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1
In 1968, The Population Bomb warned of impending disaster if the population
explosion was not brought under control. Then the fuse was burning; now the population bomb
has detonated. Since 1968, at least 200 million people -- mostly children -- have perished
needlessly of hunger and hunger-related diseases, despite "crash programs to 'stretch' the
carrying capacity of Earth by increasing food production."2 The population problem is no
longer primarily a threat for the future as it was when the Bomb was written and there were
only 3.5 billion human beings.
The size of the human population is now 5.3 billion, and still climbing. In the six
seconds it takes you to read this sentence, eighteen more people will be added.3 Each hour there
are 11,000 more mouths to feed; each year, more than 95 million. Yet the world has hundreds
of billions fewer tons of topsoil and hundreds of trillions fewer gallons of groundwater with
which to grow food crops than it had in 1968.
In 1988, for the first time at least since World War II, the United States consumed more
grain than it grew. About a third of the country's grain crop was lost to a severe drought --
roughly the fraction that is normally exported. Over a hundred nations depend on food imported
from North America, and only the presence of large carryover stocks prevented a serious food
crisis.
It is not clear how easy it will be to restore those stocks. World grain production peaked
in 1986 and then -- for the first time in forty years -- dropped for two consecutive years. In just
those two years, the world population rose by the equivalent of the combined citizenry of the
United Kingdom, France, and West Germany. Global food production per person peaked
earlier, in 1984, and has slid downward since then. In Africa south of the Sahara, production
per capita has been declining for more than twenty years and in Latin America since 1981. 4
And the prospects for unfavorable weather for agriculture may be rising as burgeoning
populations add more and more "greenhouse" gases to the atmosphere.
The Population Bomb tried to alert people to the connection of population growth to
such events. The book also warned about the greenhouse warming and other possible
consequences of "using the atmosphere as a garbage dump." It concluded: "In short, when we
pollute, we tamper with the energy balance of the Earth. The results in terms of global climate
and in terms of local weather could be catastrophic. Do we want to keep it up and find out what
will happen? What do we gain by playing 'environmental roulette'?"5
What indeed? We've played, and now we're starting to pay. The alarm has been sounded
repeatedly, but society has turned a deaf ear.6 Meanwhile, a largely prospective disaster has
turned into the real thing. A 1990s primer on population by necessity looks very different from
our original work. The Population Explosion is being written as ominous changes in the life-
support systems of civilization become more evident daily. It is being written in a world where
hunger is rife and the prospects of famine and plague ever more imminent; a world where U.S.
consumption is so profligate that the birth of an average American baby is hundreds of times
more of a disaster for Earth's life-support systems than the birth of a baby in a desperately poor
nation; and a world in which most people are unaware of the role that overpopulation plays in
many of the problems oppressing them.
Even people far removed from the pangs of hunger must suspect that something is
amiss, must feel a sense of foreboding for their own future well-being and that of their children.
Television shots of tropical forests afire, sewage-smeared beaches, and drought-stricken farm
fields cause unease. Pictures of starving Africans in desolate relief camps rend the heart.
In the United States, drivers in virtually every large metropolitan area now can
encounter gridlock at practically any hour of the day or night. Visitors to our nation's capital
find homeless people sleeping in the park opposite the White House, and drug abuse and crime
sprees fill the evening news. News about the AIDS epidemic seems to be everywhere, as is talk
of global warming, holes in the atmosphere's ozone layer, and acid rain.
These may seem to be isolated problems, but they are all tied together by common
threads -- threads that also link them to food-production statistics, to the prospect of a billion
or more deaths from starvation and disease, and to the possible dissolution of society as we
know it. Chief among the underlying causes of our planet's unease is the overgrowth of the
human population and its impacts on both ecosystems and human communities. Those impacts
are the threads linking all the seemingly unrelated problems mentioned above, and others
besides. The explosive growth of the human population, its meaning for you and your children
and grandchildren, and what you and your friends can do to make a better future are what this
book is all about.
Paul R. Ehrlich
Anne H. Ehrlich
Tahun
Provinsi
2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035
Kepulauan Bangka
Belitung 48,6 46,2 44,9 44,3 43,3 43,1
Nusa Tenggara
Barat 55,8 53,8 52,2 50,2 48,6 48,1
Nusa Tenggara
Timur 70,6 66,7 63,4 62,1 61,6 61,6
Bonus Demografi sebenarnya telah dialami oleh beberapa Provinsi di Indonesia sejak
tahun 2010. Beberapa provinsi itu seperti Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Jawatimur dan Kepulaun Riau.
