5. The exponential growth
of the world population
"Unless we can
contain the twin explosion of population and consumption, all other measures of
conservation and natural hazard avoidance will be no better than putting
Band-Aids over mortal wounds, or talking a aspirin for cancer" (E-an Zen,
President Geological Society of America)
The growth of the world
population will cause that a great number of people on this planet do not have
or barely have these six essential conditions for a descent life. In the year
2025 this also may apply to people who are at this moment secured of a high
standard of living.
Since the beginning of human mankind 200.000 years ago, we can clearly
see an unprecedented growth:
21 April 1998: 5.909.935.879 people were on earth. (Daines, 1998).
This year we will be with
6 billion people on this planet earth!
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Figure 9: The exponential
world population growth
Our guess is however that the 9 billion will not be reached, because at
that moment we do not have enough natural resources to feed this number of
people on Earth.
Every second 4.2 people are born and 1.7 die. A staggering increase of
2.5 people per second or over 78 million in one year. The consumption per
capita of the world population grows at a quicker rate than the increase in
number of people. When the population doubles the world economy quadruples. The
fertility declines in the developed nations. This fact does not help much because
95% of the increase is in the underdeveloped nations. Half the world is under
the age of 25. Forty-five percent of the Africans are under the age of 15.
Although the growth in China is only 1.2 %, it means that next year there will
be 15 million more Chinese children.
Politicians are overlooking the fact that the population problem does
not stand only. It is highly interconnected with poverty and local environment.(Bartlett,
1993,1994, 1997). None of these three elements directly causes the other two;
they rather influence each other, and are in turn influenced by the others.
Data on the status of women from 79 so-called Third World countries
display an unmistakable pattern: high fertility, high rates of illiteracy, low
share of paid employment and a high percentage at home for no pay. All these
factors hang together.
In sub-Saharan Africa a women needs to have 6 to 8 children to stay
alive, compared with the fertility rate from 1.5-1.9 in the developed
countries. As resources (firewood, water) become increasingly sparse and
distant, additional hands become more valuable for the daily tasks, creating a
demand for families to have more children.
Child labor becomes more valuable to parents spurring a viscous circle
that traps families in poverty (Caldwell and Caldwell, 1990). All this
contributes to social instability and civil strife. Scarcity of renewable
resources is already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the
world. These conflicts may foreshadow a
surge of violence in coming decades in the poor countries with their shortages
of water, forests and especially fertile land, coupled with rapidly expanding
populations. (Dasgupta, 1995).
Strangely enough, science
and technology are also causes of overpopulation.
Medical science diminishes death by diseases and accidents. Technology
makes it possible to live in big cities. Problems of sewage disposal and water
delivery are technologically solved. Transportation makes it possible to bring
people from the urban areas to the city and vice versa.
By accelerating increase of people on this earth, the number of
illiterate people is growing. In 1900 we had a world population of 1.6 billion,
in 1995 5.75 billion. In this period, the number of illiterate people has grown
from 300 million to 1 billion.
98 percent of the increase is in the developing countries, two third are
women. Each year an increase of 30 to 50 million! China and India together have
more than 50 % of all the illiterate people. Especially high is the percentage
in ethnical minority groups. The world percentage is 27%, whereas within
ethnical minority groups it is 78%.
Then there is the problem that humanity, as a whole is growing older. In
1900, there were 10 million to 17 million people aged 65 or older, less than 1
percent of the total population. In 1992, there were 342 million people in that
age group, 6.2 percent. The rise in life expectancy is a nightmare for
policymakers, because the social structures are not kept up with the boom of
old people. In 1998, we will have 9 million people older than 65 years. In
2050, this number will grow to 21 million.
97% is on the account of the third world. (Olshansky, 1993)
Another impact of the population growth and the resource scarcity are
the increasing numbers of people immigrating from the poor to the rich world.
In the US, there was a legal immigration of about 570.000 a year in 1988, which
accounts for roughly 25% of the annual population growth in the US. (Mann,
1988). However, there is a growing hostility in the US toward this immigration.
Many in the US are calling for stringent limits on immigration. In Europe,
there is a growing tendency to restrict immigration.