The UN says population growth underscores the need to tackle issues such as the climate crisis.
The world’s population is expected to reach eight billion on November 15, the United Nations predicts, with India set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country next year.
The United Nations noted on Monday that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world’s population to reach one billion and just 200 years for it to grow sevenfold. In 2011, it amounted to seven billion.
Although the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs forecast that the world’s population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, it says the effects of the previous rapid growth will be felt in the coming years.
“[The] the dramatic growth is largely due to increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age and is accompanied by large changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration,” the UN said. “These trends will have far-reaching consequences for future generations.
The report predicts the world population will reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, peaking at around 10.4 billion people in 2080 before remaining at that level until 2100.
The UN said that while population growth was indicative of progress in health and economic development, it also highlighted the need for effective policies to address some of the world’s most pressing problems.
“Progress is not one-size-fits-all, throwing inequality into a razor’s edge,” it says. “The same concerns and challenges raised 11 years ago remain or have worsened: climate change, violence, discrimination.”
More than half of the projected increase in world population in the coming decades will be concentrated in just eight countries, according to the report.
It says they are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
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