Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
would slow population growth, promote human rights
and freedom, reduce poverty, and slow environmental
degradation—a win-win result.
Empowering women by seeking gender equality
will require some major social changes. Although it
will be difficult to achieve in male-dominated soci-
eties, it can be done.
Good news.
An increasing number of women in de-
veloping countries are taking charge of their lives and
reproductive behavior—they are not waiting for the
slow processes of education and cultural change. Such
bottom-up change by individual women will play an
important role in stabilizing population and providing
women with equal rights.
7-4 SLOWING POPULATION GROWTH
IN INDIA AND CHINA
Case Study: India
For more than five decades, India has tried to control
its population growth with only modest success.
The world's first national family planning program be-
gan in India in 1952, when its population was nearly
400 million. In 2005, after 53 years of population control
efforts, India was the world's second most populous
country, with a population of 1.1 billion.
In 1952, India added 5 million people to its popula-
tion. In 2005, it added 18 million. Figure 7-12 compares
demographic data for India and China.
India faces a number of already serious poverty,
malnutrition, and environmental problems that could
worsen as its population continues to grow rapidly. By
global standards, one of every four people in India is
poor. Nearly half of the country's labor force is unem-
ployed or can find only occasional work.
India currently is self-sufficient in food grain pro-
duction. Nevertheless, 40% of its population and more
than half of its children suffer from malnutrition,
mostly because of poverty.
Furthermore, India faces critical resource and en-
vironmental problems. With 17% of the world's people,
it has just 2.3% of the world's land resources and 2% of
the world's forests. About half of the country's cropland
is degraded as a result of soil erosion, waterlogging,
Solutions: Reducing Population Growth
Experience suggests that the best way to slow
population growth is a combination of investing in
family planning, reducing poverty, and elevating the
status of women.
In 1994, the United Nations held its third Conference
on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt. One
of the conference's goals was to encourage action to
stabilize the world's population at 7.8 billion by 2050
instead of the projected 8.9 billion.
The major goals of the resulting population plan,
endorsed by 180 governments, are to do the following
by 2015:
■
Provide universal access to family planning
services and reproductive health care
■
Improve health care for infants, children, and preg-
nant women
■
Develop and implement national popula-
tion polices
■
Improve the status of women and expand
educational and job opportunities for young
women
■
Provide more education, espe-
cially for girls and women
■
Increase the involvement of men
in child-rearing responsibilities and
family planning
■
Sharply reduce poverty
■
Sharply reduce unsustainable patterns of
production and consumption
The experiences of Japan, Thailand, South
Korea, Taiwan, Iran, and China indicate that a
country can achieve or come close to replace-
ment-level fertility within a decade or two.
Such experiences also suggest that the best way
to slow population growth is through the com-
bination of
investing in family planning
,
reducing
poverty
, and
elevating the status of women
.
Percentage
of world
population
Population
India
China
17%
20%
1.1 billion
1.3 billion
Population (2050)
(estimated)
1.44 billion
1.63 billion
47%
Illiteracy (% of adults)
17%
36%
Population under age 15 (%)
21%
1.6%
0.6%
Population growth rate (%)
3.0 children per women (down from 5.3 in 1970)
1.7 children per women (down from 5.7 in 1972)
Total fertility rate
64
Infant mortality rate
27
62 years
72 years
Life expectancy
Percentage living
below $2 per day
81
47
$2,880
GDP PPP per capita
$4,980
Figure 7-12
Global outlook:
basic demographic data for India and China in
2005. (Data from United Nations and Population Reference Bureau)
