The world population reached 8 billion people on Tuesday, according to a United Nations projection that works more as a symbolic milestone than an exact figure.
Only 11 years have been needed to go from 7,000 to 8,000 million, but the UN predicts that 9,000 will be reached in 2037, which illustrates the slowdown in growth.
In 2100, he says, we will be 10.4 billion.
The population growth rate has been declining since the 1970s and fell below 1% for the first time in 2020.
In the United States the population is around 333 million, according to data from the Census Bureau.
The population growth rate in 2021 was 0.1%, the lowest in its history.
The Latino population is the one that grew the most, with 768,000 more Hispanics than two decades ago.
"Going forward we're going to have slower growth; the question is how slow?" said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, who warned: "The real wild card for the US and many other developed countries is immigration”.
Market in Mumbai, India, on November 12, 2022.Rajanish Kakade / AP
Latin America and the Caribbean represent 8.2% of the world population, but it is going through a rapid demographic transition from the high levels of mortality and fertility in the 1950s to the low levels in both variables today, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America. and the Caribbean.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where 738 million people live without an adequate food supply, the population is projected to continue to grow, doubling between 2022 and 2050, "putting additional pressure on their resources and challenging policies." to reduce poverty and inequalities”, says the UN in a report on population published last summer.
Other countries with rapid population growth include Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines and India, which may overtake China as the world's most populous nation next year.
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The pressure on natural resources will be especially overwhelming in African countries, which are among the most vulnerable to the climate crisis.
"Population is not the problem, but the way we consume: we must change our consumption patterns," said Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development in Washington DC.
Humanity's impact on the natural world "has more to do with how we behave than how many we are," reiterated John Wilmoth, director of the UN population division.
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The carbon emissions of the richest 1%, or about 63 million people, were more than double those of the poorest half of humanity between 1990 and 2015, according to a 2020 analysis by the Institute for the Environment. Stockholm Environment and the non-profit organization Oxfam International.
And whether it's food or water, batteries or gasoline, there will be less to go around when the world's population adds another 2.4 billion people by the 2080s, according to the UN.
“Every person needs fuel, wood, water and a place to call home,” said Stephanie Feldstein, director of population and sustainability at the Center for Biological Diversity.
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A baby 8,000 million in the Dominican
In any case, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the Dominican Republic celebrated the arrival into the world of what it considers, symbolically, the 8 billionth baby.
Damián was born with 6 pounds (2.77 kg) and 20 inches (52 cm) in the Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia maternity hospital, Santo Domingo.
The national representative of UNFPA, Sonia Vásquez, affirmed that this baby represents “a lot of hope that all the children that are born on this planet [...] receive them with conditions.
That is what we seek, zero maternal deaths, zero morbidity, zero diseases and health”.
With information from Efe, Ap and
Reuters.