The Population Elephant: The Problems with “The Problem”

Ten Best Population Quotes, from The Population Elephant

Climate change, energy depletion, food shortages,
resource wars, species extinction - these are not
the problem, they are only the symptoms. The
singular root problem that causes all these
horrifying threats to mankind is overpopulation.


So - logically - the solution that will eliminate
these threats is simply to reduce the population of
humans on this planet to a sustainable number.


Yet, no one proposes this obvious solution. No
one is even willing to discuss it.


It is the Elephant in every room.


Except here.

TrinityLove Eco-Family:: Mothers Limbic Love Connection: Reptilian vs. Limbic Brain Love & Intimacy

TrinityLove Eco-Family:: Mothers Limbic Love Connection: Reptilian vs. Limbic Brain Love & Intimacy

HeartSwan CourtShip

This Mothers Day post was motivated by Dachshund's comment to Why People Work Hard (below intro)

It is a brief snippets exploration into the possible neurological (psychological and emotional) foundations of love, from the perspective of individuals whose 'love' thinking and behaviour, occurs at the level of the reptilian brain, limbic brain, or neocortex.

All mammals have reptilian, limbic and neocortex brains; Reptiles only have reptilian brains. In any mammal, any 'fight, flight, love, et al' behaviour may be rooted in any related, or a combination thereof brain. Additionally the practice of certain behaviours, in this case, love, touch and intimacy, from infancy all through life stimulates the growth and activity and intimacy in the limbic brain. The absence of loving touch, and intimacy from childhood, results in stunted limbic brains. A mammal/human with a stunted limbic brain, accordingly responds to 'love' by means of their reptilian brain knowledge thereof.

Reptilian brains experience a reptilian truth: "no intrinsic restraint on harming people exists in the reptilian brain."

*****

[Dachshund]

Paul Ehrlich (Population Time Bomb): 7 Steps Toward a Sustainable Society | The Dominant Animal & The State of the World

The ancient saying, "The rich get richer, and the poor get children," has more wisdom in it than does the demographic transition theory.

The moral is surely obvious: never globalize a problem if it can possibly be solved locally. It may be chic but it is not wise to tack the adjective global onto the names of problems that are merely widespread -- for example, "global hunger," "global poverty," and the global population problem."

We will make no progress with population problems, which are a root cause of both hunger and poverty, until we deglobalize them. Populations, like potholes, are produced locally, and, unlike atmospheric pollution, remain local unless some people are so unwise as to globalize them by permitting population excesses to migrate into the better-endowed countries. Marx's formula, "to each according to his needs" is a recipe for national suicide.

We are not faced with a single global population problem but, rather, with about 180 separate national population problems. All population controls must be applied locally; local governments are the agents best prepared to choose local means. Means must fit local traditions. For one nation to attempt to impose its ethical principles on another is to violate national sovereignty and endanger international peace. The only legitimate demand that nations can make on one another is this: "Don't try to solve your population problem by exporting your excess people to us." All nations should take this position, and most do. Unfortunately, many Americans seem to believe that our nation can solve everyone else's population problems.
~ The Feast of Malthus: Living within Limits | There is No Global Population Problem!? ~

Seven Steps Toward a Sustainable Society

Paul Ehlrich | Island Press: Eco-Compass

A central problem of the human predicament discussed in The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment is that we’re small-group animals trying to live in ever more gigantic groups - and not doing very well at it. If catastrophe can be avoided, we’re stuck with gigantic groups for a century or more, and very large groups “forever.” It therefore behooves humanity to start asking itself how to maintain the small group coherence and interests that make people comfortable while greatly damping down intergroup competition and substantially enhancing the intergroup cooperation desperately needed to solve the human predicament.

Can human cultural evolution be directed away from its current trajectory toward disaster and diverted toward creating a prosperous and equitable long-term future for society? The answer is, “yes, it could” if the small-group animal “family” attitudes can be properly channeled. The basic requirements would be quite simple - a set of overlapping and intertwined ethical-environmental steps toward sustainability such as suggested below and over the next few weeks here at the “Eco-Compass” blog. Whether such steps will be taken is, of course, an entirely different question. But here’s the first of the steps we should take:


One: Put births on a par with deaths.

Human beings have always fought against early death from accident, hunger and sickness, and in the past century or so have employed improved sanitation and the use of pesticides and antibiotics to good effect in raising life-expectancy. But given the horrendous potential consequences of the explosion of human numbers following reduction of the death rate, we must pay equivalent attention to reducing the birthrate as well. As been done in many family planning programs, the happy family should be promoted as one that limits its numbers. But the change should be in the motivation. Traditionally the small family was supposed to supply a higher standard of living - including more stuff for each individual. The new approach could be to promote it as a multigenerational unit that in each generation limits its size in order to maximize the chances of each following generations retaining a happy, sustainable life style.

To move in that direction, humanity must rapidly expand programs to educate and give job opportunities to women, make effective contraception universally available, and develop public support of population policies. The goal must be to halt population increase as soon as humanely possible, and then start reducing human numbers until births and deaths balance at population size that can be maintained without irreparable damage to our life-support systems.


Two: Put conserving on a par with consuming.

At any given level of technology, there is a trade-off between how many people can be born into a society and the level of per capita physical affluence that can be sustainably supported. The more people there are, the smaller each one’s share of the pie.

One way of dealing with this trade-off would be a cultural shift away from creating ever more gadgets to creating more appreciation and better stewardship for Earth’s aesthetic assets. A high priority should be rethinking how we use the resources available to us - as individuals and societies - manage manufactured and natural capital (our ecological assets) carefully, and distribute their benefits more equitably. Success there, if it were combined with a decline in numbers, should eventually permit most people to live satisfactory lives. Of course, success would require abandoning the insane idea that growth in consumption is automatically good and can continue forever, No physical quantity can do that, including the total bulk of the human population (which at recent exponential growth rates would equal the total mass of the universe in less than 10,000 years).


Three: Transform the consumption of education.

Education is what economists call a “non-rival good” - something that can be consumed without reducing the amount available to others-and as such it is an ideal consumption good for a sustainable society. More quality education could help us solve the human predicament - the combined crises of overpopulation, wasteful consumption, deteriorating life-support systems, declining resources, multiplying weapons of mass destruction, and widening inequity within and between nations. Education reform is also crucial. In the future, both the need for sustainability and the multi-dimensional environmental, social, political, and economic requirements to achieve it must be central elements of education around the world. Unless a much larger fraction of the human population becomes aware of the predicament we all face and its possible solutions, sustainability is unlikely to be reached.

There exists today what I like to call a “culture gap.” When I lived with the Inuit (Eskimos) more than a half century ago every Inuit individual possessed the vast majority of the non-genetic information (culture) available to the Inuit community. Women knew how seal hunting was done; men knew the use of a woman’s knife. Perhaps a shaman had a few secret chants, but in general everyone was “fully educated.” In our global society that has changed completely. Even the most educated people do not possess even one millionth of the non-genetic information housed in human brains, libraries, computer disks, arts, and artifacts. Given the parts, I could not begin to assemble the computer on which I am writing this. How many readers of this blog could explain quantum physics or ecosystem science, or recite the poems of Shakespeare? There is a huge gap between what society knows collectively, and what people know individually. We obviously cannot close the culture gap across the board, but we could narrow it selectively. In short, we must strive to narrow the culture gap in the most crucial areas related to reaching sustainability..


Four: Judge technologies not just on what they do for people but also to people and their life-support systems.

A novel synthetic chemical added to the plastic in a sports bottle may increase its durability or prolong its life. But if it leaches into the bottle’s contents or into the environment and functions in tiny doses as a cancer-causing agent, is the risk worth the benefit? In general, benefit-cost analyses are not done frequently or carefully enough before the introduction of new technologies. Freons (chlorofluorocarbons) looked extremely beneficial until it was discovered they could destroy the ozone layer and with it all life on land. Risk cannot be avoided completely. But a cultural change toward more careful analyses and deployment only of technologies that carry very clear benefits will help humanity keep the odds in its favor. It is an example of where the small group alone just can’t produce the necessary cultural evolution - information from the large-group institutions of governments and international science necessarily must be integrated into the process.


Five: Rapidly expand our empathy.

We’re a small-group animal, trying to live in large groups. Although we no longer can associate exclusively with a clan “family” of, say, 125 relatives, most of us have a group of “pseudokin”—friends and close associates of about the same number. In both cases, we develop a sort of “we” versus “them” culture, with the “themness” increasing with physical and cultural distance.

People are gradually gaining more empathy toward those others distant from us in skin color, gender, religion, class, culture or physical space, but our ability to inflict harm on them has also increased. Cultural evolution is not rapidly enough reducing this discounting by distance (caring less about situations the further away they are). The same can be said about discounting by time—not caring enough about the world we will leave to our children and our descendants in the more distant future. Can affluent people in the West learn to care enough about a starving child in Darfur to take real action to save her? If society takes step five, the answer will be “yes,” and we’ll be on the kind of road that could lead to a level of global cooperation that might allow a billion, perhaps three billion small-group animals to live together sustainably in relative peace.


Six: Decide what kind of world we all want.

What are the ultimate goals of our lives? Are Americans really happier traveling to work an hour or more each day wrapped in a few tons of steel and breathing smog that threatens their lives?

While the U.S. GDP has increased almost five times since 1958, satisfaction, as shown by polls, has not increased at all. The situation in other countries is similar. Must all nations then strive to emulate the American superconsuming life style? Or should all of humanity strive together to seek a more equitable global society, which could replace today’s bipolar super-rich—desperately poor population in which the split widens as growth continues. We could initiate a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB) to begin a discussion of what economic, social, and political systems will best fulfill a small-group animal’s desires as it struggles to live in gigantic groups. How, for example, do we take advantage of the enormous benefits that market mechanisms provide to societies while constraining their propensity to do gigantic damage when unregulated? Starting and maintaining a global cultural discussion is a step that would help determine the kinds of lifestyles people really want., Armed with that knowledge, we could try to establish as accurately as possible the conditions of population size, consumption patterns, economic arrangements, and technologies required to make such lifestyles sustainable.


Seven: Determine the institutions and arrangements best suited to govern a planetary society with a maximum of freedom within the constraints of sustainability.

This is closely related to step six. In the 200,000 year history of Homo sapiens, states are a recent invention, existing for only a tiny fraction of our existence. In their modern form as nation states, they are only a little more than 200 years old. We need to look closely at possible alternatives that could combine greater awareness of the problems of living at a global scale while regaining family-style psychological comfort. More cooperation at a global level is clearly necessary for civilization’s long-term survival.

All seven of the steps could be written of as an exercise in Pollyannaism. “Totally impractical,” people will say, “not gonna happen.” Well, I tend to agree. But there is nothing more impractical than letting our global civilization go down the drain, with billions of people dying. Pundits seem to think we have choices, but they are wrong. If we don’t change our ways, they’ll be changed for us.

Paul R. Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He is the author of hundreds of scientific papers, and numerous books including The Population Bomb and Betrayal of Science and Reason (Island Press, 1997). His latest book is The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, which he co-authored with his wife Anne.

Source: Island Press: Eco-Compass

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The Dominant Animal and The State of the World

According to Paul Ehlrich | ForaTV (01:28:38)

Paul Ehrlich gives a seminar at the Long Now Foundation about the evolution of human culture and its effect on the environment. A perspective of the State of the World, from ecologists, biologists, etc.

Chapters: [chapter link goes directly to Fora.tv page & chapter]
Human Dominance of Earth | Early Human Evolution | Cultural Evolution | Big Cultural Steps | Human Effects on Environment | Population | Global Climate Change | Toxification of Earth | Epidemic Problems | Resource Wars | Changing Human Behaviour | Drilling for Oil | Questions

Source: Fora.TV

High birth rates hamper development in poorer countries | UN: World Population over 9 Billion by 2050 | Sex is Main Cause of Pop. Growth

Today, 6.5 billion humans depend entirely on oil for food, energy, plastics & chemicals. Population growth is on a collision course with the inevitable decline in oil production.

To think that we can advocate for human rights, peace, and social justice while ignoring their necessary ecological basis—is both intellectually dishonest and ultimately self-defeating.

