I think that the TRAGEDY here is not largely the huge population growth,
since this is 1/6 of the planet's entire population, but that these people
are coming under Western influence and eating animals as the West
wrongly does. Religion seems to become a mere formality of ritual,
with only a shell of meaning in what "ahimsa" once was -
the same logical mistake that Westerners made when "charity"
became merely a social ethic, and not one related to the entire Creation.
Also, we all know the problems from falling water tables in the USA,
where barely a quarter of this population base is being supported.
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NEWS FROM THE WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE
For further comment on the following statement journalists may contact:
Mary Caron, Press Director,(202) 452-1992, Ext 527 <[log in to unmask]>
Lester R. Brown, President, author, (202) 452-1992, Ext 514
<[log in to unmask]>
Brian Halweil, Staff Researcher, author, (202) 452-1992, Ext 538
<[log in to unmask]>
HOLD FOR RELEASE, 10:00 PM EDT , TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1999
INDIA REACHING 1 BILLION ON AUGUST 15:
NO CELEBRATION PLANNED
Lester R. Brown and Brian Halweil
Sometime on Sunday, August 15, India's population will pass the one billion
mark, making it the second member of the exclusive one billion club, along with
China. But reaching one billion is not a cause for celebration in a country
where one half of the adults are illiterate, more than half of all children are
undernourished, and one third of the people live below the poverty line.
Each year India is adding 18 million people, roughly another Australia. By
2050,
U.N. demographers project that it will have added another 530 million
people for
a total of more than 1.5 billion. If India continues on the demographic path as
projected, it will overtake China by 2045, becoming the world's most populous
country.
Well before hitting the one billion mark, the demands of India's population
were
outrunning its natural resource base. This can be seen in its shrinking
forests,
deteriorating rangelands, and falling water tables. For Americans to understand
the pressure of population on resources in India, it would be necessary to
squeeze the entire U.S. population east of the Mississippi River and then
multiply it by four.
Although India has tripled its grain harvest over the last half century, food
production has barely kept up with population. Riceland productivity has
doubled
while that of wheat has more than tripled. Earlier maturing, high-yield wheats
and rices, combined with a tripling of irrigated area, have enabled farmers to
double crop winter wheat and summer rice in the north and to double crop
rice in
the south.
As the nineties unfold, the rise in grainland productivity in India is slowing
as it is in many other countries. Against this backdrop, the continuing
shrinkage of cropland per person now threatens India's food security. In 1960,
each Indian had an average of 0.21 hectares of grainland. By 1999, the average
had dropped to 0.10 hectares per person, or less than half as much. And by
2050, it is projected to shrink to a meager 0.07 hectares per person. At this
point, an Indian family of five will have to produce their wheat or rice on
0.35
hectares of land or less than one acre-the size of a building lot in a middle
class U.S. suburb.
Falling water tables are now also threatening India's food production. The
International Water Management Institute (IWMI) estimates that withdrawals of
underground water are double the rate of aquifer recharge. As a result, water
tables are falling almost everywhere. If pumping of water is double the
recharge of an aquifer, then eventual depletion of the aquifer will reduce
water
pumped by half.
In a country where irrigated land accounts for 55 percent of the grain harvest
and where the lion's share of irrigation water comes from underground, falling
water tables are generating concern. The IWMI estimates that aquifer depletion
could reduce India's grain harvest by one fourth. Falling water tables will
likely lead to rising grain prices on a scale that could destabilize not only
grain markets, but possibly the government itself. With 53 percent of all
children already undernourished and underweight, any drop in food supply can
quickly become life threatening.
With a staggering 338 million children under 15 years of age, India is also
facing a major challenge on the educational front. Despite efforts to educate
its people during the 52 years since it achieved independence in 1947, some 54
percent of adults in the world's largest democracy cannot read or write.
Failure
to provide adequate education has undermined efforts to slow population growth
since female access to education is a key to smaller families.
Providing enough jobs for the 10 million new entrants into the job market each
year is even more difficult. Nowhere is this more evident than in agriculture
where the number of farms increased from 48 million in 1960 to 105 million in
1990. Meanwhile, the average farm shrank from 2.7 hectares to less than 1.6
hectares, a reduction of some 42 percent. By 2020, the land will pass to
another
generation-and another round of fragmentation will occur, shrinking farm size
even more, threatening the ability of those living on the land to earn a
livelihood, and triggering a potential migration from the land that could
inundate India's cities.
After several decades of rapid population growth, the government of India,
overwhelmed by sheer numbers, is suffering from demographic fatigue. After
trying to educate all the children coming of school age, trying to find
jobs for
all the young people coming into the job market, and trying to deal with the
environmental fallout of rapid population growth, such as deforestation and
soil
erosion, India's leaders are worn down and its fiscal resources spread
thin. As
a result, when a new threat emerges, such as aquifer depletion, the government
is not able to respond effectively. If this decrease in water supplies causes
food production to drop, death rates are likely to increase.
As noted earlier, India's population is projected to reach 1.5 billion by 2050,
but there are doubts as to whether the natural resource base will support such
growth. These projections will not materialize either because India accelerates
the shift to smaller families, alleviating the projected additional stress on
the resource base by reducing births, or because it fails to do so and the
combination of deteriorating conditions pushes up death rates.
The prospect of rising death rates as a result of aquifer depletion is no
longer
as hypothetical as it once seemed. Death rates are already rising in Africa,
where governments, also overwhelmed by several decades of rapid population
growth, have been unable to respond effectively to the HIV epidemic. As a
result, adult infection rates already exceed 20 percent in several countries,
including Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In the absence of a medical
breakthrough, these countries will likely lose one fifth of their adult
population within the next decade. In Zimbabwe, a model of development in
Africa
until a few years ago, life expectancy has fallen from 60 years in 1990 to 44
years at present and is expected to drop to 39 years by 2010.
In some ways, India today is paying the price for its earlier indiscretions
when, despite its impoverished state, it invested in a costly effort to design
and produce nuclear weapons and succeeded in becoming a member of the nuclear
club. As a result it now has a nuclear arsenal capable of protecting the
largest
concentration of impoverished citizens on earth.
Even today, India spends 2.5 percent of its GNP for military purposes but only
0.7 percent on health, which includes family planning. Unless India can quickly
reorder priorities, it risks falling into a demographic dark hole, one where
population will begin to slow because death rates are rising.
It may be time for India to redefine security. The principal threat now may not
be military aggression from without but population growth from within.
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