Berdasarkan tabel 1, menunjukkan bahwa beban ketergantungan di empat provinsi telah
berada pada angka 46 dan 45. Beban ketergantungan yang cukup rendah ini telah menciptakan
jendela peluang untuk peningkatan pertumbuhan ekonomi diwilayah yang bersangkutan.
Bonus demografi yang akan terjadi pada tahun 2020 hingga 2030 harus benar-benar di
manfaatkan oleh pemerintah. Kesiapan pemerintah dalam menghadapi bonus demografi tentu
akan mendatangkan keuntungan yang besar. Dengan Bonus demografi berarti Indonesia akan
mendapati kondisi dimana jumlah angkatan kerja yang melimpah-ruah. Angkatan kerja dengan
jumlah yang besar tersebut jika dapat dikelola dengan baik tentu akan mendorong kemajuan
dan pertumbuhan ekonomi negara. Kuncinya terletak pada peningkatan kualitas angkatan kerja
yang berdaya saing pada pasar tenaga kerja global.
Saat ini Indonesia memiliki 67 juta anak muda berumur 10-24 tahun. Mereka inilah yang
akan menjadi pemimpin dan penggerak pembangunan Indonesia pada fase bonus Demografi
tahun 2020-2030. Jumlah anak muda yang melimpah ini juga menjadi incaran tenaga produktif
negara-negara maju yang kekurangan anak muda. Sehingga bisa menjadi keuntungan yang
besar jika Indonesia mampu merespon permintaan pasar tenaga kerja global (Kompas 29
November 2014, hlm 13).
Jumlah anak muda yang besar telah menjadikan Indonesia sebagai salah satu negara yang
akan mendapatkan keuntungan demografi selain India dan Thiongkok. Jumlah anak muda di
dunia diperkirakan mencapai 1,8 miliar. Dan dari angka tersebut Indonesia menempati posisi
ketiga setelah India yang memiliki jumlah anak muda 356 juta, dan Thiongkok yang memiliki
jumlah anak muda 269 juta. Jumlah anak muda ini akan sangat menguntungkan jika strategi
pembangunan yang memanfaatkan bonus demografi bisa dijalankan dengan benar. Dengan
investasi yang tepat dari pemerintah, maka jutaan anak muda akan benar-benar menjadikan
berkah demografi. Selain itu juataan anak muda ini jika mampu dikelola dengan baik tentu
akan bisa mengubah masa depan Indonesia menjadi lebih baik.
Bonus Demografi sebagai Jendela Peluang Pertumbuhan Ekonomi
Bonus demografi yang akan datang pada tahun 2020 hingga 2030, menjadi jendela
peluang (windows opportunity) untuk pertumbuhan ekonomi. Populasi penduduk produktif
yang besar akan bermanfaat sebagai pendorong pertumbuhan ekonomi yang tinggi. Dengan
tersedianya penduduk produktif yang siap kerja dengan jumlah yang besar menjadi modal awal
dalam pembangunan ekonomi. Selanjutnya tinggal bagaimana pemerintah Indonesia mampu
menyiapkan angkatan kerja yang berkualitas dan lapangan kerja yang cukup untuk menampung
mereka.
Pemerintah perlu mempersiapkan angkatan kerja yang mampu merespon permintanaan
pasar tenaga kerja dalam kerangka bonus demografi. Dengan angkatan kerja yang terdidik dan
terampil maka berapapun jumlah angkatan kerja yang tersedia akan bisa terserap dalam pasar
tenaga kerja. Namun yang tak bisa dilupakan adalah bagaimanan pemerintah manambah
lapangan kerja untuk menampung mereka. Dengan tersedianya lapangan kerja yang cukup dan
sesuai dengan keahlian pencari kerja, maka populasi anak muda yang besar akan benar-benar
produktif dan menjadi penggerak pertumbuhan ekonomi negara.
Jaminan tersedianya lapangan kerja yang sesuai dengan kahlian pencari kerja, akan
memungkinkan anak-anak muda Indonesia mampu mengembangkan segala potensi yang
dimiliki. Dengan memperluas kesempatan kerja, akan memperluas usaha dan produksi yang
dihasilkan. Sehingga hal tersebut dapat mengerakkan ekonomi negara dan meningkatkan
Income.
