increase in per capita consumption rates, might be sustainable is still less credible. Americans are fond of considering themselves independent and self-sufficient, yet at the dawn of the 21st century this perception is far from reality. Even though the United States is by a large margin the greatest exporter of cereals, and many nations are at some level dependent on those exports, many foods of other kinds are imported, without which Americans would doubtless feel deprived. The once abundant natural forests of the nation have been reduced to less than 5% remaining old growth. Yet logging continues in those forests as well as in plantations and second-growth forests, and some timber is still exported. Regarding energy, the United States has become increasingly dependent on imports of petroleum to meet its demand, having depleted its domestic reserves over several decades. In 2001, more than 55% of the oil consumed in the United States was imported.

Like many a poor country, the United States has extracted and exported (besides consuming) natural resources such as foodstuffs, timber, and petroleum without concern for the needs of future generations. And American consumption rates are virtually without parallel. Under eco-footprint analysis, Americans, like residents of other high-income nations, draw on as much as 10 to 12 hectares per person of productive land or water to support their lifestyles.²⁹ The environmental impacts of Americans extend far beyond the nation's borders; the nation's energy use is a major component of global environmental change.³⁰ With just 4.5% of the world's population, the United States accounts for roughly 25% of the world's fossil fuel energy use. The nation's consumption of other materials and resources is similarly disproportionate.

Using ecological footprint accounting, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees have estimated that civilization has already exceeded the earth's long-term human carrying capacity by some 40%.³¹ Along with other high-income nations and the struggling poor, Wackernagel and Rees argue that Americans are living beyond their means, depleting vital ecosystems and nonrenewable resource stocks. The symptoms are increasingly evident: continued soil erosion and degradation of land, drawdown of ancient aquifers, collapses of oceanic fisheries, loss of biodiversity, and deforestation, and stratospheric ozone depletion.³² A U.S. population with grossly disproportionate consumption patterns slated to grow by 10% per decade or more while striving to increase its per capita consumption even further is not a recipe for sustainability.

U.S. Population Policies

While the United States has no explicit policy regarding population size or growth, it does have one in practice. The tax code, laws on inheritance, women's rights, and labor laws, for example, indirectly influence people's choices regarding family size. The legality and availability of family planning and abortion services have more direct influences on family size choices. Immigration laws and policies also play a large role in determining overall population size. And the nation's foreign aid policies have important implications for population size and growth in many developing countries.

Immigration

Given the nation's history of welcoming immigrants, the importance of immigration to population growth in the United States is hardly surprising. But the relative contribution of immigration to U.S. population growth is an extremely controversial subject, with different groups providing conflicting data depending on their agenda. As described above, the most reliable data indicate that roughly one-third to one-half of U.S. population growth is due to immigration. Immigration law, then, is an important determinant of U.S. population policy. And in recent times it has become even more important since, in 1990, for a variety of reasons (including pressure from high-tech and other employers) for the first time since 1965, the U.S. Congress revised the immigration laws, changing the pattern of immigration and allowing greater numbers of legal immigrants.³³

Granting amnesty to illegal aliens has influenced population growth as well. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reports that approximately 2.7 million immigrants received permanent U.S. residence in the late 1980s and early 1990s under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (offering retrospective amnesty).³⁴ By [32 ELR 10565] 1997, however, a new population of five million illegal aliens had completely replaced the pre-1986 population of illegal aliens.³⁵ The INS also concluded that family members moving to the United States to unite with amnestied relatives further contributed to illegal immigration and population growth.³⁶ The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the numbers of illegal aliens entering the country during the amnesty period reached as high as 800,000 persons a year before leveling off at around 500,000 illegal immigrants a year. As a result, the center has concluded that much of the recent illegal immigration is an unintended consequence of the amnesties.³⁷

Population size has not been part of the immigration discussion³⁸; neither are environmental impacts, although they are implicated on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. South of the border, rapid population growth and environmental deterioration of agricultural lands have made environmental refugees of hundreds of thousands of rural people. People displaced from the land have flocked to Mexico's cities, creating serious problems of squatter settlements and unemployment. Along the border, American investment in "maquiladora" factories has often led to uncontrolled pollution and a lack of basic amenities inflicted on the Mexican workers and their families who were attracted to the area by the promise of better-paying jobs.

This issue has recently come to the front of the public policy debate as President George W. Bush considers a guest-worker program that would allow opportunities for Mexican immigrants to obtain permanent resident status.³⁹ As of September 2001, however, President Bush insisted that this policy would not include a blanket amnesty program.⁴⁰ Mexican President Vincente Fox is arguing that the proposal should include such grants.⁴¹

In recent years, a number of national environmental groups have debated internally whether to take a position in favor of reducing the number of immigrants (the previous IPAT discussion explains why). Out of a variety of concerns, including the possibility of antagonizing members and potential allies, being labeled as anti-immigrant and therefore racist, and the wrenching tension between the goals of environmental protection and keeping true to America's perceived role as a nation of immigrants, most environmental and some population groups have continued to take a low profile on immigration issues.

Contraceptive and Health Services

Virtually alone among industrialized nations, the United States has no national health program. In the past decade, health insurance, mostly provided by employers, has led to the spread of health management organizations (HMOs), which have increasingly managed both clients and health services with the goal of containing the burgeoning costs of modern health care. Government health insurance is available for the elderly (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid). But some 35 million to 40 million low-income Americans are not covered by the system because they are unemployed, work part time, or are paid on an hourly basis. Many of those not covered are children and their mothers. Many HMOs do not include the cost of contraceptives in their coverage, although some states have begun to require such coverage.

