WHO published its World health statistics report 2025, revealing the deeper health impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on loss of lives, longevity and overall health and well-being. In just two years, between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy fell by 1.8 years—the largest drop in recent history— reversing a …
EVERYBODY wants growth and development. Yet, there is a serious cost attached to it. The point is what kind of growth is both desirable and sustainable. Resources of all types constitute our capital for growth. But, for growth to be made meaningful and enduring, the capital base has to be …
By October 12 the world will be home to six billion people, according to the United Nations World Population Report for 1999 titled 6 billion: A Time for Choices . By 2050 this figure will reach the 8.9 billion mark, if women's education and environmental resource management continue to be …
As Parties to the Climate Convention EU Member States have opted for a joint fulfilment of post-2000 greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations. No agreement could be reached on a joint EU target before the distribution of the burden of emission reductions among Member States had been agreed upon. This paper …
NEVER before have birth rates fallen so low and for so long in Europe as at present, except in times of plague, war and deep economic depression. There is not a single country in Europe where people are having enough children to replace themselves when they die. Recently, Italy became …
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are at a critical turning point in their effort to address the problems of rapid population growth and poor reproductive health, says a study of Population Action International (pai). The economic growth of countries such as Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe largely depend on …
THE southern state of Kerala has performed extraordinarily in the areas of public health, education, family welfare and adult literacy. Its success in areas other than population control are easier to understand, but its miracle in bringing down birth rate below replacement level without any significant advance in economic field …
Family planning restrictions in some urban areas of China have been eased allowing many of the parents of the one-child policy to have two children. The two-child rule, envisioned years ago, but phased in quietly in selected areas only recently, is designed to tackle a new problem in China: too …
The executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the secretary general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) recently signed a memorandum of understanding on the issue of environment and trade. According to Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the executive director of the UNEP, "The joint programme agreed upon …
nine tribes of southern Bihar are reportedly facing extinction due to rampant unplanned industrialisation in the Jharkhand region. Gautam S Rana, chairperson, environmental committee of the state legislative council, who has conducted a survey on tribes like the Asur, Birhor, Birijiya, Korwa, Malpahariya and Pahariya, said their populations have declined …
The Geneva-based 61-member UN disarmament commission began its 1997 session on January 21 to establish a committee on a fissile materials cut-off treaty, a top priority on the UN's agenda since March 1995. But the developing countries' insistence on multilateral talks to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a fixed period …
Gandhiji's environmentalism was based on the following ethical principles: non-violence, truth and persevering the truth; shunning the use of materials obtained by illegitimate means and so on. Gandhiji said that we can use the bounties of nature but not with an element of greed.
The recent decline in the fertility rate in India seems to have affected the Asian world a great deal. For the second most populous country in the world, it is indeed a dramatic achievement. According to a new study, since 1990, India's total fertility rate has dropped from more than …
WESTERN and 'civilised' notions concerning the relation between population patterns and economic status may seem to dominate our world-view today. This book exposes and seeks to counter the rather inadequate and insensitive understanding of the motivation for child bearing in the developing world. Anthropologist Caroline Blendsoe has produced a fascinating …
Fears that India's burgeoning population has become the "mother of all problems" may yet be belied. Vasant Gowariker, former scientific advisor to the Prime Minister, says his analysis of Indian population trends has convinced him that contrary to the assertions of some demographers, India will never overtake China and become …
I WAS lucky that my childhood memories and later my life as a civil servant gave me insights into demographic behaviour. My boyhood recollection of an evening of listening to my father and his friends soon after the 1931 census results were published, left an abiding impression of the reasons …
THE MAN who presided over one of the world's largest head-counting exercises -- the 1991 Indian census -- is soft-spoken Amulya Ratna Nanda, registrar-general and census commissioner. The 1991 census, the fifth in independent India, broke new ground in many ways. When the figures finally come in over the next …
BY coincidence, I happened to read two recent reports together. They were UNFPA's State of the World Population 1992 and Towards a Green World by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain. Both are lucidly written, carefully documented and cogently argued. And yet I find it difficult to understand the nexus between …
