The book Children and The Environment, co-authored by the United Nations Environment Program and The United Nations Children’s Fund, is a factual report on how overpopulation, toxins, changes in the environment and other factors are affecting children. It was written 19 years ago, the same year that I was born, which made it quite interesting to me. The premise of the book is that there has never been and never will be as many children on the earth than there were in the 1990s, and that the parents of that generation owe their children and grandchildren a planet able to sustain them. For this report, I will analyze the problems and statistics that are presented in Children and The Environment to see if they are inline with today’s environment, and also explore how psychosocial theories relate to the book.
Articles written by government programs are not typically questioned, and are simply taken as fact. Because Children and The Environment was written so long ago, I was given the opportunity to discover how accurate it is. I took the graphic projections in the book to check how close they came to the real statics. In the first chapter they talked a lot about what the population will be like in 2025 and how many children will there be. The United Nations projected that in 2025, there would be 100 million children in developed regions and 1900 million in developing regions. Statistics show that in developed regions there are 300 million children, and in developing regions there are already 1900 million in the year 2009, proving that the projections were way off! Another projection in this book says that the world population should be approximately 7.4 billion people in 2009, but the population is 6.8 billion. The projection is 12.5 percent over the actual population. It is astounding how far off their numbers are, and it makes me quite wary of all the information presented in the book. Although most information given by governments is highly trusted, the United Nations has not been known for it’s accuracy.
The main claim of Children and The Environment is that there will be more children born in the 1990’s than any decade before or after, and that problems caused by overpopulation will be devastating to the earth and human race. World population has increased at a very fast rate during the past twenty years, but surprisingly living standards have dramatically improved. The amount of people living in extreme poverty has decreased from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005 and is now the lowest in history.
Despite the large percent of error in the book’s statical projections, Children and The Environment does a good job educating readers about how their actions may change the environment in a negative or positive way, and affect people everywhere. It explains how and why a variety of environmental issues effect the well-being of infants, children, and adults. The book makes many important points, such as: How will the world be able to sustain enough food to feed an increased population when the agricultural systems are failing to supply enough to meet the current demand? How could over pollution be prevented? How would diseases, such as AIDs, affect the increasing population in developing countries? Will humans take care of the earth well enough to sustain future generations? All of these are important questions that have been addressed, but not well enough.
In recent years, an increased amount of people have been able to avoid malnutrition. This is because humans have been genetically modifying, mass producing, and pumping food with chemicals, none of which is good for health of humans or earth. AIDs and many other easily preventable diseases remain huge issues in developing countries. Humans have been polluting the air and water and cutting the vegetation of our earth so much that it is drastically changing the environment. Perhaps the world would be better if more people had followed the advice of Children and The Environment.
Extreme poverty is currently defined by the World Bank as living on less than 1.25 US dollars per day. Over one billion people, or roughly one in six, live in such a state. Extreme poverty is most rampant in parts of Africa, Asia, and Central America. Moderate poverty is defined as living off of less than two US dollars per day. Cumulatively, there is about three billion people, nearly half of the world, living in poverty.
If a child is living in poverty, it will effect both their physical and mental development. At each stage of psychosocial development, if a child’s basic needs aren't being met, having a favorable outcome in each stage and moving on to the next one is very unlikely. As I was reading through this book on Children and their Environment, it was difficult not to contemplate the effects of poverty on Erickson's Psychosocial Stages of Development.
As the textbook Development through Life: A Psychosocial Approach and the book Children and The Environment explain, people who are living in extreme poverty do not have food, water, shelter, sanitation, or health care and cannot develop normally. Persistent poverty has harsh effects on IQ and social functioning. Increased exposure to lead and other toxins, and having less home-based cognitive stimulation, account for some of the diminished functioning in poor children. Malaria and tuberculosis are still epidemic diseases in many countries. Children growing up in extreme poverty are at high risk for poor development.
It is essential that mothers have plenty of nutrients and energy available, and avoids toxins during the critical periods of pregnancy for development of each structure to occur correctly. When a pregnant mother is exposed to toxins or malnutrition, it will affect the fetus/embryo in different ways depending on what is developing at the time of exposure. The most crucial human organs, the heart and central nervous system, develop at weeks 7-8 and 20-38, so those are important times periods for mother to be living as healthy possible.
The chart above is similar to the one in Development through Life: A Psychosocial Approach, which shows what parts of embryos and fetuses develop at during each time period of pregnancy. When a pregnant woman does not get enough calories or protein in her diet it often causes the baby to have a low birth weight, have stunted growth, and organs such as the liver, kidneys, heart, and brain, to be smaller. The book Children and The Environment is full of interesting facts and explains many other issues that affect the development of children.
Anyone who finds interest in the book Children and The Environment, would most likely enjoy Al Gore’s book and movie on global warming, President Obama’s plan for providing healthcare to all children, or perhaps Greg Mortenson’s book: Three Cups of Tea about educating women in Afghanistan to help make change in our world. If you want a great in-depth look on our generation's chance to change the world, read Dr. Sach’s book The End Of Poverty. Dr. Sach is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He has written this book and joined forces with the singer Bono, to raise money and implement a plan to end extreme poverty by 2025. Dr. Sach and Bono have been eliminating poverty mostly by helping the women in these poor regions with "micro" loans. Giving a woman enough money to buy goats example of how the “micro” loans work. With these goats she can provide milk and cheese for her family. She can breed the goats and sell them. She can grow a business and hire helpers, etc. These kind of loans have a "play it forward" effect and can help the entire region with time. I am planing to continue researching poverty, so that I will be more capable of improving the lives people in need.
In summary, reading and researching the information in the book Children and The Environment has taught me to question information, no matter what source it comes from. It has also taught me that environment has gotten better in some ways, and worse in other ways. The amount of extreme poverty has drastically decreased since this book was published, which is a tremendous victory for humans. Global living standards have increased drastically over the past 25 years because people like Dr. Sach, Bono, Barack Obama, Greg Mortenson and the thousands of other people who have made sacrifices to help the needy. There are so many thing that can be done to improve the environment and the lives of people globally. Every person can help improve our world, including you! If you want to help out, don’t wait, get out there and do something about it! Bibliography
The World Bank. (2009). Understanding Poverty.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,contentMDK:20153855~menuPK:373757~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:336992,00.html
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNCF). (1990). Children And The Environment.
Newman, B., Newman, P. (2006) Development through Life: A Psychosocial Approach; ninth edition. Thomas Learning Inc.
critical periods in prenatal development. http://www.cerebralpalsychildren.com/CP1.jpg
Erickson's Psychosocial Stages of Development. http://www.myuccedu.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/ericksone28099s-psychosocial-stages.jpg
McLoyd, C., (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist.
Agarwal K.N., (1980). Nutrition deprivation: Effects on feto-placental unit and fetal brain. Dr. K C Chaudhuri Foundation, co-published by Springer India.
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