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  • Africa’s population to double to 2.4 billion by 2050

     

    Africa’s population to double to 2.4 billion by 2050

    Africa’s population will more than double to 2.4 billion within 40 years, according to a major study, thanks in large part to better health care.

    Children pose for a camera in the Erasmia township, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Children pose for a camera in the Erasmia township, Johannesburg, South Africa Photo: VLADIMIR RHYS/GETTY IMAGES
    Mike Pflanz

    By , Nairobi

    3:58PM BST 12 Sep 2013

    Comments35 Comments

    Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is rising faster than the rest of the world because modern medicine and health care on the continent means more babies are surviving birth complications, and fewer adults are dying from preventable diseases.

    But the number of children being born is not dropping, or is doing so very slowly.

    “This means that population growth rates would naturally rise if birth rates stay as they are,” said Carl Haub, the co-author of the report, from the Population Reference Bureau in the US.

    African mothers have an average of 5.2 children, rising to 7.6 in Niger, the country with the world’s highest fertility rate that is close to five times the European average of 1.6 children born to each woman.

    The baby boom means that its current population of 1.1 billion will increase to at least 2.4 billion by the middle of the century, according to the study from the respected organisation.

    Children pose for a camera in the Erasmia township, Johannesburg, South Africa

    “Nearly all of that growth will be in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the region’s poorest,” said Wendy Baldwin, the organisation’s president.

    “Rapid population growth makes it difficult for economies to create enough jobs to lift large numbers of people out of poverty.”

    Seven of the 10 countries with the highest fertility rates also appear among the bottom 10 listed on the United Nations’ Human Development Index.

    By 2050, many African countries will have more than twice the number of people compared to today. Kenya’s population will rise from 44 million to 97 million and Nigeria’s from 174 million to 440 million.

    Some will nearly triple. Somalia will have 27 million people in 2050, up from an estimated 10 million today, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 71 million population is predicted to rise to 182 million.

    “This is clearly going to increase pressure on Africa’s governments to deliver education, health care, security and, most importantly jobs,” said Julia Schünemann, director of the Africa Futures Project at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.

    “But it should be seen as an opportunity, too. African countries also have the world’s fastest economic growth rates. The question is, can those economies grow fast enough to offset the demands of population growth.

    “In general, I don’t think we should be too pessimistic.”

    PRB World Population

    International aid agencies are increasingly focusing efforts in Africa on family planning by advising governments how to widen access to contraceptives and helping women choose when to have children.

    But this is unpopular in some countries, especially where religious doctrine that frowns on contraception holds sway with government leaders.

    Projections included in the Population Reference Bureau’s study assume that “family planning will become widespread”, said Mr Haub.

    “If not, Africa’s population will grow more rapidly, further constraining efforts to address poverty, create jobs, and protect the environment,” he said.

    Africa’s rising middle class would contribute to a slowing of birth rates, as wealthier families tend to choose to have fewer children, the study found.

    The report gives 20 different indicators for more than 200 countries.

    It found that British mothers give birth to an average of two children, higher than the EU average of 1.6. Bosnia-Herzegovina has the world’s lowest birth rate of 1.2 children.

    The world’s population is forecast to increase from roughly 7.1 billion today to more than 9.7 billion in 2050, the report calculated.

    India, currently the second most populous country in the world, will overtake China to become the most populous by 2030, it is estimated. By 2050, India’s population will be 1.6 billion and China’s 1.3 billion.
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    Showing 1-24 of 37 comments

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    • Me blokes,

      Wud I’d a like ta say, I kant say, bekuss it wudna be politicully correct.

    • wasexpat

      Today 03:09 AM

      What a sad article.

    • Well surely the UK will benefit if many are allowed to come here, after all mass immigration and a multi-cultural society are good things, are they not?

    • The sub Saharan countries named are either Muslim or contain large Muslim contingents.  Bad news.

    • How many of them will fit on Lampedusa?

    • Thanks Bill Gates – crap, overpriced software, and another billion Africans.

