Population growth, climate change and refugees

In the long run this effort is likely to be an entirely fruitless exercise. If the developed world doesn't make a concerted effort, now, to prevent people from making the decision to migrate from their overcrowded, poverty stricken counties to the developed world, then, as we can already see, the flood of refugees will continue to grow and grow and grow and the developed world as we know it will be overwhelmed.

In summary therefore there is an on-going and massive population increase in the undeveloped world. (China is excluded from this of course because of its 'one child policy'). The elite's in most of the countries of the undeveloped world will continue to fuel the fires of corruption, at best marginalising large swathes of their populations, at worst creating huge conflicts- e.g. Syria. This will result in increasing numbers of people trying somehow to migrate to the developed world, creating what can only be described as a Tsunami of desperate unhappy people. Inexorably the world will continue to warm up, exacerbating the marginalisation of large swathes of population in already overpopulated parts of the world.

Aid ineffectiveness.

What should we be doing instead? The developed world provides a massive amount of aid to the undeveloped world; is this not having any effect?

The answer is no, it is not. The aid provided to the undeveloped world is often wasted and ineffective. There is a view, backed up by substantial evidence, that the most heavily aided countries are being destroyed by aid and that their GDP's are actually falling as a result of aid (reference: Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo). Ms Moyo argues that aid often destroys existing industries, and fuels corruption because however the recipient country behaves the aid continues to flow.

The following table, of a few African countries, illustrates the point:

In vast contrast to the heavily aided countries in Africa the least aided is Botswana which enjoys a GDP per capita of some US$ 16000, compared to South Africa, potentially a much richer country, US$11000, Kenya US$1800 and Zimbabwe US$$600 ( By comparison The USA rate is US$ 52000, and Britain US$ 38000).

It is notable that the higher the corruption levels the lower the GDP per capita.

Enormous sums are available and are being spent on aid (approximately 150 to 160 Billion US$ per annum- Ref: Wikipedia)). So the funds exist. It has to be in everybody's best interests to redirect these funds to better use:

Perhaps aid money could be better spent in helping countries with high population growth rates to put in place policies that help to reduce those rates of growth. Apart from helping to reduce the number of refugees, a policy that limits the rate of population growth will enable those countries to start to provide the services that local people will value such as Schools, Hospitals and Roads. Persuading the Roman Catholic Church to participate in such a programme is also critical.

We also know that developing countries or states with high literacy rates among women, have low birth rates (e.g. The Indian State of Kerala).