Friday, June 5, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Parliamentarians working to meet SDG's
Native Women Green the Outskirts of the City, Feed Their Families
The hands of women who have migrated from rural areas carefully tend to their ecological vegetable gardens in the yards of their humble homes on the outskirts of Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia, in an effort to improve their families’ diets and incomes.
Bolivia’s School Meals All About Good Habits and Eating Local
A successful school meals programme that serves breakfast and lunch with Andean flavours to 140,000 students in La Paz gave rise to a new law aimed at promoting healthy diets based on local traditions and products in Bolivia’s schools, while combating malnutrition and bolstering food sovereignty.« Previous Page
Parliamentarians Adressing Population and Development Issues to Meet the SDGs
IPS Inter Press Service actively supports parliamentarians as they represent cultures and values of respective countries and constitute a link between governments and its citizens in democratic countries. Given the nature of population issues, parliamentarians have an important role to play in finding solutions for them that are essential for achieving sustainable development. Compulsion is strictly out of the question in the handling of population matters, and any measures to tackle a particular population issue must be undertaken by individuals voluntarily with their full understanding.
The Asian Population and Development Association APDA has been supporting the work of different nations’ parliamentarians on the issues of population and development. In the more than three decades since APDA was founded, it has held Asian Parliamentarians’ Meetings on Population and Development (APDA Meetings) throughout Asia with the aim of developing solutions for population and development issues on that continent, which accounts for 60% of the world’s population. APDA has provided support to platforms that aim to spur understanding and exchanges between parliamentarians from Japan and Asian nations in relation to population and development issues. In addition, APDA is currently focusing its work on inter-regional cooperation, particularly between the African, Arab and Asian regions, while cooperating with other regions.
The world is increasingly changing and interconnected and poses important challenges to global issues of energy, food, human security, poverty, and the environment. The world population is still on the rise and is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and surpass 10 billion by 2100. The population of Africa, with the fastest growth rate in the world, was one billion in 2011 but is expected to more than triple to 3.6 billion in 2100. On the other hand, developed countries are concerned about the issues of rapidly aging populations and fewer children.
From one end of the spectrum to the other, population issues are becoming more and more diverse, posing a range of economic and social challenges. In dealing with the increasing burdens these demographic conditions bring to our societies, a sustainable approach to how we live in dignity and in harmony with the Earth’s carrying capacity is needed, and finding solutions to stabilize populations is a vital step in this endeavor.
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