    • We really should pour more aid into Africa so they can treble their population by 2050, come on everybody, give em your fxxking money!!!!! I’m organizing a coach trip for 50 people to go and dig wells for them and sow seeds because they don’t know how to dig holes other than shallow ones to put their murdered non Muslim enemies in!!

    • And 1 billion of them will be starving, wow great prospects.

    • Wow, I guess I will crack open a bottle of water and celebrate, twice as many mouths to feed, guess we better get busy.

    • We should never have given them money in the first place.  I hate this practice of sending aid to countries.  It’s stupid and short sighted.  All it does is enable dysfunctional situations to thrive, when they should be nipped in the bud by “Darwinian” (for lack of a better concept) factors.  It should be “survival of the fittest” but because of foreign aid, it’s survival of the weakest and then they procreate like rabbits and have no foundations to support all these parasites.

      They would be a strong country if it weren’t for the intrusion of foreign governments’ aid money.

      Another thing:  what countries send us aid when we have disasters?  Anybody?

    • We in the UK are bombarded daily with letters & TV-adverts from numerous charities asking for donations to help the starving/sick/thirsty in Africa.

      It now becomes clear why the problem continues…

      An advert from one charity…

      “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for  a day. Teach him to fish, and you feed him for life.”

      REALITY.

      “Teach a man to fish, but do not teach him how to use contraceptives or convince him to use them,  and you will have shown him how to have 10 children. His kids will have 10 kids, and they will eat all the fish, and you now have 100 hungry men and no fish.”

      Some parts of the world are marginal for supporting large numbers of humans. The best solution is to teach him to farm fish, and then he might be lucky and grow enough fish to feed 2 kids. A sustainable human population living from a long term sustainable food source.

    • Indeed, I do wonder from the letters from my water compnay just how long it will be before some people learn how to dig a f*cking well without my having to help pay for it.

    • CrushedGrape

      Yesterday 01:24 PM

      Hooray, I’m thrilled the African Continent is going to take over from us lazy selfish ‘Westerners.’  They will become the leading nations again while we disappear into oblivion, and good riddance to us, I say….

    • We’ve been told for years that increased population = increased GDP and economic growth, hence the insane support for immigration in some circles.

      The addition of the simple words “per capita” to GDP shows up the fallacy of this argument.

      India’s population growth has been massive – more than doubled since 1947, yet there are more poor in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.  The Indian government has just launched a programme to provide emergency food aid to two-thirds of the population.  They still breed like rabbits though, so not much hope for improvement there.

      Africa will go the same way.  More than half the population of Nigeria is under 20 years old and other countries have similar figures.

      Foreign aid to Africa and Asia is like standing in the bilge of the Titanic stuffing £20 notes in the hole.  Utterly pointless.

      These people are all grown-ups and they must be allowed to run their countries the way they want.  Our role should be to ensure that charity begins at home and that our border controls are sufficiently robust that they all stay where they were born – or at least, don’t come here.

    • Amen.

    • The Chinese found a way to counteract their huge population,  Despite the huge growth they still struggle today and for the foreseeable future.

      Will Africans be prepared to go down  the same path? Will they abide by the state’s dictate or improve their productivity by millions of percent or will we allow them the cheap electricity and clean power that they nee? Will they adopt the same work ethics?
      Forget the aid, which will do nothing to secure prosperity. Africa needs to understand that with  the doubling the population there comes a price. Will they pay it?

    • Answer: no.

    • John Mark

      Yesterday 12:40 PM

      So, the prediction is that the world’s population will increase by 37% in the next 37 years.

      It makes you into a Malthusian economist, where population rise is exponential but food increase is linear.

      At some point in time, the exponential leaves the linear far behind, and people starve.

      Farmers and optimists still say that we can produce more food than you think with the spread of westernised industrial farming throughout Africa.

      Yes, OK! But if they won’t use contraception enough, and the elderly live longer and longer, and the people eat more and more meat than in the past, you farmers are going to give up on your optimism one day.

      It makes you Malthusian in regard to charitable giving. The population growth is exponential but the charitable giving is, at best, linear.

      If international currencies do collapse in value well before 2050, then aid will cease or, at least, the currencies will be so debased in value that they will buy very little for this exponentially increasing world population.

      I have this fear that something catastrophic will happen, and that this will reduce global population to a level at which those, who are still alive, will be free of debt.

      If so, perhaps, the population will be no more than 2 billion.

      I am so, so pessimistic for the human race. It’s oppressive sometimes!

    • Comment removed.

    • I hope you reflect upon your remark and feel ashamed.

    • manwhosees

      Yesterday 04:24 PM

      See what you gone done did ? Don’t you feel ashamed ?

    • “See what you gone done did ? Don’t you feel ashamed ?”

      I haven’t “gone done did” anything other than make my thoughts known, in words using reasonable grammar, so no I don’t feel ashamed.

    • Nature kept things in balance for aeons, then along come the scientists.  Each generation of them solving the problems created by the solutions of their forebears.

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  • Migration to low-lying coastal cities putting lives at risk -expert

    Migration to low-lying coastal cities putting lives at risk -expert

    Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation – Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:23 PM

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    LONDON (AlertNet) – Climate change pressures – including worsening droughts, floods and sea level rise – are expected to drive a surge in world migration by 2050. But a worrisome amount of that movement may be putting families in new kinds of peril rather than making them safer, an expert warned on Tuesday at the Planet Under Pressure conference in London.

    The number of people living in floodplains of urban areas in East Asia, for example, may rise from 18 million in 2000 to 45–67 million by 2060, according to an October 2011 “Migration and Global Environmental Change” report by Foresight.

    Many of those migrating to cities are looking for jobs and other opportunities. But such movement into areas at high risk of climate-related disasters may unwittingly be putting many more families in danger in coming decades, said David Thomas, the head of the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, one of the authors of the Foresight report.

    “Rapid growth in urban mega-deltas is putting a lot of people at risk,” said Thomas, particularly because migrants normally end up settling on the only land available, which is often in flood-prone or other disaster-vulnerable areas.

    The problem, while most obvious in Asian cities such as Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Manila, Shanghai and Mumbai, also extends to Africa and Latin America, affecting cities from Lagos to Rio de Janeiro, he said.

    For instance, in the last 15 years, 40 percent of the people who have moved to the city of Dakar in Senegal have settled in flood-prone areas, he said, which means that “migration is increasing risk rather than reducing risk.”

    Migration driven at least in part by climate pressures is also proving much harder to understand and predict than expected, said Thomas. What is becoming clear, however, is that as environmental conditions worsen it may be the better-off – not the most desperate – who migrate since they have the resources to make a successful new start.

    That means “we need to think about those who stay” as well as those who go, Thomas said. Those who remain behind “may become trapped (and) are at greater risk of future environmental changes.”

    The majority of coming climate-related migration also is unlikely to be the result of displacement from one extreme event – such as a flood – but instead the result of a growing burden of pressures that mean “migration is a rational choice.” And future climate-linked migration – like migration today – is expected to occur largely within national borders, rather than across them, he said.

    “Migration can be adaptive, can strengthen people’s ability to cope with future change. It’s not a last resort of those who can’t adapt. It’s part of the adaptation process,” Thomas said.

    (

  • Sign Amy’s Petition Below

    NEVILLE –

    Doctors can’t tell me exactly how long my husband has to live. Our oncologist said it could be as little as two weeks however our neurosurgeon said, given he is fit and strong, it could be 3 to 6 months.

    Nick has exhausted all the commercially available treatment options for Stage 4 melanoma and is just not qualifying for the new ‘breakthrough’ PD-1 drug trials – he needs access to PD-1 urgently, however the pharmaceutical companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck, each of whom make a version of PD-1 have not, to date, agreed to grant Nick access to the drug on a compassionate basis. They insist that he should enter a trial but they know that he does not qualify for any trials.

    I can’t imagine life without Nick. I can’t imagine telling our son Locky he has to watch the big game alone, telling Hayley that Daddy can’t take her bike-riding anymore, or knowing that my youngest son won’t even remember his dad.

