Think sustainable families as population hits seven billion

The end of October is expected to mark a leap in the world’s population to seven billion. The rise comes at a time nations are still battling challenges of poverty, disease, unemployment and climate change.

Granted, there has been significant progress in the quality of life, thanks to improvements in the medical, scientific and industrial fields. But even though child mortality rates might have dropped over the years, accessibility to reproductive health services continues to hamper the effective management of numbers, particularly in developing nations where a rise in population may not necessarily be accompanied by concomitant planning on the distribution and use of resources.

In Kenya, National Co-ordinating Agency for Population and Development has warned that the current 2.9 per cent population growth rate, in a nation of 40 million, is ‘unhealthy’ for realisation of Vision 2030, a development blueprint expected to thrust Kenya into the league of newly industrialised nations.

Global projections indicate that the world’s population will hit the 10 billion-mark by the end of the century. Majority of these are expected to be from Africa and Asia.

While a rise in figures could come with additional advantages such as having a larger labour force that can drive economic growth, the challenge for many nations lies in establishing sustainable mechanism to preserve and facilitate generation and distribution of resources. Environmentalists have pushed for the protection of water bodies, reduction in emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, reforestation and afforestation to preserve what’s left for future generations.