World population grows by 1 billion in only 12 years

The 7 billionth person on Earth will be born in India on October 31 of this year, according to scientists working with data from the UN.

It's only been 12 years since we passed 6 billion, in 1999.  In contrast, the world population growth from 1 billion to 2 billion took 120 years.

What's next?

Our human population is expected to hit 9.3 billion in 2050.  Some scientists project human population growth to begin leveling off between 9 and 10 billion. Others predict continued geometric growth well beyond 10 billion.

Caption: world population growth between the years 1800 to 2100

Growth is due to reduced death rates

The growth is due to reduced death rates rather than increased birth rates. The decreased death rate is attributed to the distribution of effective vaccines and antibiotics, as well as improvements in public health conditions. These recent medical advances have improved life expectancy most dramatically in developing countries, where most of the population growth is happening.

As the poorest populations expand, scientists say unrest will grow

By 2050, the population of India will surpass that of China. Nine of the most populous countries at that time will be developing nations where poverty is widespread. Issues of unequal distribution of world resources will loom larger; borders of industrialized and wealthy countries will grow increasingly porous.

U.S. will be only developed country among the most populous

In 2050, the U.S. will be the only industrialized nation among the 10 most populous countries. Our over-consumption of the world's resources will be even more out of proportion to the rest of the world than it is now.

Oil has fueled this growth

Although medical advancements have played a role in reducing death rates, it's been the abundance of oil that's allowed populations to grow so large. With cheap oil it's been possible to power the machinery to build large cities and support them. Take it away and you can't sustain New York, Tokyo, Delhi, Mexico City, etc. All cities, even those of moderate size, will suffer dramatically when we run out of oil, which many scientists predict within 50 years (see http://www.worldometers.info/).

Keywords: population growth 7 billion oil end of oil

April tornadoes caused by climate change, population growth, and pavement

Photo: noaa.gov

April's 297 devastating tornadoes were unparalleled in the U.S. Of the four biggest tornado clusters ever recorded here, two occurred this past April. What caused so many deadly and tragic tornadoes in a single month?

Meterorologists say chance is partly to blame. One little thing can set off a tornado, or not.

We do understand a lot about factors that cause tornadoes, though. They need warm, most air interacting with cooler, faster air. A thunderstorm coupled with something to create rotation, such as wind shear, can create a tornado. Are those conditions occuring together more often these days?

Changing climate is partly a factor, say meteorologists. Jet stream forces in April were among the strongest ever recorded, contributing to wetter, stormier weather than usual in the middle of the country. (I wrote a post recently about how warming Arctic air has sent the circumpolar jet stream shooting off southward, leading to the massive snow falls the U.S. experienced this winter.)

The stormier April was also caused in part by warm air from the U.S (warmer than usual due to climate change) colliding with cooler Canadian air - conditions that can spawn tornadoes.

Population growth and pavement contribute to number of tornadoes

More people are living now in "Tornado Alley" - the nation's midsection and the South - so more tornadoes are observed and recorded.

Some of the states hit hardest by tornadoes this year were also among our fasted growing states - such as Texas and North Carolina. The South has grown 14.3% in the past decade, compared to 9.7% for the nation as a whole. According to Kirk Johnson of the NYT, much of that growth occurred in areas of flood plain, where water used to spread out and be absorbed. But now that the areas are developed and paved, water runs off quickly, heated by the pavement, and is much more likely to cause floods of warm water. The evaporation of warm water can lead to storms, and collisions of air masses of different temperatures and densities. Ingredients for tornadoes.

Climatologists have long predicted that climate change will lead to stronger storms as we head into the future. Apparently that will include not only hurricanes, droughts, blizzards, and floods, but also tornadoes.

Keywords: tornado, tornadoes, climate change, population growth, pavement, April tornadoes

Africa's big mammal populations drop 59% in 40 years!

African elephants in Kruger National Park. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Just saw a distressing news item.  In an interview published 1/27/11, scientist Ian Craigie says populations of big mammals in Africa have decreased 59% in 40 years. And those figures are only from protected areas such as national parks. If unprotected areas were included in the study, the percent would probably be much higher.  Craigie is a zoologist (University of Cambridge) and former employee of South Africa National Parks.

