On Monday, October 31, there will be seven billion humans on the planet. The world celebrated the birth of the sixth billionth baby in 1999; it took us just 12 years to add a billion more.
Our numbers make us the most successful species ever, colonising all parts of the globe, controlling its resources, making our presence felt in outer space and even managing to delay death.
Resisting temptation to construct this dizzying mental imagery, social scientists and demographers have been surveying the challenges we now face, while attempting to shine light on an uncertain future, in a new UN report “State of World Population 2011”.
The entire landscape of this steep growth curve is confounded by paradoxes. Rich countries are getting older, thanks to dropping fertility rates and worry about staying rich, while poorer developing nations have high fertility that hinders economic growth.
The one thing that is certain is there will be more mouths to feed, especially in countries with little resources. Key energy sources are unevenly distributed, with little access for the poor. China reigns as the most populous country, but India will surpass it in 2025 with 1.46 billion people. “India will continue to grow to about 1.7 billion by 2060 before beginning to decline,” the report predicts. A large chunk of the world’s population is based in these two nations. India’s registrar general and census commissioner C. Chandramouli has said: “Now the question is: how the ‘youth bulge’ is handled. What kind of skills do you give them? How do you make them into assets?”