A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, July 8, 2017
Rising populations and decreasing resources
Tuesday, July 11 is the United Nations World Population Day which seeks
to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues.
The day was officially proclaimed by the then-Governing Council of the
United Nations Development Programme in 1989, an outgrowth of the
interest when the world population reached five billion, on July 11,
1987.
According to the UN, around 225 million women who want to avoid
pregnancy are not using safe and effective family planning methods, for
reasons ranging from lack of access to information or services to lack
of support from their partners or communities. Most of these women with
an unmet demand for contraceptives live in 69 of the poorest countries.
The UN says, access to safe, voluntary family planning is a human right.
It is also central to gender equality and women’s empowerment and is a
key factor in reducing poverty. Investments in making family planning
available also yields economic and other gains that can propel
development.
This year’s World Population Day coincides with the Family Planning
Summit, which aims to expand access to voluntary family planning to 120
million additional women by 2020, the UN says.
According to a world populations website with the dawn of the
agriculture era about 8000 B.C., the world population was about five
million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million
though some estimates put it at 300 million or even 600 million,
suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical
periods can be with a growth rate less than 0.05% a year. During the
20th century alone, the world population has grown from 1.65 billion to
six billion. In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the
world as there are now. Because of declining growth rates, it will now
take more than 200 years to double again.
This year, the world population has reached 7,515,284,153. This month,
the world population was estimated at around 7.5 billion. The UN
projects that the world population will reach 10 billion by 2056.
According to a recent study based on the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion, there were 2,173,180,000 Christians or 31% of the world’s population. Some 50% were Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other. There were some 1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of whom 87-90% were Sunnis, 10-13% Shia. Some 16% had no religious affiliations while there were 1,033,080,000 Hindus (15%), the overwhelming majority (94%) of whom lived in India. There were 487,540,000 Buddhists (7%), of whom half lived in China. According to a world population research centre, the religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well and by people switching faiths. Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion.
According to a recent study based on the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion, there were 2,173,180,000 Christians or 31% of the world’s population. Some 50% were Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other. There were some 1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of whom 87-90% were Sunnis, 10-13% Shia. Some 16% had no religious affiliations while there were 1,033,080,000 Hindus (15%), the overwhelming majority (94%) of whom lived in India. There were 487,540,000 Buddhists (7%), of whom half lived in China. According to a world population research centre, the religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well and by people switching faiths. Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion.
If current trends continue, by 2050, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world.
Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any
religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and
France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.
The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in
2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they
are today.
India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim
population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia. By
yesterday, the population of Sri Lanka was 20,906,672, based on the
latest United Nations estimates.
India is expected to become the largest country in population size,
surpassing China by 2022, while Nigeria could surpass the United States
by 2050. This years’ UN theme is “Family Planning: Empowering People and
Developing Nations.” We also need to remember the wisdom of Mahatma
Gandhi who said, the world has more than enough to meet every persons’
need, but not the greed of some people in the context where nine of the
world’s super billionaires have more wealth than 50% of the worlds’
population.