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| Compiled by GayToday A Population Institute Report
World Population Awareness Week (October 10-16) is an intense educational campaign designed to create public awareness about the startling trends in world population growth, the detrimental effects they have on our planet and its inhabitants, and the urgent need for action in order to change this situation. We are striving to create a world community concerned with bringing the world's population into balance with its resources and environment.
Curbing population growth rates not only rests on private individual decisions about family size, but also on the network of educational techniques, economic institutions, and political rules which influence these individual decisions. In a sense, we all make policy. If we decide not to concern ourselves with population policy, we are choosing to support the existing demographic patterns. How It All Began The Population Institute first conceived of World Population Awareness Week in 1985 as a means of alerting the American public to the startling trends in world population growth and the need for immediate action. The idea is one that continues to motivate growing numbers of supporters. In 1989, just four years after its inception, World Population Awareness Week branched far beyond the borders of the United States to be observed internationally. World Population Week Today
You Can Make a Difference Communicate to others that world population actually should be some cause for optimism because it is one social issue that we really can do something about. The world today has all the necessary tools to bring population growth into a more stable pattern. In this sense, world population growth is not so much a problem as it is a challenge. Facts and Figures The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Apocalypse: 1. Overpopulation
Global population is now 6 billion. Last year we grew by almost 78 million people. 97% of this growth occurred in the poorest countries. And under Deforestation 4th bullet should read as follows: Global climate changes continue unabated. 1998 was recorded the hottest year in history.... Three billion young people are entering their reproductive years. That's equal to the entire population of the world in 1960 2. Deforestation 600,000 square miles of forest were cut in the last 10 years. 26 billion tons of topsoil have been lost. The hole in the ozone layer continues to expand. Humans are experiencing more incidents of skin cancer and eyesight problems. Our world is in upheaval as agricultural and marine life disruptions become more commonplace. (For more information about depleting natural resources, visit the World Resources Institute.)
Global climate changes continue unabated. We just recorded the hottest year in history. According to the National Science Foundation, 40 percent of all frogs have disappeared in the last 10 years. How long before humans feel the impact themselves? (For more information about global climate changes, visit the Climate Institute.)
3. Water Scarcity Regional fresh water supplies are dangerously low. Rivers are drying up; many lakes are at their lowest levels in history. 97 percent of the world's water is sea water. Of the remaining three percent, two percent is locked up in the polar caps, leaving just one percent for use by the 5.9 billion of us. 4. Famine Eighty-two nations that depend on subsistence farming are unable to feed their populations or have the wherewithal to buy food. (For more information on food scarcity, visit the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.) Developed countries will be looking at staggering disaster relief budgets as a result... and only a few years from now. (For more information on what the future holds in store, visit the Worldwatch Institute.) Population Institute welcomes Requests for Information: web@populationinstitute.org. |
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