For people in low-income families who qualify for federal assistance, the Department of Health and Human Services administers the Family Planning Program (also known as Title X) and the Adolescent Family Life Program (known as Title XX). The Title X program provides grants for a wide range of activities, including family planning and reproductive health services, contraceptive services and supplies, basic gynecological care, cancer and general medical screening, infertility services, education, counseling, and referrals. Some 4,800 clinics serve almost five million people. The program also provides an information clearinghouse on population and reproductive health issues, including family planning, adolescent pregnancy, abstinence, adoption, reproductive health care, and sexually transmitted diseases.⁴²

Abortion

Before 1969, abortion was almost completely illegal in the United States, although it was estimated that one million or more American women had abortions each year, either clandestinely (and very unsafely) or in other countries where it was legal. Beginning in 1969, several states began to liberalize their laws on abortion and, in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that restrictions violated constitutional protections of privacy. Since the procedure was legalized, most abortions have occurred in private clinics, often those of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Planned Parenthood), which also provides family planning services and counseling, rather than in hospitals. Abortion numbers rose above 1.5 million a year in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has fallen to about 1.2 million annually in recent years. This change is attributed in part to changes in the age structure of the population—aging of the baby-boom generation of women—and to increased use of long-term injectable contraceptives by teenagers.⁴³ If the 1.2 million pregnancies were carried to term, the birth rate in the United States would be increased by 28%; the population growth rate, including net immigration, would be over 1.5%, a rate more typical of a developing nation.⁴⁴

In 1973, Roe v. Wade⁴⁵ marked the first chapter in recent Supreme Court jurisprudence regarding a woman's right to an abortion. The Court voted 7-2 to strike down a state ban on abortions and held that a woman's right to terminate a [32 ELR 10566] pregnancy is within her constitutionally protected right to privacy inherent in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Under strict scrutiny, the government has to set forth compelling reasons to restrict a woman's right to privacy and these interests must be narrowly tailored in legislation. A woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, however, is not absolute. Rather, this right ceases at the point of viability, where the state's interest in the child is higher. The Court used a trimester approach to analyze the state's interest.

Abortion has since become one of the most contentious issues in American politics. Violent protests and assassinations of doctors and personnel at abortion clinics have further limited access to abortion services, causing many providers to cease practicing. Indeed, few hospitals even teach safe abortion procedures any more. "Pro-life" advocates have introduced bills that would prohibit abortions in every Congress since 1973. While no outright prohibition has been enacted, Congress and state legislatures have greatly restricted access to abortions by banning the use of federal funds for performing abortions, imposing consent requirements, and other measures. Courts have upheld many of these restrictions.

In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey,⁴⁶ for example, the Court considered the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute. This statute authorized a woman to get an abortion, but only after seeking medical consultation where she was read a script describing the nature of the procedure, the health risks of the abortion, and the available state child support services. Following this consultation, the statute prescribed a 24-hour waiting period and required spousal consent for married women and parental consent for minors (17 and under).⁴⁷ The Court upheld the medical consultation, waiting period, and parental consent, but struck down the spousal notification provision. The Court's new test required that states place no undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion. The Court also upheld the mandatory 24-hour waiting period, holding that these burdens do not present an undue burden to a woman's right to choose.

In Harris v. McRae,⁴⁸ the Court held that the government has no affirmative duty to provide benefits or facilitate a woman's right to have an abortion. The Court held that Congress may, consistent with due process, deny public funding for medically necessary abortions while funding substantially all other medical costs, including carrying the pregnancy to term. Thus, the government cannot interfere with a woman's right to an abortion, but that does not mean that the government has to provide funding.

Today, 19 states pay for medically necessary abortions for Medicaid recipients and 29 states will cover Medicaid recipients if the mother's life is in danger or the pregnancy occurred as a result of rape or incest.⁴⁹ In some states, insurance coverage of abortions is also restricted. Nine states explicitly ban insurance coverage when public monies are used or public employees are insured.⁵⁰ Other restrictions are also widespread. Forty-four states require abortion reporting, 14 require parental notification for minors, 16 require a mandatory delay following state-directed counseling; and 8 require state-directed counseling with no delay.⁵¹

One of the most contentious areas remaining in abortion law is over restrictions on partial-birth abortions (a procedure sometimes used to terminate a late-term pregnancy). Partial-birth abortions first entered the national debate in 1993, when Congress published a report on the late-term dilation and extraction method of abortion and proposed legislation to ban such procedures. Although President William J. Clinton vetoed this legislation, 30 states enacted partial-birth abortion statutes based on this proposed legislation.⁵² For many years, controversy brewed over the legality of these state abortion bans. In Stenberg v. Carhart,⁵³ the Court addressed this debate when it considered a Nebraska statute that prohibited partial-birth abortions before the point of viability. In a narrow 5-4 margin, the Court held that this outright ban was unconstitutional because it banned common procedures and provided no maternal health exception. The Stenberg decision had widespread impacts on state statutes. Eighteen states' partial-birth bans were subsequently barred by court action.⁵⁴ The status of 10 states' partial-birth abortion statutes has not been litigated, but they are no longer considered enforceable in light of the Court's ruling.