Craigie says the primary causes of the decline are agriculture, hunting and the bushmeat trade. But all are due to human actions and Africa's population explosion. Africa's human population has increased 5-fold since WWII. The additional human population has moved into cultivated areas that were previously wildlife habitat, leading to widespread habitat destruction.

I might add (my words, not Craigie's) that deforestation for agriculture and timber has increased access to previously secluded or inaccessible wildlife.  Modern weaponry has also increased the ease of killing large numbers of animals for commercial trade as bushmeat or traditional medicine.

White rhino in an African national park. Photo: Sally Kneidel

Craigie says that Southern Africa is better off than West Africa or East Africa because the parks in Southern Africa have better funding and the human population is less dense.

West Africa has the most serious wildlife problem of the three regions because of the strong tradition of hunting for bushmeat, the countries are poorer, and the human population density is high.

What's the solution? Increase funding for programs to help communities develop livelihoods that depend on protecting wildlife (such as ecotourism) rather than over-harvesting and destroying their greatest resource (wildlife) and their greatest potential for income.  These are my words, not Craigie's.  Americans alone spend 12 billion dollars per year on ecotourism in Africa.

Keywords: Africa wildlife big mammals elephants rhinos poaching hunting bushmeat population growth deforestation habitat loss 59% loss in 40 years Ian Craigie

 

We were lucky to see lions on a kill. But are lions disappearing from Africa?

Text and photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD
A lion we spotted on a kill in South Africa. Note the blood on his lower jaw.

If you go on a "game drive" in Africa, looking for wildlife with cameras & binoculars, the guide always starts off by asking, "What do you all want to see?". The answer from everyone in the jeep is always the same...."lions, leopards, cheetahs". People are fascinated with the big cats. Even though hyenas are the second most powerful carnivore on the continent, I never once heard anyone asking for hyenas. It was always the cats.

Unfortunately, cats are among the hardest of the big animals to find, even in reserves and parks like South Africa's Kruger National Park.

We were lucky this past June to come across a couple of adult male lions on the carcass of a big Cape Buffalo, just outside of Kruger in a protected area that's part of "Greater Kruger." The carcass was only 10 feet from the sandy road we were driving down. We couldn't get a clear shot of the carcass because of the bushes and grasses in the way. But we waited and we did get clear shots of the lions when they got up to stretch and sleep.

One of the lions (left) pulling meat from what's left of the Cape Buffalo carcass. You can see the open body cavity on the right, and the buffalo's gray skin still covering the rib cage.

Presently one of the lions got up to relieve himself in the grass (below).

Then the second lion got up, and ambled over to the soft sandy road to sleep. He was so stuffed and so sleepy that he almost stumbled as though he were drunk. Note the blood on his front legs and face (two photos below).

All photos and text by Sally Kneidel, PhD

We came across the same lions at the same spot the next day (below). Again, one of them was napping in the road, too full and sleepy to even get up to urinate. Instead he urinated where he lay (as we watched) and the urine pooled around his rear end.

Although we were lucky to see these lions that stayed on the kill for several days, we didn't see many other lions, even though we looked for about a month inside Kruger Park and in reserves abutting Kruger. I had expected cheetahs and leopards to be rare, but I was surprised at the scarcity of lions. I shouldn't have been surprised. Africa's lion population is sharply declining, I'm now learning. The number of free-roaming African lions has dropped from 50,000 just 10 years ago to somewhere between 10,000 and 23,000 today. That's a decline of more than 50% in just a decade! And, according to Jeff Corwin, there were 250,000 lions in Africa only 25 years ago! Some scientists, such as Dr. Laurence Frank of UC Berkeley, believe the African lion is on the road to extinction.

What the heck is going on????

