Integrated and effective measures are essential to cope with population explosion as well as face country’s development challenges, said speakers at a dialogue on population and development challenges on Wednesday.
The department of population science of Dhaka University and the United Nations Population Fund jointly organised the programme at Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Bhaban of the university.
The speakers said in Bangladesh the population is likely to grow up to 22.2 crore by the year 2051 and will stabilise at 25 crore by 2081, even if the replacement level fertility is achieved by 2015.
They also said 23 per sent of total population are adolescent and among them 68 per sent are married at the age of 18 and 55 per sent of them become mothers before reaching 19.
DU vice-chancellor AAMS Arefin Siddique addressed the dialogue as chief guest while DU pro-vice-chancellor Harun-Or-Rashid was special guest and UNFPA representative Anther Erken moderated the programme.
Arefin Siddique mentioned the alarming rate of the world population growth and said the world population crossed six billion in 1999 and the current figure stood at 6.89 billion though the figure is changing rapidly.
He also said Bangladesh currently has a population of nearly 16 crore and the amount is going up every minute.
He added that climate change might have dramatic impacts on agriculture through flooding and drought.
‘Rising sea level and consequent salinity will affect the crops and we require long-term planning to meet the growing needs of the population,’ he added.
The participants in the dialogue said the growth of population had major implications for future development of the country and some new and emerging population issues such as the impending fertility transition, population ageing, global climate change, rural-urban migration, urbanisation and so on.
They mentioned the violence against women in forms of rape, assault, trafficking, and acid throwing is prevalent though several legal measures have been adopted to safeguard women’s rights.
They also said Dhaka was the second fastest growing mega city between 1975-2007 with 5. 65 per cent urban growth and they said Dhaka would be the fastest growing mega city up to 2025 in spite of having lower growth rate of 2.72 per sent from 2007 t0 2025.
Professor AKM Nurun Nabi presented the keynote paper where former deputy speaker Muhammad Ali Ashraf, members of parliament MA Mannan, Mujibul Haque, Rawshan Jahan Sathi and MP of Austria Karl Ollinger, MP of Germany Karin Roth, Senate members also took part in the dialogue.