The other major controversy has surrounded Mifepristone, better known as the "abortion pill" or RU-486. A synthetic steroid, Mifepristone functions by preventing an implanted embryo from receiving progesterone, a necessary hormone for fetal development.⁵⁵ In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that the drug was "safe and effective" but did not approve its use for four more years, presumably because of pressure from anti-abortion advocates. France, however, had approved Mifepristone in 1988, and it was approved in 1991 in the United Kingdom and in 1992 in Sweden. Another reason for this delay was the inability to secure a U.S. manufacturer.⁵⁶ In September 2000, the FDA finally approved RU-486, but with controversial restrictions. Only doctors with admitting privileges at hospitals could prescribe the drug. These doctors would also be listed on a national registry. Physicians prescribing the drug must be able to accurately determine the stage of development and be able to provide surgical intervention when necessary, either personally or by making the necessary arrangements, as well as comply with informed consent [32 ELR 10567] and incident reporting procedures.⁵⁷ It remains uncertain whether existing state restrictions on abortions, such as parental consent provisions, counseling mandates, and reporting requirements, will apply to Mifepristone.⁵⁸

U.S. Tax Code

As Prof. Mona Hymel has argued, "the symbolic aspect of tax policies makes the tax system a particularly well-suited tool for sending messages and encouraging individuals to reform attitudes and behaviors."⁵⁹ And, in fact, domestic tax policies indirectly influence population size. Domestic tax policies have been historically supportive of childbirth, providing government subsidies to offer economic assistance to families.⁶⁰ Most important, the per-child dependency exemption has translated into "more children = more tax relief." This policy was furthered most recently in President Bush's Agenda for Tax Relief. The new law, signed in June 2001, will double the tax credit per child from $ 500 to $ 1,000 over the next 10 years.⁶¹

Foreign Aid for Family Planning

As Agenda 21 and the Cairo conference made clear, both bilateral and multilateral funding are essential for successful efforts to address population growth. The United States has supported international family planning since 1965. While over $ 6.5 billion of aid has been provided over this period, the area has proven extremely contentious since the Reagan Administration, with the domestic abortion debate serving as a lightning rod. Despite the annual sturm und drang over international family planning funds, this aid has almost certainly played a role in the significant decrease in population growth in developing countries, from an average growth rate of roughly 2.4% in the 1960s to 1.8% in the 1990s.⁶² Birthrates fell throughout the 1990s, and by 2001, the average growth rate of the developing world was 1.6%.⁶³ Total fertility rates in the developing world have similarly decreased from 6.2 children per woman in 1950 to 3.2 in 1998.⁶⁴ Despite the progress in reducing birthrates in most developing regions, 98% of today's population growth is occurring in developing countries, so the need for family planning assistance from overseas donors remains very real.⁶⁵ Moreover, the developing world is far from monolithic in its demographic transition; some countries, such as China, South Korea, Thailand, and several Caribbean nations, have below-replacement reproduction, whereas most subSaharan African and Middle Eastern nations have seen little or no decline in birthrates. Also, population growth rates lag behind birthrate changes because of population momentum, described earlier, and that momentum is why growth is likely to continue throughout the 21st century.

The first International Population Conference was held in 1974. The U.S. government, as well as other donor countries, argued that population growth needed to be reduced in order to promote quality of life in developing countries. Thus in 1977, the Carter Administration helped pass § 104(d) of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961, integrating family planning funding into the more traditional development assistance programs, i.e., making clear that curbing population growth would be considered as a development issue. Spurred by the political reaction to the Roe decision, however, Congress banned the use of foreign aid for abortions and involuntary sterilizations. As a result, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been prohibited from directly supporting abortion as a method of family planning. Nonetheless, USAID was still allowed to provide foreign aid to family planning organizations that relied on other funds to support or counsel about abortion as a method of family planning.

Worldwide, an estimated 46 million abortions take place each year, of which some 20 million occur in nations where the procedure is illegal or restricted.⁶⁶ Unsafe abortions carry a high rate of complications and are a leading cause of maternal deaths. The World Health Organization ascribes 13% of all maternal deaths worldwide to abortion complications. Abortion is an important method of birth control in many parts of the world where contraceptives are not reliably available, among them nations of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe as well as many developing nations. Abortions occur in every country, regardless of the availability of contraceptives, although the rate is usually much lower when contraceptives are readily available. Until family planning services are universally available and affordable, abortion will remain a major avenue by which couples can limit their reproduction and an important factor in curbing population growth. If the 46 million pregnancies now ending in abortion each year were carried to term, the population growth rate would be 2.1% per year, not 1.3%.

At the second International Population Conference, held in Mexico City in 1984, the Reagan Administration announced a new policy. In contrast to regarding population growth as a fundamental hindrance to economic development and a threat to environmental security, Administration [32 ELR 10568] officials described population growth as a "neutral phenomenon." In its formal policy, known as the "Mexico City policy," the Administration banned foreign aid for organizations (though not governments) that undertook voluntary abortion activities, even if these were supported by non-U.S. funds. In other words, the Mexico City policy banned U.S. aid to groups that used their own money for abortion counseling or services. This policy, later known as the "Global Gag Rule," was unsuccessfully challenged in the courts by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and remained in place through the first Bush Administration.

