WWS, Well stated. The terrible plague of AIDS will slow growth in Africa...The Middle East population growth will be slowed by three factors- An absolute lack of water and with Turkey sitting in the water "catbird's seat"; declining opportunities to escape from the Middle East and emigrate to Europe and United States; ...and the Internet.
the Internet will cause women in Middle Eastern countries to be exposed to more images of women in Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and North America getting college and post graduate educations, driving cars, having careers, and freedom to choose lifestyles, and begin to want these same opportunities....
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Wednesday August 23 4:22 PM ET
Population Group Reports Progress
By HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Growth in the world's population is slowing, meaning pressure on natural resources such as drinking water and crop land will ease, according to a new report by Population Action International.
Despite the slowdown, the report said, the world's population of more than 6 billion - four times as many as were alive in 1900 - still will double by 2050.
The most hopeful aspect of the slowing of this growth, the report says, is that young people on every continent want to start having children later in life and to have smaller families than at any time in history.
In addition, it says, in greater proportions than ever, women and girls want to go to school and to college and find well-paying jobs.
But, the report, entitled ``People in the Balance,'' says, in most of Africa and in the Middle East, the transition to later childbirths and small families has not advanced as far as it has in the industrialized countries.
In Latin America and Asia, the continent on which most humans live, access to contraception has helped fertility rates to fall by half in little more than a generation.
``But the braking of this growth has been significant enough that many analysts of natural resources are more optimistic about their future availability than they were in the 1990s,'' the report said.
One area of concern is water. By the year 2025, between 2.4 billion and 3.2 billion could live in water-scarce or water-stressed conditions, depending on future rates of population growth.
This compares with 505 million in these circumstances now, the report said.
``The current trend of slower population growth is one bright spot in an often gloomy picture of natural resource scarcity,'' said Robert Engelman, lead author of the report and the group's vice president for research.
``But we can't take this for granted. Hundreds of millions of people, most of them in developing countries, still lack access to basic health care. We must do more to change this... People's lives hang in the balance.''
Population International is an independent, private advocacy group that works to increase political and financial support for effective population policies, including voluntary family planning.
A 32-page booklet updates key data on population growth and the state of critical natural resources such as cropland, forests and renewable fresh water as the 2000s begin. It details the links between population growth, environmental degradation and poverty.
Among its key findings:
-Measurable per capita emissions of carbon dioxide, a major, green house gas, rose modestly, continuing a trend of increasing fossil fuel consumption and growing population. With less than five percent of world population, the United States contributes more than 20 percent of these emissions.
-Though global fish production increased modestly in 1997 most fisheries are fully exploited or are in decline. Fish farms now provide one fish out of every three the world consumes. |
