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areas and now has over 500,000. A new treaty which would give Panama jurisdiction over land
now in the Zone would help alleviate the problems caused by this growth of Panama City.
Mexico and the U.S. Closest to home, the combined population growth of Mexico and
the U.S. Southwest presages major difficulties for the future. Mexico's population is growing at
some 3.5% per year and will double in 20 years with concomitant increases in demands for food,
housing, education, and employment. By 1995, the present 57 million will have increased to
some 115 million and, unless their recently established family planning program has great
success, by 2000 will exceed 130 million. More important, the numbers of young people entering
the job market each year will expand even more quickly. These growing numbers will increase
the pressure of illegal emigration to the U.S., and make the issue an even more serious source of
friction in our political relations with Mexico.
On our side, the Bureau of the Census estimates that as more and more Americans move
to the Southwestern States the present 40,000,000 population may approximate 61,000,000 by
1995. The domestic use of Colorado River water may again have increased the salinity level in
Mexico and reopened that political issue.
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Amembassy Mexico City (Mexico 4953, June 14, 1974) summarized the
influences of population factors on U.S. interests as follows:
"An indefinite continuation of Mexico's high population growth rate would increasingly
act as a brake on economic (and social) improvement. The consequences would be noted
in various ways. Mexico could well take more radical positions in the international scene.
Illegal migration to the U.S. would increase. In a country where unemployment and
under-employment is already high, the entry of increasing numbers into the work force
would only intensify the pressure to seek employment in the U.S. by whatever means. Yet
another consequence would be increased demand for food imports from the U.S.,
especially if the fate of growth of agricultural production continues to lag behind the
population growth rate. Finally, one cannot dismiss the spectre of future domestic
instability as a long term consequence, should the economy, now strong, falter."
UNCTAD, the Special UNGA, and the UN. The developing countries, after several
years of unorganized maneuvering and erratic attacks have now formed tight groupings in the
Special Committee for Latin American Coordination, the Organization of African States, and the
Seventy-Seven. As illustrated in the Declaration of Santiago and the recent Special General
Assembly, these groupings at times appear to reflect a common desire to launch economic
attacks against the United States and, to a lesser degree, the European developed countries. A
factor which is common to all of them, which retards their development, burdens their foreign
exchange, subjects them to world prices for food, fertilizer, and necessities of life and pushes
them into disadvantageous trade relations is their excessively rapid population growth. Until they
are able to overcome this problem, it is likely that their manifestations of antagonism toward the
United States in international bodies will increase.
Global Factors
In industrial nations, population growth increases demand for industrial output. This over
time tends to deplete national raw materials resources and calls increasingly on sources of
marginal profitability and foreign supplies. To obtain raw materials, industrial nations seek to
locate and develop external sources of supply. The potential for collisions of interest among the
developing countries is obvious and has already begun. It is visible and vexing in claims for
territorial waters and national sovereignty over mineral resources. It may become intense in
rivalries over exploring and exploiting the resources of the ocean floor.
In developing countries, the burden of population factors, added to others, will weaken
unstable governments, often only marginally effective in good times, and open the way for
extremist regimes.
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Countries suffering under such burdens will be more susceptible to radicalization. Their
vulnerability also might invite foreign intervention by stronger nations bent on acquiring political
and economic advantage. The tensions within the Have-not nations are likely to intensify, and the
conflicts between them and the Haves may escalate.
Past experience gives little assistance to predicting the course of these developments
because the speed of today's population growth, migrations, and urbanization far exceeds
anything the world has seen before. Moreover, the consequences of such population factors can
no longer be evaded by moving to new hunting or grazing lands, by conquering new territory, by
discovering or colonizing new continents, or by emigration in large numbers.
The world has ample warning that we all must make more rapid efforts at social and
economic development to avoid or mitigate these gloomy prospects. We should be warned also
that we all must move as rapidly as possible toward stabilizing national and world population
growth.
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CHAPTER VI - World Population Conference
From the standpoint of policy and program, the focal point of the World Population
Conference (WPC) at Bucharest, Romania, in August 1974, was the World Population Plan of
Action (WPPA) The U.S. had contributed many substantive points to the draft Plan We had
particularly emphasized the incorporation of population factors in national planning of
developing countries' population programs for assuring the availability of means of family
planning to persons of reproductive age, voluntary but specific goals for the reduction of
population growth and time frames for action
As the WPPA reached the WPC it was organized as a demographic document. It also [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]