The longer we put off choosing the nicer methods of achieving demographic stability, the more likely the nasty ones become, whether imposed by nature or by some fascistic regime. Urine Good Company might represent a mild version of what could actually be in store if we let the marketplace, corporations, and secretive, militaristic governments come up with eugenic solutions to our population dilemma.
~ Population, Resources, and Human Idealism, Energy Bulletin | Population Growth: Most Powerful Force on Earth, Money&Markets ~

High birth rates hamper development in poorer countries, warns UN forum

United Nations

1 April 2009 – Rapid population growth, fuelled by high fertility, presents a barrier to reducing poverty levels and reaching other internationally agreed development goals, experts attending the current session of the United Nations population body said today.

The meeting of the Commission on Population and Development, which began on Monday and concludes on Friday, is examining the extent to which population growth affects the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), globally agreed targets on reducing poverty and eliminating other social ills by 2015.

Although birth rates have been on the slide across the developing world since the 1970s, women in most of the least developed countries (LDCs) still have five children each on average, according to a policy brief presented by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

The lack of access to family planning and to modern methods of contraception is the major cause of this persistence in high fertility.

“When individuals and couples are given the possibility of deciding how many children they want to have, they usually opt for much lower numbers than they used to,” Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division, told the press at UN Headquarters in New York at a briefing focusing on the work of the Commission.

Ms. Zlotnik noted that giving people the information and means for reaching their reproductive goals – without any kind of interference or coercion – has significant implications for economic and social development.

Reducing population growth through cutting fertility rates, versus increasing mortality or restricting migration, is beneficial to the economy, as low fertility increases the number of people of working age per capita as well as output per capita, according to the Population Division brief.

Benefits to economic growth also occur as lowering fertility leads to an increase in the supply of female labour, particularly in urban areas in developing countries.

In addition, smaller family size allows for greater investment in the health and education of children in the longer term both from the family and government.

Source: United Nations

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Revised UN estimates put world population at over 9 billion by 2050

United Nations

11 March 2009 – The world’s population will hit 7 billion early in 2012 and top 9 billion in 2050, with the majority of the increase taking place in developing countries, according to revised United Nations estimates released today.

“There have been no big changes for the recent estimates and we have not changed the assumptions for the future,” Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), told reporters in New York.

“We’re still projecting that by 2050 the population of the world will be around 9.1 billion,” she said, as she presented the 2008 Revision of the World Population Prospects.

The Revision also says that nine countries are expected to account for half of the world’s projected increase from 2010 to 2050: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania, China and Bangladesh.

Ms. Zlotnik noted that current projections are based on the assumption that fertility is going to decline from the current global level of 2.5 children per woman to 2.1 children per woman from now until 2050.

The population of the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) is still the fastest growing in the world, at 2.3 per cent per year, according to a news release issued by the Population Division.

While the population of developing countries as a whole is projected to rise from 5.6 billion in 2009 to 7.9 billion in 2050, the population of more developed regions is expected to change minimally, passing from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion.

The latter would have declined to 1.15 billion were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries, which is expected to average 2.4 million persons annually from 2009 to 2050.

The UN adds that projected trends are contingent on fertility declines in developing countries. Without further reductions of fertility, the world population could increase by nearly twice as much as currently expected.

“It is going to be extremely important to continue funding and increasing the funding that has gone down for family planning because, if not, our projections on declining fertility are unlikely to be met,” Ms. Zlotnik stated.

She added that the projected population trends also depend on achieving a major increase in the proportion of AIDS patients who get anti-retroviral therapy to treat the disease and on the success of efforts to control the further spread of HIV.

Among the other findings, she noted that most developing countries are unlikely to meet the goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015, one of eight globally agreed targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Source: United Nations

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Sex is main cause of population growth

Optimum Population Trust

March 26, 2009

Sex, not religious or cultural beliefs or the quest for economic security, is what increases family size and drives world population growth, according to one of the UK’s leading authorities on family planning.

Conventional economic wisdom, which says that couples in poorer societies actively plan to have large families to compensate for high child mortality, to provide labour, and to care for parents in their old age, is wrong, Professor John Guillebaud will tell a conference on sustainable population today (Thursday, March 26).