It's mostly about conflict with humans. As human populations in sub-Saharan Africa expand, the land left for prey populations decreases. A single pride of lions requires a hunting territory of 8 - 154 sq miles (20-400 sq km), depending on the density of prey animals. Lions generally eat the commonest hoofed animals nearby - impala, wildebeest, zebra - all grazers that need a lot of grazing space. Loss of habitat due to human population growth and human activities is the primary cause of the decrease in lion numbers in Africa. Jeff Corwin says that lions have lost 80% of their habitat in the last century.

African lions are now officially listed as Endangered (West African subspecies) and Vulnerable (East and Southern African subspecies) by the World Conservation Union and are on Appendix II of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) list.

But loss of habitat is not the only cause; other factors play a role in their decline. As the human population increases, so does the number of livestock. In Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai people graze their cattle on the same lands where lions roam, or have roamed. Cattle are equivalent to wealth and status for the Maasai. When prey is not plentiful, some lions will kill livestock. Traditionally Maasai have eliminated such lions by hunting them with spears. Nowadays though, the lions can be eliminated much more easily by poisoning carcasses with a cheap and common crop pesticide, Furadan, and then leaving the poisoned carcasses out for lions to take. (Lions are scavengers as well as predators.) In March of 2009, the TV news program "60 Minutes" ran a story on the American chemical Furadan: "Poison Takes Toll on Africa's Lions." With hidden cameras, reporters documented that Furadan was commonly available in Kenyan shops that were miles from any cropland, where shopkeepers chuckled when asked what the Furadan was for. After the story aired on national TV in the U.S., the American manufacturer promised to stop all sales of Furadan in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. In a July 25 update online, the 60 Minutes staff report that Furadan has been pulled from the shelves in Kenya, but not in neighboring Tanzania or Uganda.

Disease is also a serious problem for lions. We were told by several wildlife guides and scientists in Kruger that lions in South Africa are suffering from tuberculosis contracted from cattle. We were told that TB doesn't kill them immediately, but weakens them and shortens their life span. In addition, according to The Lion Foundation, 90% of free-roaming lions in Botswana are infected with FIV, the feline equivalent of HIV. And the lions of the Serengeti decreased around 30% after a 1997 outbreak of canine distemper.

A thin, weak lion we saw in 2007. We watched him try to climb a tree, but he was unable to. At the time I thought he was old. But now I wonder, did he have TB?

Trophy hunting or so-called "canned hunting" also takes its toll on African lion populations. Private ranches are often stocked with game animals just to provide easy shooting for those who like to kill big animals. By some reports, as many as 1500 lions are shot annually in southern Africa for trophies. Most desired are black-maned male lions in their prime reproductive years. But according to The Lion Foundation, approximately 6-8 other lions die each time such a male is shot. That's because another male will take his place in the pride, and when that happens, the newcomer generally kills all the cubs in the pride, which makes the females come into estrus sooner than they would otherwise. Occasionally adult females are even killed trying to protect their cubs. It's an adaptive strategy for a newly dominant male to kill the cubs of his predecessor, because it increases the likelihood of propagating his own genes, which is what natural selection is all about. But it wreaks havoc in a system when prime males are plucked out over and over by trophy hunters.

What's the problem?? How'd we get here?
The problem ultimately is poverty, and an uneven distribution of wealth and resources in the world. Poverty means...

• Families whose survival is dependent on their livestock will and must protect their domestic animals from predators.
  
• Poverty leads to rapid population growth and overgrazing, both of which contribute to habitat loss for prey and predators.
• When local families are impoverished, the breadwinners are of course tempted to make money selling lions to shooting ranches, where Europeans, Americans, and Asians pay thousands to shoot big lions (and other big animals).

What's the solution?
Practical short-term solutions include reimbursing herders or livestock owners for animals that are lost to predation, which is now happening in some places. Other solutions include recruiting Maasai and others in agrarian or herding communities into clubs or groups such as the Lion Guardians of Kenya, who stand guard and alert their neighbors when predators are nearby.

Ultimately the broader solution is support and assistance for the families and communities of Africa. That means sustainable employment that gives local people an incentive to preserve their natural resources, including lions. We need to empower women with education and jobs; when women are empowered, they choose to have smaller families, which leads to higher incomes and more opportunities for their children. People with choices and opportunities don't have to poison lions or sell lions to shooting ranches.

