David Attenborough: trying to tackle famine with bags of flour is ‘barmy’

Sending food aid to famine-stricken countries avoids the more fundamental problem of population growth, Sir David Attenborough has said, as he called for more debate about population control.

The renowned broadcaster told the Daily Telegraph the world was «heading for disaster», and without action the «natural world will do something».

«What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about?» he said. «They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about. And we are blinding ourselves. We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That’s barmy.»

He admitted the issues had huge sensitivities, but insisted it was important to «just keep on about it».

One area of concern, he said, was about the right to have children. «To start with, it is the individual’s great privilege to have children. And who am I to say that you shan’t have children? That’s one thing,» he said. «And the last sensitivity – and the most tricky of all – is the fact, when you talk about world population, the areas we’re talking about are Africa and Asia, you know.»

But Hannah Stoddart, Oxfam’s senior policy adviser, said: «We can’t look the other way while men, women and children starve in a famine; it is our moral duty to help. David Attenborough is wrong – there is plenty of food in the world to feed everyone if we share what we have more fairly. Also, we could easily boost production by reversing decades of under-investment in poor countries’ agriculture.

«Of course we need to act to reduce climate change and protect scarce natural resources but that does not mean turning our backs on people in dire situations who need our help.»

The veteran broadcaster admitted that the debate over population control could be construed as just being about poor people, adding: «And to have a European telling Africans that they shan’t have children is not the way to go around things.»

But the subject could not be avoided, he said: «We keep on talking about the problem without putting names on it in that sense. And getting it on the agenda of people. Because – you obviously can see it just as I can – you know, that we are heading for disaster unless we do something.»

The world’s last famine took place in Somalia, where an estimated 258,000 people died in southern and central parts of the country between October 2010 and April 2012, including 133,000 children under five. It was the worst famine in 25 years.

The UN declared famine in Somalia in July 2011, after repeated warnings of an impending crisis after severe drought and failed harvests.

But politics contributed to the crisis. Alarmed at the possibility of aid being captured by al-Shabaab Islamist radicals, donors and imposed onerous conditions on humanitarian groups. Al-Shabaab’s decision to exclude western aid agencies from areas they controlled made the situation worse.

Sir David Attenborough’s latest series, Rise of Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates, kicks off at 9pm EDT on Friday 20 September.