whonetherlands2policypaper08

Committee: WHO Topic: Overpopulation Country: Netherlands Lauren E. Period 3

I. Background Information

Overpopulation is a very serious issue in not only third world countries, but in large countries as well. Most people only think that small starting up countries possess this problem, but the richer countries use more resources consumed by humans and bigger technology used to supply them making them have a higher overpopulation rate. It took our population thousands of years to reach 1 billion in 1804, but it only took us 123 years for us to double to 2 billion in 1927. Only 47 years later the population hit 4 billion and soon, if we keep going at the same rate, we will leap to 8 billion in 2028. Overpopulation is not population density – the amount of people per space – but the number of people in an area exceeding the capacity necessary to sustain human life and activities. With all this growth, soon our planet Earth will not be able to support us any more. Our planet is changing and many of our environmental factors have decreased in the past half-million years. If countries do not develop policies to cope with this, the consequences may be huge. Our global economy has increased so much since 1950 and this progress has begun to affect the planet and how it functions. Some known causes of Overpopulation are “increase in birth rates, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in immigration, a decrease in emigration, or from an unsustainable biome and depletion to sustain human life.” Some people argue that poverty and famine are cause by bad government and bad economic policies, not by overpopulation, but other argue otherwise, that overpopulation is an important cause in these worldwide issues.

II. UN Involvement

UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund has been working on improving overpopulation for many years. It is an “international development agency, that promotes the right of every woman, man, and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity,” for all. They work on programs and policies to “reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.” Their goals are the Universal access to reproductive health services by2015, universal primary education and closing the gender gap in education by 2015, reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent by 2015, reducing infant mortality, increasing life expectancy, and reducing HIV infection rates. UNFPA’s main goal is to make people aware of our overpopulation situation and to help people in overpopulated areas to be treated with better medical care.

III. Country Policy and Involvement

Many people have argued that the Netherlands is not overpopulated because of the amount of people per square mile, but we actually are because of the differential amount of resources we import and export. We export many goods to other countries, but in return are not getting the materials we need in imports. We also have an excessive amount on immigrants coming into our country and the amount of people leaving do not match the amount coming in. The Netherlands is very involved in UNFPA and other organizations that work on exporting goods to smaller countries with a larger overpopulation rate. The Netherlands would like to see this problem decrease dramatically by 2015 and would love to work on resolutions with other countries to see this happen.

IV. Solutions

The Netherlands wants this problem to decrease dramatically and we believe that they only way this can be done is by universal contribution from multiple countries in the effort of making people aware of this tremendous situation. Overpopulation needs to be publicized in countries with this problem as to show that resources are sparse and conservation needs to take place. Also birth rates should be watched by teaching about birth control and other methods of reducing the amount of unwanted babies. Every country faces this issue - wether it be small or large - so countries need to join together as a combined front to diminish this horrible global issue. A stand needs to be made toward the health and safety of future generations.

V. Works Cited

http://www.unfpa.org/about/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation http://www.overpopulation.org/impact.html http://www.cosmosmith.com/human_population_crisis.htm