ALBAWABA - The world’s population reached 8 billion people on Tuesday, 1 billion more than the figure recorded in 2010, according to a United Nations projection.
Although the world population continues to grow, the "pace of growth is slowing down," the U.N. said in a report, entitled World Population Prospects 2022.
“This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine," the report said.
BREAKING: The world’s population has officially reached 8 BILLION people. pic.twitter.com/l8bLUEt3sH
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"It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries," it added, pointing to some nations, specifically in Asia, accounting for most of the growth in the past decade. It said they added some 700 million people to their already dense population since 2011.
For example, India's population grew by about 180 million people, and the country is set to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023.
But as the global population reaches new highs, the growth rate has fallen steadily to less than 1 percent per year, the report explained. It maintained that this should keep the world from reaching 9 billion people until 2037.
The U.N. projected, however, that the global population will peak at around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s, and will remain at the same level until 2100. Most of the 2.4 billion people to be added are envisaged to be born in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the U.N. report, which said that will mark a shift away from China and India.
There is widespread concern that with droughts caused by climate change, Russia's war on Ukraine, which depleted supply chains, and a global tumult caused by rising inflation and depleting resources, there may be insufficient food resources to cover the needs of a swelling global population.
The issue has caught the attention of renowned global organizations, like the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, and some elite, like Twitter CEO Elon Musk, and American billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who have been urging careful population planning.