Pengelolaan angkatan kerja yang tepat tentu juga akan menjawab permasalahan
pengangguran yang selama ini masing memiliki angka yang cukup tinggi. Tingkat
Pengangguran Terbuka di Indonesia bulan Agustus 2014 masih cukup tinggi yaitu 5,94%.
Angka tersebut lebih tinggi dari tingkat pengangguran terbuka bulan Februari 2014 yang hanya
5,70%. Untuk itu, dalam kerangka bonus demografi sangat diperlukan kesiapan dan strategi
yang tepat, sehingga jumlah anak muda yang melimpah mampu mendorong peningkatan
ekonomi. Dengan terserapnya jutaan anak muda dalam lapangan kerja selain mengurangi
angka penganguran juga akan meningkatkan pertumbuhan ekonomi negara.
Bonus demografi menjadi kondisi yang sangat baik bagi suatu negara untuk
meningkatkan pendapatan dan standar hidup masyarakatnya pada posisi yang sejahtera. Selain
itu dengan peningkatan pendapatan dan kesejahteraan akan bisa mengakhiri kemiskinan yang
selama ini masih menjadi salah satu problem utama.
Faktor-Faktor Penentu Keberhasilan Pemanfaatan Bonus Demografi
Bonus demografi dapat mendatangkan keuntungan yang besar bagi Indonesia. Dengan
persiapan yang baik dan investasi yang tepat, bonus demografi bisa mengubah masa depan
Indonesia menjadi lebih sejahtera dan maju. Namun keberhasilan dalam memanfaatkan bonus
demografi sangat dipengaruhi oleh empat faktor utama yaitu kualitas pendidikan, kualitas
kesehatan, ketersediaan lapangan kerja, dan konsistensi penurunan angka kelahiran melalui
program KB.
Pada fase bonus demografi jumlah anak muda sangat besar sebagai kelompok produktif
yang telah memasuki usia kerja. Sehingga Pengelolaan ketenagakerjaan yang baik, menjadi
pekerjaan rumah yang harus dilakukan oleh pemerintah. Pengelolaan ketenagakerjaan yang
baik dengan mempersiapkan angkatan kerja yang berkualitas, akan menentukan keberhasilan
pemanfaatan bonus demografi. Untuk itu dalam mempersiapkan angkatan kerja yang
berkualitas haruslah dilihat dari aspek kualitas pendidikan, kualitas kesehatan dan kecukupan
gizi.
1. Peningkatan KualitasPendidikan
Salah satu aspek penting yang perlu diperhatikan dalam fase bonus demografi yaitu
meningkatnya kebutuhan terhadap pendidikan. Meningkatnya jumlah anak muda pada tahun
2020 hingga 2030, akan berpengaruh pada meningkatnya kebutuhan akan fasilitas pendidikan.
Pendidikan telah menjadi kebutuhan mendasar bagi penduduk yang harus dipenuhi selain
kecukupan gizi dan kesehatan. Dengan kesempatan yang mudah untuk mengenyam
pendidikan, tentu akan dapat menciptakan penduduk yang berkualitas dan terampil.
Dalam usaha untuk meningkatkan kualitas anak muda sebagai penduduk produktif masa
mendatang, salah satu usaha yang tepat adalah dengan menyediakan kesempatan pendidikan
seluas-luasnya. Kemudahan akses pendidikan dan didukung oleh prasarana pendidikan yang
lengkap, serta tenaga pendidik yang berkualitas, akan menciptakan masyarakat yang
berkualitas pula. Dengan kesempatan mengenyam pendidikan sampai ke jenjang yang tinggi,
tentu menjadi modal penting untuk menciptakan angkatan kerja yang berkualitas dan terampil.
Peningkatan kualitas pendidikan menjadi faktor utama keberhasilan perencanaan
ketenagakerjaan. Perencanaan tenaga kerja akan menjamin kebutuhan tenaga kerja, terutama
tenagakerja terdidik yang diperlukan dalam pembangunan (Sumarsono ,2003:25). Dalam
kerangka bonus demografi perencanaan ketenagakerjaan berhubungan eret dengan
pembangunan sumberdaya manusia yang berkualitas.
