The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. . . you must remember, and teach your children that the rivers are our brothers, and yours. You just henceforth give the river the kindness you would give any brother.

-Chief Seattle, Speech, 1854

IN THIS new millennium, having a child is no longer an individual’s choice. Instead, it may be a decision which has to take into account the current state of the world.

Why? Close you eyes and picture this. Until 1804, it took almost all of human history for the Earth’s population to reach 1 billion. But in l987, we have reached the same figure in a period of 12 years. If the current pace holds up, 78 million humans will be born each year.

On top of that, 3 billion young people are entering their productive years, and this equals the entire world population in 1960!

According to the United Nations’ projections, Earth’s population could reach 7 billion, 9 billion or 11 billion, depending on the choices made by today’s youth about bearing children.

Can the world sustain such rapid expansion? The World Health Organisation estimated that more than 3 billion people, mostly in Asia and Africa, suffer from malnutrition. It is predicted that by 2100, 12 billion humans will face a lifetime of hardships.

What will happen if we continue to expand? The world will be overpopulated. You may argue, so what? Don’t we have the capacity to continue to develop and provide home and food for the ever-growing population?

But we must realise that we are expanding at the expense of our environmental health. As we continue to grow, the environmental resources are continuing to dwindle, especially wetlands, the source of water. Water scarcity is an inevitable catastrophe that looms large ahead of all of us. Regional water supplies are dangerously low. Rivers are drying up; many lakes are at their lowest levels in history.

Water tables are falling due to over-consumption of groundwater in central and northern China, northwest India, parts of Pakistan, much of the United States, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Farmers in these regions are pumping groundwater faster than nature is replenishing it. Just as a bank account dwindles if withdrawals routinely exceed deposits, so will an underground water reserve decline if extractions exceed replenishment.

In the last three decades, as farmers sunk millions of wells, the depletion of underground aquifers has spread from isolated pockets of the agricultural landscape to large portions of irrigated land.

In India, a government-comissioned study found that "over-exploitation of ground water resources is widespread across the country".

As much as a quarter of India’s grain production could be at risk due to ground water depletion.

Meanwhile, populations continue to grow fastest in some of the world’s most water-short regions.

The number of people living in water-stressed countries is projected to climb from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025.

Countries which already suffer from lack of water are unlikely to be self-sufficient in terms of food production. This could lead to an increase in competition for grain imports.

Whether the United States, Europe, and other exporters will be able to produce sufficient surpluses to meet those import demands is only half the issue.

The other half is whether the exports will be offered at a price that poor, food-importing nations - especially those in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - can afford.

Apart from that, 82 nations that depend on subsistence farming are unable to feed their populations or even have the means to buy food.

Developing countries will soon be looking at staggering disaster relief budgets as a result.

The doom and gloom does not Stop there.

Deforestation continues to take place, to accommodate the needs of the ever-expanding human population, in spite the outcry by environmentalists from around the world.

Reports show that 600,000 square miles of forests were cut down in the last 10 years.

Twenty-six billion tons of topsoil have been lost and the hole in the ozone layer continues to expand.

We are experiencing more incidents of skin cancer and eyesight problems. The global climate changes continue unabated.

We just recorded the hottest year in history in 1999. According to the US National Science Foundation, 40 per cent of all frogs, a wetland species, have disappeared in the last 10 years.

How long would it be before we feel the impact ourselves? The crux of the matter is that at any level of development, the health of our environment is directly related to the size of the population, consumption patterns and also the technology used to produce what is consumed. 

People in developed countries pose the greatest impact on the global environment. The 20 per cent of the world’s people living in the highest income countries are responsible for 86 per cent of total private consumption compared with the poorest 20 per cent, who account for a mere 1.3 per cent.

A child born in the industrial world adds more to consumption and pollution levels in one lifetime than do 30-50 children born in developing countries.

Meanwhile, as living standards rise in developing countries such as Malaysia, the environmental consequences of population growth will be amplified.

An ever-increasing numbers of people will be aspiring, justifiably, to "live better." The drive towards progress could lead to degradation of the environment.

The most obvious environmental impacts are usually local, such as disappearance of forests and associated wetlands, soil erosion or the brown haze hovering over cities.

Examples of less obvious phenomena are build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the global decline of fish catches or the pollution of land and water resources with industrial and hazardous wastes.

The development progress of the past few decades is so immense that it seems as if we have leapt into the future, missing a few phases in the natural process of evolution that is recorded by history. Population explosion in a very good example.

However, the next phase in evolution is for us to realise that the world is virtually a big, borderless home for humans and that we need to include it’s health in our decision making.

It wouldn’t be all that difficult. After all, globalisation is already a common word when we speak of capitalism. Borderless communication is another catchphrase we are getting used to. This in a way is an evolution process that will bring us together to treat the environment better.

Being born into a crowded and famished world is not a welcome fate for a newborn child. Let’s think forward and take the environment into consideration in our daily lives.

By minimising the negative impacts on the world we live in, space constraints might not hinder our existence but could well bring humanity closer!

Source : New Sunday Times, Apr 30, 2000

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