World Population Growth: A major threat to global stability and peace.

Over the past human history the world has displayed a very unusual demographic profile. The world population grew very slowly for many centuries but showed a sudden rise during the last fifty years when the population more than doubled to touch the figure of 6 billion in 1999. Within another seven years in 2007 another 700 million humans were added to make a total of 6.7 billion. According to an estimate the world population is expected to grow by another 2.53 billion and reach the level of 9.1 billion in 2050.

Ironically the unprecedented increase in population will be concentrated in the less developed regions of the world, thereby multiplying the problems of those countries manifold. Even in the less developed countries the population will be concentrated in urban centers, thus aggravating the civic and other issues for the hard pressed economies.

Major reasons given by the analysts for this growth are the lower mortality, longer life expectancy and the high fertility among women. Except for the last factor, high fertility, I differ with the other two factors. The countries where population growth is on the rise do not have lower mortality or high longer life expectancy. The developed countries with all the facilities of life have negligible population growth rate. Rather the developed countries like Germany, Japan, Italy and successor states of the former Soviet Union may have decline in their total population by 2050.

The major areas of concern for the tremendous population growth for the world communities should be South Asia, Sub Saharan Africa and a few countries of Latin America. China has effectively controlled her population growth and her strong, emerging economy will be able to sustain her huge population.

The problem of population growth is not to be left to the countries concerned. It is a global problem and if not addressed the whole world will have to suffer for its consequences. The developed countries will particularly become victim of this population explosion. On one side their population declining and on the other hand their prosperity and wealth will be tempting for the billions of poor people of under developed world. No amount of stringent immigration laws will be able to control the huge influx of hungry and starving immigrants to storm the developed countries. The stage is being set for a global catastrophe after 2050.

The only remedy is the sustained development of the effected regions and empowering the people of those regions to run their own affairs. They should be helped to establish democratic governments based on independent and impartial justice system. Their societies be made free of corruption and foreign interference. In order to achieve these objectives the developed countries should even go to extreme ends, less the wars. Once the backward countries see the light of development and prosperity, the reduction in population growth will ensue automatically, without the use of birth control measures and contraceptives.