Jan 27, 2010

Book Bytes - 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI

Book Bytes
- 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI
: "Ranking on the Failed States Index is closely linked with key demographic and environmental indicators. Of the top 20 failed states, 17 have rapid rates of population growth, several of them expanding at close to 3 percent a year or 20-fold per century. In 5 of these 17 countries, women have on average more than six children each. In all but 6 of the top 20 failed states, at least 40 percent of the population is under 15, a demographic statistic that often signals future political instability. Young men, lacking employment opportunities, often become disaffected, making them ready recruits for insurgency movements."

Book Bytes - 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI

Book Bytes
- 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI
: "States fail when national governments lose control of part or all of their territory and can no longer ensure the personal security of their people. When governments lose their monopoly on power, the rule of law begins to disintegrate. When they can no longer provide basic services such as education, health care, and food security, they lose their legitimacy. A government in this position may no longer be able to collect enough revenue to finance effective governance. Societies can become so fragmented that they lack the cohesion to make decisions."

Book Bytes - 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI

Book Bytes
- 70: Mounting Stresses, Failing States | EPI
: "After a half-century of forming new states from former colonies and from the breakup of the Soviet Union, the international community is today focusing on the disintegration of states. The term “failing state” has entered our working vocabulary only during the last decade or so, but these countries are now an integral part of the international political landscape. In the past, governments have been concerned by the concentration of too much power in one state, as in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. But today it is failing states that provide the greatest threat to global order and stability."

Jan 26, 2010

The New Population Bomb | Foreign Affairs

The New Population Bomb | Foreign Affairs: "The United Nations Population Division now projects that global population growth will nearly halt by 2050. By that date, the world's population will have stabilized at 9.15 billion people, according to the 'medium growth' variant of the UN's authoritative population database World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. (Today's global population is 6.83 billion.) Barring a cataclysmic climate crisis or a complete failure to recover from the current economic malaise, global economic output is expected to increase by two to three percent per year, meaning that global income will increase far more than population over the next four decades."