The world population now exceeds 8 billion

The world population on Tuesday exceeded 8 billion, according to the official estimate of the United Nations, which sees it as “an important milestone in human development” and a reminder, in the midst of COP27, “of our shared responsibility to take care of our planet”.

For the United Nations, this “unprecedented growth” – there were 2.5 billion people in 1950 – is the result of “a gradual increase in longevity thanks to advances in health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine”.

But population growth also poses daunting challenges for the poorest countries, where most of it is concentrated.

While the Earth’s population was less than 1 billion until the 19th century, it only took twelve years for it to grow from 7 to 8 billion.

An indication of the demographic slowdown, it will take about fifteen years for it to reach 9 billion in 2037. The UN predicts a “peak” of 10.4 billion in the 1980s and stagnation until the end of the century.

The 8 billion mark was crossed in the midst of the COP27 World Climate Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, which once again underscores the difficulty of the rich countries, those most responsible for global warming, and the poor countries, who demand it. Help deal with it, and agree to more ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

However, states the United Nations, “If population growth amplifies the environmental impact of economic development,” then “the countries in which consumption of material resources and emissions of greenhouse gases per capita are highest are generally those in which per capita income is highest and not those in which growth population quickly.

“Our impact on the planet is determined much more by our behavior than by our numbers,” Jennifer Chioppa, resident researcher at the Wilson Center Research Center, sums up to AFP.

Indeed, population growth poses major challenges in countries where there is already a high concentration of poverty.

The United Nations writes that “persistent high fertility rates, which drive rapid population growth, are both symptom and cause of slow development progress.”

Thus, India, a country of 1.4 billion people, which will become the most populous in the world in 2023, overtaking China, should see its urban population explode in the coming decades with megacities already overcrowded and lacking basic infrastructure.

In Bombay, about 40% of the population lives in slums, areas densely packed with poverty, consisting of makeshift huts, most of which lack running water, electricity, and sanitation.

Global numbers mask an enormous demographic diversity. Thus, more than half of the population growth by 2050 will come from just 8 countries according to the United Nations: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.

And by the end of the century, the three most populous cities in the world will be Africa: Lagos in Nigeria, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.