Will the Water Last?

One important reason why it’s becoming harder for farmers to keep up with the growing population is that supplies of water for irrigation are declining around the world as underground water reserves-aquifers-become depleted faster than nature can fill them. “Groundwater overdrafting is now widespread in northwest and southern India, parts of Pakistan, much of the Western United States, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Peninsula,” reports Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amhest, Mass.

At the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992, delegates grappled with issues of environment and development. Predominantly Muslim and Roman Catholic countries resisted efforts to include population as an important factor there.

Two years later, another UN-sponsored meeting – the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo – saw delegates from 179 countries hammer out a “program of action” that sets as one of its primary goals the universal availability of reproductive health services, including family planning. Another major goal is increased educational opportunities for girls and women, which has been shown to lower birth rates and improve the family standard of living.

Slice then, there has been some progress. Family-planning services are available to many couples around the world (60 percent today compared with just 30 percent in 1974). The incidence of abortion has consequently dropped in many countries, and the rate of population increase has slowed. Still, some 350 million women in developing countries (one third the total) do not have access to reproductive-health services, and unsafe abortions kill an estimated 70,000 women a year. And while more girls are in school, there remains a significant gender gap in education. In Cairo, governments agreed that $17 billion a year would be needed to meet year-2000 targets. One-third was to come from industrial countries and two-thirds from developing countries.

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水够用吗？

养活日益增多的人口对农民来说，越来越不容易，一个重要原因在于，随着地下水储备（含水土层）枯竭速度超出自然界对其补充的速度，全球灌溉水供应日渐减少。据马萨诸塞州阿姆赫斯特全球用水政策项目（Global Water Policy Project）主任桑德拉•波斯特尔（Sandra Postel）说，“在印度西北和南部、巴基斯坦的某些地区、美国西部许多地区、北非、中东以及阿拉伯半岛等农作物产地，现在广泛存在过分使用地下水的问题。”
1992年在巴西召开的地球问题首脑会议（the Earth Summit in Brazil）上，代表们设法解决环境和发展问题。会上穆斯林和罗马天主教国家为主的国家反对把人口作为一个重要因素考虑。
两年后，另一个有由联合国主办的会议—国际人口与发展会议（人发会议）（the International Conference on Population and Development）(ICPD)在开罗举行，在这次会议上，来自179个国家的代表认真制定了“行动方案”，确定包括计划生育在内的普及生殖保健服务为其主要目标之一。另外一个主要目标是扩大女孩和妇女受教育的机会，时间证明，这样可以降低生育率和提高家庭生活水平。

其后有了些进展，计划生育服务进入全球许多的夫妇（与1974 年的30%相比，今天已经达到60%）， 在许多国家，流产数量随之减少，人口增长率也有所放缓。但是，生活在发展中国家的3.5亿妇女（1/3 的妇女人口）无法享用生殖健康服务，估计每年死于不安全流产的妇女有7万之多。尽管上学的女孩比原来多了，但是在教育上依然存在严重的性别差距。在开罗，各国政府同意每年需要170亿美元来实现2000年的目标，其中1/3将来自工业化国家，2/3来自发展中国家。