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This historic milestone is rekindling age-old debates over birth control, protecting natural resources and reducing consumption. It also has many wondering whether the Earth can support so many people. About half were added just in the past 40 years, and 3 billion more are expected by 2100. Global population has swelled in record time since 1987, when it hit 5 billion. Currently, world population is growing at the most rapid pace in history, says Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. In 1900, we were at 1.6 billion. In 99 years, we flipped the numbers to 6.1 billion. The world is adding more people in less time but the annual growth rate is slowing down from 2.1% in the late 1960s to 1.2% today reflecting lower birth rates. In 1999, when we passed the 6 billion mark, the world economy was in hyperdrive, says Robert Lang, urban sociologist at the University of NevadaLas Vegas. Now we pass the 7 billion mark in a recession and theres much pessimism. Recessions and depressions tend to slow population growth, especially in developed nations. Currently, growth is highest in poorest countries where health care advances are keeping people alive longer while birth rates are still relatively high. The result is a yawning age gap. The share of the population 65 and older is at 21% in Germany and 23% in Japan. In countries such as Gambia and Senegal, only 2% are in that age group. Many of the programs to reduce population growth have been successful, Haub says. I can only imagine what population size would have been today if that had not happened, he says. However many more people are added in the next century, more will live in cities. Even in developing nations, a growing share of the population lives in urbanized areas, a shift that is leading to denser living and putting more pressure to reduce energy use and build new infrastructure . Seven billion people are 7billion good reasons for sustainable infrastructure development, says Daryl Dulaney, president and CEO of Siemens Industry, a leading supplier of transportation and building technology. Only 28.8% of the worlds population lived in urban areas in 1950. Today, just over 50% do, and the United Nations projects that almost 69% will by 2050, when the population is expected to reach 9.3 billion. The number of people who live in cities by then will almost equal todays world population. Thats why Siemens created the Infrastructure and Cities Sector this month. From a citys perspective, what this is doing is putting additional pressure to be competitive in the world, says Dulaney, who heads Siemens new division in the USA. Global companies can go anywhere. If America is going to compete to attract businesses the way they compete is with infrastructure, a good quality of life.

7 billion Earth. people on

Cities in developing nations have an edge of sorts because theyre building from scratch and can apply the latest green technologies. In developed nations such as the USA, the challenge is to retrofit old buildings, power grids and roads. Many are doing it. Siemens installed 40,000 new lights in Houstons traffic signal system, cutting energy use and saving $1.4 million a year, Dulaney says. Dallas is getting a smart grid that will integrate water, electrical and other services. With 19th-century technology, the planet could not have handled 2 billion people, Lang says. It would have consumed every stick of wood, which was a principal source of fuel. Groups such as the Population Institute, an organization that advocates family planning around the world, are calling for more international support to reduce births. People in the developing world are on the front line of climate change and food insecurity, says Robert Walker, executive vice president. Of all the very significant challenges that we face in the world today, many of those issues appear to be almost insurmountable challenges. Population growth is not. By Haya El Nasser

Why The Real Victim

Maybe its just the fact that the official day has been set for Oct. 31 Halloween but theres a distinct whiff of panic and fear around the expected birth of the 7 billionth person on the planet. Heres Roger Martin, chair of the NGO Population Matters, writing in the Guardian recently: The 7 Billion Day is a sobering reminder of our planets predicament. We are increasing by 10,000 an hour. The median UN forecast is 9.3 billion by 2050, but the range varies by 2.5 billion the total world population in 1950 depending on how we work it out. Every additional person needs food, water and energy, and produces more waste and pollution, so ratchets up our total impact on the planet, and ratchets down everyone elses share the rich far more than the poor. By definition, total impact and consumption are worked out by measuring the average per person multiplied by the number of people. Thus all environmental (and many economic and social) problems are easier to solve with fewer people, and impossible with ever more.

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Environment

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Providing FoodFor A Expanding Population Rapidy

