If the World were a Village of 1000 People... Donella Meadows

Dr. Donella Meadows was a distinguished professor at Dartmouth (with the Environmental Studies Program). She was an author and highly respected economist for the Sustainability Institute (she died at the age of 59 in 2001). The Village of 1,000 was included in Dona Meadows "State of the Village Report" as part of her weekly column, the Global Citizen on May 31, 1990. It is now a bit outdated, but the overall magnitudes are still roughly correct. http://www.gdrc.org/uem/1000-village.html

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Before looking at the anwsers (at the url listed on the bottom of this form), try and fill in the blanks below.

It would include:

    • _____Asians
    • _____Africans
    • _____Europeans
    • _____Latin Americans
    • _____Russians and former Soviet republics
    • _____North Americans
    • _____People of the Pacific

there would be:

____Christians (including ____ Catholics, ____ Protestants, ____ Orthodox)
____Muslims
____ "Non religious"
____Hindus
____Buddhists
____Atheists
____Jews
____Other religions

Among other languages, the people of the village would speak:

____Mandarin
____English
____Hindu/Urdi
____Spanish
____Russian
____Arabic

 Population, Healthcare and Education

_____ of the 1000 people in the world village are children, and ____ are over the age of 65.

_____% of the children are immunised against preventable diseases such as measles and polio.

_____% of the married women in the village have access to and use modern contraceptives.

About ______ people have access to clean, safe drinking water.

Of the ____ adults in the village, _____% are illiterate.

This year _____ babies will be born. _____people will die, _____ of them for lack of food, _____ from cancer. _____ of the deaths will be of babies born within the year. _____ people of that 1,000 in the village is infected with HIV.

With the _____ births and _____ deaths, the population of the village next year will be ______.

 Environment and Economy

In this 1000 person community, _____ people receive 80 percent of the income; another _____ receive only 2 percent of the income.

_____ people own an automobile (although some own more than one car).

The village has 6 acres of land per person -6000 acres in all-of which:

_____ acres are cropland

_____ acres are pasture

_____ acres are woodland

_____ acres desert, tundra, pavement, and other wasteland.

The village allocates _____ percent of its fertiliser to 40 percent of its cropland - that owned by the richest and best fed 270 people.

The remaining 60 percent of the land, with its _____ percent of the fertiliser, produces _____ percent of the food and feeds 73 percent of the people.

In the village of 1000 people, there are:

_____ soldiers

_____ teachers

_____ doctors

_____ refugees driven from home by war or drought.

The village has a total yearly budget, public and private, of over $3million - $3,000 per person if it is distributed evenly (which, as we have already seen, it isn't).

Of the total $3 million:

$_____ goes to weapons and warfare

$_____ to education

$_____ to health care.

The village has buried beneath it enough explosive power in nuclear weapons to blow up itself. These weapons are under the control of _____ people.

For the answers, click here.