“National Population Projections, 2010-based
reference volume: Series PP2”.

From the Introduction we read the key results (emphasis
is ours):

• “The population of the UK is projected to increase by 4.9 million over the next 10 years from 62.3 million at mid–2010 to 67.2 million at mid–2020, an annual average rate of growth of 0.8 per cent. It is projected that the UK population will be 73.2 million at mid–2035, a total increase of 10.9 million over the next 25 years.”
• “The projected total population of the UK in 2035 is about 924,000, 1.3 per cent higher than in the 2008–based projections. This is due to an increase in the assumed number of births and net migration.”
• “Some 47 per cent of the projected 10.9 million increase in the population between 2010 and 2035 is directly attributable to the assumed level of net inward migration. The remaining 53 per cent is attributable to projected natural change (an excess of births over deaths) of which 32 per cent would occur with zero net migration. The remaining 21 per cent arises from the effect of net migration on natural change. It is estimated therefore, that some 68 per cent of projected population growth in the period to 2035 is attributable, directly or indirectly, to net migration.” 
  

Read the full summary:

ONS

Recent News items have drawn attention to crop failures and drought across the dry Sahel region of Africa.

Food stocks are running out and cattle are dying. Recently the focus  has been on the country of Niger where there has been a recent harvest failure. The situation there is complicated. There have recently been a series of years of drought, food prices have risen, insecurity in neighbouring countries leading to immigration of many desperate people, extreme poverty, diarrhoea from use of dirty water, poverty and of course, continued population growth have together created a desperate situation.

At the same time there are water shortages not only in the Sahel but in many other areas in the world. And the UN Secretary-General has used World Water Day to warn about the global situation. He noted that there are 7 billion people to feed on the planet today and another 2 billion are expected to join by 2050. Statistics say that each of us drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day, however most of the water we ‘drink’ is embedded in the food we eat: producing 1 kilo of beef for example consumes 15,000 litres of water while 1 kilo of wheat ‘drinks up’ 1,500.litres.

Producing enough food to feed the world’s rapidly growing population will require the international community to ensure sustainable use of the world’s most critical finite resource,” water.

When a billion people in the world already live in chronic hunger and water resources are under pressure we cannot pretend the problem is ‘elsewhere’.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has released its latest migration report. In terms of the amount of immigration, we need to view the migration estimates in relation to the government’s pledge to cut annual net migration (gross immigration minus gross emigration) from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands by 2015.

So far, as some predicted, there is little sign of government success. For in the year to June 2011 net migration was 250,000, not far below the peak figure of recent years!

Here are the first three ‘Key Points’ of the report.

• “Estimated total long–term immigration to the UK in the year to June 2011 was 593,000. This compares to 582,000 in the year to June 2010 and has remained at a similar level since 2004
• “Estimated total long–term emigration from the UK in the year to June 2011 was 343,000. This is similar to 347,000 in the year to June 2010 and a decrease of 32,000 from the year ending June 2008
• “Net migration was 250,000 in the year to June 2011. Since the year to June 2010 when net migration was 235,000, it has peaked at 255,000 in the year to September 2010 and remained steady since”

In terms of citizenship the report says:

• British citizens. “Long–term international migration estimates by
  citizenship show that in the year to June 2011 the estimated number of British citizens immigrating long–term to the UK was 88,000. In the year to June 2010 there were 96,000 British citizens immigrating. The estimated number of British citizens emigrating long–term from the UK in the year to June 2011 was 143,000 an increase of 12 per cent on the estimate of 128,000 in the year to June 2010.
• Non–British citizens. “The estimated number of non–British citizens immigrating long–term to the UK in the year to June 2011 was 505,000, not a statistically significant difference from the estimate of 487,000 in the year to June 2010. The estimated number of non–British citizens emigrating long–term from the UK was 200,000, not a statistically significant difference from the estimate of 219,000 in the year to June 2010.”

This shows that there is a big difference between British and non–British citizens, in migration flows. While there is a large annual negative net migration of British citizens (far more leaving than coming in) of minus 55,000, with non–British citizens there is a far larger positive net migration (more people coming in than going out) of 305,000.