Economists overlook the fact that sexual intercourse is more frequent than the minimum needed for intentional conceptions, and that half of pregnancies worldwide are unplanned. Moreover, demand for contraception increases when it is available, irrespective of a society’s wealth or child survival rates.

“Having a large rather than a small family is less of a planned decision than an automatic outcome of human sexuality,” Prof. Guillebaud will say. “For a fertile couple, nothing is easier.”

Prof. Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College, London, is one of a group of experts who will be discussing the scientific rationale for reducing population to environmentally sustainable levels at today’s conference, organised by the Optimum Population Trust.

Other speakers include: Tim Dyson, professor of demography at the London School of Economics; Prof. Andrew Watkinson, former director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research; Robin Maynard, campaigns director of the Soil Association; Prof. Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; Jonathon Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission; Sara Parkin, founder-director of Forum for the Future and former co-chair of the Green Party; and Dr. Martin Desvaux, an ecological footprint specialist.

Many environmentalists argue that greener lifestyles, and reducing consumption, are the key to solving environmental challenges such as climate change. However, Dr. Desvaux will disclose details of research showing that even with an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, the UK will be able to sustain only 37 million people; a “zero-carbon” economy will support only 52 million people in 2050. This will make the UK “extremely vulnerable in an uncertain world”, he will argue. The UK’s population, currently 61 million, is projected to rise to 77 million by 2050.

Even if Britain’s population could be capped at 70 million, as suggested by the immigration minister, Phil Woolas, last year, there would still be up to 33 million too many people in the UK for long-term sustainability, according to Dr. Desvaux.

The conference will also hear that:

*The UK could face major problems because of its high population density and low agricultural self-sufficiency. To reduce London’s current “food footprint” of some 20 million hectares - 2 million more than the UK’s agricultural land area – to a globally sustainable “fair share”, Londoners would need to eat an estimated 70 per cent less meat.

*Despite the likelihood of a world population crash as a consequence of inaction on overpopulation, 21 European countries are trying to raise their birth rates.

Prof. Guillebaud will argue that in both rich and poor countries, “something active needs to be done to separate sex from conception - namely, contraception…The evidence is clear within a wide variety of settings that - despite no prior increase in per capita wealth or child survival or other presumed essentials - demand for contraception increases when it becomes available, accessible, and accompanied by correct information about its appropriateness and safety.”

Yet despite being long seen as synonymous with contraception, the oral contraceptive pill is not an ideal method. It has the wrong “default state” - conception occurs if an error is made in its use. Long-acting reversible contraceptives, such as implants or copper intrauterine devices (IUDs), are far more effective because, unlike the pill, they are “forgettable”: mistakes in use do not result in conception.

Prof. Guillebaud argues that LARCs are particularly valuable for young people, “whose track record for unwanted conceptions - due to failure to comply properly with pill-taking even where oral contraception is available - is high in all societies”. This is a crucial feature in reducing population growth, he adds, since nearly half the world’s population is under the age of 25.

The conference, Environmentally Sustainable Populations: The scientific case for population policy - and ways of achieving sustainability, is being held at the Royal Statistical Society.

NOTES

A synopsis of Prof. Guillebaud’s paper is appended to this release.
The UN estimates that over 200 million women worldwide lack access to effective contraception.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Contact Prof. John Guillebaud on 07779 180188 or telephone 07976 370221

For information about the conference, contact Julie Lewis, administrator, Optimum Population Trust, 07531 316564, admin@optimumpopulation.org

NOTES FOR EDITORS: The OPT, a think-tank and campaign group, was founded in 1991 by the late David Willey. Its main aims are to promote and co-ordinate research into criteria that will allow the sustainable or optimum population of a region to be determined. Its patrons include Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey professor of economics at Cambridge University; Paul Ehrlich, professor of population studies, Stanford University; Jane Goodall, founder, the Jane Goodall Institute, UN Messenger of Peace; John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health, University College, London; Susan Hampshire, actor; Aubrey Manning, broadcaster and professor of natural history, Edinburgh University; Professor Norman Myers, visiting fellow, Green College, Oxford; Sara Parkin, founder director and trustee, Forum for the Future; Sir Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission; and Sir Crispin Tickell, director of the Policy Foresight Programme, James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation, Oxford University

Scientific Solutions in Contraception

John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health, University College, London

Paper for: Environmentally Sustainable Populations: The scientific case for population policy - and ways of achieving sustainability, Optimum Population Trust conference, Royal Statistical Society, March 26, 2009.

