The World
Key to population growth is developing for benefit of all
- By: Cindy Wooden
- Published: 09 November 2011
VATICAN CITY – The challenge posed by the world’s population reaching seven billion people is not how to stop population growth but how to find ways to ensure continued growth can benefit all humanity, said an article in Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Based on estimates by the United Nations, the population reached seven billion on 31 October.
At a time when people were talking again about overpopulation, “it’s worth asking which overpopulation we’re talking about,” author Cristian Martini Grimaldi wrote in the article published on the Vatican newspaper’s front page.
He said some talked as if population growth in some parts of the world or individual countries was so exaggerated it was akin to an “abnormal growth” on part of a diseased body or a form of gigantism.
“The problem is not demographic gigantism and never was, not even way back in 1968 when the best seller The Population Bomb disturbed the consciences of millions by predicting planetary catastrophe,” he wrote.
“Perhaps the point isn’t to stop growth, but how to continue to grow,” specifically by “emphasising development that does not privilege only a few, but all”.
The author said that in discussions about excessive population growth, “the experts always and only indicate two places: sub-Saharan Africa and Asia,” particularly China and India.
But if one looked at population density, the number of people per square mile, Germany faced more of a population problem than China does. India’s population density was “basically analogous to that of Japan,” he said.
Some people have been promoting the idea of a sustainable negative growth campaign focused on convincing people in affluent industrialised nations to reduce their consumption of food and natural resources while simultaneously convincing people in the developing world to reduce their population growth rates, he said.
The underlying assumption was that, in the area of population growth, the West “has already done its part”, Mr Grimaldi wrote. - CNS
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