orthogonal
Registered Senior Member
"Between 1950 and 1994 the population of Rwanda, favored by better health care and temporarily improved food supply, more than tripled, from 2.5 million to 8.5 million. In 1992 Rwanda had the highest growth rate in the world, an average of 8 children per every woman. The teenage soldiers of the Hutu and Tutsi tribes then set out to solve the overpopulation problem in the most direct possible way". Consilience, by E. O. Wilson
If I had gone to Rwanda in the 1960's as an aid worker, perhaps to set up hospitals or to help improve crop yields, might I think myself partly responsible for the events that led to genocide in the 1990's?
How might we best help limit the exploding populations of the third world?
The most humane solution might be to raise their level of education and prosperity to roughly equal our own. Hopefully, their birthrate would then drop to the levels seen in Western European and North American. But Wilson points out a problem with this solution;
"To suppose that the living standard of the rest of the world can be raised to that of the most prosperous countries, with existing technology and current levels of consumption and waste, is a dream in pursuit of a mathematical impossibility".
We currently send food, medicine, and weapons to the poor countries, while the poor countries send refugees to us in return. Certainly our efforts of improving their nutrition and health make the lives better for those who are alive today, but given the model of Rwanda quoted above, are we actually harming them through our acts of compassion?
To give aid merely because it makes us feel good about ourselves is a moral outrage if the end result is a boom and bust population cycle. I'm reminded that these are real people dying miserable deaths, not just theoretical numbers. Discounting some future technological fix, such as genetically modified crops, or desalinization of sea water to make the deserts bloom, what is today the most humane way to help these people achieve a sustainable level of population?
Thanks,
Michael
If I had gone to Rwanda in the 1960's as an aid worker, perhaps to set up hospitals or to help improve crop yields, might I think myself partly responsible for the events that led to genocide in the 1990's?
How might we best help limit the exploding populations of the third world?
The most humane solution might be to raise their level of education and prosperity to roughly equal our own. Hopefully, their birthrate would then drop to the levels seen in Western European and North American. But Wilson points out a problem with this solution;
"To suppose that the living standard of the rest of the world can be raised to that of the most prosperous countries, with existing technology and current levels of consumption and waste, is a dream in pursuit of a mathematical impossibility".
We currently send food, medicine, and weapons to the poor countries, while the poor countries send refugees to us in return. Certainly our efforts of improving their nutrition and health make the lives better for those who are alive today, but given the model of Rwanda quoted above, are we actually harming them through our acts of compassion?
To give aid merely because it makes us feel good about ourselves is a moral outrage if the end result is a boom and bust population cycle. I'm reminded that these are real people dying miserable deaths, not just theoretical numbers. Discounting some future technological fix, such as genetically modified crops, or desalinization of sea water to make the deserts bloom, what is today the most humane way to help these people achieve a sustainable level of population?
Thanks,
Michael
Last edited: