The fact that they had no choice but to launch this unprecedented policy of such grand scale with no economic prospects shows how difficult it is to maintain the ecosystem with human activities, population increase and food production taking place within it.

　

This is Ocher Plateau. Ocher Plateau stretches from Xian to Yinchuan, a region in Islamic China where the Great Wall of China starts to disappear. Soil does get eroded by wind and rain in these areas but the situation rapidly got worse. People are cultivating land in the upper parts of the slope as cliffs slip with their fields on them.

　

The caves that you see here and there are traditional dwellings of this region called yaoton. Many people still live in these caves that they have dug and this kind of major collapse is really taking place. People are compelled to plant trees in these places and adopt the policies of returning farms into forests and closing off mountains to plant trees.

　

An ironic way to put this would be "political tree planting." Japan's Forestry Agency would definitely refuse to plant trees on places like this if you ask them. It would be difficult for seedlings to take root on such steep slope with precipitation of only 200 to 300 millimetres. However, China does have her great side. As the proverb "Persistence moves mountains" suggests, this is a very critical scene representing such prevailing way of thought in China. This is a tree planting site. We cannot even imagine what is going to happen here in the future.

　

You see these slogans, "Plant trees and make the mountain beautiful" or "Invite affluence through trees" everywhere. I wanted to convey what is happening at the frontline of returning farms into forests policy to give you a glimpse of what people have to do when population and human activities go out of alignment with nature's carrying capacity.

　

I mentioned at the outset that Paul Ehrlich's "I = PAT" formula holds up in developed industrial countries but is not convincing to developing countries. As several lecturers have pointed out earlier, the theory of demographic transition emerged as a result of analysing the European society to find out how has population shifted. According to this theory, people give many births and many people die in the first stage. In the next stage, following advancement of industrialisation, for instance, people continue to give many births but fewer people die thanks to immunisation, food aid, higher agricultural productivity and abundance of commodities. This is the stage of high fertility and low mortality. Then comes the next stage in which people start having less children as a result of advancement of women into workplace, higher literacy and clearer self-determination on the individual level. Education also costs money. People then start to bear and raise less children as the society enters the stage of low birth/low mortality. Population is said to reach a static state after going through these 3 stages.

　

However, there is a term "demographic transition trap" that refers to the situation in which population increase continues instead of becoming transitional in the second stage when people continue to bear many children but stop dying as food and medical facilities are improved. There are many countries in Asia and Africa that are suffering from such phenomenon. When this occurs, population will have to keep increasing as the country gets caught in a demographic transition trap.

　

Having worked for many years as a journalist, I participated in three Environmental Summits − starting from the first conference in Sweden in 1972, the second in Kenya in 1982 and the third in Rio in 1992 − and saw all kinds of situations at the scene. At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Secretary-General Maurice Strong said at the opening speech that there were two reasons for holding the Environmental Summit. First is the problem of explosive increase of population in which 250,000 people are added to the population every day in the developing countries. Second is the problem of expanding disparity in wealth in which 75 percent of humanity is intent on obtaining daily bread. He clearly declared that Earth Summit was being held to solve these two problems.

　

He also said that concentration and rapid increase of population in developing countries and concentration of wealth in developed countries is creating unsustainable imbalance in both realms of environment and economy but situation such as this would not continue for a long time. Then he went on to say that population increase would have to be restrained and stabilised at once; otherwise, nature would control the population in a much merciless manner.

　

That was the Secretary-General's opening address at the United Nations Environmental Summit in Brazil. He said that if people did nothing, nature would control the population in a much ruthless manner. This is in line with the indications made by the scientists earlier today.

　

At this conference, Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 were adopted with the aim of urging the governments to implement adequate population policy, establish proper population dynamics and incorporate it into the policy and aim for integration of population, environment and development. They also asserted that improvement of women's status and improvement of their education were of crucial importance.

　

An inner party (preliminary sectional meeting) was held in London prior to this conference. At that meeting, Dr. Strong made a very interesting remark. He told me that many of the comments made at international conferences held on the agenda of decreasing population were blatant dissenting opinions that would destroy the conference itself. He did not get into the details of who said what, but generally speaking, there were different views of life as represented by Islamic fundamentalism and Roman Catholic Church (Holy See). They were the source of movements that directly oppose abortion and birth control.

　

Then the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo in 1994 and international community adopted an action plan centred on two policies of reproduction health and rights, and empowerment of women which sought to support improvement of education and social participation of women. It was adopted through agreement of all participants including Islam, Vatican, planned economy and market economy. The action plan had two main pillars. The first was to make efforts so that people can enjoy reproductive health including safe and reliable family planning by 2014. The second was to set intermediate goals for 2004 and 2014 and attain the goals of average life expectancy and infant mortality rate set respectively for these stages. Efforts are currently being made to attain these goals.

　

There is a big question as to whether such efforts are bearing any fruit. As many of you who are here may know, there is a doctor from Ghana named Dr. Fred Sai who served as the president of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). Like the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) which is sponsoring this lecture today, IPPF is an organisation with a very strong character of NGO. I once interviewed Dr. Sai in Geneva. According to Dr. Sai, population and fertility have started decreasing in more than 80 countries over the past 20 years. World's fertility rate was increasing rapidly at 2.1% on a year-on-year basis in the 1960s but has now dropped to 1.3%.

　

The reason behind this was the further promotion of the policy realised by international cooperation and assistance to developing countries that encouraged and supported the politicians of these countries. Dr. Sai stressed that the efforts of him and his colleagues were bearing fruit. In response to this question about the relationship between population and development, Dr. Sai said. "Population is the instrument of development and progress and at the same time is the consumer of the fruits of development. Well-educated population that has been trained in social participation raises the technical level of industry or becomes a resource in nation-building. However, the levels of education, medical care and employment are very low in Central Asia, Central Africa and West Africa. Population continues to increase at more than 3% under such circumstances. For example, Afghanistan and the Arab countries that are fighting Israel have population increase rates on the 3 percent mark, but it is already clear that such situations are disastrous".

　

We have been addressing the population problem and have made various efforts to date to solve the problem. We are also determined to continue such efforts. I think that Japan's first goal in international contributions in the nearest future should be the support from government agencies to NGOs that are working in the field. I think that the activities of Asian Population and Development Association should be rated very highly in this regard. Thank you very much.