Thanks to Joe Bish for this article from The Hindu.  See http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1701790.ece

NEW DELHI, April 16, 2011

India will take over China in terms of population by 2025, an analysis of the provisional Census, 2011 data suggests.

With more than 1.2 billion people, India contains about 17.5 per cent (every sixth person in the world is an Indian) of humanity. China is the only country with a larger population, with 144 million more people. The United Nations has estimated that the Indian population grew at an annual rate of 1.43 per cent during 2005-10. In comparison, China registered a much lower annual growth rate of 0.7 per cent during corresponding period.

In fact, the population growth is now almost at par with that of the developed nations.

Demographers expect India’s population to surpass that of China, which is currently the most populous country in the world. At that time, India is expected to have a population of more than 1.4 billion, which will begin to drop in subsequent years.

27 m. born every year

Analysing the provisional Census, 2011 data, Management Institute of Population and Development has quoted the Population Reference Bureau’s 2010 estimates which says that India had 1189 million people whereas China’s has 1338 million. Nearly 27 million children are born every year in India and only 16 million in China.

In the last 20 years, India’s population has increased by more than 350 million, while China’s has increased only by 210 million. With China successfully managing the population issue, it has been able to improve the rate of economic growth. “One fails to understand why some experts and policy makers have stated that India’s population is its strength,” the analysts point out.

During the May 2011 PMC-Papua New Guinea Writers’ Workshop, PMC’s lead trainer, Virginia Carter, opened up the week by telling writers, “I want hot, sexy soap operas. I want to grab the audience by the throat and not let them go until 208 episodes later.” Formerly working as Senior Vice-President and Head of Drama on shows like Maude, All in the Family, and Diff’rent Strokes, if Virginia asks for something, people listen!

For the past eight months, Virginia has been working both in-person and remotely with writers in PNG to help craft PMC’s innovative and powerful social change dramas dealing with culturally-relevant PNG issues. With two separate dramas, six unique settings and story arcs, and characters that represent all of the major regions of PNG, PMC’s writers have worked around the clock to get two hit series on the air. Both dramas have now aired their 30th episode.

The workshops given by trainers like Virginia and the issues the dramas address are already beginning to effect great change, even among PMC’s Papua New Guinean writers and actors. Take a look at the video above for immensely powerful interview of how the dramas have already improved one actress’s life.

In mid-May, writer and co-executive producer of the popular television series Grey’s Anatomy — as well as ER medical supervisor and an inspiration to women everywhere for her own rise to success – Dr. Zoanne Clack was in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to work with PMC’s PNG team and the United Nations (UN) in support of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Radio Campaign.

Zoanne used her extensive experience as both a top Hollywood scriptwriter and doctor to help train the writers, producers, and actors working on PMC’s two radio drama series. Both series, Nau Em Taim (“Now is the Time”) and Echoes of Change, are now airing every Tuesday and Thursday night on PNG’s most popular radio station, FM100.

Zoanne spent much of her time training PMC’s Papua New Guinean writers (many of them women) on how to create entertaining and gripping storylines — think Meredith and McDreamy’s climatic moment in the exam room on “Prom Night” — while also weaving in positive values that can be a catalyst for social change within a society.

Zoanne’s personal rise to success as an African-American woman in Hollywood is a true inspiration to the women of PNG, where the status of women is low and in some areas domestic violence has a prevalence rate of 100%. She is living proof that women have the power to make better lives for themselves and their communities.

The dramas deal with issues that can be sensitive and difficult to approach, but they offer guidance and role model positive change over time using characters the audience can easily identify with. As Zoanne said herself during the workshop, “The characters must have the ebb and flow of life – it doesn’t always have to be so deep and heavy, or always frivolous and light. It’s the in between where you can really have fun.” And fun she did! Check out the above video of Zoanne working with the writers and actors on improvisation skills.

From National Geographic Magazine.  See http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/05/bangladesh/belt-text

We may be seven billion specks on the surface of Earth, but when you’re in Bangladesh, it sometimes feels as if half the human race were crammed into a space the size of Louisiana. Dhaka, its capital, is so crowded that every park and footpath has been colonized by the homeless. To stroll here in the mists of early morning is to navigate an obstacle course of makeshift beds and sleeping children. Later the city’s steamy roads and alleyways clog with the chaos of some 15 million people, most of them stuck in traffic. Amid this clatter and hubbub moves a small army of Bengali beggars, vegetable sellers, popcorn vendors, rickshaw drivers, and trinket salesmen, all surging through the city like particles in a flash flood. The countryside beyond is a vast watery floodplain with intermittent stretches of land that are lush, green, flat as a parking lot—and wall-to-wall with human beings. In places you might expect to find solitude, there is none. There are no lonesome highways in Bangladesh.