General trends in recent years have been similar, that is net emigration of British and net immigration of non–British. This means that a major gradual transformation of the UK population is underway.

Migration Statistics Quarterly Report February 2012.
ONS

“Migrations figures remain steady.”
BBC

Adequate water supply is vital for any nation, and where the population continues to grow massively, securing that supply is often very difficult, as it increasingly is in England. Now a serious drought has been declared in parts of England.

The availablity of fresh water in any country is limited. It depends on stocks in underground aquifers, supplies in man–made dams, and rainfall, the last mentioned being usually unpredictable. In a country like England, other land use requirements, such as increasing food supply to meet the needs of a
growing human population, mean that there is a limit of space for building any new dams.

Now a major summit on water supplies has been called by the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on the same day that it was announced that the South East is now officially in drought.

Details of the drought.

• “Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, parts of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire,and west Norfolk are still in drought.
• “Shropshire and Nottinghamshire in our Midlands region and Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, East Sussex and Kent in our South East region are still affected by dry weather.
• “In the Anglian region groundwater levels remain exceptionally low. Soils in these areas are still not wet enough for widespread recharge to take place.
• “The Midlands region, Anglian region and South East region all received below average rainfall for January (79 per cent, 74 per cent and 66 per cent respectively of the long term average rainfall). It has been the driest ever five month period (September 2011 to January 2012) in Anglian region.
• “The driest 12 months between February and January ever saw 636mm of rain – between Feb 2011–Jan 2012 we had 774mm which is the 8th driest ever.”

“As parts of the UK have been affected by droughts for many months and prolonged periods of heavy rainfall in the near future are unlikely according to recent Met Office forecasts, the Environment Secretary urged water companies, businesses, and people to find ways of reducing water waste and water usage.“

“Save water now to limit the effects of drought says Spelman.”
Defra

“Drought summit as rivers in England dry up.”

BBC

The charity Save the Children has produced a very
distressing report about the global scale of malnutrition
of children. This was based upon a survey carried out in
five countries – India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria
and Peru.

Here are a few of the 'vital statistics' from
the report.

“One in four of the world's children are
stunted. In developing countries this figure is as high as
one in three. That means their body and brain has failed to
develop properly because of malnutrition.”

“Malnutrition is an underlying cause of the death
of 2.6 million children each year – one–third
of the global total of children’s deaths.

“In the poorest countries, the poorest children
are two times more likely to be chronically malnourished
than their richest counterparts.

“48% of children in India are stunted.

“Seven countries are projected to see an increase
in numbers of stunted children by 2015. Nigeria is
projected to have 1.6 million additional stunted children
and by 2020 Tanzania is projected to have 450,000 extra
stunted children.”

Save the Children
See also
“500m children at risk of effects of
malnutrition.”
BBC

In June, a very important United Nations conference will take place on the subject of  ’Sustainable Development’. In preparation for this, a three day conference of representatives of member states, United Nations agencies and civil society was organised to prepare a draft document that would form the basis for discussion at the conference. And this conference has now produced a draft document,

We at Gaia Watch have always argued that it will not be possible to achieve global sustainable development without pursuing a policy of reducing global human population growth and eventually reducing the global population.

But if the draft document eventually prepared is any guide, the United Nations Conference may not adopt this position. Fot opposition to any focus on population growth was expressed by some spokespersons. And the final draft document apparently made no mention of population control or reproductive rights as being necessarily part of sustainable development policy.

So LifeNews.com drew the conclusion stated as the heading for the present news item. On the other hand, at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, the United Nations Population Fund issued an offcial statement that said that human population growth is unsustainable and indeed a threat to development, and the WEF concurred.

So we think that we may yet see a global recognition of the harmful effect of human population growth.

LifeNews.com

A new survey carried out by Professor Paul Whiteley at the Essex University ‘Centre for the Study of Integrity’ (ECSI) claims this is so for misdemeanours (minor wrongdoings) as distinct from major crimes.

The survey repeated, with the same questions, a survey carried out in 2000. The survey was of the attitudes of over 2,000 adults who “were asked to take an ‘integtity test’, in which they were asked whether they thought a range of activities could ever be justified”.

