The progress in medicine and medical science will continue to extend our life expectancy which has already been lengthened from the world average of 41 years to 62 years. Access to clean water will soon improve from 300% to 70% of the world population. On-going drastic reduction in illiteracy will bring about a better education and more equal economic opportunity.
However, not everything is rosy around us. There are serious doubts as to how our planet with its finite space, especially its limited cultivable land, which is being reduced due to desertification & global warming, will be able to accommodate and feed the galloping population whose dietary habits continue to change towards more expensive food items. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were only 2 billion people on earth, which increased to 5 billions by 1990. This is projected to increase to 7 billions by the year 2010, and to 10 billion by 2050, You will agree with me that this expansion is somewhat frightening.
Concurrently, a lot of population movement will take place towards urban centres, creating an unprecedented concentration of people and unacceptable congestion in some metropolitan areas. It is urgent that we redouble our efforts for systematic family and city planning everywhere, especially in the developing countries. At the same time, in some developed countries like Japan, measures must be taken to avoid a precipitous fall in the working age population and reverse the trend towards the rapid aging of population, which will mean the loss of dynamism in society. The contraceptive use increased from 10% in 1960 to 5000 in 1990, which has already restrained world's population growth by 500 million. Family planning efforts should continue in the future, but aiming at an even spread of different age groups.
The challenge of environmental change is enormous with the ever increasing pressure of population, which will be more affluent, more mobile, and more consumption-and recreation-oriented. We will need counter measures in order to cope with pollution of the air we breathe. the water we drink and the soil on which we grow food and build our houses. It would help the situation if more people shift their dietary habit from excessive meat consumption to vegetrian type of diet. We are fortunate in recent years in that food production has been out-stripping population growth by 20%. But a concerted approach to conservation is urgently required to fishing in the oceans as well as to agriculture and animal husbandry if the exhaustion of reproductive capacity of land and water is to be averted. We will also have to develop, through global cooperation, a more effective means to prevent the spread of new epidemic diseases which are often deadly and have no boundaries. The last two decades have seen the emergence of at least 30 new contagious
