Population

Effects of population explosion....

1. Social Problem

The village community has traditionally been the coalescing social unit in Pacific countries,
providing a social safety net, a forum for resolving family and kinship issues and sustaining social cohesion in towns as well just as in rural areas. Many migrant families continue to reinforce rural ties rather than establish new social ties in the wider urban community. Migrants from the same islands prefer to live and work together; the social and economic bonds they forge are the basis for
much social support in towns.

2. Health Problem

The most prominent public health problems in Pacific countries, especially among the poor,
remain those of (largely preventable) infectious diseases, in particular respiratory diseases
related to overcrowding, and gastroenteric diseases related to water pollution, poor
sanitation, and inappropriate health and hygiene practices. Poor-quality water and sanitation
services continue to contribute to public health risks.

3. Unemployment

Education systems are orienting young people to non-manual employment in towns, primarily in government. It has not equipped them with the technical and business skills demanded by the emerging urban economy, however, and expatriate workers with these skills are imported at very substantially higher cost.

Population..

Effects of population Growth....

Competition for water resources among individuals, regions, and countries and associated human activities is already occurring with the current world population. About 40 percent of the world's people live in regions that directly compete for shared water resources. In China where more than 300 cities already are short of water, these shortages are intensifying. Worldwide, water shortages are reflected in the per capita decline in irrigation used for food production in all regions of the world during the past twenty years. Water resources, critical for irrigation, are under great stress as populous cities, states, and countries require and withdraw more water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers every year. A major threat to maintaining future water supplies is the continuing over-draft of surface and ground water resources.

Diseases associated with water rob people of health, nutrients, and livelihood. This problem is most serious in developing countries. For example, about 90 per cent of the diseases occurring in developing countries result from a lack of clean water (Pimentel et al., 1996). Worldwide, about 4 billion cases of disease are contracted from water and approximately 6 million deaths are caused by water-borne disease each year. When a person is ill with diarrhea, malaria, or other serious disease, anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of an individual's food intake offsets the stress of the disease.

population

According to the , U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World, projected to 09/28/08 at 17:39 GMT (EST+5) is

6,726,599,753

The world population growth rate rose from about 1.5 percent per year from 1950-51 to a peak of over 2 percentin the early 1960s due to reductions in mortality. Growth rates thereafter started to decline due to rising age at marriage as well as increasing availability and use of effectivecontraceptive methods. Note that changes in population growth have not always been steady. A dip in the growth rate from1959-1960, for instance, was due to the Great Leap Forward in China. During that time, both natural disasters and decreased agricultural output in the wake of massive social reorganization caused China's death rate to rise sharply and its fertility rate to fall by almost half.

In addition to growth rates, another way to look at population growth is to consider annual changes in the total population. The annual increase in world population peaked at about 88 million in the late 1980s. The peak occurred then, even though annual growth rates were past their peak in the late 1960s, because the world population was higher in the 1980s than in the 1960s.

Population of the world

Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower. The planet's population continues to explode: from 1 billion in 1820, to 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000. For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war).

Land boundaries

the land boundaries in the world total 250,708 km (not counting shared boundaries twice); two nations, China and Russia, each border 14 other countries

note: 44 nations and other areas are landlocked, these include: Afghanistan, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Holy See (Vatican City), Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Niger, Paraguay, Rwanda, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Swaziland, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, West Bank, Zambia, Zimbabwe; two of these, Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan, are doubly landlocked