Cauldron of Contention

The city of Bucharest was hit last week by a population explosion and a heat wave that turned the ordinarily tranquil, temperate Rumanian capital into a cauldron of international contention. Gathered in Bucharest were 1,100 delegates from 141 countries for the United Nations World Population Conference. It was the largest intergovernmental meeting in history, convoked to devise ways of remedying the soaring overpopulation that is straining declining world food reserves. Yet in spite of the gravity of the issue, the sweltering delegates in Bucharest's airless, ovenlike Palace of the Republic seemed motivated more by national pride and ideology than concern for the hunger that already blights many poor nations.

The heated arguments at Bucharest came as a surprise to the conference planners. Several preliminary U.N. meetings had been held to work out a detailed draft of a "plan of action." The plan called for a reduction of birth rates that would be proportionate to a country's population. This would slow down the present 2%-per-year growth rate that experts believe will double the present 3.9 billion world population by the year 2009. The plan also proposed that governments should provide the education, information and means for family planning, if the families so desire. The plan seemed tame enough.

U.S. Delegate Christian A. Herter Jr. warned that North American food reserves available for emergencies are now down to 27 days of world consumption. "Meanwhile," said Herter, "200,000 more people are born each day and have to be fed." Clearly, a catastrophic famine could some day occur, and Herter's warnings appeared to be merely stating the obvious.

Not so. The American proposals that overpopulated countries make a systematic effort to reduce the size of families to an average of two children, and implement birth control policies by the specific target date of 1985 were resoundingly rejected by the delegates.

The onslaught was led by a bizarre alliance of Communist and Latin American countries. According to these delegations, overpopulation is a myth invented by the rich to exploit and subjugate the poor. Soviet Deputy Minister of Health Lev Volodarsky contended that high population-growth rates have "nothing to do with the real reason for backwardness and only serve to distract attention from needed social reforms." Huang Shu-tse, Deputy Minister of Health for China, which has the world's greatest population (800 million), declared that development lags were caused by exploitation by both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and "the large population of the Third World is an important condition for the fight against imperialism." Even India, which has one of the world's most acute problems in feeding its 550 million people, failed to defend the U.S. proposals, claiming that fertility controls were doomed as long as rich countries waste their resources and indulge in "superconsumerism." As the conference ended last week, the final recommendation put forward by the delegates linked family planning with "socioeconomic development," which requires massive infusions of foreign aid. Many underdeveloped nations were obviously unwilling as yet to accept openly responsibility for coping with overpopulation and its resultant hunger. Still, the conference had at least focused attention on these grave problems. When the ideological heat cools down, some progress may be made in resolving them.

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