Seven Billion People, Seven Billion Possibilities by UN Population Fund & news agencies 11:40am 24th Oct, 2011   Oct 2011    The world is in danger of missing a golden opportunity for development and economic growth, a "demographic dividend", as the largest cohort of young people ever known see their most economically productive years wasted, a major UN population report has warned.    The potential economic benefits of having such a large global population of young people will go unfulfilled, as a generation suffers from a lack of education, and investment in infrastructure and job creation, the authors said.    "When young people can claim their rights to health, education and decent working conditions, they become a powerful force for economic development and positive change. "This opportunity for a demographic dividend is a fleeting moment that must be claimed quickly or lost," said the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), in its Global Population Report, published just days before the UN forecasted the world population will pass 7 billion.    Of this 7 billion, 1.8 billion are aged between 10 and 24, and 90% of those live in the developing world.    The report also reveals average life expectancy across the globe has risen by 20 years since the 1950s, from 48 to 68, as healthcare and nutrition have improved, while infant mortality has fallen from 133 deaths per 1,000 births in the 1950s to 46 per 1,000 today.    These successes are a cause to celebrate, the United Nations said. Fertility has also halved, from 6 births per woman to 2.5 over the same period, though there are stark regional differences – fertility is 1.6 births per woman in east Asia but 5 per woman in some parts of Africa.    The report found a "vicious cycle" of extreme poverty, food insecurity and inequality leading to high death rates, that in turn encourages high birth rates. Only by investing in health and education for women and girls can countries break the cycle, as improving living conditions will allow parents to be more confident that their children will survive, and therefore have smaller families.    Crucial to this will be allowing women and girls greater freedom and equality, in order to make their own choices about fertility. Hundreds of millions of women would prefer to have smaller families, but are unable to exercise this preference owing to a culture of repression.    "Governments that are serious about eradicating poverty should also be serious about providing the services, supplies and information that women need to exercise their reproductive rights," said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UNFPA, daid on the empowerment of woman, "There is no group that gives up power voluntarily. Men will not give up power to women voluntarily."    One way of doing so highlighted in the report is to provide a good level of sex education to adolescents, and access to modern methods of contraception.    The report said: "When women have equal rights and opportunities in their societies and when girls are educated and healthy, fertility rates fall ... the empowerment of women is not simply an end in itself, but also a step towards eradicating poverty."    The difference between a future of high fertility rates and one where people are better able to choose is stark: if fertility rates in areas of high population growth come down towards the global average, the world will reach a global population of about 9 bn in 2050, and about 10bn in 2100. But if fertility rates remain high in the most populous countries, the 2100 population will be more than 15bn.    Osotimehin said countries must do more to help themselves: "It is unacceptable for countries to rely on donor money for reproductive health. The welfare of their people is their mandate." He said it would cost only $2bn to give access to family planning to the 250 million women who would like it but lack access.    "The budget of the average developing country does not give enough money to issues of women and reproductive health. That has to change. If it does not change, it becomes unsustainable."    But he also said donors were failing to make sufficient commitments. "Family planning has not been funded as it should have been. Donors need to provide resources ... there has been a reduction [in money made available]."    Osotimehin also said that the opportunity had been missed to educate people on reproductive health and family planning, during a drive to prevent HIV infection.    With high population growth, many scientists predict that the pressure on food and agricultural productivity and other natural resources may become intolerable, and conditions for the poorest people will deteriorate further, rather than improving.    Rapid growth will also exacerbate the impact of other global problems, such as climate change and other environmental impacts.    Steven Sinding, a population expert at Columbia University, said: "The pace of growth poses enormous challenges for many of the poorest countries, which lack the resources not only to keep up with demand for infrastructure, basic health and education services and job opportunities for the rising number of young people, but also to adapt to climate change."    Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin looks at the growing numbers from a more positive angle. "We are seven billion people with seven billion possibilities".    So, instead of asking questions like, "Are we too many?, we should be asking: "What can I do to make our world better? What can we do to transform our growing cities into forces for sustainability?" he asked.    The UNFPA report points out that the seven billion milestone is marked by achievements, setbacks and paradoxes.    While women are on average having fewer children than they were in the 1960s, the numbers continue to rise. And globally, says the report, pointing to another paradox, people are younger - and older - than ever before.    "In some of the poorest countries, high fertility rates hamper development and perpetuate poverty, while in some of the richest countries, low fertility rates and too few people entering the job market are raising concerns," it says.    Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon picked up the same theme when he said last week that the seven billionth citizen will be born into a world of contradictions.    "We have plenty of food, yet millions are still starving. We see luxurious lifestyles, yet millions are impoverished. We have great opportunities for progress but also great obstacles," Ban said.    "These are all the challenges that we can and must overcome," he said. "If we invest in people, we will reap the best dividends."    But is the international community making the right investments, including in education and reproductive health?    Tragically, no, says Barbara Crossette, the lead reporter of the UNFPA study.    "If you take the UNFPA report together with the U.N. Population Division"s 2010 upward revisions published in the spring, the question isn"t so much whether the world with its seven billion is heading to an unsustainable population level - as if this happens all by itself - but why it is that more than 17 years after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (in Egypt), the promises of Cairo have not benefited women in some of the poorest places, where most of this century"s people will be born?".    These women - who know well how high fertility affects them personally, makes it hard to educate and feed their children, strains food and water supplies and denies to national development the skills and productivity of women - simply do not have the choices women in richer nations enjoy, she said.    "More than 215 million women are estimated to want family planning, so that they can have more control of their reproductive lives and general health - hundreds of thousands die of pregnancy related causes that are largely preventable - but they have no access to contraception for numerous reasons," said Crossette.    "During my lifetime," said Dr. Osotimehin, a former minister of health in Nigeria, "I have seen world population nearly triple. And 13 years from now, I will see another billion added to our numbers. In my grandchildren"s lifetimes, there could be as many 10 billion people in our world."    To create a sustainable and peaceful world, he said, "We must invest wisely. By investing in health and education and moving to a green economy, we can improve the well-being of people and our planet. As lives improve, population growth tends to stabilise," he added.    Crossette says "It seems to me that the interaction of population and development in its broadest sense and its many facets is what needs to be considered urgently, with special focus on women and their place in every aspect of society".    In traveling around the world for the report, she said, "I met women who still want larger families, or are persuaded to have more children by partners, culture or family pressures, and that should be their choice.    "But I also met many more who say that two, three or sometimes four children would be ideal - when they may already have five or six or more, and mourn that their daughters lives will be no different from their daily hardship."    Give a generation of women everywhere the attention they were promised at the Cairo conference, and the tools they need to exercise their choices and rights, and they would bring fertility down for reasons of their own, not because of national targets or population policies, which the world abandoned once and for all decades ago, she stressed.    Crossette said even China is actively rethinking its one-child policy, seeing that when women have comprehensive reproductive health care with strong family planning programmes, educational opportunities and time to engage in economic activity beneficial to their families and communities as a whole, fertility rates come down as fast and without the coercion of population control.    And Taiwan, just across the straits, achieved a lower fertility rate than China without coercion - and sooner - as did numerous other Asian nations with successful, friendly family planning programmes.    Crossette said economic growth follows as well as precedes these changes. Listening to women, and helping them, should be a high priority in years to come, starting now. They are the key to stabilising global population growth in their own self-interest, she added. Visit the related web page
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