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This story is from March 19, 2019

Reducing global population growth important in preventing environmental degradation, Alok Bhargava says

The United Nations 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) have failed to recognise inter-dependence between the goals and the role of population growth, according to Alok Bhargava, an Indian econometrician and professor at University of Maryland in the US.
Reducing global population growth important in preventing environmental degradation, Alok Bhargava says
CHENNAI: The United Nations 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) have failed to recognise inter-dependence between the goals and the role of population growth, according to Alok Bhargava, an Indian econometrician and professor at University of Maryland in the US.
“The sub-goals such as ‘ending hunger and food insecurity’, ‘improving education quality’ and ‘providing adequate sanitation’ are adversely affected by population growth.
The skilled labour is critical for rapid economic growth afforded by globalisation, and formulation of evidence-based policies is critical in the wake of climate change,” said Bhargave, who is one of the pioneers in econometric methods for longitudinal data.
The SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals set by the UN General Assembly in 2015 for the year 2030 under a resolution called “Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.”
Speaking on “climate change, demographic pressures and global sustainability,” at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation here on Tuesday, Bhargava emphasised on the reductions in global population growth for maintaining living standards as well as for preventing environmental degradation.
Bhargava said the role of emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture was not studied in detail despite the availability of FAOSTAT database. The framework that he presented said reducing ‘unwanted fertility’ especially in remote areas of developing countries should be of highest priority.
Bhargava specified about enhancing the agricultural productivity using information from GRACE satellites on terrestrial water storage anomalies and using data on well depths (evidence of population pressures on groundwater depths in India), and said that getting information through GRACE satellites does not work properly and is much more approximate when compared with traditional methods and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite which is much more precise.
He stressed on the role of fertility rates and education in increasing emigration to OECD countries and the need to harmonise international migration patterns. “The evidence on total and unwanted fertility from India state that unwanted births are detrimental for maternal nutritional status, children’s nutritional status and education inappropriate to claim ‘population dividend,” he said.
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