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system. Some governments have successfully cobined population programme: with health, education, and rural development projects, and implemented them as part of major socio-economic programmes in villages or regions. This integration increases motivation. improves access, and raises the effectiveness of investments in family planning.
42. Only about 1.5 per cent of official development aid now goes for population assistance.[1] Regrettably, some donor countries ave cut back on their assistance for multilateral population proqrammes and so weakened them; this must be reversed.
43. Zimbabwe is one nation that has successfully integrated its family planing efforts not only with its rural health services but also with efforts to improve women's abilities to organize group activities and earn money through their own labour. The government's initial efforts were aimed less at limiting population growth than at assisting women to space births in the interests of mother and child health and at helping infertile women to bear children. But gradually families have begun to use the contraceptives made available for child spacing as a way to limit fertility. Zimbabwe now lads sub-Saharan Africa in the use of modern contraceptive methods.[2]
2. Managing Distribution and Mobility
44. Population distribution across a country's different regions is influenced by the geographical spread of economic activity and opportunity. Most countries are committed in theory to balancing regional development, but are rarely able to do this in practice. Government able to spread employment opportunities throughout their nations and especially through their countrysides will thus limit the rapid and often uncontrolled growth of one or to cities. China's effort to support village-level and, tries in the countryside is perhaps the most ambitious of this sort of national programme.
45. Migration from countryside to city is not in itself a bad thing; it is part of the process of economic development and diversification. The issue is not so much the overall rural urban shift but the distribution of urban growth between large metropolitan cities and smaller urban settlements. (See Chapter 9.)
46. A commitment to rural development implies more attention to realizing the development potential of all regions, particularly those that are ecologically disadvantaged (See Chapter 5.) This would help reduce migration from these areas due to lack of opportunities. But governments should avoid going too far in the opposite direction. encouraging people to move into sparsely populated area such as tropical moist forests, where the land may not be able to provide sustainable livelihoods.