Pendidikan menjadi aspek penting dalam upaya meningkatkan kualitas sumber daya
manusia (SDM). Data tentang Human Development Index (HDI) yang disajikan United
Nations for Development Program (UNDP) menunjukkan bahwa peringkat kualitas SDM
Indonesia cenderung mengalami penurunan dari tahun-ketahun. Pada tahun 1998 HDI
indonesia berada pada posisi 99, dan merosot pada tahun 1999 ke posisi 105. Sementara itu
Pada tahun 2000 HDI Indonesia kembali merosot ke posisi 109 (Irianto, 2001:1). Saat ini
kualitas sumberdaya manusia di Indonesia masih terbilang rendah, dengan angka Human
Development Index (HDI) Indonesia masih menempati urutan ke-111 dari 182 negara. Untuk
itu peningkatan kualitas sumber daya manusia menjadi upaya yang harus di prioritaskan untuk
menghadapi bonus demografi beberapa tahun mendatang.
Jika melihat Angka Partisipasi Sekolah (APS) di Indonesia, menunjukkan bahwa terdapat
peningkatan APS di masing-masing kelompok umur, sepanjang tahun 2003 hingga 2013
(Perhatikan Tabel.2). Kenaikan APS dimasing-masing kelompok umur ini bisa dipengaruhi
oleh peningkatan kebutuhan akan pendidikan ketika jumlah penduduk semakin besar.
Peningkatan angka APS ini menunjukkan sesuatu yang baik jika dilihat secara terpisah
dimasing-masing kelompok umur.
Tabel.2 Angka Partisipasi Sekolah ( A P S ) Tahun 2003-2013
96, 96, 97, 97, 97, 97, 97, 98, 97, 98, 98,
7-12
42 77 14 39 64 88 95 02 62 02 42
81, 83, 84, 84, 84, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90,
13-15
01 49 02 08 65 89 47 24 99 76 81
50, 53, 53, 53, 55, 55, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63,
16-18
97 48 86 92 49 50 16 01 95 49 84
11, 12, 12, 11, 13, 13, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20,
19-24
71 07 23 38 08 29 72 77 82 05 14
Tahun % Tahun %
Tingkat
Partisipas Tingkat
Angkata Penganggura i Penganggura
Bekerja
n Kerja n Angkatan n Terbuka -
Tahun Kerja - TPT
TPAK
(Juta (Juta
(Juta Orang) (%) (%)
Orang) Orang)
The second half of the 1960s was a boom time for nightmarish visions of what lay ahead for
humankind. In 1966, for example, a writer named Harry Harrison came out with a science
fiction novel titled “Make Room! Make Room!” Sketching a dystopian world in which too
many people scrambled for too few resources, the book became the basis for a 1973 film
about a hellish future, “Soylent Green.” In 1969, the pop duo Zager and Evans reached the
top of the charts with a number called “In the Year 2525,” which postulated that humans
were on a clear path to doom.
No one was more influential — or more terrifying, some would say — than Paul R. Ehrlich, a
Stanford University biologist. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” sold in the millions
with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply
too many of us. Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the
gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of
millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that
crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year
2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next
15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of
the planet to support humanity.”
As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India. Hundreds of millions did not
die of starvation in the ’70s. Humanity has managed to hang on, even though the planet’s
population now exceeds seven billion, double what it was when “The Population Bomb”
became a best-seller and its author a frequent guest of Johnny Carson’s on “The Tonight
Show.” How the apocalyptic predictions fell as flat as ancient theories about the shape of the
Earth is the focus of this installment of Retro Report, a series of video documentaries
examining significant news stories of the past and their aftermath.
After the passage of 47 years, Dr. Ehrlich offers little in the way of a mea culpa. Quite the
contrary. Timetables for disaster like those he once offered have no significance, he told
Retro Report, because to someone in his field they mean something “very, very different”
from what they do to the average person. The end is still nigh, he asserted, and he stood
unflinchingly by his 1960s insistence that population control was required, preferably through
voluntary methods. But if need be, he said, he would endorse “various forms of coercion”
like eliminating “tax benefits for having additional children.” Allowing women to have as
many babies as they wanted, he said, is akin to letting everyone “throw as much of their
garbage into their neighbor’s backyard as they want.”