As part of its policy change, the Reagan Administration also required the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to provide "concrete assurances that [it] is not engaged in, or does not provide funding for, abortion or coercive family planning programs." This was motivated in part by opposition to China's "one-child policy" (despite official condemnation, sometimes involving coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization at the commune level). In implementing this policy (and complying with the Kemp-Kasten Amendment that made it law), the Reagan and Bush Administrations withheld a portion of aid to UNFPA every year and redirected it to other programs. Prior to these actions, the United States had provided almost one-third of UNFPA's budget. In the wake of the new policy, however, until 1993 no U.S. contributions were provided to UNFPA; what assistance was given was spent mostly on bilateral programs through USAID.

As one of his first actions upon becoming president, Clinton reversed the Mexico City funding restrictions for family planning programs and the UNFPA. Despite repeated congressional attempts to re-impose the Mexico City policy, threats of veto and Senate opposition kept funding measures in place until 1999. In the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2000, however, in order to gain congressional support to pay the nearly $ 1 billion in U.S. arrears to the United Nations, Clinton agreed to require as a precondition for aid that private foreign organizations certify they did not perform abortions and did not lobby to change abortion laws. The restrictions only covered funds for fiscal year (FY) 2000.⁶⁷

Eight years after President Clinton rescinded the Mexico City policy, one of President Bush's very first actions upon becoming president was to issue an Executive Order on January 22, 2001, reinstating the Mexico City policy. A White House press release the same day stated that "the President is committed to maintaining the $ 425 million funding level provided for in the FY 2001 appropriation because he knows that one of the best ways to prevent abortion is by providing quality voluntary family planning services." In implementing the new policy, the USAID guidelines provide that

U.S. NGOs receiving USAID grants cannot furnish assistance to foreign NGOs which perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in USAID-recipient countries, or that furnish assistance to other foreign NGOs that conduct such activities. When USAID provides assistance directly to a foreign NGO, the organization must certify that it does not now or will not during the term of the grant perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in USAID-recipient countries or provide financial support to other foreign NGOs that carry out such activities.⁶⁸

Thus foreign organizations (excluding national governments) and international agencies cannot receive U.S. foreign aid if they either perform or actively promote abortions as a method of family planning in other countries. The guidelines go on to define family planning services as promoting abortions if they, for example, provide information on the benefits of abortion, advice on the availability of abortion, or encourage consideration of an abortion. The guidelines provide exceptions in the case of abortions conducted to save the life of the mother or following rape or incest.

Critics assert that the restrictions infringe on free speech rights of family planning services in other countries. Thus, in floor debates in Congress, a number of legislators have noted the hypocrisy of restricting rights of people in foreign countries that the Constitution of the United States protects. Of more legal relevance, they allege that the restrictions infringe on Americans' rights to participate in the political process and to exercise their First Amendment rights. The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) announced on June 6, 2001, that it would challenge President Bush's Executive Order in court, claiming it violates the First Amendment by censoring speech that promotes abortion.⁶⁹

Despite these continuing battles, since the Rio conference the United States has provided significant levels of family planning funding, ranging from $ 322 million in 1992 to $ 450 million in 2001 (average annual assistance of $ 430 million per annum).⁷⁰ Indeed, the United States remains the largest single donor to family planning programs. While the level of annual funding may seem generous, it is important to recall that foreign donors (including the United States) committed at the 1994 Cairo conference to provide fully one-third of the family planning and reproductive health care costs in developing countries (about $ 5.7 billion annually). As described above, however, after the Cairo + 5 conference in 1999, developed and developing countries together were providing only one-third of what they had promised.

Conclusion and Recommendations

At the Rio + 5 meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development in 1997, the U.S. submission stated that

the [United States] does not have an official population policy, in part because population density is low in the [32 ELR 10569] United States and large regions of the country are sparsely populated. (The [United States] also has no specific policies to modify the spatial distribution of the population.) In addition, there is little public consensus about either the need for population-based policies or their nature.⁷¹

In the context of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration, this was a remarkable statement. A major point of the Rio conference, perhaps the major point, was to highlight the relationship between environmental protection and development. Population is an inescapable part of this dynamic, yet the government's statement above reflects no such awareness. Parts of the United States can be considered "sparsely populated" only in a simple context of people per square mile, certainly not in relation to local resources such as supplies of fresh water. As for possible population redistribution, desirable as it might be from an environmental standpoint in some places, local incentives and disincentives have played a dominant role, although not from the standpoint of environmental or resource factors. Ordinarily, municipalities try to lure businesses and potential employees to their areas; development of infrastructure and support systems comes later, and concern about the environment later still. In most areas, environmental impacts associated with population growth have impinged on public consciousness mainly through concerns about urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and water supplies.