We should not be surprised. Bangladesh is, after all, one of the most densely populated nations on Earth. It has more people than geographically massive Russia. It is a place where one person, in a nation of 164 million, is mathematically incapable of being truly alone. That takes some getting used to.

So imagine Bangladesh in the year 2050, when its population will likely have zoomed to 220 million, and a good chunk of its current landmass could be permanently underwater. That scenario is based on two converging projections: population growth that, despite a sharp decline in fertility, will continue to produce millions more Bangladeshis in the coming decades, and a possible multifoot rise in sea level by 2100 as a result of climate change. Such a scenario could mean that 10 to 30 million people along the southern coast would be displaced, forcing Bangladeshis to crowd even closer together or else flee the country as climate refugees—a group predicted to swell to some 250 million worldwide by the middle of the century, many from poor, low-lying countries.

To read the full story, please click here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/05/bangladesh/belt-text

Thanks to Jenny Goldie and Mark O’Connor for this powerful statement against pursuing further population growth by Australian businessman, Dick Smith.  See http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11928&page=0.  Also thanks to David Simcox for his article, “Australia Considers a Population Policy: Any Lessons for a Drifting USA?” which you can download at http://npg.org/forum_series/AUSTRALIA_CONSIDERS_A_POPULATION_POLICY.pdf

Much More Than A ‘Thought Bubble’.

ONLINE opinion
By Dick Smith

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

I read with interest and not a little dismay the recent On Line Opinion article by Ross Elliott. Mr Elliott is a property developer and his views are consistent with those few who stand to benefit from ever-increasing population growth in Australia: developers, media companies and of course retailers. But for most Australians, the advantages would be few and the negative effects would be many.

I don’t mean to be unkind to the developers. In fact, I suspect secretly many of them agree with me that our headlong rush for crude population growth is undermining the quality of life of many Australians and doing nothing to help the rest of the world either. Recently I addressed a gathering of the Property Council of Australia, and privately many of the attendees said they agreed with me. We simply haven’t thought through the negative consequences of population growth for Australia or the world.

Far from being a mere ‘Thought Bubble’ as Mr Elliot suggests, I have given the question a great deal of thought in recent times, and will be expanding on them at length in a book, The Population Crisis, to be published next month. Let me give you a hint of what it contains. But first, I would like to dispel a myth or two.

Firstly, Mr Elliot repeats a whopper first put out by the Murdoch Press which deliberately misreported my recent comments on the subject. I have never called for a ‘two-child policy’ as if there should be some kind of government edict setting a limit on the number of children Australian families should have.

Quite the contrary. I believe that once they are well-informed, Australians will make up their own minds about what they believe to be the right number of kids they have. What I do believe however is that it is high time we dump the wasteful baby bonus and other tax measures which currently cost us well in excess of $1 billion annually in artificially encouraging Australians to have three or more children. There are many good reasons to drop this silly scheme, not least of which is that it disadvantages those who choose to have small families, or none at all. Governments should get out of people’s bedrooms full stop.

Again and again as I tour Australia discussing our failure to have a sensible plan for population, I ask simple questions: Why would we want to rapidly increase our population? What’s so great about constant growth? What are the advantages for average Australians? I fail to ever get a convincing answer. The best the “pro-growthers” come up with is “because we can”, and that of course, is no answer at all.

Continue Reading »

Thanks to Judith Bruce for this article, a summary of which she delivered at the May meeting of European Parliamentarians on Population and Development, where I also spoke.  The paper emphasizes the need for increasing emphasis on demand creation in order to encourage more people to use family planning.  Download the paper at:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeZDgyZTZiNDItZjJjNi00Mjg1LTkyOTUtNDkyNTY5YWJkMjAx&hl=en_US&authkey=CJ3pov4F

Or, if you prefer a PDF file, you can find the article here: http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/2009PGY_NewPopChallenge.pdf

Thanks to John Rowley for this article.  See http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=29845&section=33&topic=27.  Also see People and Planet’s home page at http://www.peopleandplanet.net/

Philippines: Surging population, rising troubles

This Commentary, by South East Asia contributing editor Henrylito Tacio, looks at what has happened to the ‘Lost Eden’ of the Philippines — a country where  the influential Catholic Church continues to oppose  access to modern means of family planning. While that continues, he says, it will be difficult to ease the country’s runaway population growth and its environmental woes.

