- Researchers at the Worldwatch Institute
say rising death rates are slowing world population growth for the first
time since famine in China claimed 30 million lives in 1959-61.
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- The institute, based in Washington DC,
says the latest UN estimate is that there will be 8.9 billion people in
the world in 2050, not the 9.4 bn predicted earlier.
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- It says about two thirds of the drop
is explained by falling birth rates.
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- But one third is caused by an increase
in the death rate.
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- The institute says the two regions where
death rates are either rising already, or are likely to do so, are sub-Saharan
Africa and the Indian sub-continent.
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- And it says three specific threats are
pushing death rates up, or have the potential to do so. They are:
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- the HIV epidemic the depletion of aquifers;and
shrinking cropland area per person.
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- The institute's director, Dr Lester Brown,
says the HIV epidemic is the first of these threats to spiral out of control
in developing countries.
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- He says it "should be seen for what
it is: an international emergency of epic proportions, one that could claim
more lives in the early part of the next century than World War II did
in this".
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- Between a fifth and a quarter of adults
are already infected in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Swaziland.
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- India, with four million adults now HIV
positive, has more infected individuals than any other country.
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- The institute says the risk from finite
water sources is real, since 40% of the world's food comes from irrigated
land.
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- India again faces trouble, with water
tables falling annually over much of the country by between 1 and 3 metres.
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- The International Water Management Institute
estimates that aquifer depletion and the cutbacks in irrigation it would
cause could cost India a quarter of its grain harvest.
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- More than half of all Indian children
are already malnourished and underweight.
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- Half the area available
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- Worldwatch says dwindling cropland threatens
food security in countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan.
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- The amount of grainland available to
each Nigerian is expected, as population grows, to fall from 0.15 hectares
today to 0.07 ha by 2050.
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- In Pakistan the share will shrink from
0.08 ha to 0.03 ha, an area barely the size of a tennis court.
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- Countries which have already fallen to
the 0.03 ha level, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, each import
about 70% of their grain.
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- Worldwatch says one of the key ways to
help slow population growth is to provide more help for reproductive health
and family planning.
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- It says developing countries have largely
honoured the commitments on increased spending which they made at the UN
population conference in 1994.
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- But it says the industrial countries
have reneged on theirs.
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- And late last year the US Congress withdrew
all funding for the UN Population Fund.
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- Worldwatch also says the abolition of
poor countries' debts could help to slow population growth.
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- Kenya, for example, spends 25% of government
revenue on debt servicing, 7% on education, and only 3% on health care.
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