RETRACING THE INITIAL FORMULATIONS OF WORLD OVER POPULATION AND METHODS OF CONTROL: IDEOLOGICAL SPLIT AND DISPUTE ANALYSIS

There has been an unending debate and dispute on the particular issue of whether the world is over populated with people or that there is nothing wrong with the current, and indeed further growth in the population. On the one side of the dived are those who see the world as heading for-a global catastrophe giving the way that world population is growing. They see that very'soon, assuming we are not there already; there will not be enough of anything to go-by as world population is far outstripping available resources; If unchecked, there will not be enough food, water, housing, health facilities and other basic need amenities for life to continue. This will eventually lead to exhaustion of resources, which by their nature are finite and that will usher in doomsdays. The reverse view disagrees and instead posits that human advancement, economic viability and overall welfare and growth of any society are conditioned and dependent on numerical strength. The more people there are the better the chances that they will produce more food, be able to put more hands to exploit resources and their heads to usher educational advancement and technological progression. Equally, the more there are the better the chances of political control and resistance to minority rule and dictatorship. They therefore see the call to control population as anti-thesis to the entire ideal that make life worthwhile and thus mount resistance. The issue of population as a problem or not is therefore hinged on which view or perspective one is looking at. What follows hereunder is an attempt to analyze the views of the groups who argue for and against the problem of world population growth and the need to control it as well as the views of those who feel that there is something sinister about the current drive at population control. This paper explores the positions that these views take by examining the basis on which they lay their arguments. It further directs its attention on the initial formulations that were made to establish a universal approach to population control and the ideas behind such a policy formulation. It narrows down the arguments by suggesting that irrespective of which position one favors, the world, as a global village has now agreed that there is indeed a case for the way human being are growing in number that call for the establishment of some consensus to deal with the problem. This is possible under the current international drive for the establishment of reproductive health and sexual rights which bears the direct consequences of the population issue. Thus the ties between child- bearing, safe motherhood, and maternal mortality/morbidity has now shifted the scales to one favoring policy formulations to deal with population and consequently narrowed down the fissure between the protagonists and antagonists.