The Elm Student Newspaper
Fornos gives lecture on issue of overpopulation
Stephanie Gerhold
Overpopulation speaker Werner Fornos.
Shane Brill, Elm photographer
As part of Earth month, WC's Student Environmental Alliance (SEA) presented a lecture on "Population and the Urban Future" on Thursday, April 12 in the Casey Academic Center Forum. As one event in the Green Campus Lecture Series, Werner Fornos, President of the Population Institute since 1982, delivered a speech treating the issues he deemed, "Global Treason."
As one of the foremost authorities on global population issues, Fornos has won numerous awards such as "Humanist of the Year," and has been nominated four times for the United Nations Population Award.
Discussing recent global problems, Fornos said, "Our forests are declining, our top soil eroding, our deserts expanding." He stated the three top reasons for the world's population predicament are "urbanization, marginal farming, and desert expansion."
As an example of urbanization, Fornos spoke of the scarcity of land the Dutch are currently facing. Population increase has caused land rates to skyrocket. One available acre of land in Holland now sells for $25,000 US dollars. Because of the massive urban exodus to the country, the Dutch "no longer have enough land to be able to grow their own agricultural products," and must rely on the importation of milk products daily from El Paso and Las Cruces, said Fornos.
As a member of the Maryland State Legislature since 1972, Fornos became "worried about women's issues, convinced that one of the keys to maintaining the world's population lay in making family planning services available to all women."
He feels that it is not the government's place to regulate women's reproduction, however, he does believe that it is the government's responsibility to aid women who desire to limit their families.
Currently, there are "350 million women in the world who want no more children," said Fornos. By "empowering those women, by preventing unwanted pregnancies, nature will balance the population for us," Fornos maintained.
Due to either lack of information or of means by which to obtain contraceptives, the World Fertility Survey and Demographic Health Survey estimates that 500 million women around the world become pregnant even though they wish to maintain the number of children in their households.
Assuming the calculations of the Population Institute do not alter, one hundred years from now, the United States will boast 560 million people.
As the industrial world constitutes only 20% of the world's population, yet consumes 80% of the world's natural resources, Fornos warned that "we must lower our consumption rate; we have to change in order to survive."He urged male policy makers to join the fight for legislative policies supporting gender equality. "As women improve their status in this world, they improve the status of life in the community," championed Fornos.
Fornos advocated 4 main solutions to the population crisis facing the world. Primarily, he recommended the eradication of female illiteracy.
Literate women, he argued, might be more apt to take advantage of family planning programs if the information was made available to them. As a second step, Fornos suggested women receive full employment opportunities with pay since they perform "2/3 of the world's work," yet receive only "1/10 of the world's income."Third, through educating women, Fornos suggested, the world could reduce the infant mortality rate by 2/3 fewer pregnancies. Lastly, he suggested that in making "sure every couple has knowledge [and] access to natural family planning," the world would see a decline in population growth.
WC Senior Rob Savidge, President of SEA, said that he felt the lecture would "raise the student body's awareness about important environmental issues." He also hoped that through such talks and activities held during WC's Earthmonth, SEA would gain strength and support for future "green" campus policies.
"He was excellent . . .He does a good job of putting it [population growth] in perspective," said SEA's treasurer, junior Melissa Downs.
Professor Kevin Brien felt that the lecture demonstrated the motion towards a greater "awareness of the interconnectedness in the thinking of young people." As Fornos said, "We have to become the conservation generation" in order to make a significant and positive impact on the world.
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