Every year on July 11th, World Population Day is commemorated in an effort to raise awareness about worldwide population challenges. It was on this day in 1987 that the world’s population surpassed the 5 billion mark. Since then, the globe has come a long way; according to the world metres website, the world population has reached an all-time high of 7.8 billion people as of July 2020.
The purpose of World Population Day is to raise awareness about the importance of family planning, adoption, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and human rights.
In the second year of COVID-19, we are in a state of transition, where certain regions of the world are emerging from the pandemic’s depths, while others are fighting this pandemic whereas vaccine access remains a distant, dangerous reality.
Health-care systems have been harmed by this, notably in the field of sexual and reproductive health. It also highlighted and worsened gender inequities: during the lockdown state, the risk of child marriage and female genital mutilation increased drastically, as did the risk of child marriage and female genital mutilation, as programmes to eradicate the harmful practices were disrupted. Significant numbers of women left the workforce as their low-paying employment was terminated.
In this context, several countries are becoming increasingly concerned about changing fertility rates. Alarmism about fertility rates has often resulted in human rights violations.
It took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to reach one billion, and then it surged sevenfold in just another 200 years or so. According to a new United Nations report The world’s population passed the 7 billion milestone in 2011, and it now stands at roughly 7.7 billion, with projections of 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.
This rapid expansion has been fuelled in part by an increase in the number of individuals living to reproductive age, as well as significant changes in fertility rates, increased urbanisation, and accelerated migration. These tendencies will have far-reaching consequences for future generations.
Fertility rates and life expectancy have changed dramatically in recent years. Women had an average of 4.5 children in the early 1970s; by 2015, global fertility had dropped to below 2.5 children per woman. In the meantime, worldwide average lifespans have increased from 64.6 years in the early 1990s to 72.6 years in 2019.
Furthermore, the world is experiencing increasing levels of urbanisation and migration. In 2007, more people lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time, and by 2050, cities would account for roughly 66 percent of the global population.
These megatrends will have far-reaching consequences. They have an impact on economic growth, employment, income distribution, poverty, and social safety nets. They also have an impact on efforts to provide universal health care, education, housing, sanitation, water, food, and energy. To answer the needs of individuals in a more sustainable manner, officials must first understand how many people live on the globe, where they live, how old they are, and how many people will follow them.
The top 10 most inhabited cities on the planet are listed below:
Tokyo (Population: 37,435,191),
Delhi (Population: 29,399,141)
Shanghai (Population: 26,317,104)
Sao Paulo (Population: 21,846,507)
Mexico City (Population: 21,671,908)
Cairo (Population: 20,484,965)
Dhaka (Population: 20,283,552)
Mumbai (Population: 20,185,064)
Beijing (Population: 20,035,455)
Osaka (Population: 19,222,665)
The following are some of the goals of the World Population Day celebrations: