This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities. Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.
This week's post: 2050 Global Human Population Revised Upward--Again
This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities. Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.
2050 Global Human Population Revised Upward--Again
Each year at this time I view the Population Reference Bureau's annual "World Population Data Sheet."
Of particular interest to me is the trend over the past 15 years or more to increase the Bureau's projection for the size of the human population in 2050.
To keep things simple, the following table from the "Data Sheets" shows the projections for 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, in addition to four other important demographic statistics. (The intervening years fit the trend.)
Table Notes:
BR = birth rate (# of births per 1,000 people).
DR = death rate (# of deaths per 1,000 people).
NI = natural increase (growth rate of the population).
The just-published "2016 Data Sheet" projects the 2050 population to be 9.869 billion.
The PRB states: "the projected populations [are] based on reasonable assumptions of the course of fertility, mortality, and migration [relevant only for individual country projections]. Projections are based on official country projections, series issued by the U.N. or the U.S. Census Bureau or PRB publications.
Since 2000, these projections have been updated to show the potential addition of about 0.83 billion more people than the 2000 projection of 9 billion. If these projections are accurate, by 2050 there will be 2.4 billion more humans than today. This total population increase of nearly 32% will occur in the next 34 years.
Future posts will address some of the challenges and opportunities this unprecedented population phenomenon offers.
Human Population (Current size & growth rate)
As a wildlife biologist I am interested in many large and small populations of large and small organisms. Among the large animals none is so well known and so important as the population of humans. I am told that among all of the so-called large animals (body size greater than 50 kilograms or 110 pounds), humans are currently more numerous than any other—past or present. We are important in large numbers because of our impact on our environment.
The “environmental fact sheet” below summarizes our current size and rate of growth. The population size, birth rate and death rate statistics are from the Population Reference Bureau’s 2015 “World Population Data Sheet.” This useful summary is published every September and reflects the mid-year (July) world population information for all countries and regions of the world.
Environmental Science Classroom: "The Human Population I"
The population fact sheet shown below outlines the calculation of the current (2012) growth rate of the global human population.
This is the first in a series intended to illuminate various characteristics of the "people phenomenon."
