This October 31st the U.N. announced that the world population is seven billion and counting. After growing very slowly for most of human history, the number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last fifty years: three billion in 1959, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, and six billion in 1998. Looking ahead, the U.N. predicts that it will reach eight billion by 2025 and ten billion by 2083.
“The State of the World Population 2011” report asserts that this record population should be viewed as a success—yet uneasily so. Put simply, an increase in population means that people are living longer: average life expectancy has increased worldwide and more children are surviving too. But these victories in promoting the right to the highest attainable standard of health are not equally benefiting all of the world’s people. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the demographic news is sobering; the region has both the world’s highest birth rates and the greatest poverty. This double burden lends itself to a vicious cycle: women are having more babies, stymieing development and perpetuating poverty.
In this regard, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, former Nigerian health minister Babatunde Osotimehin, believes the milestone population figure is not only cause for celebration and for concern—it is a call for action. For him, the unprecedented growth in human population is the essential reason to step up efforts to enable adolescent girls to stay in school and to empower women to control the number of children they give birth to. “It is an opportunity to bring the issues of population, women’s rights and family planning back to centre stage,” he says. “There are 215 million women worldwide who need family planning and do not get it. If we can change that, and these women can take charge of their lives, we will have a better world.”
I found such an idea thought provoking. It begs the question: where do we, as twenty-something-year-old Canadian students, fit into this world of seven billion?
On its website, BBC News has a feature based on the U.N. Population Fund’s detailed population calculator, “7 billion and me.” BBC’s version has you enter your date of birth to determine both your individual number out of the world’s current sevenbillion people and out of the total number of people to have lived since history began. It then puts these numbers into perspective, giving figures for the fastest growing and fasting shrinking countries, as well as population figures for your own country. It also shows life expectancies. Check it out to find your own number.