Population issue must be digested slowly,
then put into value systems
By Buck Lindsay
President, Lindsay Pope Brayfield (architects)
for Gwinnett Forum.com

(Editor's Note: The problem of world's growing population is being addressed by a group which Gwinnett's Buck Lindsay got started back in 1995, through Rotary Clubs throughout the world. The third Population and Development Conference, now an officially-sanctioned Rotary initiative, met recently in Brasilia. Here is Mr. Lindsay's report.)

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga., May 25, 2001 -- Brasilia, Brazil was the location for the third of Rotary International President Frank Devlyn's trilogy of Population and Development Conferences.

The first two conferences, in Zurich and New Delhi, were easy calls: steaming successes. The Zurich meeting was organized by the Swiss and German Rotarians, built to run like one of their fine automobiles, with results to match. Many African Rotarians were present in Zurich, suffocated by their runaway population growth rates, and openly ready to address the problem.

New Delhi was no different. Indians have become global leaders in understanding the population issue and are attacking it at all levels, aggressively and openly.

But the Brazil Conference was different. As Brazilian Director Hipolito Sergio Ferreira said, "Here, we have to go step-by-step." It was most significant that over 800 Rotarians, mostly from South America, attended this meeting.

Maybe it was out of respect for Brazilian Past RI President Paulo V. C. Costa, who just before his recent death had reversed his long-standing position against Rotary's involvement in the population issue, and had agreed to host the Brazilian Population and Development Conference. Maybe it was because the intelligencia of Brazil has been hearing about the population issue for some time, and now wanted to learn about it. Or maybe it was because Frank Devlyn, a Latin American himself, has understood the imperative need to address population growth and chose Brazil as the place in South America from which to let the story be told.

With a few exceptions, Brazilian Rotary leaders were reserved on the Conference topic. This topic is new to most Brazilian Rotarians and it will not be embraced at the first hearing; the population issue must be digested slowly, thought about, understood; and then carefully assimilated into the value systems already in place in their culture.

And religious issues must be accounted for. Like the rest of Latin America, Brazil is predominantly Catholic, the Vatican is clear to its congregants on issues such as contraception, which is central to reproductive health, which is central to the population issue. How these challenges will be resolved will only be learned "step-by-step." But the sense of the Conference was that they could be resolved.

In the last 25 years, Brazil has reduced its fertility rate from six children per family to less than three, only one over replacement level, or a stabilized population. But we know that fertility rates only go down when contraceptive prevalence rates go up. Director Ferreira observed that with the pill, sexual freedoms have also changed, which has created other types of problems.

Youth are more apt to engage in sex, and the value of family structure, which is primary in the Brazilian culture, is reduced. Social order and harmony in society is changing; in many ways for the worse.

Urbanization is an associated aspect of the problem.

At the Brazil Population Conference, as might be expected, it was the younger and the female Rotarians who were most intrigued by the discussions. The logic is that it is the younger generations who will inherit the global calamity if we do not come to grips with the population issue; and it is the women (especially in the developing world), who must decide if their role in life is quantity or quality of births, as they determine the number of children they might have, and what other contribution they may make to society.

The Conference also adopted a Resolution recommending to the Board of Directors that the Memorandum of Cooperation between RI and the United Nations Population Fund, co-hosts of the Conference, be extended from its current 1 1/2 year term to five years.

People throughout the world can influence the answers to these questions. We can openly discuss the problem, and we can devise projects that begin to improve the situation. Nearly 50 projects directly addressing the population issue were presented at the Brazil meeting.

We can inform our fellow Rotarians, our neighbors, and our community leaders on the population topic. There is no more powerful force than the simple, honest, spoken word, from one friend to another. That is how the population issue finally is resolved.

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