With regard to the lack of public consensus about the need for population-based policies, the statement is true today, although a generation ago there was considerably more awareness of the need for a population policy to address the U.S. population's size and growth. Since 1970, the U.S. population has grown some 39% while interest in limiting its growth has diminished. But official government statements to the contrary notwithstanding, the United States clearly does have population policies, although some of them contradict each other. The provision of family planning means and facilities, legalized abortion, access to reproductive health facilities, equal treatment (if imperfectly applied) in the job market and economic independence for women, compulsory education for all, and subsidized higher educational institutions all influence family-size decisions, mostly toward smaller families. These small family influences are counterbalanced by other policies, such as the income tax deduction for children and the increasing difficulty of access to abortion services, that encourage larger families. The change in welfare policies of 1994 appears to have had a significant effect in reducing the rate of teenage, out-of-wedlock births (though this component of the U.S. birthrate continues to be the highest of any industrialized nation).⁷²

The most obvious population policy of the United States is its immigration policy. Given that an estimated one-quarter million or so unauthorized immigrants, mostly from Central America and Mexico, enter the country each year, the policy and its implementation clearly are not working very well. After nearly a decade and a half of public neglect of the issue, interest recently was sparked by the evident determination of President Fox to find a better solution for Mexican immigrants, especially undocumented ones. Discussion has begun of solutions such as legitimization for long-established undocumented immigrants, perhaps limited to Mexicans, and a guest-worker arrangement of temporary or seasonal jobs for commuting workers whose families remain in Mexico.⁷³ The topic is very controversial and how it will be resolved remains to be seen. Clearly, however, President Fox has forced the U.S. public and the government to reexamine the entire set of policies dealing with immigration from Central America and Mexico. A second reconsideration was caused by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, leading in the opposite direction: toward a tightening of immigration restrictions and the expulsion of many who had overstayed their visas or were in the United States illegally.

Nevertheless, changing immigration policies outside the context of national demographic trends and a national population policy is a case of sub-optimization. If immigration rates are maintained at present levels or increased further, population pressures and environmental problems for the United States will increase in the long term, even if the abuses and inequities of present immigration policies are eliminated.

In the international arena, the United States began as a leader in conducting research on demographic trends and their importance in the development process. In response to the explosive population growth of the 1950s and 1960s, when modern sanitation, pest and disease vector control, and antibiotics dramatically reduced mortality in developing regions, the United States took the lead in designing, implementing, and funding family planning programs to help those countries reduce their birthrates. Even though the idea of smaller families took hold in some areas, it gradually became evident that more was needed in most poor countries than simply making contraceptives available. Most of the research on people's motivation regarding family size, as well as studies of the effectiveness and performance of family planning programs, was conducted by American institutions and supported mostly by private foundations. In the past two decades, however, as noted above, American support for family planning assistance has been considerably less dependable.

As the government's submission to Rio + 5 suggests, the U.S. government has been reluctant, to put it mildly, to recognize the connections between population size/growth and environmental or resource impacts. Indeed, even the Clinton Administration, which included a vice president with an avowed strong commitment to environmental protection, seemed by its actions determined to sweep any such implication under the rug. The second Bush Administration appears even more overtly blind to the links. Under governmental influence, this attitude becomes subtly pervasive; little wonder the public ignores the connections and many of the problems they underlie.

So what are a few basic steps the United States should be taking to fulfill the goals of the Rio conference domestically and internationally? The first task should be to deepen the nation's commitment to the international agreements on population, development, and the environment of recent decades that we have signed and ratified. Taken together, these [32 ELR 10570] agreements add up to a common understanding that population stability, environmental integrity, prudent resource use, and equity considerations must all be inextricably linked in any design for a sustainable human future. Yet this perception is far from instilled in the American consciousness. While the vast majority of citizens consider themselves to be pro-environmental, think they use resources prudently, and honor equity (often without realizing the inequities of international affairs), their practice belies this self-perception. Most important for this discussion, overpopulation is believed to be a problem for developing nations, not the United States. Although much could be done to incorporate goals of sustainability into domestic and international policies, the current Administration and the present Congress have shown little inclination to do so.

The second task should be a commitment to examine seriously the nation's carrying capacity. This review has to be set in a global context and include considerations of equity in a globalizing world.⁷⁴ The U.S. government cannot, we submit, claim that it is taking steps toward sustainable development without first analyzing its environmental resource base and developing policies to ensure that its population does not exceed its carrying capacity, including its ability to draw on foreign resources. The United States clearly has failed in this admittedly difficult and complex obligation. Piecemeal analyses have been undertaken by scientists in universities and research institutes, often supported with government funds, but there has been no government-sponsored attempt to make such an assessment on a comprehensive national scale. In some cases, Congress or the Administration have attempted to discourage any such research by cutting budgets for work by government agencies on such relevant topics as renewable energy or a national inventory of biodiversity. Nor has any government-sponsored research been conducted on a desirable population size for the United States from an environmental standpoint, although the President's Commission on Sustainable Development at least raised the question.

Third, at this point the U.S. government and NGOs alike should be looking forward to Rio + 10 and drafting submissions for advancing the goals of sustainability, including population policies that will further those goals. A new set of interconnections should be proposed for the international community to consider. At the last Population and Development Conference, the focus was on women's roles, rights, and reproductive health issues. The concern over health should be broadened to consider the relationships among population growth, distribution, and mobility, environmental degradation, and the spread of diseases, including emergent diseases.⁷⁵ Finding ways to combat the spread of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) particularly, which is now devastating several African societies and threatening parts of Asia, could be a major goal.

Another interconnection, and daunting challenge for the next decade, is the growing shortage in many regions of fresh water.⁷⁶ Global warming, air pollution, land use changes, and deforestation, among other environmental factors, all play roles in actually or potentially changing rainfall patterns and reducing the delivery of fresh water, but population growth is an exceedingly important factor, as well, both in increasing demand and in driving the environmental factors. Not only do shortages of water for drinking and domestic use cause hardships, adequate surface or groundwater sources are essential for agricultural production.

The last interconnection, sure to dominate policy discussions for the foreseeable future, is the complex problem of global warming—including not only efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and retard the processes of climate change and sea-level rise, but measures to mitigate the anticipated effects on various sectors of economies. Population factors can be expected to be important. Population growth is related, directly or indirectly, to national rates of fossil fuel use and land clearing and conversion, both of which are major sources of greenhouse emissions. Population size and distribution are related to degrees of vulnerability to the consequences of climate change. And the consequences may well lead to mass movements of people from severely affected areas—indeed, populations of low-lying islands threatened by rising sea levels are already beginning to relocate. Today's huge migrations might be dwarfed by those a few decades from now.

Following the Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted at the Rio conference, the Kyoto Protocol was developed to address reduction of greenhouse emissions. In its present form, it is only a small first step toward what is needed, so obviously the next steps will be discussed at Rio + 10. But ways in which societies might prevent the worst impacts and adapt to those that cannot be averted are a topic not yet clearly addressed by the international community, except through the deliberations of the International Panel on Climate Change and the difficult negotiations in implementing the Kyoto Protocol. The sustainability of the human population through the 21st century will be problematic, given a projected population increase of 40% to 60% by mid-century and the rate of depletion of the world's natural capital.⁷⁷ Providing sufficient food and other necessities, amenities, and employment for up to nine billion or more people without further degrading earth's already impacted life support systems would be more than enough of a challenge, even without the added risks due to climate change and sea-level rise. With those risks, curbing and ending population growth thus becomes all the more essential. It should also be noted that the populations most vulnerable and least able to adapt are among the most rapidly growing ones. Clearly, the need for international cooperation to tackle humanity's common dilemma has never been greater.

1. See U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS (CENSUS BUREAU), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE (DOC), AMERICAN FACTFINDER, at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet (last visited Jan. 15, 2002) [hereinafter CENSUS BRIEF 2000].

2. World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision, POPULATION NEWSL., Dec. 2000 (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, U.N. Secretariat).

3. COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, DEMOGRAPHIC DYNAMICS AND SUSTAINABILITY (2001) (E/CN.17/2001/PC/2).

4. THOMAS R. MALTHUS, ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION (1798) (concluding that unless population growth is regulated, resources will become scarce, leading to widespread famine and poverty), reprinted in G. HIMMELFARB, ON POPULATION (1960).

5. PAUL R. EHRLICH, THE POPULATION BOMB (1968), E.F. SCHUMACHER, SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL: ECONOMICS AS IF PEOPLE MATTERED (1973); DONNELLA MEADOWS ET AL., THE LIMITS TO GROWTH: A REPORT FOR THE CLUB OF ROME'S PROJECT ON THE PREDICAMENT OF MANKIND (1972).

6. The IPAT model was developed by Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. Paul Ehrlich & John Holdren, The Impact of Population Growth, 171 SCIENCE 1212 (1971); John Holdren & Paul Ehrlich, Human Population and the Global Environment, 62 AM. SCI. 282 (1974).

7. See Judith Jacobsen, Population, Consumption, and Environmental Degradation: Problems and Solutions, 6 COLO. J. INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 255 (1995). Using 1997 commercial energy figures from World Resources 2000-2001, which somewhat understate actual energy use in developing countries, United States = 7,956, China = 833, and India = 477 kilograms of oil equivalent per capita. See also World Resources Inst., Population and Environment Development, in WORLD RESOURCES 2000-2001—PEOPLE AND ECOSYSTEMS: THE FRAYING WEB OF LIFE, available at http://www.wri.org/wr2000/ (last visited Jan. 15, 2002) [hereinafter PEOPLE AND ECOSYSTEMS].

8. Gretchen C. Daily, Visions, MOTHER JONES, Nov. 1994, at 21. The Netherlands' standard of living is dependent upon these large quantities of imported resources. A trade economist would likely argue that this situation is a perfect expression of comparative advantage—where the Netherlands exports the goods it can best produce and imports the goods others can best produce.

9. Note that refugees are a very small fraction of the people who move between countries; the one billion figure refers to people who move both between and within countries for any number of reasons. In China alone, conservatively 200 million—probably far more—have left their places of origin in the last few years. LESTER BROWN ET AL., VITAL SIGNS 83 (1997); JANET ABRAMOVITZ ET AL., VITAL SIGNS 2001 (2001).

10. See NORMAN MYERS & JENNIFER KENT, ENVIRONMENTAL EXODUS (1995); Jessica Mathews, Redefining Security, FOREIGN AFF., Spring 1989, at 162.

11. This was first developed by the Brundtland Commission's 1987 report, Our Common Future, and is embodied in Principle 3 of the Rio Declaration: "The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations." Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, princ. 3, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I) (1992) [hereinafter Rio Declaration].

12. Id. princ. 8, reprinted in 31 I.L.M. 874.

13. For a discussion of soft international law, see, e.g., Hans W. Baade, The Operation of Foreign Public Law, 30 TEX. INT'L L.J. 429, 446 (1995).

14. Report of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.171/13 (1994), available at http://www.undp.org/popin/icpd/conference/offeng/poa.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002).

15. At Cairo + 5, the goal of universal access to sexual and reproductive health was amended. Countries agreed to monitor improvements in contraception, maternal mortality, and the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), instead of just contraceptive use access as was first agreed upon. Francoise Girard, Cairo + 5: Reviewing Progress for Women Five Years After the International Conference on Population and Development, 1 J. OF WOMEN'S HEALTH & L. 1 (1999).

16. PAUL R. EHRLICH ET AL., THE STORK AND THE PLOW 94 (1995).

17. U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY, KEY ACTIONS FOR THE FURTHER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAMME OF ACTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT (1999).

18. Paul Lewis, U.N.Meeting Splits Sharply on Limiting Population, N.Y. TIMES, June 30, 1999, at A9.

19. See U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, Declaration and Platform for Action, Beijing, U.N. GAOR, 50th Sess., U.N. Doc. A/CONF.177/20 (1995), reprinted in 35 I.L.M. 401 (1996). See also Doran Peter, Summary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, EARTH NEGOTIATIONS BULL., Sept. 18, 1995.

20. PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION TASK FORCE REPORT ch. 1, available at http://clinton4.nara.gov/PCSD/Publications/TF_Reports/popchap-1.html (last visited Jan. 30, 2002) [hereinafter WHITE HOUSE REPORT].

21. CENSUS BRIEF 2000, supra note 1.

22. See Press Release, Census Bureau, Largest Census-to-Census Population Increase in U.S. History as Every State Gains, Census Bureau Reports (Apr. 2, 2001), available at http://www.numbersusa.com/overpopulation/census.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002) [hereinafter Census Bureau Press Release]. While all States gained in population, the West was the fastest-growing region at 19.7%, the South the second-fastest growing (17.3%). Id. at 2.

23. CENSUS BRIEF 2000, supra note 1.

24. ZERO POPULATION GROWTH, THE DEMOGRAPHIC FACTS OF LIFE (2001), available at http://www.zpg.org/Communications/demographicfacts1.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002). This is a significant reduction from the 1950s and 1960s.

25. If a previously growing population reaches replacement level, the population growth will continue for roughly a lifetime—about 70 years. This phenomenon is known as the momentum of population growth.

26. The 2000 U.S. Census put U.S. growth for the 1990s at better than 1.2%, indicating that the immigration component amounts to 0.5%, while Europe's population declined by 0.1%.

27. See CENSUS BUREAU, U.S. DOC, THE FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES (2000) [hereinafter CENSUS REPORT 2000]. It has been estimated that, between 1990 and 1999, the proportion of Caucasian Americans declined from 75.6% in 1990 to 71.9% in 1999. The Black, non-hispanic population increased 0.3%, the Hispanic population increased 2.5%, and the Asian population increased by1%. Of the foreign-born population, 51% of the total population were Latino and roughly one-third of the total foreign-born population was from Central American. See AmeriStat, Population Estimates and Projections, at http://www.ameristat.org/estproj/basics.htm (last visited Jan. 15, 2002) (citing the Bureau of the Census as the source of its analysis); see also CENSUS BUREAU, U.S. DOC, THE FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES 1 (1999).

28. The Population Reference Bureau projects a U.S. population size of 414 million in 2050. See POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU, 2001 POPULATION DATA SHEET (2001) [hereinafter POPULATION DATA SHEET], a 46% increase over the 2001 population of 285 million.

29. MATHIS WACKERNAGEL & WILLIAM REES, OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT: REDUCING HUMAN IMPACT ON THE EARTH (1996); Mathis Wackernagel et al., National Natural Capital Accounting With the Ecological Footprint Concept, 29 ECOLOGICAL ECON. 375 (1999).

30. P.M. Vitousek et al., Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems, 277 SCIENCE 494 (1997).

31. WACKERNAGEL & REES, supra note 29; Wackernagel et al., supra note 29.

32. EHRLICH ET AL., supra note 16; PEOPLE AND ECOSYSTEMS, supra note 7.

33. WHITE HOUSE REPORT, supra note 20.

34. Id. In addition to the 2.7 million illegal immigrants amnestied under the IRCA, 1.3 million illegal aliens were given green cards under the normal INS immigration procedures.

35. Id.

36. Id.

37. Press Release, Center for Immigration Studies, New INS Report: 1986 Amnesty Increased Illegal Immigration (Oct. 12, 2000), available at http:www.cis.org/ins1986amnesty.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002).

38. PAUL R. EHRLICH ET AL., THE GOLDEN DOOR: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, MEXICO, AND THE UNITED STATES (1981).

39. Mike Allen, Bush's Mexican Guest Worker Plan to Push English, but White House Won't Have Proposal Ready in Time for State Visit of President Vincente Fox, WASH. POST, Sept. 1, 2001, at A8.

40. Id.

41. Id.

42. SUBMISSION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FIFTH SESSION OF THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (1997) [hereinafter U.S. SUBMISSION].

43. Stanley K. Henshaw, Abortion Incidence and Services in the United States, 1995-1996, 30 FAM. PLAN. PERSP. 263-70, 287 (1998).

44. See Stanley K. Henshaw, Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 30 FAM. PLAN. PERSP. 24-29, 36 (1998).

45. 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

46. 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

47. As an exception to parental notification, the minor could opt to appear before a family court judge and the judge's signature would waive the parental notification requirement.

48. 448 U.S. 297, 316 (1980).

49. THE STATUS OF MAJOR ABORTION-RELATED LAWS AND POLICIES IN THE STATES (Alan Guttmacher Inst. 2001) [hereinafter STATUS OF MAJOR ABORTION-RELATED LAWS].

50. Id.

51. These data are from a May 31, 2001, survey by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Id.

52. Meredith R. Henderson, Stenberg v. Carhart: "Partial-Birth" Abortion Bans and the Supreme Court's Rejection of the "Methodological" Erasure of the Right to Abortion, 9 N.C. L. REV. 1127 (2001).

53. 120 S. Ct. 2597 (2000).

54. STATUS OF MAJOR ABORTION-RELATED LAWS, supra note 49.

55. Press Release, U.S. Department of Health & Human Servs., FDA Approves Mifepristone for the Termination of Early Pregnancy (Sept. 28, 2000), available at http.www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/NEW00737.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002) [hereinafter FDA Approves Mifepristone].

56. See PLANNED PARENTHOOD, MIFEPRISTONE: A BRIEF HISTORY, available at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/library/ABORTION/Mifepristone.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002).

57. FDA Approves Mifepristone, supra note 55. See also 21 C.F.R. § 314.520.

58. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES FREEDOM NETWORK, DO EXISTING STATE ABORTION LAWS APPLY TO MIFEPRISTONE (RU-486)?, available at http://www.aclu.org/issues/reproduct/statelaws_ru486.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002).

59. Mona Hymel, The Population Crisis: The Stork, the Plow, and the IRS, 77 N.C. L. REV. 13, 45 (1998).

60. Id. at 49.

61. Radio Address by the President to the Nation (June 2, 2001), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010602.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002). Professor Hymel further argues that revisions are necessary to the earned income credit, which seeks to subsidize low-wage parents. Under the present tax code, "the addition of a qualifying child increases both the credit percentage and the eligible wage base." The problem with this policy is that there is no guarantee that the money is actually spent on the child. Thus, Professor Hymel supports a subsidy "more closely tied to amounts actually spent on children." In contrast, the child care credit more closely resembles the type of tax policy that is narrowly targeted toward the amount parents actually spend on their children and treats children as a "consumption choice." Hymel, supra note 59, at 65-68.

62. This section is largely based on the report, Larry Nowels, Population Assistance and Family Planning Programs: Issues for Congress, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE ISSUE BRIEF FOR CONGRESS (2001) [hereinafter Nowels].

63. POPULATION DATA SHEET, supra note 28.

64. Id.

65. Id.

66. In 1995, it was estimated that 52 million abortions occurred each year. HOPES AND REALITIES: CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN WOMEN'S ASPIRATIONS AND THEIR REPRODUCTIVE EXPERIENCES 31-32 (Alan Guttmacher Inst. 1995). In 2001, Stanley Henshaw estimated that 46 million women annually have abortions. Personal Communication with Carl Haub, Population Reference Bureau (Nov. 29, 2001).

67. According to the Congressional Research Service, "as of late 2000, 448 groups had signed the certification agreement, and USAID officials expected another 250 groups would certify over the next year." Nowels, supra note 62. Only nine organizations refused to be certified, but these included two of the largest grant recipients—the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the World Health Organization.

68. See USAID, Restoration of the Mexico City Policy Concerning Family Planning, at http://www.usaid.gov/bush_pro_new.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002); see also Presidential Memorandum of March 28, 2001, Restoration of the Mexico City Policy, 66 Fed. Reg. 17303 (Mar. 29, 2001).

69. Press Release, CRLP, President George W. Bush Sued by Center for Reproductive Law and Policy: Global Gag Rule Censors Free Speech of Americans (June 6, 2001), available at http://www.crlp.org/pr_01_0606ggrsuit.html (last visited Jan. 15, 2002).

70. Nowels, supra note 62.

71. U.S. SUBMISSION, supra note 42.

72. See Births: Preliminary Data for 2000, NAT'L VITAL STAT. REP., July 24, 2000; Isabel V. Sawhill, Teen Pregnancy Prevention: Welfare Reform's Missing Component, BROOKINGS INST. POL'Y BRIEF, Nov. 1998.

73. Ginger Thompson, Fox Urges Congress to Grant Rights to Mexican Immigrants in U.S., N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 6, 2001, at A6.

74. Gretchen C. Daily & Paul R. Ehrlich, Population, Sustainability, and Earth's Carrying Capacity, 42 BIOSCIENCE 761 (1992).

75. Gretchen C. Daily & Paul R. Ehrlich, Global Change and Human Susceptibility to Disease, 21 ANN. REV. OF ENERGY & THE ENV'T 125 (1996); A.J. McMICHAEL, HUMAN FRONTIERS, ENVIRONMENTS, AND DISEASE: PAST PATTERNS, UNCERTAIN FUTURES (2001).

76. WATER IN CRISIS: A GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S FRESH WATER RESOURCES (P.H. Gleick ed., 1993); S.L. Postel et al., Human Appropriation of Renewable Fresh Water, 271 SCIENCE 785 (1978).

77. NATURE'S SERVICES: SOCIETAL DEPENDENCE ON NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS (Gretchen C. Daily ed., 1997); Vitousek et al., supra note 30.

32 ELR 10559 | Environmental Law Reporter | copyright © 2002 | All rights reserved