We need more people
We are still bombarded overmuch with exhortations as to how necessary it is to lower rates of population growth before the world and its resources are smothered by the expanding mass of humanity. I have serious doubts about these exhortations. I am particularly suspicious about the rich countries' insistence on how essential it is to lower fertility rates in the Third World. And of all countries Guyana most particularly should find these exhortations ironic and misplaced. Guyana may well be the only country in the world whose population is currently diminishing. Far from fearing over-population, we face a desperately serious problem of under-population. Indeed, by the first decades of the 21st Century probably no more serious problem will face Guyana than the problem of taking possession of its own land before others do so. As neighbours crowd near and over our frontiers we will find it harder and harder to assert de facto possession and use of what belongs to us - and soon enough, as the world shakes its head and turns away, de facto situations will become de jure and half our birthright will be lost. If ever a country needed higher fertility rates to help offset de-population through emigration Guyana is that country. I therefore find it infinitely sad to see many no doubt well-intentioned Guyanese repeating doom-laden cliches straight out of First World mouths about a population mega-crisis and calling for action to control population growth in Guyana. The accepted wisdom seems to be that economic progress in developing countries cannot take place if their populations keep on growing. On a global scale, the argument goes, unless we get population growth under control we will be unable to feed the world's poor. Furthermore, the earth's resources will soon be exhausted and there will be an environmental catastrophe. The trouble with this scenario is that there is no evidence for any part of it. It reminds me of the famous scenario published by the highly prestigious Club of Rome in 1972 which scared the world stiff at the time: this predicted the dates when certain key raw materials would run out - gold in 1981; silver in 1985; mercury in 1985; petroleum in 1992; copper in 1993; natural gas in 1993. In every case, these resources at the end of the 1990s are more plentiful than they were when these lurid "expert" predictions were made. Let us beware the great population explosion myth. The most widely believed element of this myth is that of impending mass starvation. For as long as one can remember that has been the dire prediction. Indeed fear of population growth has alarmed economists since Thomas Malthus in the 18th Century claimed that the earth was facing starvation as it inexorably filled up with people. Paul Ehrlich's influential book The Population Bomb, published in the late 1960s, warned that the battle was already lost and that hundreds of millions would die of starvation in the next few years. In fact, such famines as there have been have normally overtaken sparsely populated areas and have invariably been caused by war or by political incompetence rather than by demographic pressure. India, once seen as a hopeless case, can now comfortably feed itself. Since 1965 world population has doubled - but food production has more than kept up with this increase. Since 1951 the world's per capita food production has steadily increased. Chronic malnutrition in the Third World declined from 36% during the late 1960s to 20% during the late 1980s. In 1993 the World Bank, almost unnoticed, reported that the world's land and water use for agriculture could more than double. But what about poverty? Even supposing you can feed them, will not the poor become poorer if the wealth of a poor nation has to be divided into ever smaller shares? No, because that is not how national economies actually function. Population growth does not cause poverty. Economic success or poverty is caused by how well economies are managed. In the late 1980s a famous survey was carried out examining the comparative economic performances of divided countries: China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, East and West Germany. In each case the part with a denser, faster growing population was economically outstripping the part which had the sparser population but which was then being badly managed under stifling government control. This side of the argument, strangely enough, has been accepted by the population control lobby itself. Barber Conable, former President of the World Bank, historically a major enforcer of birth control programmes in developing countries, admitted years ago: "The evidence is clear that economic growth rates in excess of population can be achieved and maintained by both developed and developing countries". And the US National Academy of Sciences has stated quite clearly: "There is little reason to be concerned about the rate at which population growth is depleting the stock of exhaustible resources". One wonders why such important conclusions are so little publicised? Wealth is produced by work. The better the quality of work the more wealth is produced. That, not the number of people, is the key to development. Guyana needs a much larger population to unlock its resources and safeguard its integrity. But that population must not only be larger but also more skilled, better educated, more spirited and more hopeful. The question, of course, is: how do we get to there from where we are now? 
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