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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (200661)	11/7/2001 9:16:46 AM
From: gao seng	Respond to of 769670

U.N. author says women may be key to saving planet By Jeremy Lovell LONDON (Reuters) - Women across the world are winning the war for their own wombs and could be the key to stopping the planet from self-destructing, the author of a U.N. population study said on Wednesday. "Until the late 1960s...you literally couldn't talk about family planning in public. That is where the improvement has been," Alex Marshall, editor of the United Nations 2001 world population report, told Reuters in an interview. "It doesn't by itself solve water problems or fuel problems but a slower population growth in the first place gives governments and agencies room to look for solutions," he said. "It also liberates a good chunk of the human race to take action on their own behalf. Rural women have a direct impact on the environment. If you can just liberate part of their time they can use the rest of it more profitably." Marshall said every country in the world had agreed on the need to build family planning and reproductive health into their policies, with benefits to the family, local and national economies as rural women were the motive force of many small business. His report, published on Wednesday, painted a bleak picture of a planet being plundered at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate. The world's population, which has doubled to 6.1 billion in the past 40 years, is projected to surge 50 percent to 9.3 billion within another half century -- with all the growth in developing countries whose resources are already overstretched. CHANGE COMING SLOWLY The report said water was being used and polluted at catastrophic rates, with nearly half of the projected population expected to be living in areas unable to sustain them by 2050. At present 54 percent of available fresh water supplies are being used annually -- two-thirds for agriculture. This figure is set to surge to 70 percent by 2025 due to population growth alone, and 90 percent if consumption in the developing countries reached the levels in the developed world. The report said food production would have to double and distribution would have to improve to feed the exploding population, with most of the increase coming from higher yielding varieties which needed more environmentally dangerous chemicals to grow. Marshall acknowledged the report painted a grim picture, but said all was not gloom and doom. "I sometimes wonder what I have been doing for the last 30 years. But in fact things have changed," he said. "In this business you don't expect progress. If progress happens then you are really gratified." "Nearly 60 percent of women now have access to some sort of family planning -- even if you take China out of that you still have about 40 percent. "The whole attitude has changed. Women regard this as their right -- which it is. You are finding a tremendous upsurge of strength among women joining together to do what they see needs to be done," he said. Marshall said government and big corporations were being forced to sit up and take notice of the rising chorus of women around the world. "There is a sense now that you can't just ignore the little people. You can't just ignore women. You have got to listen and you have got to respond somehow," he said. sg.news.yahoo.com