    This treatment is our family’s last hope. That’s why we started a petition on change.org asking Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck to give Nick compassionate access to the PD-1 cancer drug. Please click here to sign our petition.

    Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb have the power to grant Nick single patient access to PD-1 right away under compassionate use laws. They even have policies for providing development drugs to people where it is their only hope. PD-1 is being trialled right now and they’ve given patients compassionate access to drugs like this before so I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t this time — but so far they’re refusing to hear our case.

    Nick is determined to beat this so our children — Locky (7), Hayley (5), and Evan (1) — can grow up with Dad beside them. Nick takes on each new battle with melanoma with audacity — determined to win and constantly assuring others that he will jump the next hurdle. And he always does.

    Nick can jump this last hurdle, I know it — but only if Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb give him that chance.

    Please join Locky, Hayley, Evan, and me in asking Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb to provide the cancer drug PD-1 to Nick, so he can win against melanoma.

    Thank you so much for your help,

    Amy Auden

     

  • The story of how Cathy McGowan stormed Indi

    The story of how Cathy McGowan stormed Indi

    Updated 22 minutes ago

    A grass roots campaign set Cathy McGowan apart in Indi, writes Barrie Cassidy.

    This scene from a florist shop at Rutherglen in North East Victoria may well capture the beginnings of grass roots politics like we have never seen before in this country.

    Nine days before the federal election, 15 people wearing the distinctive orange and black t-shirts of the Independent candidate for Indi, Cathy McGowan, walked into Carla Walsh’s shop in High Street and bought $400 worth of flowers.

    The group was acting out an idea called cash mobbing. They targeted Walsh’s shop because she had written a letter to the Weekly Times bemoaning a lack of consumer confidence.

    The cash mob gets together to spend money collectively at small businesses and then promotes the idea on social media.

    This time though, it was as much a political as a community exercise.

    The organiser, Cambell Klose, first came across the practice on a visit to the United States.

    As a supporter of McGowan’s bid for Indi, he proposed the fusing of community action, social media and political activism.

    It was just one of many unorthodox approaches to the 2013 campaign in Indi that brought about the most unlikely result.

    What set Indi apart from other successful runs by independents is that it was driven by the grass roots, and not by the candidate.

    In the past, almost without exception, an elected independent either had a big local profile, or was an established politician defecting from another party.

    Cathy McGowan’s history is very different. It was never about her.

    McGowan won voter support because people in Indi had become fed up with the system.

    For all the talk about a flawed Senate, it’s the system that elects members to the House of Representatives that annoys so many across the country.

    Only about 20 per cent of Australians who live in marginal seats genuinely decide who will govern the country.

    The rest who vote in safe seats – the other 80 per cent –  effectively have no say.

    It was that sense of being disenfranchised and taken for granted, that drove a small group of people to get together early this year for an informal meeting at Wangaratta Library.

    Cam Klose, and a colleague, Nick Haines, have since written that the alienation from events in Canberra “and the ugliest and most negative period in the country’s history” filled them with despair.

    They wrote : “This motley group of various political colours became Voice for Indi, and their goal was to start a conversation…about needs, values and political leadership”.

    During April and May the group organised 55 structured kitchen table style conversations, drawing 425 people, an extraordinary result in a rural community.

    Eventually, participants hit on the idea of nominating an independent to run against the Liberal’s Sophie Mirabella, who had held the seat since 2001, and once recorded 63 per cent of the primary vote.

    They started headhunting prominent locals.

    Klose and Haines wrote: “While there was widespread support for the idea, many people expressed anxiety about taking on the vast party machine Sophie Mirabella had behind her.Given (her)  aggressive style, it was felt that personal and professional reputations would be treated as fair game.”

    But eventually McGowan stepped up.

    The campaign was given national attention when independent, Tony Windsor, was asked on Insiders what he would miss the least about federal politics. He nominated Sophie Mirabella.

    That quip made front page news in the Border Mail, the district’s largest newspaper. The story also attracted the attention of national commentators whose views, often uncomplimentary to Mirabella,  were read by the locals on twitter and Facebook.

