Booming population is only one among many causes of social and environmental problems. But such growth can make these problems much more difficult to solve. But, for a variety of reasons, including a change in the US government's attitude towards family planning, population has slipped down the international agenda, almost to the point of disappearing.
Indeed a report last year (2007) from UK parliamentarians said "a whole decade has been lost" in dealing with the problem. They pointed especially to the rampant growth of human numbers in many poor African countries where the problems of land degredation and poverty are most severe.
Ethiopia, for example, has seen its numbers grow from 42 million at the time of the infamous famine in 1984 to 75 million today. By 2050 its population is projected to reach 145 million � and this at a time when eight million Ethiopians already live on permanent food aid.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, as a whole, the numbers of people in extreme poverty fell from nearly 48 per cent in 1990 to 41.1 per cent by 2004, with most of the progress achieved in the previous seven years. However, the MDG report for 2007 claims what little progress has been made is stalled and there is no immediate likelihood of further reductions in poverty rates for those living on less than one dollar a day. It seems that Sub-Saharan Africa will not come close to halving poverty by 2015.
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