Twenty-three years ago the Catholic Bishops Conference, meeting in Tagaytay City, issued a pastoral letter which warned of a coming ecological debacle. They echoed the views of the country’s national hero, Dr Jose Rizal, who talked years before about Nuestro perdido Eden – our imperiled Eden. Today, his words have proved prophetic.

Deforestation in the Philippines continues unabated.  Some endemic fauna may soon join the dodo into extinction.  Coastal ecosystems are gasping for breath.  Rivers and lakes are drying up.  Land is running out.  A water crisis is looming.

“We have to bring all of these to an end,” environmentalists urge.  But all this destruction and its consequences can be curbed only if the country stops growing its population, now numbering about 100 million – and projected to reach 140 million by 2050. “No way,” Catholic priests and anti-reproductive health bill activists respond.

“Rapid population growth, unchecked and unequal access to natural resources and their subsequent over-exploitation, uncontrolled logging, waste disposal and mining and the pollution of rivers, lakes and sea are the root causes of the environmental destruction and degradation both in coastal and upland areas,” states a report released by the German Technical Cooperation agency (GTZ)., From Ridge to Reef: Sustaining Nature for Life.

For the full article, please click here: http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=29845&section=33&topic=27

Greetings from Nairobi, where I will be working for two weeks on planning a PMC program for Kenya.  Thanks to Joe Bish for this announcement from the official Philippine Information Agency.  See http://www.pia.gov.ph/?m=1&t=1&id=27805

PIA Press Release
Friday, April 15, 2011

PLCPD launches the 7th Annual Population and Development Media Awards

by Jahzeel C. Tubal

DAVAO CITY, April 15 (PIA) – The Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc. (PLCPD) has recently opened its 7th Annual Population and Development Media Awards in the region.

With the support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), PLCPD organized the yearly competition open to all Filipino print, broadcast, online journalist, photojournalist and bloggers nationwide.

This credible award giving body wants to pay tribute and recognition to the outstanding and responsible journalists who promote excellence in journalism particularly concerning issues on population and development.

PLCPD executive director Ramon San Pascual said that since 2005, PLCPD has engaged the members of the national and local media by forging partnerships and holding education drive to stimulate and sustain their proactive coverage on population and human development issues.

“The Population and Development Media Awards, really aims for the recognition of different Filipino journalists,” San Pascual stated.

Entries for the competition must be related to the following issues: Population and Development; Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Public/Reproductive Health, Economic Growth and Poverty, Reproductive Health Policy and Governance, Climate change, Housing and Urban Development and the Sustainable development.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.pia.gov.ph/?m=1&t=1&id=27805

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.  See http://topnews.us/content/238601-eu-announces-50-million-euros-grant-control-philippines-population

EU Announces 50-Million Euros Grant to Control Philippines Population

Submitted by Cindy Tweed on Sat, 04/16/2011 – 07:54

Officials at the European Union are having a tough time convincing the local Catholic Church for the promotion of contraceptive use in Philippines.

Since long, the recommendation has been given by the health experts across the country that in order to descend the levels of poverty, the population must be controlled.

But the decision has invited strong opposition from the Church, which feels that the practice of using contraceptives is “unethical and against the nature”.

To read the full article, please click here: http://topnews.us/content/238601-eu-announces-50-million-euros-grant-control-philippines-population

Thanks to Joe Bish for this article.  See http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20110419-332053/Senator-backs-Aquinos-renewed-stand-on-population-bill

Senator backs Aquino’s renewed stand on population bill

By Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:05:00 04/19/2011

MANILA, Philippines-Senator Panfilo Lacson backed President Benigno Aquino III’s renewed push for the controversial Responsible Parenthood bill, saying the President was on the right track to address the country’s perennial problem of poverty.

“Finding ways to curb our monstrous population growth rate, which has been a major part of our poverty problem, is one sensible approach in poverty alleviation. Advocating population management is not being anti-life. In fact, it is pro-country and pro-people,” Lacson said in a statement on Tuesday.

Population management, he said, was urgent since most poor Filipinos do not have enough food or access to basic services.

“There is not enough food on the table, many are homeless, the poor have almost zero opportunity to have access to education, health care and the most basic social services, which they can otherwise enjoy with an efficient but moral population management program,” said the senator.

To read the full article, please click here:  http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20110419-332053/Senator-backs-Aquinos-renewed-stand-on-population-bill