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Dr. Ehrlich’s ominous declarations cause head-shaking among some who were once his
allies, people who four decades ago shared his fears about overpopulation. One of them is
Stewart Brand, founding editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. On this topic, Mr. Brand may be
deemed a Keynesian, in the sense of an observation often attributed to John Maynard Keynes:
“When the facts change, I change my mind, sir. What do you do?” Mr. Brand’s formulation
for Retro Report was to ask, “How many years do you have to not have the world end” to
reach a conclusion that “maybe it didn’t end because that reason was wrong?”
One thing that happened on the road to doom was that the world figured out how to feed itself
despite its rising numbers. No small measure of thanks belonged to Norman E. Borlaug, an
American plant scientist whose breeding of high-yielding, disease-resistant crops led to the
agricultural savior known as the Green Revolution. While shortages persisted in some
regions, they were often more a function of government incompetence, corruption or civil
strife than of an absolute lack of food.
Some preternaturally optimistic analysts concluded that humans would always find their way
out of tough spots. Among them was Julian L. Simon, an economist who established himself
as the anti-Ehrlich, arguing that “humanity’s condition will improve in just about every
material way.” In 1997, a year before he died, Mr. Simon told Wired magazine that
“whatever the rate of population growth is, historically it has been that the food supply
increases at least as fast, if not faster.”
Somewhere on the spectrum between Dr. Ehrlich the doomsayer and Mr. Simon the
doomslayer (as Wired called him) lies Fred Pearce, a British writer who specializes in global
population. His concern is not that the world has too many people. In fact, birthrates are now
below long-term replacement levels, or nearly so, across much of Earth, not just in the
industrialized West and Japan but also in India, China, much of Southeast Asia, Latin
America — just about everywhere except Africa, although even there the continentwide rates
are declining. “Girls that are never born cannot have babies,” Mr. Pearce wrote in a 2010
book, “The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet’s Surprising Future” (Beacon Press).
Because of improved health standards, birthing many children is not the survival imperative
for families that it once was. In cramped cities, large families are not the blessing they were
in the agricultural past. And women in many societies are ever more independent, socially
and economically; they no longer accept that their fate is to be endlessly pregnant. If
anything, the worry in many countries is that their populations are aging and that national
vitality is ebbing.
Still, enough people are already around to ensure that the world’s population will keep rising.
But for how long? That is a devilishly difficult question. One frequently cited demographic
model by the United Nations envisions a peak of about nine billion around 2050. Other
forecasts are for continued growth into the next century. Still others say the population will
begin to drop before the middle of this century. The trickiness of numbers is underscored by a
look at population density. It is generally assumed that having too many people crammed into
a small territory is a recipe for poverty and other social ills. Yet according to the United
Nations, the three places with the highest density are Monaco, Macao and Singapore. Not one
of them remotely qualifies as a desperate case.
In Mr. Pearce’s view, the villain is not overpopulation but, rather, overconsumption. “We can
survive massive demographic change,” he said in 2011. But he is less sanguine about the
overuse of available resources and its effects on climate change (although worries about the
planet’s well-being could be a motivator for finding solutions, much as demographic fears
may have helped defuse the population bomb).
“Rising consumption today far outstrips the rising head count as a threat to the planet,” Mr.
Pearce wrote in Prospect, a British magazine, in 2010. “And most of the extra consumption
has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their
population, while most of the remaining population growth is in countries with a very small
impact on the planet.”
“Let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions, the biggest current concern because of climate
change,” he continued. “The world’s richest half billion people — that’s about 7 percent of
the global population — are responsible for half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Meanwhile, the poorest 50 percent of the population are responsible for just 7 percent of
emissions.”
To some extent, worrying about an overcrowded planet has fallen off the international
agenda. It is overshadowed, as Mr. Pearce suggests, by climate change and related concerns.
The phrase “zero population growth,” once a movement battle cry, is not frequently heard
these days; it has, for instance, appeared in only three articles in this newspaper over the last
seven years.
But Dr. Ehrlich, now 83, is not retreating from his bleak prophesies. He would not echo
everything that he once wrote, he says. But his intention back then was to raise awareness of
a menacing situation, he says, and he accomplished that. He remains convinced that doom
lurks around the corner, not some distant prospect for the year 2525 and beyond. What he
wrote in the 1960s was comparatively mild, he suggested, telling Retro Report: “My
language would be even more apocalyptic today.”