Babies Everywhere in Africa, Meanwhile Global Population Leveling in Developed World

Get knocked up and win a Hummer! Talk about a national holiday. So went the “family contact day” earlier this month in the central Russian province of Ulyanovsk, where governor Sergei Morozov urged families to take the day off from work and do their best to, ahem, get lucky. In an effort to grow the Russian population, incentives go beyond the day off and pure pleasure of procreation: families who find themselves visited by a stork exactly nine months later on June 12, Russia’s national day, will be awarded home appliances, a sport-utility vehicle or even a new house.

This third annual Russian “sex day” seems to buck the common conception that, if anything, the earth suffers from too many human inhabitants. If you look at a graph of population growth, it would seem as much. From about the birth of Christ to the year 1800, there were less than a billion people. Then the graph shoots straight up, as the world population increased sixfold in two hundred years.

For a long time, common understanding dictated that overpopulation was a serious threat to the survival of the species. Such is still a perilous reality in countries like China and India who, each with more than a billion people, face poverty crises and drastic shortages of essential resources, namely water. Only, recent reports are hinting that the global baby boom may be coming to an end. Russia, in particular, is losing population at a rapid rate, hence the holiday.

Already, in an increasing number of countries, women are having babies at a rate that won’t keep populations even at its current levels. The United Nations, who has been tracking this story since 1951, estimates that by mid-century there will be 9.2 billion people. That’s an increase of almost 3 billion. For some perspective, that’s more people than even existed 50 years ago.

The mass of those billions of babies soon to be born, on the whole, will be from developing countries. Currently, the world’s highest fertility rates are in some of the world’s poorest areas. On the whole, women in Uganda, Angola, Chad, East Timor, Liberia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Afghanistan are giving birth to seven children over the course of their child-bearing years. (See here for a complete list.)

Growth in countries like the United States, Europe, and Japan, has already leveled off. In other words, the developed world is getting old. Unfortunately there’s no Viagra prescription that is going to solve this one. Hummers, as incentives, may help, but you have to wonder about the wealthy world—all work and no babies?

(Map of world fertility rates from Wikipedia; click to enlarge.)

Run for the Water Crisis!

Earlier this year I attended a luncheon about world hunger. Despite the fact that the world-renowned panelists proved very informative, the seeming contradiction of a lunch for hunger rivaled, say, a pub crawl for alcoholism.

So it's with a curious eye that the Inquirer points to the not-for-profit Blue Planet Run Foundation's round-the-world run to raise awareness for the world's water crisis. Twenty "ordinary" folk are running 15,200 miles across 16 countries and four continents, all day every day for 95 days to drive home the group's central message: "We can and must begin today to alleviate the catastrophic burden placed on over a billion people who, every day, must drink unsafe local water, or travel long distances on foot to search for safe water for themselves and their families."

Fair enough. The group is, not surprisingly, also taking pains to be environmentally-conscious, billing to run as a "race without a trace."

The map, pictured at right, indicates the progress toward the final goal: New York City. Today, the runners huffing it from Washington, DC to Baltimore. In case you want to catch up with them, they'll be at the Dunkin Donuts in Astoria, Queens at 7:30 Monday morning.

Good Water to Farm, Lethal Water to Drink

While the UN has stated explicitly, "water will become the dominant global issue this century," and its scarcity could threaten the stability of world populations, California has already begun to feel the crunch.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the state is already trying to manage the "future water wars in California." A public health crisis is already underway for hundreds of rural Californian communities whose public drinking water is loaded with unsafe levels of contaminants. About a million people are affected.

Like many reserves, the water on which these communities depend lay deep underground. But in this case, years of farming, often with heavy chemicals, has rendered the resource worse than useless: the water is dangerous, prone to causing cancer and kidney disease.

It is safe to say that California has a stable legislature and social mechanics to address the issue, however, this case shouts out as a case where unchecked farming can damage fresh wells.

Are farmers around the world acting accordingly?

More to come.

The Inquirer's World Water Crisis Watch

The Inquirer is now fixing its eyes on what could be the next truly global humanitarian crisis: the fight for clean water.

Only a fraction of the world's water is fresh (or, not salty), and already a billion people a day lack adequate resources for drinking and bathing.

As an introduction, click on the image to work with an informative interactive map put together by the BBC which indicates a number of flashpoints around the world where catastrophe looms.