The world is about to get a whole lot more crowded, according to a new report by the United Nations, with the planet’s population expected to climb to nearly 10 billion by the middle of this century.
The UN’s World Population Prospects 2019, published on Tuesday, estimated that the next three decades will see today’s figure of 7.7 billion people rise to 9.7 billion by 2050 despite a continued slowdown in the global birth rate.
More than half of the increase will be concentrated in just nine countries – India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United States – while the population of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to nearly double.
“Many of the fastest-growing populations are in the poorest countries, where population growth brings additional challenges in the effort to eradicate poverty, achieve greater equality, combat hunger and malnutrition and strengthen the coverage and quality of health and education systems to ensure that no one is left behind,” said Liu Zhenmin, the UN’s undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs.
The study concluded that the world’s population could reach a peak of nearly 11 billion around the end of the current century. (Al Jazeera)
