UNITED NATIONS - 3 October 2005  / www.MaximsNews.com/ On his website, www.pophike.com, 44-year old David Nova offers these statistics and asks the question: “Is an 11-year-old population agreement worth hiking 2,650 mile for?” 

I caught up with him in Oregon when he was well over halfway into his hike of the Pacific Crest Trail and got his short answer; “Absolutely!” 

While he says the physical challenges have been “intense”, especially the snow, and his feet have grown from 10 ½ M to 12 ½ EEEE as a result of the heat and pounding from walking 20 miles a day, the pleasure exceeds the discomfort. 

“I so appreciate the natural world, that calculus is easy for me.” 

Along with a day-by day narrative of his hike and photos of his experiences along the say, his website offers a summary of the 1994 Cairo Agreement (shorthand for the United Nations Conference on Population and Development [ICPD] Programme of Action):

[The agreement] rejects the notion of “population control” and recognizes that the expanding the rights and opportunities of women have a fundamental positive impact on stabilizing population growth. 

Developing nations with dramatic population growth are urged to increase educational opportunities to women and provide greater access to reproductive health care. 

Developed nations (like the United States) are encouraged to support efforts to improve the individual lives of women (and men) in developing nations. 

The Cairo Agreement also urges countries to address concerns of over-consumption and the destruction of our natural resources. 

Key to this approach is empowering women and providing them with more choices through expanded access to education and health services and promoting skill development and employment. 

The Programme advocates making family planning universally available by 2015, or sooner, as part of a broadened approach to reproductive health and rights, provides estimates of the levels of national resources and international assistance that will be required, and calls on Governments to make these resources available.  

The Programme of Action includes goals in regard to education, especially for girls, and for the further reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality levels. 

It also addresses issues relating to population, the environment and consumption patterns; the family; internal and international migration; prevention and control of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; information, education and communication; and technology, research and development. 

More information is available from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The ICPD was held in Cairo, Egypt, on September 5-13, 1994. Delegations from 179 nations participated in negotiations to finalize a 20-year "Programme of Action" on population and development. 

“Unfortunately”, says Nova, who in “real life” is CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge based in Roanoke VA, “few Americans are aware that such an historic conference ever took place.  

I want this hike to create more awareness of Cairo, even if people don’t know the term. 

It’s a simplistic idea: in developing nations, it’s all about empowerment of women; in developed nations, it’s about reducing consumption.”

Nova has lost 40 pounds since he started training for the hike last January. 

“I could solve the obesity problem for the country if we could get everybody out here,” he observes wryly.

He also observes that different organizations and interests see the Cairo agreement from their own perspectives: the environment, women’s rights, human rights, family planning, social justice—but it is in truth all those things. 

We should all try to see it from holistic perspective, he says, because reproductive health and human rights organizations are also environmental organizations.  

Population-oriented organizations are also women’s rights organizations. 

It’s a kinship, he says, that should be build upon organizationally and politically.

When asked to respond to the notion that the so-called “population bomb” has been defused, Nova replies, 

“I’ve been living in a world of fewer people. When you do get overcrowding like in Yosemite national Park, people are not at their best. There are long lines for bathrooms, tour buses are everywhere. That undermines our sense of humanity. 

"Remember that just a couple of years ago, we took note of having 6 billion people on Earth. 

"Just a few years ago! Already that has grown by over 400 million. 

"The population of the U.S. grows by 7000 each day, and contrary to popular belief, it’s not all immigration. 

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there is a birth every 8 seconds, a death every 12 seconds, and an uptick in immigration by 1 every 26 seconds. 

"The U.S. is the third most populous nation in the world and will increase significantly over the next 25 years.”

Nova is a font of such facts and figures: 

“In terms of consumption”, he says, “When you ratchet down the level of things you have to carry, even a small reduction in weight can create a large reduction in energy you need to expend. 

"The amount of energy it takes to carry an extra pound for 2000 miles is equal to the amount of energy to move a one-ton object a mile. 

"Think about this in terms of 6.4 million people on the planet. If you can make even a small reduction in consumption, it makes a great difference.”

But there have been physical and spiritual benefits to PopHike as well as time to think about the facts of world population and the Cairo Programme of Action. 

Though Nova says he longs for his family, he has attained a sense of being at home in the wilderness. 

“When you are eating every meal outside, you forget that you are outside, you feel kinship with wilderness. We separate ourselves from wilderness. 

"I can tell time now as much as I need to know what time it is based on the sun, the stars, the ferocity if mosquitoes in the evening. 

"It’s not wilderness, it’s like Eden to me. You sit on dirt and it isn’t dirt to you; it’s home--an indescribable experience.”

“Modern conveniences pull us away from the world that was created for us—you can argue it is good or bad, but there are profound losses. It is easy to dismiss the environmental issues when you feel no kinship to the natural world.”  

Now that Nova has been hiking for months, he’s even more committed to the idea that propelled him initially. 

“The thing I like most about the Cairo agreement is its comprehensiveness. 

"I can see how it affects something as seemingly tangential as a wilderness trail on the Pacific Coast.”

US population at the end of the hike: 297,250,543.

World population at the end of the hike: 648,527,802.

          GloriaFeldt@MaximsNews.com

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