International   

Britons urged to have fewer children

London: British couples should consider having no more than two children to help reduce the environmental impact of the rising global population, doctors have said.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal has called on GPs (family doctors) to encourage the view that bigger families are as environmentally dubious as owning a patio heater or driving a gas-guzzler.

Writing in the journal, John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College, London and Pip Hayes, a GP based in Exeter, south west England, urge doctors to “break a deafening silence” over the use of family planning to curb the rise in population, which has been viewed by many in the community as a taboo subject.

Managing the impact of a soaring human population will be one of the most politically fraught issues governments will have to grapple with in coming decades. Though the rate of population growth has slowed since the 80s, the U.N. estimates the world’s population has increased by about 76 million a year this century, which drives up greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbates the destruction of wildlife habitats.

Previous efforts to limit population growth in India in the 70s and in China, with its one child policy, have made any attempt to raise the issue in Britain highly controversial.

The authors call on schools and GPs to develop education programmes to explain how a rising population is environmentally unsustainable, and how families who have no more than two children will help ensure the population remains steady or even falls.

Figures for 2007 show that average fertility rates in England and Wales were 1.91, meaning there were 191 children born for every 100 women, but that rate has been rising since 2001.

Mr. Guillebaud argues that bringing the fertility rate down to 1.7 would lead to a halving of the population within six generations.

The authors emphasise that couples should never be coerced into having fewer children than they wish, but the environment should become part of a couple’s decision making. The doctors, both of whom are linked to the Optimum Population Trust, a thinktank that researches the impacts of a rising population, claim that every new birth in the U.K. produces 160 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one in Ethiopia. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Gilani heads to U.S. to shore up anti-terror policy
Iran: West has accepted limited U-enrichment
Obama meets Brown
SAARC pact to fight terrorism on the anvil
Namibia auctions its wildlife to raise funds
West Africa’s scrabble kings reign supreme
Ancient burial site found
Britons urged to have fewer children

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu