Examine the View That Rapid Population Growth Will Prevent Some Countries from Meeting Their Millenium Development Goals

For several decades the gap between more economically developed countries and less developed countries hasn't really decreased. In order to change that in 2000 United Nations established The Millennium Development Goals. These goals aim to promote human development by ensuring improvements in a range of areas including poverty alleviation, education, health and environment. Even thought none of 8 goals touches the subject of the population directly, all of them are interlinked and closely related to population issues. The rapid population growth might be a big obstacle for some developing countries to achieve Millenium Development Goals. That creates one very important question for geographers: Will rapid population growth prevent some countries form meeting their Millenium Development Goals?

In order to answer this question this essay will first look at connections between individual goals and consequences of rapid increase in the number of people. Probably goals most directly affected by rapid population growth are the second one, which tackles the subject of primary education and the ones connected with health. Because of rapid increase in number of concerned citizens, many developing, and particularly the least developed countries, will face a continuous increase in the demand for services, like education and health. That means there will be an increasing need for social investment just to catch up with population growth, giving fewer opportunities to increase the quality of the services, which is needed to generate the changes requested to attain the Millenium Development Goals. Moreover, limited schooling and employment opportunities in rural areas force migration and change the size and composition of cities. Giant cities have appeared during the last two-three decades in many developing countries due to this effect. Rapid urbanisation without planning puts greater financial and physical restraints on education, health and social services if these services cannot keep pace with increasing demand. Insufficient number of children that will achieve primary education will have problems because of questionable quality of their education. The standard of educating will deacrese and their education will be worth nothing on the international area. In Sierra Leone might be an example of this issue. A 2008 UNICEF report indicated that 30% of children of primary school age were still out of school, and many of those who accessed schooling did not complete it.

Rapid population growth has even bigger impact on another public service – healthcare.