By Debra Wirth
It is in the world's poorest countries that population is growing fastest. In wealthier countries, higher living standards have produced lower birth rates. In Australia, a number of organisations are working to relieve problems in the Third World, though all are deploying tiny resources against massive problems and the combined efforts of all of them make hardly any difference to the wealth flowing out of the recipient countries into Australia due to unequal trade.
Among the aid groups, approaches differ. At the minimalist end of the scale, World Vision encourages people from wealthy countries to sponsor Third World children, presumably in the hope that at least a few can be saved in the midst of vast social disasters. Other organisations, although they are fewer these days, promote programs to encourage Third World women to have fewer children. Neither approach tackles the fundamental problems underlying Third World poverty and the resulting runaway population growth.
Some organisations have taken on questions such as developing a sustainable approach to problems of inequality and poverty. Janet Hunt of the Australian Council For Overseas Aid dismisses talk of population strategies in favour of an approach to women's health, including their reproductive health. This takes in the question of poor women having too many children too quickly and damaging their own health as well as that of the children. If aid programs take account of all such considerations, they are more likely to work in the interests of the recipients.
Where women do have control over their fertility and can make informed choices, their economic and social status improves. Hunt says many women in developing countries do want control over their fertility, but because they have no access to family planning strategies, they are denied the right to make informed choices.
Bronwyn Olaver, of Community Aid Abroad in Victoria, would agree. Her experience in the Philippines confirms that women in very poor societies often have many children in the knowledge that some will die. However, "if a woman does see her child grow up, and is confident that child can support her family when they are old, she won't have so many children", Olaver said.
Community Aid Abroad programs are based on such premises. "But we don't just come in and say we think you people need a health centre, then impose one on them", Olaver told Green Left. "We wait for the people themselves to begin to set up health centres or literacy schools, then we work in partnership with them. How we help is by funding these projects."
Other aid organisations contribute to projects to reverse environmental degradation. The Committees in Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean, along with other groups including the Swiss-based Eco-Solidar, is currently contributing funds to a model farm and training centre for organic farming in Achuapa, Nicaragua. This project was begun under the Sandinista government during the 1980s. International funding of the organic farm has become all the more important as a result of the Sandinistas losing office at the .
The project includes terracing, replacement of chemical fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides with organic alternatives, dispensing with the practice of burning before planting, and reforestation and tree-planting.
According to Pip Hinman, national coordinator of CISLAC, "a project such as this not only avoids the use of chemicals harmful to both people and the environment, it is also economically advantageous. This means people will feel more secure about their future, and women will be able to participate more in farming and in the general community. Women won't be tied to having and then caring for such large families. We are talking about both ecological sustainability and raising people's standard of living and self-sufficiency."
Janet Hunt says ACFOA supports similar projects, but she feels it would be hypocritical for aid organisations only to fund projects that are completely environmentally sound. Most of the damage to the world's environment is a result of economic and industrial activity in the First World.
First World companies also contribute heavily to environmental damage in the Third World. In the Solomons Islands and Papua New Guinea, where people depend on the natural environment for their livelihood, logging and mining causes soil erosion and damages waterways and fishing grounds. "So, in many cases where aid organisations are funding projects aimed at protecting or restoring the environment, they are also protecting the habitats and resource bases of the people as well." n