Dizzying rate of growth a 'clarion call to action' in a crowded world

According to UN projections, a child will be born somewhere on the planet today who will tip the world’s population to seven …

According to UN projections, a child will be born somewhere on the planet today who will tip the world’s population to seven billion. The number marks an important, and, to many, worrying, milestone at a time of rising energy and food prices, environmental changes and increasing competition for dwindling resources.

Demographic research shows that the number of people inhabiting the world did not hit one billion until 1804, and it took 123 more years to reach the two billion mark in 1927. After that, it accelerated at a dizzying rate – the global population stood at three billion in 1959, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987 and six billion in 1998.

The UN predicts that, with about two babies being born every second, the world population will reach eight billion by 2025, nine billion by 2050 and 10 billion by 2083. But those projections could end up much higher or lower, depending on factors including access to birth control, infant mortality rates and average life expectancy rates – which have increased from 48 years in 1950 to 69 years today.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon says the planet’s seventh billion resident “will be born into a world of contradiction”. He argues that the landmark birth should be considered a “clarion call to action” for the international community.

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“This is not a story about numbers. This is a story about people,” he said last week.

“Seven billion people who need enough food, enough energy, good opportunities in life for jobs and education, rights and freedoms: the freedom to speak, the freedom to raise their own children in peace and security.

“Everything you want for yourself – seven billion times over,” he told students at a New York school.

For many, today’s milestone highlights the challenges of a crowded planet as those nations with the highest birth rates – all of them in the developing world – struggle with the effects of rapid urbanisation, environmental degradation and rising demand for education, healthcare, resources and jobs. For those in places like western Europe, Japan and Russia, it acts as an ironic reminder of the very different challenges arising from plummeting birth rates and ageing populations. “There are parts of the world where the population is shrinking and in those parts of the world they are worried about productivity, about being able to maintain a critical mass of people,” says Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UN Population Fund.

“Then there are parts of the world where the population is growing rapidly. Many of these countries face challenges in terms of migration, poverty, food security, water management and climate change and we need to call attention to it.”

The world’s five most populous nations are China (1.3 billion), India (1.2 billion), the United States (310.2 million), Indonesia (242.9 million) and Brazil (201.1 million).

Over the past decade China has added 73.9 million to its population. But its overall growth has slowed dramatically and the population is expected to start shrinking in 2027. According to some demographers, by 2050 it will be smaller than it is today.

India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population is expected to soar to an estimated 1.6 billion. But even as the numbers increase, the pace of growth is faltering. Demographers say India’s fertility rate – now 2.6 children per woman – should fall to 2.1 by 2025 and to 1.8 by 2035.

More than half of India’s population is under 25. Some analysts say this so-called “youth dividend” could power a productive surge over the next few decades that could see India’s economy outrunning that of China. But others warn the dividend could just as easily prove more curse than blessing if India does not start planning major social investments.

Those tracking India’s population dynamics also fret about a growing gender gap, stemming largely from Indian families’ preference for male offspring.

An increasing preference for sex-selection tests, which often result in female foetuses being aborted, has resulted in the latest census showing 914 girls under six years of age for every 1,000 boys.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the question of demographics is an urgent one in a region with both the world’s highest birth rates and deepest levels of poverty. A recent study noted that Africa’s population more than tripled during the second half of the 20th century, from 230 million to 811 million. It could reach two billion in 40 years, accounting for about half of the projected global population growth over that period. Most of that growth will take place in sprawling slums at the edges of the continent’s cities, which are already bursting at the seams.

According to some demographers, Nigeria, already Africa’s most populous country with more than 160 million inhabitants, is expected to grow to 730 million by the end of this century, making it larger than Europe’s projected population of 675 million. The population of its commercial capital, Lagos, soon to overtake Cairo as Africa’s largest city, is growing by at least 6 per cent every year.

Lagos is an example of the emergence of so-called “mega-cities” in developing nations across Africa, Asia and South America as millions of rural migrants seeking work or fleeing droughts, floods and other environmental catastrophes converge on cities already under strain. In 1950, about 730 million people lived in cities. By 2009, it was nearly 3.5 billion and, according to the UN, in four decades it will be 6.3 billion.

The UN warns that such explosive urbanisation carries huge risks as resources and infrastructure are stretched to the limit.

The seventh billion child will be born into a world where nearly half the population lives on $2 a day, or less. A world where close to a billion people either do not have enough to eat or are chronically malnourished.

According to the UN, if the world is to feed the two billion more mouths predicted by 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 per cent. More than 800 million of the world’s population live in slums, and a similar number, mostly women, are illiterate. More than a billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and two billion do not have adequate sanitation.