It is often assumed that any quantitative concern for population must be intrinsically coercive. But why consider infringing human rights when around half of pregnancies worldwide are unplanned? Moreover, numerous countries as varied as Costa Rica, Iran, Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand halved their total fertility rates primarily through meeting women’s unmet fertility needs and choices. What features do such disparate “success story” countries have in common - and how might they be replicated?

Conventional economic wisdom says that couples in resource poor settings actively plan to have many children to compensate for high child mortality, to provide labour, and to care for parents as they age. Often with cultural and religious endorsement, those factors clearly enhance the post hoc acceptance of large families. But economists overlook the fact that, everywhere, potentially fertile intercourse is more frequent than the minimum needed for intentional conceptions.

Thus, having a large rather than a small family is less of a planned decision than an automatic outcome of human sexuality. For a fertile couple, nothing is easier. Whether in resource poor or rich settings, something active needs to be done to separate sex from conception—namely, contraception. Moreover access to contraception is often difficult. Barriers to women’s choice are created through lack of empowerment and abuse of their rights by husbands or other family members; or religious authorities and some governments (for example, the Philippines) and, regrettably, sometimes even contraceptive providers. Misinformation abounds: in Rwanda, for instance, rumours have spread that hormonal contraceptives cause permanent sterility and that condoms always have holes in them.

The evidence is clear within a wide variety of settings that—despite no prior increase in per capita wealth or child survival or other presumed essentials—demand for contraception increases when it becomes available, accessible, and accompanied by correct information about its appropriateness and safety; when barriers are removed; and when there is good publicity and marketing principles are applied. This is consistent with normal consumer behaviour.

In Iran, where the total fertility rate (”average family size”) declined from 5.5 to 2 (replacement level) in just 15 years, all couples must learn about family planning before marriage and contraception was endorsed by the edicts of religious leaders. The Population Media Centre uses serial radio dramas or “soaps”. Audiences learn from decisions that their favourite characters make—such as allowing wives to use contraception to achieve smaller and healthier families. In Rwanda, 57% of new attendees at family planning clinics named the radio drama “Rwanda’s Brighter Future” as their reason for attending.

Contraceptive technology – which methods are best?
For too long the very name ‘pill’ has been seen as synonymous with contraception. Yet the combined oral contraceptive pill is not an ideal method. It has the wrong “default state”, namely conception if an error is made in its use. And user-failure errors are very common, so that its failure rate in typical use is up to 10 times higher than its theoretical effectiveness.

A better model for most of us humans would be a long-acting yet fully reversible contraceptive: having the right “default state”, namely of contraception - regardless of what the user does or doesn’t do. Such a method – invariably some kind of insert or implant - requires a single decision when sexual activity starts, to “opt out” of fertility. (Note that in principle the method could be for use by either sex). After that, the user becomes free of all contraceptive responsibility. In a future utopian version there would be no side effects, nothing else to be done until the individual was ready to “opt in” to restored fertility. At that point a second voluntary action would reverse the method. Until then, the method would have that crucial virtue among contraceptives of total “forgettability”.

Over the past 100 years scientific research has already produced several such long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs): they are the copper intrauterine devices (IUDs) and an intrauterine system (IUS); injectables; and subcutaneous implants. While not achieving the contraceptive utopia just described, because of side effects - principally irregular bleeding - they do have that ideal default state. They have been established to have, in typical use, much higher continuation rates and effectiveness than pills - indeed the same effectiveness as female sterilization. But in settings where there is high infant mortality they are far more appropriate than sterilization, which is essentially irreversible and for too long has been the mainstay of many developing world programmes. Moreover, these LARCs are particularly valuable for young people, whose track record for unwanted conceptions –due to failure to comply properly with pill-taking even where oral contraception is available - is high in all societies. Given that close to half of the world’s population is under age 25, we can therefore add another crucial feature to those above that are shared by the successful countries: that they have offered to the majority of their citizens a good range of choice of contraceptives, including most or all of these long-acting methods.

Source: Optimum Population Trust