Struggling to Survive!
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
For decades many world leaders have struggled to eradicate global, grinding poverty. While those efforts have alleviated poverty for millions, the ongoing flood of rapid population growth has undermined and overwhelmed much of this progress to reduce poverty.
They struggle every day just to survive!
Struggling to Survive -- The Poorest
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
They do not have enough food. As a result, many are severely malnourished or starving.
They do not have enough water. And much of the water they do have is polluted and unsafe.
According to the World Bank the poorest billion people struggle in absolute poverty -- and barely survive.
Struggling to Survive - Absolute Poverty
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
Absolute poverty is a condition of existence so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency.
Starving children searching for insects to eat in Sudan.
These poorest - who struggle to survive in absolute poverty - are more than the entire world population in 1850!
About 1 out of every 5 people on the planet struggles to exist in this horrific condition.
What do you think your life would be like if you were this young person?
What do you think this boy’s hopes and dreams are for the future?
Struggling to Survive -- Existing on less than $2 a day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
Over one third of the world’s people – more than 2 billion – survive on less than $2 a day. Of course, it’s utterly impossible for Americans to even begin to comprehend this condition of existence. Some of the poorest 2 billion are not struggling as desperately as the poorest of these shown above. But many barely exist on the edge of survival.
Following is a description – only an attempt – to describe what this existence is really like for nearly all of these people:
Elderly woman under a bridge in Bangkok, Thailand
Source: Ronn Aldaman
Receiving intravenous fluids in a government hospital in India
Source: Oxfam International
People waiting to get registered at a government hospital in India
Source: Oxfam International
Struggling to Survive - On Less than $2 a Day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
A slum shack in Haiti -- built right on top of a mangrove swamp
Source: le Korrigan
If they are lucky enough to have a “house,” it will be nothing more than a shack in worse condition than all but the worst American garages.
Slum house in Manila, Philippines
Struggling to Survive - Less than $2 a Day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
A poor Indian farmer
Source: Animesh Singh
Small girl collecting metal scrap in a Dhaka, Bangladesh garbage dump
Struggling to Survive on Less than $2 a Day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
They don’t have any books, magazines or newspapers. It would be meaningless because they are illiterate and will never learn to read or write.
They don’t have any clothing except for a single old shirt and one old pair of jeans.
Children playing around an open sewer in a slum in Nairobi, Kenya
Source: Chris Johnson
Struggling to Survive Each Day on Less than $2 a Day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
A woman in Chad fills a bowl with dirty, undrinkable town well water.
Each week, up to 50% of the children have diarrhea.
Source: Pierre Holtz | UNICEF
Struggling to Survive Daily on Less than $2 a Day
The primary purpose of population balance is to reduce misery and suffering in the world.
In spite of our greatest humanitarian efforts to reduce global poverty in recent years, now there are more people suffering and miserable in the world than there were 25 years ago. That’s primarily because we have failed to humanely and compassionately stop population from increasing and further overshooting our planet’s vital, declining resources -- including oil, fresh water, topsoil and farmland, ocean fish stocks, rainforest and many more.