One thing we can do is to support organizations that are working on solutions - organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the World Wildlife Fund. If you know others, write a comment after this post and tell me.

Another thing we can do is this: when we travel, we can make sure that our travel dollars go to local people, not international chains that will funnel the money to stockholders in other countries. It's not that hard to do. Americans spend 12 billion dollars a year in Africa. Let's put it in the hands of the local people.

All text and photos by Sally Kneidel, PhD

This post now appears on The Courier News online, a member of the Chicago Sun-Times News Group and on www.basilandspice.com, the #1 Syndicated Site for Authors and Book Views. This post is also now linked to Google News (a time-senstive link.)

Sources:
Enkosini Wildlife Sanctuary/The Lion Foundation

Poison Takes Toll on Africa's Lions: Kenyan Cattle Herders Are Using the American Pesticide Furadan to Kill the Predators. 60 Minutes. CBS News. July 25, 2009.

Investigation Earth with Jeff Corwin. Planet Green TV network. July 27, 2009.

Nicholas Bakalar. 2005. Lions in South Africa Pressured by TB Outbreak, Hunters. National Geographic News.

Richard D. Estes. Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals. Chelsea Green Publishing Co.

Key words: Kruger National Park African lions tuberculosis lions declining South Africa wildlife trophy hunting loss of habitat population growth Furadan Jeff Corwin

China's growing appetite for meat will strain world water supplies

China's rapid industrialization and increasing population, along with a growing preference for meat on the dinner table, are creating water shortages that will have world repercussions. In coming decades, China will have to rely on food imports to meet demand.

China is home to 21% of the world's population. Its economy has grown at the fastest rate in recent world history, about 8% per year over the last two decades, says Junguo Liu, an environmental scientist in Switzerland.

During this period of unprecedented growth, the consumption of grains in China has remained steady, even dropping a little. But the consumption of meat in China has more than quadrupled since 1980. The production of meat requires much more water per serving than any other kind of food. Even though meat and other animal products made up only 16% of the typical Chinese diet in 2003, those foods accounted for more than one-half of the country's food-related water consumption, report Liu and colleague Hubert Savenije of Delft University in an upcoming Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

How does the Chinese diet compare to the American diet?

Food-related water consumption per capita in the United States is about 3,074 cubic meters per year, almost four times the Chinese figure. The water needed to produce the typical U.S. citizen's consumption of meat alone far exceeds that required to produce the average Chinese citizen's entire diet.

Why is that? According to Danielle Nierenberg of Worldwatch Institute, Americans eat 248 lbs of meat per person per year, far more per capita than any other country in the world.

The world of the future will not be able to support a growing population eating more and more meat. Already more than 1/3 of the world's population live in regions where water is considered scarce.

Keywords :: China, water shortage, meat industry, American meat consumption, population growth

Sources:
Sid Perkins. "A thirst for meat." Science News. January 19, 2008.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20080119/fob4.asp

Danielle Nierenberg. "Happier meals: rethinking the global meat industry." Worldwatch Institute. 2005. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/819

Violence in Darfur Fueled by Global Warming

Darfur photo courtesy of Columbia University

A hidden culprit behind the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region is global climate change, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon wrote in a newspaper editorial last spring. Although we tend to use political or military terms when discussing the violence in Darfur, "its roots," says Ban, are "a more complex dynamic." One of the root problems of the conflict is global warming.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government. Violence in Darfur began in response to worsening drought conditions in the region that caused both water and food shortages.

Ban's warning follows that of other experts, including Britain's Home Secretary John Reid, who pointed out that "the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign" of continued social dislocation and violence.

Rainfall in Sudan began declining in the 1980s because of "man-made global warming," said Ban. He called for economic development in the region that might involve new irrigation and water storage techniques. Meeting unmet contraceptive need would also address the very root of climate change: population growth.

Key words:: Darfur, violence, global warming, climate change, drought, population growth, Africa

Sources:
Kandis Wood. Violence in Darfur Linked to Climate Change. The Reporter, magazine of Population Connection, Vol. 39. Fall, 2007.

