The world's population has likely crossed the 8 billion mark, the United Nations projected on Tuesday, calling it "a milestone in human development" largely due to longer lifespans from improved public health and nutrition.
"The milestone is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity's shared responsibility for the planet," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
It only took a dozen years to add another billion people to the planet and reach what the U.N. called the "Day of 8 Billion."
"This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries," the United Nations said.
But adding the next billion to the world population is projected to take 15 years because of slowing population growth. The U.N. says countries with the highest fertility levels tend to be those with the lowest income per capita, concentrating global population growth among the world’s poorest countries, mostly in Africa.
Meantime, it says, nations with the highest per capita consumption of natural resources and that are the biggest carbon polluters tend to be those where income per capita is higher, not those where the population is growing rapidly.
It took 300,000 years to get to 1 billion but only 218 years to go from 1 to 8. pic.twitter.com/K7QyeCbjKi
— Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy) November 15, 2022
We are 8 billion pic.twitter.com/nqngZVV9iU
— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) November 17, 2022
More than numbers
Some countries have tried boosting fertility through "problematic means, including by limiting access to abortion and cutting sex education from school," the U.N. Population Fund says.
The question of whether to have children is a life-altering decision, but UNFPA’s 2022 State of World Population report shows people are frequently denied the choice by partners, relatives, health care providers and even governments.
And the U.N.'s sexual and reproductive health agency warns that efforts to engineer population size often have little impact on fertility in the short term and can cause major problems in the long term.
“Focusing on numbers alone treats people as commodities, stripping them of their rights and humanity,” UNFPA's Executive Director Natalia Kanem said in an op-ed for TIME.
“We have too often seen leaders setting targets for population size or fertility rates, and the grievous human rights abuses that result," she said.
