Population and sustainable development: The critical role of good governance

Many articles in the popular press and in academic journals decry the doomed state of our planet. In one recent journalistic account, “The Ends of the Earth”, the author (Kaplan, 1997) journeyed to see for himself “the corrosive effects of overpopulation and environmental degradation in the Third World”. What he found, not surprisingly, was consistent with what he had expected, based on the oft-cited statistical indicators of development - or more accurately, of the malaise of development - decay, disorder and depression. Similar indicators suggest that the news from the Pacific is not good either. Demographic trends particularly are invoked as harbingers of doom for these island countries and territories. The well-rehearsed scenario is a future condemned by overpopulation of under-resourced towns and depopulation of the outer islands; by agricultural communities beggared by the pressure of numbers, the degradation of their environmental resources, and the loss of their most productive members; by the inability of basic education and health services to make headway against the growing numbers of potential clients; and by economic stagnation that is deepened by the emigration of talent and the absence of jobs for the remnant of a low-skilled labour force (see, for example, Cole, 1993).