World Enivironmental Issues Brief

  • LARGE AREAS SUBJECT TO OVERPOPULATION
  • INDUSTRIAL DISASTERS
  • POLLUTION (air, water, acid rain, toxic substances)
  • LOSS OF VEGETATION (overgrazing, deforestation, desertification)
  • LOSS OF WILDLIFE
  • SOIL DEGRADATION
  • SOIL DEPLETION
  • EROSION
  • GLOBAL WARMING

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Global Issues Snapshots

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Nicaragua

— Current Environmental Issues —
deforestation; soil erosion; water pollution

— Health Indicators —
HIV / AIDS prevalancy rate: 0.2
Fertility Rate: 2.7
Infant Mortality Rate: 27.1
Life Expectancy at Birth: Male: 68.8
Life Expectancy at Birth: Female: 73.0
Life Expectancy at Birth: Total Population: 70.9

— Population —
Population Total: 5,675,356
Population Growth Rate: 1.9

— Economic Indicators —
GDP Real Growth Rate: 3.7
Military Expendatures Percent of GDP: 0.7
Unemployment Rate: 3.8
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 9.4
GDP Per Capita PPP: 3,000
Population Below Poverty Line: 48
    (Definitions of poverty vary considerably among nations.)

— Education and Communications —
Global Issues Snapshots
Global Issues Snapshots
Bordering country: Honduras

— Background —
The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century. Independence from Spain was declared in 1821 and the country became an independent republic in 1838. Britain occupied the Caribbean Coast in the first half of the 19th century, but gradually ceded control of the region in subsequent decades. Violent opposition to governmental manipulation and corruption spread to all classes by 1978 and resulted in a short-lived civil war that brought the Marxist Sandinista guerrillas to power in 1979. Nicaraguan aid to leftist rebels in El Salvador caused the US to sponsor anti-Sandinista contra guerrillas through much of the 1980s. Free elections in 1990, 1996, and 2001, saw the Sandinistas defeated, but voting in 2006 announced the return of former Sandinista President Daniel ORTEGA Saavedra. Nicaraguas infrastructure and economy - hard hit by the earlier civil war and by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 - are slowly being rebuilt.