A global struggle

Rise in population leads to massive strain on resources that will fuel high unemployment and poverty

While the final results of Pakistan’s census are unlikely to be out before April 2018, the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Population Division has made some astounding projections for the future. Within the next six years, the world’s population is likely to hit the eight-billion mark. And by 2050 we could potentially be looking at a world of nearly 10 billion souls. Our planet will be more overcrowded than it has ever been in any period of human history. Some 83 million people are added to the world’s population every year despite a steady drop in fertility rates since the 1960s. The latest UN projections are alarming and deserve our immediate interest as it involves the future of mankind. Upon our collective response will rest the entire fate of the earth.

One of the biggest fallouts from this unprecedented rise in population is the massive strain on resources that will fuel high unemployment and poverty. The threat does not stop there because these are the very conditions that lead to civil unrest, war, displacement and terrorism.

The population boom is all the more remarkable considering that the globe as we know it had happily sustained just under a billion people for thousands of years. Then suddenly within a period of 300 years or so, it swelled up to more than 6 billion — a figure that was supposedly passed in 1999. This is a staggering contrast.

In the midst of these important demographic changes, India is likely to displace China as the most populous nation within the next seven years. In another three decades, the United States is expected to lose its place to Nigeria as the third most populous country. We must understand that despite the high global population it is critical to devise strategies that will work out how people will produce, distribute and consume goods and services while managing to lower their environmental footprint.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 23^rd, 2017.

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