U.N. wants better life for world of 7 billion
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Indian children ride in a cart on the way home from school in the outskirts of New Delhi in this file picture taken, February 26, 2001.
Credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopcznski/Files
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Instead of worrying about sheer numbers when the world's population hits 7 billion next week, we should think about how to make the planet a better place for people to live in, the United Nations said in a report.
"It is both about consumption and population," the U.N.'s Population Fund Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said at a media conference to launch the report, referring to people's impact on the environment and economic growth.
While growing populations could be a drain on the world's resources, the U.N.'s Population Fund's "The State of World Population 2011" released Wednesday said a contributing factor was overconsumption by the existing population.
"With planning and the right investments in people now, to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves ... our world of 7 billion can have thriving sustainable cities, productive labor forces that fuel economies, and youth populations that contribute to the well-being of their societies," Osotimehin said in the report.
It was vital to engage with the world's youth and to harness their entrepreneurial skills to boost economies and prevent potential alienation, the report said.
Those under the age of 25 make up 43 percent of the population, and as much as 60 percent in some countries, and this group must be educated and trained if countries are to have a dynamic work force, it said. Failure to do so would see a loss of ideas, innovation as well as tax income.
A major contributor to the recent Arab uprisings was a youth unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent, the report quoted the International Labor Organization as saying.
FERTILITY AND MIGRATION
The U.N. also said migration will become more significant in the coming century, with people moving across borders as well as within their own countries.
The report looked at nine countries to see how they were responding to different rates of fertility and migration.
In some of the poorest countries, high fertility rates have stunted development and perpetuated poverty, the report said.
Getting girls to school and providing women with jobs and equal opportunities as well as sexual and reproductive healthcare including family planning was essential, it said.
In some of the richest countries, low fertility rates and too few people entering the job market have raised fears about the prospects for sustained economic growth and the viability of social security systems.
Every country has a population that is aging to some degree. The global proportion of people over the age of 60 is expected to grow from 11 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2050.
In Finland, which enjoys a high standard of living but where low fertility rates have led to a quarter of the population being over 60 years old, the emphasis is on excellent social services to make parenthood easier.
Academics have said that in countries such as China, which is getting older before it gets richer, there is need for old-age security, medical care and social services.
More funding, including from governments and foundations, was needed, Osotimehin told reporters at the media conference.
"Family planning, for instance, has not been funded as much as it should have been," he said.
A U.N. Secretary General report showed that $68 billion would be needed in 2011 if its program on sexual and reproductive health initiatives set out in Cairo in 1994 was to be met, Wednesday's report said.
Countries were expected to contribute $34 billion, with a further $10.8 billion coming from international and bilateral donors, leaving a shortfall of around $25 billion.
Growing global interdependence meant governments had to work out how to deal with record populations if they were to avoid future competition for limited resources such as food and water.
Reports already suggest a 40 percent global shortfall in water supply by 2030, while developing countries are buying up land in Africa to offset any future shortages at home.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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As they observed, given an increasing global population it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to lower atmospheric CO2 significantly without major changes to our standard of living and disruptions to the global economies. They also observed that solar and nuclear energy sources can be useful supplements but are unlikely to replace fossil fuels in such uses as transportation.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
By Steven W. Mosher
Weekly Briefing: 2011 (v13)
In the run up to its ominously entitled “Day of Seven Billion,” the United Nations Population Fund has released a preview of its State of World Population Report 2011.
The preview opens with a graph of population over time that seems to show the world’s population climbing ever higher in the decades to come. In fact, the scaling suggests to the eye that the number of people will more than double by century’s end.
UNFPA graph from State of World Population Report 2011
The trouble with this graph is that it is, to put it bluntly, an absolute fabrication. It is designed, I believe, to create the impression that human numbers are spinning out of control. It is a population bomb graph, if you will.
No demographer that I know of believes that our numbers will ever double again.
In fact, not even the demographers at the UNFPA’s sister agency, the U.N. Population Division, believe it. Their favored graph looks like this:
UN Population Division Medium Variant Projection
This projection shows the world’s population peaking at 10 billion by the last decades of the 21st century, not steadily climbing to 13 billion and beyond.
While this is an improvement over the UNFPA’s population bomb graph, even this graph significantly overstates future numbers. It does so because the people counters at the UN Population Division assume that fertility rates in dying countries will somehow surge to 2.1 children per woman.
Now why would aging and dying populations (e.g., the Russians, the Italians, the Japanese, etc.) suddenly start having exactly the number of children necessary to replace themselves. The UN Population Division does not say.
Perhaps — I can only speculate — its demographers assume that governments will put in place generous child allowances. But many countries already have such allowances, and these have had only a modest effect on fertility. Russia’s $13,500 baby bonus, for example, has only increased the birth rate by 8 percent, too small a percentage to offset Russia’s population decline.
In all probability, the future of humanity looks more like the UN Population Division’s “low variant” projection.
UN Population Division Low Variant Projection
This shows population peaking around 2040 at 8 and a half billion or so, and then beginning to decline. It assumes that birthrates, which have been steadily falling for a century now, will continue to fall. What could be more reasonable?
The UNFPA can draw all the scary graphs it wants, but our long-term problem is not going to be too many people, it is going to be too few people: Too few people to start businesses and families, too few people to drive the economy forward, too few people to provide for the future.
Our current economic chill is just the beginning of a long demographic winter that will soon have much of the world in its deadly grip.
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