The Washington Post, AP Online, June 16, 2007. www.seedmagazine.com

Child-brides, Poverty, Population Growth

Photo of an 11-yr-old Afghan bride by Stephanie Sinclair, NY Times magazine 2006 and National Public Radio

Eight-year-old Enatnesh stands by the door way of her Ethiopian home contemplating the recent marriage of her 12-year-old sister with a look of profound sadness. She says she would like to be a doctor or a teacher, but she doesn't think that can happen if she marries at 12.
She says she doesn't want to get married; she'd rather get an education. But, she says, "Of course, I can't decide to marry or not. The decision is under my family, my father and mother." (Brenda Wilson, NPR)

In many developing nations, rural girls marry very early, often as children. Brenda Wilson reports for NPR that up to 40% of girls in rural Ethiopia are married before the age of 15. The girls' fathers arrange the marriages, and the girls have no voice in the matter. Many are married by the age of 12, but are allowed to remain with their parents until they are 14, when they go to live with their husband's family. The husband is generally10 years older.

Today we talked with an Ethiopian woman who lives in our hometown. She said that even in the capital city of Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), girls are commonly married in their early teens. Child-marriage is most prevalent in the two most impoverished areas of the world: sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, including India and Bangladesh. See this document by the International Center for Research on Women for more data about child-brides.

Tradition plays a role in the persistence of this practice. Because so many girls do marry young, fathers fear that their daughters will be viewed as defective if they don't marry young, then no one will want them. Or they might be raped or abducted or become sexually active if they don't marry early, then - again - no one will want to marry them. Marriage, for girls, has been seen traditionally as the only way for parents to provide for their daughter's future.

But marrying early is bad news all the way around for the girls. Girl-brides are virtually powerless, easily manipulated, and extremely vulnerable to their older husbands. The incidence of domestic violence, abuse, and abandonment is much higher for wives who are married before the age of 18.

Child-brides are also likely to experience pregnancy and childbirth while they are still children themselves, an event which is likely to damage their bodies permanently. The CDC reports that many girls who give birth too early experience tearing of internal tissues during birth, leaving them with "fistulas," or internal chambers that should be separate but are no longer so. The walls of the vagina, large intestine, and bladder may be torn so that one opens into another. The girls may "leak" urine or feces continuously for the rest of their lives. Young brides in rural Ethiopia and in other developing nations often go through pregnancy without health care and give birth attended only by female neighbors or family members.

Forcing young girls to marry older men has repercussions far beyond the suffering and lost potential of the girls themselves. Girls coerced into marriage, whether by their fathers or by the circumstances of poverty and the absence of other options, perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Girls and young women with no education, no financial resources, no opportunities to generate income or improve their circumstances, are much more likely to have large families. They have little authority or autonomy in the marital relationships, and men in developing nations often want large families, to work the farm or for spiritual and traditional reasons. Young women with limited options may want large families themselves - children can give meaning to a life that is otherwise bleak.

There is abundant research to show that in communities with programs to improve educational and occupational opportunities for women, birth rates drop dramatically. That's important not just for those women, but for all of us on planet earth.

Worldwide population growth exacerbates all of our environmental problems on the planet. Although the number of humans on the planet will swell from 6 billion to 9.5 billion people by the year 2050, our land and other resources are not growing. In fact, our resources are shrinking due to overharvesting, overgrazing, pollution, and global warming.

Most of the growth in world population will occur in developing nations. In those countries, the subjugation of women is one of the biggest factors contributing to population growth. That subjugation is locked in place when girls are betrothed as children.

For more information about what you can do to protect young girls from arranged marriages, go to the web site of the International Center for Research on Women (www.icrw.org) or email info@icrw.org.

Keywords:: CHILD BRIDE CHILD MARRIAGE FORCED MARRIAGE ARRANGED MARRIAGE POVERTY EDUCATION ETHIOPIA BRENDA WILSON OLDER MEN POPULATION GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES FISTULA HUMAN RIGHTS WOMEN'S RIGHTS OPPRESSION SUBJUGATION ABUSE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE COERCION DEPRESSION