The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs has recently released a new report that projects world population to reach 9.8 billion people by 2050.
The report projects an increase of over 2 billion people during the next 30 years and 3.6 billion people during the next 80 years, totaling over 11 billion in 2100.
The “World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision,” report reveals the complexity of a growing world population and how sustainability is the only path to ensure human survival.
The countries with the largest populations are China, with 1.4 billion and India, with 1.3 billion, making up a total of 37 per cent of the global world population.
The growing world population raises many warning signals, considering the finite resources of our planet, including worsening and increasing problems such as limited fresh drinking water, lack of global sewage treatment, air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution, deforestation, loss of ecosystems, antibiotic resistant bacteria diseases, escalating conflicts over scarce resources, etc.
In 2013, British naturalist, David Attenborough described the level of human population on the planet as a multiplier of all other environmental problems. He also described humanity as “a plague on the Earth” that needs to be controlled by limiting population growth or the natural world will do it for us.