POPULATION COULD TRIPLE IN 100 YEARS by Edith M. Lederer, APS Writer
5/17/90
LONDON--- World population, now 5.3 billion, will increase faster than 
ever in the 1990's and could almost triple in 100 years with 
castastrophic effects on the environment, the annual U.N. population 
report said Truesday.
    The next 10 years will decide the shape of the 21st Century. They 
may decide the futrure of the Earth as a habitation for humans," said 
Dr. Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund.
    Every year during the 1990's , the population will increase by 90 
million to 100 million people, roughly equivalent to the current 
population of Eastern Euripe or Central America, the report said.
    Over the decade, a billion more people will inhabit the planet, 
equivalent to a n extra China, it said.
    "The 1990's will see faster increased in human numbers than any 
decade in history," Mrs. Sadik told a news conference.
    "The choices of the next 10 years...will decide whether world 
population trebles or merely doubles before it finally stops growing. 
They will decide whether the pace of damage to the environment speeds 
up or slows down," she said.
    World population growth continues to be grossly out of balance, 
wuth 90 percent of the increase in developing countries, and the 
biggest growth in the poorest of them, said the State of World 
Population 1990 Report.
    "At the start of the 1990's the choice must be to act decisively 
to slow population growth, attack poverty and protect the environment. 
The alternative is to hand on to our children a poisoned inheritance," 
it said.
    Mrs. Sadik said "the best an quickest way to reduce population 
growth" is to invest in improving women's status, access to education 
, health and access to family planning.
    The U.N. Population Fund recommended that spending on family 
planning in developing countries be doubled to $9 billion by the end 
of the century.