Planet Earths population reached 7 billion people Monday, according to the United Nations, posing new challenges to provide adequate food for all. After taking about 250,000 years to reach the 1 billion mark in 1805, the worlds population has exploded in the past two centuries. The population reached 2 billion people in 1927 and then doubled to 4 billion just 47 years later in 1974. Now only 12 years after the United Nations named Bosnian Adnan Nevic as number 6 billion on Oct. 12, 1999, the world has reached the 7 billion milestone. Our record population size can be viewed in many ways as a success for humanity: People are living longer, healthier lives, said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in a 2011 report on population growth. But not everyone has benefited from this achievement or the higher quality of life that this implies, he wrote. The world has seen game-changing technological innovations, yet the gaps between rich and poor are widening in almost every region. The significant decline in the number of children per mother in some developed countries contrasts starkly with the high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Experts predict massive environmental destruction and natural resource deficits if nothing is done to create a more sustainable way of life. We have to consume in more sustainable ways, but also we have to produce in more sustainable ways, said Michael Herr, an adviser on population and economics with the UNFPA. Many countries already face water shortages, food shortages and energy shortages. The U.N. estimates that the world must increase food output by at least 17 percent a huge challenge, Herrmann said to be able to feed the worlds population by mid-century, when the 9 billionth person is expected to enter the world. But the problem is not the overall amount of food produced. The problem is the question of food availability to those who need it most. With the current food production you could even feed 8 billion, maybe you could feed 9 billion, he said. The trouble is that a large share of the food we produce does not actually end up as food on our plates. A lot of raw produce, like maize and soybeans, is used as fodder for livestock and indirectly ends up on our plate as a pork chop. An increasingly large portion of food also is being used for bio-fuel production. Add to that a lack of success in boosting agricultural output in many of the worlds poorest countries and about 1 billion people, or every seventh person, suffers from food insecurity and extreme poverty, according to the U.N. A lot depends on investment in the agricultural sector in some of the poorest areas of the world, Hermann said. In late September of this year, PepsiCo, Inc., the PepsiCo Foundation, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the United States Agency for International Development announced an initiative to tackle food and economic insecurity in Ethiopia by increasing the amount of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) harvested. By Jordan Helton

The

Until the 7 billion threshold was approached recently, population growth had largely disappeared as a major international issue a far cry from the 1970s, when Malthusian thought was back in fashion and countries like India and China were taking brutally coercive steps to curb population growth. Thats partially a reaction to those dark days right-thinking environmentalists didnt want to be associated with unjust policies, and so population became the green issue that dare not speak its name. But I also think that when the 6 billionth person rolled around just 12 years ago the world was in a very different and much brighter place. Its a lot easier to feel sunny about the idea of the planet growing more crowded when the global economy is humming, there are few major conflicts ongoing and you can take a water bottle through airport security. Things, of course, are a little darker in 2011, so suddenly more people just seem like more mouths to feed, more competitors at the marketplace, more straws in the milk shake. You can see it in the way that immigration has once again become a hot-button political issue in the U.S., or the rise of population-induced apocalyptic fears. Are we going to breed ourselves out of existence? Is there room on the planet to support 7 billionplus people? By Bryan Walsh

The Food Challenge

Every seventh person suffers from food insecurity. Beef consumption in China has increased by 240% in the last decade as the population has continued to grow. The World Bank predicts that global demand for food will double by 2030.

Populations rapid growth receives too little political and public attention. At only 2.5 billion in 1950, it is now at 6.8 billion, and is predicted to stabilise between 7.8 and 11.7 billion around 2050 (median 9.1 billion). Because of the high impacts, it is important to stabilize at the lowest level possible. Rapid population growth in the worlds poorest countries is a major obstacle to poverty reduction. Rapid population growth rates and high fertility rates correlate closely with rates of maternal mortality, and most of the countries that are furthest from achieving the Millennium Development Goals have high rates of population growth.

Children of Population Growth

Success at reducing fertility rates does not require coersion. The forced sterilisation policies pursued by India and China in the 1970s were an outrageous violation of womens rights. In International Conference on Population and Development concluded that strengthening womens sexual and reproductive rights and social status; improving maternal and child health, and education; and increasing access to and the use of modern family planning, would work the best, empowering women tend to choose to have fewer children and to space their pregnancies. This has positive effects on the health of mothers and children alike and on the development prospects of poor communities and countries.

While total fertility rates have fallen across the developing world from an average of 5.6 children per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 2005, almost all of the 50 least developed countries have much higher rates, in most cases more than five children per woman. By 2050, Uganda is expected to grow from 27 to 130 million; Niger from 14 to 50 million; Iraq from 29 to 64 million; and Afghanistan from 31 to 82 million. Sachs noted: not only will the worlds population continue to soar in the medium and high forecasts, but it will soar in precisely those parts of the world that are struggling the most today with poverty, disease, famine and violence. The Millennium Development Goals (MGD), agreed in 2001, made no reference to population growth, and the 2005 Commission for Africa report said almost nothing on the subject, despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence of the damaging impact that rapid population growth has on poverty reduction efforts. By Albert Navetta

380 women become pregnant each minute; half of these do not wish for or plan their pregnancy.

For More Information Please Visit:

www.overpopulation.org www.worldpopulationbalance.org
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Currently, world population is growing at the most rapid pace in history, in 1900 we were at 1.6 billion. In 99 years, we flipped the numbers to 6.1 billion.
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www.un.org