World Population May Peak about Nine Billion in 2050s, Study Reveals
- The Irish Time
VIVA – The world population may peak at an all-time high, around nine billion people in 2050, and then start falling, a new study reveals.
Now, a new report states that if global society takes a “Giant Leap” in terms of investment in economic development, education, and health, the world population may peak at around 9 billion people by 2050.
This project was put together by scientists from the Earth4All initiative for the Global Challenges Foundation. Earth4All describes itself as an international initiative aimed at accelerating the systems change urgently needed to promote an equitable future on a finite planet.
The projection used a new model to explore two scenarios this century and the estimate is significantly lower than those by several predictions, including those of the United Nations.
In the first scenario, if the world economy continues along a path similar to the one followed during the last 50 years, many of the poorest countries can eventually break free from extreme poverty, and the world population will peak at 8.8 in the middle of the century before declining to 7.3 billion in 2100.
Ilustrasi populasi penduduk bumi
- U-Report
In the second scenario, if the world took a ‘giant leap’ in investment in economic development, education, and health, the world population could peak at 8.5 billion people by 2040 and decline to just six billion by the end of the century.
In the future, extreme poverty would be eliminated within a generation, by 2060. Meanwhile, in just under 50 years, the world population doubled to four billion by 1975. It has just doubled again reaching 8 billion last November. This sparked a worry that the world population would double again to 16 billion.
“The answer is a resounding no. The global population will not get anywhere close to that level, owing to a paradigm shift in demographics over the past 50 years,” said Beniamino Callegari, Earth4All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at Norwegian Business School.
“Population growth rate peaked in the 1960s and has been falling steadily ever since. Women around the world are choosing to have fewer children, and the global average fertility rate is now just above two children per woman.” Callegari added.
While the number of children per woman is below two in places like Germany and Japan, it is higher in most low-income countries and fragile states.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that the world population could peak at 10-11 billion people this century, before beginning a slow decline.
According to new estimates, human numbers will peak lower and faster than previously thought.
So, if the world invests more in economic development, education, and health, the world population could drop to a level where every person on Earth could have sustainable access to clean energy, shelter, food, and water.