    McGowan was also helped because Labor and Greens voters who had never before had any influence, saw an opportunity to take out a Coalition sitting member.

    Many National Party supporters got behind her as well, some of them motivated by a Liberal preference deal that went against the Nationals in the Victorian seat of Mallee.

    Ken Jasper, a retired National Party member who held  the state seat of Murray Valley for 34 years, publicly backed McGowan.

    He said he did so because a sitting member’s first obligation is to the electorate, and he felt Mirabella had failed to recognise that.

    The McGowan campaign had its critics.

    One of them, Nicola Bussell, a lamb producer from Carboor, paid for  an open letter to be published in the Border Mail, the Wangaratta Chronicle and the Benalla Ensign.

    In that letter Bussell wrote of Mirabella that she “doesn’t shy away from conflict or skirt around sensitive issues, preferring to call a spade a spade, the old fashioned way.”

    Bussell argued that Mirabella, as a member of the Coalition would be part of a future government,  while McGowan, in the absence of a hung parliament, would be a backbencher with limited  clout.

    On ABC News Breakfast Thursday, Virginia Trioli put it to McGowan that “you won’t be a kingmaker independent in minority government…you’ll just be another vote”.

    McGowan responded: “There is no ‘just’ attached to being a member of parliament. I will be the member for Indi, a voice for the electorate.”

    And in a direct message to the Coalition, she said : “You should have seen this coming, guys.”

    That surely serves as a warning to the occupants of safe seats everywhere on both sides of politics. Work the turf, no matter how safe the seat. If you don’t, another McGowan might be just around the corner.

    Having a vote that counts for nothing is no fun. Finding a way to make it count has been a lot of fun for the Voice of Indi, and it just might catch on.

    Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of Insiders and Offsiders on ABC1. View his full profile here.

     

  • Firefighters have the upper hand on the blazes but their speed and ferocity were a shock to residents and authorities

    An ominous sign of what lies ahead this summer

    Updated Thu 12 Sep 2013, 6:05am AEST

    Firefighters have the upper hand on the blazes but their speed and ferocity were a shock to residents and authorities alike.

    Adam Harvey

    Source: 7.30 | Duration: 4min 50sec

    Topics: bushfire, community-and-society, disasters-and-accidents, rural, australia

     

  • Is this a La Niña or El Niño year? Try La Nada By John Upton

    Is this a La Niña or El Niño year? Try La Nada

    By

    Ocean
    Shutterstock
    C’mon Pacific Ocean, heat up or cool down. All this average crap is making us nervous.

    Meteorologists base a lot of their long-term weather projections on temperatures in the globally influential Pacific Ocean. But for more than a year the world’s most expansive ocean has been devoid of its famed El Niño and La Niña patterns — anomalously higher-than-average or lower-than-average bands of sea-surface water that help govern major weather events.

    For now, the Pacific is stuck in a stubborn La Nada state: near-normal surface height and temperatures. Scientists say it could last into the spring, but that’s not so unusual: La Nada rules the Pacific about half the time. But it makes life difficult for weather forecasters, and it threatens to ignite unpredictably extreme weather. From NASA:

    “Without an El Niño or La Niña signal present, other, less predictable, climatic factors will govern fall, winter and spring weather conditions,” said climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Long-range forecasts are most successful during El Niño and La Niña episodes. The “in between” ocean state, La Nada, is the dominant condition, and is frustrating for long-range forecasters. It’s like driving without a decent road map — it makes forecasting difficult.”

    Patzert noted that some of the wettest and driest winters occur during La Nada periods.

    “Neutral infers something benign, but in fact if you look at these La Nada years when neither El Niño nor La Niña are present, they can be the most volatile and punishing. As an example, the continuing, deepening drought in the American West is far from ‘neutral,’” he said.

    La Nada
    NASA
    NASA uses satellite data to measure Pacific Ocean sea levels. Because warm water expands, that data helps scientists gauge the water temperature. All the green in this latest image means a whole lot average sea temperatures. And that means that La Nada is in town.
    John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.