POPULATION BOOM IS A BOMB BEING CREATED BY THE GREEDY

POPULATION BOOM IS A BOMB BEING CREATED BY THE GREEDY

By John Muto-Ono p’Lajur

8th June 2015.

The planet earth and its resources are finite and it cannot support an infinite population of humans or any other species, yet everyday there are 225,000 more people hungry for dinner. It is estimated that every second worldwide, five people are born and two people die, leaving three more humans to inhabit the Earth-Population Media Center (PMC).

GULU: A caller to MEGA FM, a popular local radio station in Gulu town in Northern Uganda, surprised me when he offered a simple solution to the current population boom crisis. To him, God created diseases like HIV/AIDS, to curb population growth so as to maintain his standards.

“Do you think God is stupid to create diseases such as AIDS and Ebola? Now we cannot feed the world. It is your mess. We should allow people to die,” Says my caller. But what does the picture look like in the whole world?

In Uganda, the population increased from seven million at independence in 1962 to now 34 million people in 2014, yet the land size has not increased. Already, people have encroached on wetlands, hunting grounds and forests to grow more food as demand for food production increases with devastating effects on climate and rain pattern. People now till more area for food production but get less yield than it was fifty years ago and rain pattern has changed too.

There are lots of land conflicts in Acholi sub-region of Northern Uganda currently after the people started to return home in 2007 because the people learnt from the Concentration Camps, that land has value which can be translated into money.

These are current attempts to distort the way our ancestors managed to keep large swatches of land for few people and their herds of cattle, which is the envy of other Ugandans. There are 1,511,614 people in Acholi sub-region according to the census result conducted in 2014. Gulu alone has 443,733 people and it occupies 3,457.8 square kilometers of land.

The Environment Program which was established in 1972 states that by 2050, if current consumption and production pattern remain the same and with rising population expected to reach 9.6 billion, we will need three planets to sustain our way of life. In terms of renewable resources and the Earth’s capacity to absorb carbon toxic chemicals and other forms pollution, we need two Earth’s by 2030 to sustain us. Our current growth path is unsustainable. Currently world population is 7 billion people.

Living well within planetary boundaries is the most promising strategy for ensuring a healthy future.

Warning signs are all over the place; rivers and lakes are shrinking, water table are falling, carbon emission are rising, deserts are expanding, forests are shrinking and fisheries collapsing,

“To grow our crops we are using a land area about the size of South America and to raise cattle and farm animals, we have cleared an area greater than Africa.” Population Media Center (PMC)  

It is estimated that 50 percent of the world’s pregnancies are intended and 25 percent are unwanted.

Research has shown that investing in girls’ education is one of the most effective way to reduce poverty and other social and health challenges. The United Nation estimates that approximately one million girls are forced into commercial sex each year. Therefore, we must empower people to stop human rights violation that harm the lives of individuals and societies.

“Job opportunities are essential to the health and wellbeing of individuals and families and are effective tools needed to help them understand economics and increase their ability to make sound financial decision.”

There are estimated 220 million women worldwide who want to use safe and effective Family Planning methods but are unable to do so because they lack access to information and services or the support of their husbands and communities. An estimated 33 million adolescent girls undergo unsafe abortion every year. We must therefore protect the rights of girls and women to determine if and when they want to have children.

The work to decrease population growth and our impact on environment must be done by providing education to three separate categories, all of which educate and empower people. These categories are human health, human rights and environmental preservation.

My caller in Gulu is wrong on how to control the size of population because even those suffering from HIV/AIDS can still be useful to this world. It is the greedy men of this world who would want more than one sexual who will bring down this planet called Earth.

The number of people time consumption is equal to impact on planet.

ENDS   

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