CHENNAI: “The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals fail to recognise inter-dependence between the goals and the role of population growth,” said Alok Bhargava, an Indian econometrician and one of the pioneers in econometric methods for longitudinal (panel) data.
Bhargava is a professor in the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland in College Park, USA. He was in the City to present a research paper ‘Climate change, demographic pressures and global sustainability’ at MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) on Tuesday.
The important points that he specified as background issues are that the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals have failed to recognise inter-dependence between the goals and the role of population growth. Sub-goals such as Ending hunger and food insecurity, Improving education quality and Providing adequate sanitation, are adversely affected by population growth.
The conceptual framework that he presented, says reducing ‘unwanted fertility’ especially in remote areas of developing countries, should be of highest priority. The evidence on total and unwanted fertility from India state that unwanted births are detrimental for maternal nutritional status, children’s nutritional status and education inappropriate to claim ‘population dividend. The effects of population growth for water depths in India can be marked from the rise of population to 77% between 1980-2010.
