Sunday 11 July marks World Population Day and the theme for this year is ‘Everybody counts.’
The world population stands at 6.7 billion people. Of that, Namibia houses a mere 2.1 million. About 50 years ago, the Namibian population was 602 000.
This day marks the importance of data for development. It also aims at creating awareness for global population issues like food supply, fresh water, public health and climate change. It is important that an understanding of why reliable data is necessary is cultivated amongst people and therefore everyone is encouraged to take part in the census and other data collections.
According to the website www.pacensus2010.org, a census can affect the representation in state and local government and is used to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other important functional areas of government. It also affects the funding in your community. This funding is used for improvements, public health, education and transportation. Furthermore, a census informs a community’s decisions. It defines a nation and their trends.
The population or more so, the growth of the population, has a tremendous impact on the environment and it keeps getting worse. According to info.k4health.org, poor sanitation and unclean water is the reason for millions of deaths yearly. With the steady rise in population growth, the food supply couldn’t keep up and two billion hectares of arable land have been degraded. Biodiversity is vital for agricultural purposes and to sustain life but human activities are pushing plant and animal species into extinction.
Statistics are shocking and on www.globalissues.org, it is clear that spending priorities should be reviewed. Some 12 years ago, 8 billion U.S $’s were spent world wide on cosmetics, 50 billion on cigarettes and 780 billion was military spending. Only 6 billion were spent on basic education and 9 billion on water and sanitation.
