World Population Day

What is the sense of a day, week or year in a linear perception of the time frame- perhaps to mark an specific purpose to commemorate a sense of an urgency that reminds everyone the concerned duties and responsibilities of the citizens? So, is the World Population Day to think, plan, execute and enable a congenial living environment across the societies? This may be an ideal precept but in reality the challenges are different, in different societies. The developed World has problem of ageing, care of elderly, narrow base o f population pyramid and managing work force in stark contrasts of developing World that is grappling with broad base of pyramid, population bulge, unemployment, underdevelopment, weak planning enforcement and brewing discontents. The growing pool of population in developing world seems to have reached the level of carrying capacity which is tearing the productivity, efficiency and sustainability of the earth. The human-environment relationships are becoming abysmally degraded. The climate change is further complicating the living condition of human being in high tropical zones of the globe. The World seems to heading in an anarchic place where the sense and sensibility of the human being are losing the battle against the keeping the surroundings a livable place. 

The population explosion has maligned the pristine nature of the gift that one was supposed to preserve for the generations. The over-exploitation of natural resources, greed’s, commercialization of forest products, ecological degradation and exertion of population to meet the basic requirements of human lives have led the imbalance in chain of human-environment relations. Population growth, poverty, ravages from war and finite natural resources perhaps pose the tough challenge to fight climate change. Since every individual needs space, energy, development and their share of ecological footprints.  The carrying capacity of the earth should not be tested at this point of time since millions and billions of years are supposed to be the natural heritage for the human descents. There are wider ramifications of unaddressed population growth in the developing World for climate change. Population pressure has led many unfriendly environmental practices that have direct bearings on ecosystem. There is large scale ignorance amongst rural masses in developing World towards finiteness of the natural resources. In a sense there is unconsciousness about the judicious use of the natural resources. This lack of knowledge and vision for sustainable development is harming the environment. The natural resources are limited and there distributions are skew and there are unforeseen generations to come and claim their due shares from their predecessors. So every individual, every generation holds responsibility of only a fair share.

The ‘human actions’ on land have direct implications for the ocean World. The release of greenhouse gases in atmosphere has raised the global mean temperature in turn the normal oceanic phenomenon of wind circulations over the ocean’s surface have become either weaker or stronger than normal due to El-Nino and La-Nina effects. This phenomenon has led in unpredictability of rainfall and conventional changes in wind directions. The results are drought, cyclone and erratic rainfall that had wrecked havocs in recent past. Moreover, the rise in average global mean temperature is directly visible from the smelting Antarctic and Himalayan ice caps and rising sea level has threatened the submergence of many of the low lying World’s islands. The level of uncomforted is seen in behaviors of animals from different parts of the World. The species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move quickly particularly in low lying areas.   The temperature sensitive micro fauna and flora in ocean will face the challenges of survival and reductions in algae and planktons productions.

The World Population Day was established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Program in 1989. It was inspired by the public interest in Five Billion Day on July 11, 1987, approximately the date on which the world's population reached five billion people. But are we concerned how reaching7 billion someday in October, 2011?  …and bigger questions beyond….