Sir

It is worrying that population growth should be absent from the agenda of the forthcoming United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, as outlined by Wolfgang Lutz et al. in Correspondence (Nature 418, 17; 200210.1038/418017a).

It is also worrying that empowerment of women can be mentioned without pointing to successful enterprises such as the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which makes small loans to help penniless women set up in business. These are known as 'microcredit' or 'microlending' enterprises. To read some of the numerous success stories arising from these small loans, often $100 or less, see, for example, http://www.greenstar.org/microcredit or read Banker to the Poor, the autobiography of Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus (with Alan Jolis; Aurum, London, 1998).

Microlending, under the rules pioneered by the Grameen Bank, has turned the empowerment of women and the reduction of fertility from mere slogans into a growing reality.