July 11th - World Population Day!
Today as we commemorate World Population Day, Population Media Center and Population Institute pledge their commitment to help bring population numbers into balance with natural resources, so humanity can live in harmony with the earth.
We vow to help create a world where people are educated and empowered to make healthy decisions about their family size; where women have a voice and are heard; where reproductive health services are available and accessible to all; where every family can afford to feed, clothe, and educate their children; where communities live in balance with the earth’s resources; and where together we can protect and share our planet.
The world population has reached an unprecedented 6.7 billion people, and it continues to grow by 80 million people each year. As a result of this growth, the world faces unparalleled challenges, including climate change, food and water shortages, and a severe energy crisis.
Ninety-nine percent of the world’s population growth is in the world’s poorest countries where people are commonly afflicted by poverty, civil unrest, and scarce resources. These countries are struggling to provide for their existing populations, and even while making strides to improve their infrastructure, they are unable to keep up with the extreme population growth. Developing nations now require about $1 trillion per year in new infrastructure development just to accommodate their population growth – a figure that is very far from being met and is effectively impossible for these countries to generate.
One of our main challenges is improving the status of women. This is vital to stabilizing population numbers and improving the health and well-being of all humankind. By improving a woman’s standing in society, she will have the opportunity to educate herself and her children, gain access to reproductive health services, and make economic strides to improve her life and that of her family. It is imperative that men play an active role in the expansion of women’s rights and unrestricted access to reproductive health services in developing countries. When men and women are equally valued, it is more likely that population numbers will stabilize, resulting in improved living standards and an increasingly brighter outlook for the future of our environment. Increasing family planning education and access to services also helps to reduce poverty, by allowing families to devote more of their resources to the education and health of each child.
Globalization and the interconnectedness of the biosphere, forces us to look at the issue of population with a global lens. Half of the world’s population is under the age of 24, yet family planning information and services remain out of reach for many, particularly for those who often have the most difficulty acquiring the information and services they require to plan their families, such as the poor, the marginalized, and young people. It is critical that we provide them with the education and services necessary to stabilize population numbers and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. It is our responsibility as inhabitants who share this planet to ensure a healthy future.
Today, on World Population Day, Population Media Center and Population Institute pledge their commitment to continue to pursue the goal of bringing population numbers into balance with natural resources, to improve the health and well-being of all people and of the planet.
-A Message from William N. Ryerson, President of Population Media Center and Population Institute
Population Media Center (www.populationmedia.org) is a nonprofit, international non-governmental organization working worldwide to promote use of effective communication strategies for promoting behavior change to improve family and reproductive health. The organization’s work is concentrated on entertainment broadcasting, particularly on long-running serial dramas in which characters evolve into role models for adoption of family planning, delayed marriage and childbearing, elevation of women’s status, avoidance of HIV/AIDS, and related social and health goals.
The Population Institute (www.populationinstitute.org) is an international, educational nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce rapid population growth and achieve a world population in balance with a healthy global environment.
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July 11th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Dear Friends of the Population Media Center,
On World Population Day in 2008, could now be the time to acknowledge the threat to the family of humanity that could soon be posed by the current huge scale and anticipated growth of the human population on Earth?
Somehow, sooner rather than later, we have simply got to find reasonable and sensible ways to communicate openly with one another about real global challenges that are ominously looming before humanity, visible even now on the far horizon. These issues are supremely significant to human and environmental health as well as to life as we know it and the integrity of Earth, even in these early years of Century XXI. Our silence wastes precious time. Time appears to be something that we cannot afford to continue frittering away much longer while the human species unintentionally ravages the Earth.
Many too many so-called and self-proclaimed people with ‘expertise’ assure us that we simply need to do nothing except that which we are doing now; that we must “stay the course” of unbridled economic growth, increasingly conspicuous per-capita resource overconsumption and unregulated propagation of absolute global human population numbers.
Are people going to stand up, speak out loudly and clearly, to say that the “same ol’ business as usual” course of action may be nothing more or less than a “primrose path” to the future, at the end of which could be the inadvertent loss of life as we know it and an unintended ecological wreckage, the likes of which only the King of kings, Ozymandias has seen.
The idea that silence is regularly triumphant in moments like this one is anathema to me. People with clear vision, intellectual honesty, coherent minds and good scientific evidence have got speak up and, in so doing, overcome the silence.
Perhaps silence presents itself to the human community as the greatest of all dangers: a threat greater than 9.2 billion unrestained human consumers on Earth in 2050; greater still than environs being relentlessly polluted by the unrestricted expansion of large-scale industrialization activities; even greater than the reckless dissipation of Earth’s finite resources and the irreversible loss of biodiversity worldwide. Silence is not only deafening; it is also destructive of everything we are intending to do well.
If now is not the right time for open acknowledgement, then when will that time come? What possible value can be derived from more denial and delay? Who or what can we possibly be awaiting?
Human-induced global challenges loom before us here and now, I suppose. Then again, perhaps I am mistaken.
Sincerely,
Steve
July 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Many New England residents think we need not worry about things such as World Population Day. There is a strong myth that New England’s population is stable or shrinking. It’s not true.
Population in the six states of New England is now well over 14 million, having grown by 1 million since the first World Population Day.
In New Hampshire — now the 20th most dense state in the nation — population increased by over 200,000 between 1990 and 2006. It now exceeds 1.3 million people. The rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 12,000 acres per year. The average commute for New Hampshire residents increased 66 percent during the 1990s, from 15 minutes to 25 minutes in 2005.
In Connecticut, 3.5 million people now squeeze into the 4th densest state in the nation, with 702 people per square mile. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury suburban area of Connecticut has the seventh worst sprawl in the country. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 7000 acres per year.
In Massachusetts, 6.4 million people now squeeze into the 3rd densest state in the nation, with 809 people per square mile. Commute times rise decade after decade. The rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 42,400 acres per year. The American Lung Association even gave 9 of Massachusetts’s 14 counties a grade of “F” in their “State of the Air 2005” report.
In Maine, population is now well over 1.3 million, increasing by over 5000 people per year since 2000. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 38,000 acres per year. The American Lung Association even gave Cumberland, Penobscot, Knox, and Hancock, and York counties an “F” grade in their “State of the Air 2005” report.
In Rhode Island, over 1 million people now squeeze into the 2nd densest state in the nation, with 1021 people per square mile. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 1300 acres per year. Commute times rise decade after decade. The American Lung Association even gave three out five of Rhode Island counties a grade of “F” in their “State of the Air 2005” report.
In Vermont, over 620,000 people now reside, up by 46,000 since 1990. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 2000 acres per year. Seventy percent of Vermonters say action should be taken to control sprawl.
Inexplicably, contraception and family planning information remain out of reach for hundreds of millions of women, men and young people both in the United States and abroad. Look no further than:
* New Hampshire’s 14,200 teen births between 1991 and 2004.
* Connecticut’s five largest cities regularly experience teen pregnancies at double the state and national rates
* Massachusetts’s 4500 teen births in 2005
* Maine’s 1,100 teen births in 2005
* Rhode Island’s own Central Falls, where the teen pregnancy rate was more double the national average from 2001 to 2005
* Vermont’s 412 teen pregnancies in the year 2005
As the world transitions to sustainable development, family planning programs that provide unconstrained access to contraception — and good information for the using these services — are a high priority indeed. However, highly consumptive and polluting regions like New England need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what sort of world they are leaving the next generation.
The future can still be as abundant and healthy. But at every scale – regional, national and global — there are two critical tasks: softening our impacts on ecology and climate, and giving immediate attention to our human numbers.