Although it is of course impossible to say exactly when it will happen, demographers have picked 31st Oct 2011 as the symbolic date when the world population officially hits 7 billion.
Its somewhat ironic choosing the day of the dead to highlight world population, that has taken little more than a decade to add on another billion heads, and while other calculations estimate it will not actually happen until March 2012, the U.N.’s best estimate is that population will come close to hitting Ten Billion by 2050. In fact some estimates peg it as sooner if birth rates do not continue dropping as they have in the last fifty years.
Most of the growth is projected to occur in developing nations, Asia, Africa and Latin America, whilst the wealthier industrialized nations of Europe and North America look to remain relatively flat in their population totals. Japan, Germany and Russia are even poised to drop, although waves of immigration from growth areas will of course add to population areas that have little or no growth.
The new leader of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, a Nigerian obstetrician-gynecologist, added his thoughts rather unassumingly, as his agency is a favorite focus for antiabortion activists in the United States. It maintains an active role in supporting family planning clinics in developing countries.
Osotimehin wrote in the annual State of the World Population report :
“Instead of asking questions like: ‘Are we too many?’ … we should instead be asking: ‘What can I do to make our world better? … In many parts of the developing world, where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great.”
The report looks at the differences between rich nations and poorer ones. Poor countries continue to have substandard education and alarmingly high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal and child deaths due to complications from childbirth.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is holding a conference on Monday to mark the date and talk about the challenges that lie ahead. In particular how to reduce poverty, invest in the world’s 1.8 billion youth and help countries develop in a sustainable way.
In 1999, his predecessor, Kofi Annan, designated a boy born to refugee parents in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as Baby 6 Billion. He had been plucked from the hundreds of thousands of babies born that day to put a face on global population growth. Adnan Mevic, now 12, has become something of a celebrity.
None of the estimated 382,000 babies born Monday will have such an honor and there is no plan for 2026 when the world’s population hits 8 billion.
Written by Rupert Shepherd.