Uncontrolled population is big problem to environment

Uncontrolled population is big problem to environment

JAKARTA (JP): Uncontrolled population growth, particularly in
developing countries, poses a major threat to the world's
population, an executive of the Population Council says.

A rapid population increase will burden the environment and
the world's natural resources, crowding out species which in turn
leads to an irreversible change in soils, woods and the habitat
of rivers, the council's president, Margaret Catley-Carlson said.

"Maybe you can produce food for a great deal of populations,
but the question becomes the cost, in terms of the environmental
impacts," Catley-Carlson said at a discussion on Thursday held at
the Widjojo Centre.

"Each person on earth needs food, needs space, clean water and
has certain amounts of wastes created either by that person or
the products he has used," she said.

"We think that environmental degradation is bad because it
directly or indirectly impacts adversely on human welfare. And it
does," she addressed local experts on population who attended the
discussion.

The Population Council is a New York-based science and
research organization. Catley-Carlson took an active part in the
conference of population and development involving 10 developing
countries in Jakarta last week.

Catley-Carlson said the situation is somewhat different in
developed countries where the biggest threat to environment there
comes from the people's pattern of consumption.

"Population growth and environment have many crossovers.
However, it's absolutely the case that the Western world very
much needs look at the population issues. And in the mirror of
western consumption pattern issues, at least after the next
decade, is going to be the chief part of environmental worries."

She pointed out that people in the West are far more
consumptive, and this has serious implications on the
environment.

In Britain, a person's energy consumption reaches the
equivalent of 35 barrels of oil each year while in Bangladesh, it
is only three barrels. In terms of transportation,
there are 75 Africans per automobile compared to 2.5 North
Americans. "You can see that the mathematics of carbon dioxide
emission, global warming, and so on can get fairly complicated."

Catley-Carlson said the size of the world's population,
currently put at 5.7 billion is estimated to increase in the next
10 years to between 8.5 billion and, under the worst imaginable
case scenario -- 15 billion.

"And it's quite well known that over 95 percent of the
forthcoming population expansion will be in the developing
world," she said.

Population all over the world increases over a quarter of a
million every day, day after day. Of the number, Africa alone
adds a million every week as population is growing fastest where
people are poorest.

She said the biggest problems can be found in countries where
40 to 50 percent of the population is under 15 years of age. In
these societies, which mostly have very low gross national
products, development just does not happen.

Still, 53 developing countries, excluding Indonesia, have an
over three percent growth rate which means that their populations
will double in the next 23 years.

The population growth has been more worrisome as one third of
the world's population is under 15. This means that the
population of young people coming into reproductive age will
expand by 25 percent in the next decade.

A research suggests between 25 and 40 percent of fertility is
not wanted. And family planning deals mostly with unwanted
fertilities.

She noted that 150,000 pregnancies are terminated every day by
induced abortion -- about two thirds under legal conditions,
which does not always mean safe. And every three minutes, a woman
dies from unsafe abortion.

Maternal mortality

Maternal related mortality is also a problem in developing
countries. In India, for instance, more women die in a week than
in Europe in a year from maternity related causes.

"I know that this is still a worrying issue in Indonesia with
the rate above 400 per 100,000 births," she said.

However she acknowledged that women and families' acceptance
of contraceptive measures as part of their family health has
changed radically in developing countries.

Contraceptive use has been also accelerating in developing
countries, from 10 percent three decades ago to over 50 percent
today.

Indonesia -- the fourth largest country in the world -- is
exactly at the mid point of this trend. While contraceptive use
in industrial societies is 75 percent.

Total fertility rate -- measured in terms of the average
number of children per woman -- has declined in developing
countries, from 6.1 in late 1960s to 3.9 in late 1980s.

The decline in Indonesia from 5.6 to 3.0 over the past 20
years is very much in line with this trend. While in the whole
world the decline is from 4.9 to 3.4. (rid)