Population and Human Development : Face To Face

We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, UN Population Fund (UNFPA)

Experts are concerned that the earth's 'carrying capacity' is already overstrained, and worry that the huge impending increases in consumption in countries such as India and China will add enormously to the burden of greenhouse gases which threaten to heat the planet - not to mention all the other demands which increases in both population and consumption are putting on the earth's natural systems.

The Comparison Chart of Population issue in the world is given below:

Population and human development - the key connections

Globally, many experts are concerned that the earth's 'carrying capacity' is already overstrained, and worry that the huge impending increases in consumption in countries such as India and China will add enormously to the burden of greenhouse gases which threaten to heat the planet - not to mention all the other demands which increases in both population and consumption are putting on the earth's natural systems. Indeed some commentators argue that one of the best strategies for reducing future greenhouse gas emissions is to stabilise population as quickly as can be achieved by non-coercive education and reproductive health programmes.

Nor is the problem confined to the so-called 'developing world'. The United States, for example, produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions with only five per cent of the global population. And, unlike Europe, the US population is growing fast - from 200 million in 1970, to over 303 million today and a projected 420 million in 2050.

One of the complicating facts is that much of the world's population - especially in the South - is very young, with plenty of potential to reproduce. So that although the rate of population growth began to decline some 30 years ago, annual additions to the human population are still near to their highest level, with some 75 million being added every year, or over 200,000 people every day. This is equivalent of a San Francisco every week and almost a Germany every year.

These people all need food, housing, jobs and health care. And once basic needs are met, the appetite for other consumer goods and services seems to be limited only by the ability to pay for them. Human impacts on resources and on the environment vary, therefore, not only with changes in population growth and distribution but also with changes in levels of consumption and the technologies involved.