Elephant in the greenhouse part II

The current world population of 7.3 billion is increasing by 83 million a year. It will reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, assuming UNPD’s medium variant projection is accurate.

If, however, a higher growth rate prevails this century – with an increase in average fertility of just 0.50 children per woman - it would reach 16.6 billion people by 2100, assuming another global doubling is supportable. In this scenario, India would have 2.6 billionand China 1.6 billion people.

 India – with just 250 million people in 1950 - will overtake China as the most populous country in just seven years with 1.4 billion. Meanwhile, Africa’s population will double in the next 35 years. By 2100, almost 40 percent of humankind will live on this one continent.

Nigeria will overtake the US to become the world’s third largest country in just 35 years with 400 million people; more than double its current 170 million and eight times what it was a century ago.

As a Nigerian central banker explained on a recent BBC Inquiry programme:

…gap between the rich and the poor has continued to grow. If conditions are so tough today for so many, what is it going to be like when twice as many live there in 2050? Yet this isn’t a question the political elite have been asking themselves. (10min.)

My worry is that we are not making arrangements for this rising population. There is no country in the world that I know of over 70 million people that does not have a flourishing rail network, expanding social services and the rest of it. All those things need to be in place, together with better planning for population and for families.

What if the government could not improve opportunities for the many millions more who will be living there in the next few decades? Its fast-growing young population - 108 million Nigerians are currently under 25 - could become ‘deeply frustrated’.

The sort of thing that happened in the so-called Arab spring could happen in Nigeria.  (11 min.)

UNPD’s report also concluded that between 2015 and 2050, half of the world’s growth will occur in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Indonesia and Uganda.

John Wilmoth, head of UNPD, was interviewed by the ABC’s Mandie Sami two days after public release of the 2015 Revision. He was asked whether it was ‘a positive picture’, or one that ‘worries you when you look at these numbers.’

“That’s a very difficult question. The births have stopped increasing….But what is increasing is the number of people living at older ages and this is an enormous sign of success.