Compared with the survey of attitudes in 2000, people were more tolerant of activities like having an extramarital affair, or failing to leave a contact after damaging a parked car.
The only offence of which people have become less tolerant since the year 2000 was cheating on benefits.

These results suggest that there might be an on-going decrease in honesty that could eventually have serious consequences for society in the future by making it much more difficult for government to maintain order.

Read the whole article

See the report:
ECSI

See also the BBC News item:
BBC

A new survey carried out by Professor Paul Whiteley at the Essex University ‘Centre for the Study of Integrity’ (ECSI) claims this is so for misdemeanours (minor wrongdoings) as distinct from major crimes.

The survey repeated, with the same questions, a survey carried out in 2000. The survey was of the attitudes of over 2,000 adults who “were asked to take an ‘integtity test’, in which they were asked whether they thought a range of activities could ever be justified”.

Compared with the survey of attitudes in 2000, people were more tolerant of activities like having an extramarital affair, or failing to leave a contact after damaging a parked car.
The only offence of which people have become less tolerant since the year 2000 was cheating on benefits.

These results suggest that there might be an on-going decrease in honesty that could eventually have serious consequences for society in the future by making it much more difficult for government to maintain order.

But there was another finding that was also very relevant to the concerns of GaiaPopulationWatch, namely, that young people were “much more likely to condone bad behaviour than older people”.

Now since today’s young people are tomorrow’s adults (who in turn will affect the attitude of their children to misdemeanours), we think this finding is consistent with the idea that a decline in honesty is likely to continue.

However, as the report points out, there is an alternative explanation of the significance of the difference between young people and older people. It might simply be that people tend to become more honest as they grow older!

See the report:

ECSI

See also the BBC News item:

“25th Jan. Britons ‘more dishonest than 10 years ago’, study finds”

BBC

In the middle of December there was a flury of intererst in parliament and the media about foreign criminals freely going around in Britain having been released from Prison. And this was not just a few people – apparently currently there are nearly 4,000.

Essentially there were two problems. The first was Article 8 of the European Commission’s Human Rights Legislation and how this was intepreted by the British courts.
The second problem was getting the necessary travel documents ready for deportation.

Article 8 states:

1. 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Frequently claims by lawyers that a defendant has a right to family life or some other human right have been used to override other considerations and the defendant has been freed.

With the second problem (getting the necessary travel documents ready for deportation), it turned out that – and this is quite amazing – foreign criminals were successfully obfuscating the attempts to get the documents.

Thus the independent chief inspector’s report (ICIR) on the management of foreign national prisoners concluded that:

“Whilst the time taken to secure travel documentation does vary from country to country, the timescale for obtaining a document is mainly dependent on the compliance of the FNP. Non-compliance covers a range of behaviour but it centres on frustrating removal by refusing to cooperate with attempts to obtain travel documents, for example by adopting a false identity, nationality swapping, refusing to engage with the UK Border Agency, or refusing to engage with embassies (our emphasis).

“We estimate that this is a significant issue in around 60% of long term detained foreign national prisoners. Documentation can be arranged quite quickly in most circumstances when the FNP is compliant, takes longer with the semi-compliant FNP and takes a very long time with the non-compliant.”

More specifically, as the Chairman of the MAC writes in his foreword to the report:
“we find a negative association between working–age migrants and native employment: (i) in depressed economic times; (ii) for non–EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1995-2010. A ballpark estimate is that an extra 100 non-EU working–age migrants are initially associated with 23 fewer native people employed. Such evidence suggests that successive governments since 2008 have been right to make non–EU migration more selective.”

On the otherhand the chairman also notes:
“We find no association between working–age migrants and native employment: (i) in buoyant economic times; (ii) for EU migrants; (iii) for the period 1975–1994.”

Also, “But this possible displacement of British workers only holds for those migrants who have been here for under five years. Both EU and non–EU migrants who have been in the UK for over five years are not associated with displacement of British born workers.”

The Chairman also stressed that the report talks only about an ‘association’. In other words, the report does not prove that immigrants cause any displacement of native workers, although that may very well be the case. It is worth noting that in general, it is difficult in migration studies to prove an ‘association’  is causal. But it is clear that immigrants from non–European countries such as from the Indian sub–contintent may in fact displace native workers.

Read the report:
MAC