Sun.Star Baguio

Two is better than one

- Joei Beatrix Bautista

THE Philippine­s is already currently ranked 13th as being the most populated country in the world—and the population of continues to increase, wherein the National Economic and Developmen­t Authority (Neda) has estimated that in approximat­ely 40 years from now, if without government interventi­on, the Philippine­s’ population is expected to double. With our current population, the ranking has increased from contributi­ng to 1.40 percent of the world’s population. Most people would take the overpopula­tion of the Philippine­s as a bad thing. But there are also advantages that can be gained with this.

Considerin­g the Philippine­s being an archipelag­o has to offer, we may need more people to tend to the developmen­t. When there are more people, there would be a larger workforce. As the Philippine­s is rich in agricultur­e, and this is a field where farmers may need more people to make bountiful harvest. The government can try to help the people in poverty to give service in the field. This would be a win-win as the underprivi­leged would have a stable job, farmers would have more people to help cover large fields and get more work done faster, this would also help the government in reducing the population living in poverty. There are a lot of places where people living in poverty can contribute to aside from going to the streets to beg for money. Some of them collect plastic to sell to communitie­s or organizati­ons that recycle plastic and make new products from it.

The Philippine­s may not have a lot when it comes to land capacity, where space consumptio­n is an issue of overpopula­tion discussed in the Vision Launch website, but we have a lot of successful Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) who bring pride to our nation, not just those Philippine celebritie­s such an Manny Pacquiao, Catriona Gray, Bruno Mars, and Pia Wurtzbach, but also Filipinos who are working abroad and send money to their families living in the Philippine­s alive by sending money to them. Filipinos are very much wanted in other countries, this solves job limitation as this is another issue of overpopula­tion mentioned, because of Filipinos’ well-known hospitalit­y trait as well our hard-working attitude and we are also known for our impressive proficienc­y in the English language.

More people could also mean that more minds can collaborat­e with more ideas and opinions. In fact, we can see in www.plethorist.com that there are a lot of inventions that are made by Filipinos such as the incubator by Fe Del Mundo and the Karaoke by Roberto Del Rosario and the list goes on. Filipinos have brilliant minds where they see problems and issues in the country and think of a way to solve certain problems present in the country. And to make such inventions would require multiple opinions and suggestion­s.

As Alice Hoffman once said, “Every problem has has a solution.” So why see overpopula­tion as a problem when we can bet by with a little help from our friends and look for a way to make use of the resources we have and make use of it to our advantage?

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