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?We have enough food for everyone" - U.N. Secretary General
Keep it real – you’re not one in a million.
You’re actually one in 7 billion – or at least you will be as of Oct.31 (or thereabouts), according to United Nations estimates.
But as the world population nears this milestone, you might well wonder what the implications of this lofty figure actually are. Are there enough resources to meet all our needs?
Of course, round numbers are arbitrary markers. But they’re still important as psychological thresholds that help us grapple with mind-boggling figures. And one thing we do know for sure, is that the more of us there are, the greater the risk of some people going short of food and clean water.
Last year, 925 million people suffered from hunger. But the wide misconception is that there simply isn’t enough food to go around. On the contrary, experts argue, there is enough for everyone.
“We have enough food for everyone, yet nearly a billion go hungry,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a July message that marked population day.
“We have the means to eradicate many diseases, yet they continue to spread. We have the gift of a rich natural environment, yet it remains subject to daily assault and exploitation.”
Experts blame people, not nature, for many causes of hunger.
For example, climate change’s effects are linked to increased risks of droughts that hit harvests, while market speculation fuels food price inflation. And conflicts displace people or disrupt food-aid delivery, while broad economic disparities in many countries also cause hunger. Add to this the many people who lack the finances or the rights to buy or use enough land to grow their food.
Experts have attributed the current drought in East Africa, the region’s worst in decades, to all of the above.
THE 7-BILLIONTH CHILD
To mark the big number, insurer Allianz has set up an interactive online quiz about the prospects of the 7-billionth child. A moving counter at the start of the quiz, ticking up to 7 billion, underlines the giddy speed of population growth.
So where is the 7-billionth child likely to be born? And where are newborns most at risk of poverty and hunger?
With their fast rates of population growth, Africa, Asia and Latin America are most likely to welcome the world’s 7-billionth earthling. But India, with 51 babies born a minute, is the front-runner.
The quiz shows that if the child arrives in India, she or he would be born to a country where 48 percent of the 1.2 billion people live below the international poverty line – as measured by the World Bank – of $1.25 a day.
But Indians’ prospects look set to improve:
“As India has a young population and the economy is growing very fast, in the future we expect living standards to improve markedly,” Michaela Grimm, a senior economist at Allianz, said. “Therefore we are convinced that the living standards of a newborn will be much higher than of its parents today.”
Other countries’ newborns look set to fare worse. Babies born in Nigeria, for example, join a nation in which 64 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day, the quiz showed. And only 58 percent of people in Nigeria have sustainable access to safe drinking water, it adds. Yet the oil-rich country is sub-Saharan Africa's second largest economy.
Focusing on themes including poverty, women’s empowerment, reproductive rights, urbanization and the environment, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has launched a global initiative called 7 Billion Actions to boost awareness of how people can keep the world sustainable.
Because the fact is, there’s enough room for 7 billion people, there’s enough food to go around, and good governance can help offset food insecurity.
As a new book “The No-Nonsense Guide to World Population” argues, people should not just focus on population growth itself. It’s also about how people live and how they share their resources.
Keep it real – you’re not one in a million.
You’re actually one in 7 billion – or at least you will be as of Oct.31 (or thereabouts), according to United Nations estimates.
But as the world population nears this milestone, you might well wonder what the implications of this lofty figure actually are. Are there enough resources to meet all our needs?
Of course, round numbers are arbitrary markers. But they’re still important as psychological thresholds that help us grapple with mind-boggling figures. And one thing we do know for sure, is that the more of us there are, the greater the risk of some people going short of food and clean water.
Last year, 925 million people suffered from hunger. But the wide misconception is that there simply isn’t enough food to go around. On the contrary, experts argue, there is enough for everyone.
“We have enough food for everyone, yet nearly a billion go hungry,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a July message that marked population day.
“We have the means to eradicate many diseases, yet they continue to spread. We have the gift of a rich natural environment, yet it remains subject to daily assault and exploitation.”
Experts blame people, not nature, for many causes of hunger.
For example, climate change’s effects are linked to increased risks of droughts that hit harvests, while market speculation fuels food price inflation. And conflicts displace people or disrupt food-aid delivery, while broad economic disparities in many countries also cause hunger. Add to this the many people who lack the finances or the rights to buy or use enough land to grow their food.
Experts have attributed the current drought in East Africa, the region’s worst in decades, to all of the above.
THE 7-BILLIONTH CHILD
To mark the big number, insurer Allianz has set up an interactive online quiz about the prospects of the 7-billionth child. A moving counter at the start of the quiz, ticking up to 7 billion, underlines the giddy speed of population growth.
So where is the 7-billionth child likely to be born? And where are newborns most at risk of poverty and hunger?
With their fast rates of population growth, Africa, Asia and Latin America are most likely to welcome the world’s 7-billionth earthling. But India, with 51 babies born a minute, is the front-runner.
The quiz shows that if the child arrives in India, she or he would be born to a country where 48 percent of the 1.2 billion people live below the international poverty line – as measured by the World Bank – of $1.25 a day.
But Indians’ prospects look set to improve:
“As India has a young population and the economy is growing very fast, in the future we expect living standards to improve markedly,” Michaela Grimm, a senior economist at Allianz, said. “Therefore we are convinced that the living standards of a newborn will be much higher than of its parents today.”
Other countries’ newborns look set to fare worse. Babies born in Nigeria, for example, join a nation in which 64 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day, the quiz showed. And only 58 percent of people in Nigeria have sustainable access to safe drinking water, it adds. Yet the oil-rich country is sub-Saharan Africa's second largest economy.
Focusing on themes including poverty, women’s empowerment, reproductive rights, urbanization and the environment, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has launched a global initiative called 7 Billion Actions to boost awareness of how people can keep the world sustainable.
Because the fact is, there’s enough room for 7 billion people, there’s enough food to go around, and good governance can help offset food insecurity.
As a new book “The No-Nonsense Guide to World Population” argues, people should not just focus on population growth itself. It’s also about how people live and how they share their resources.
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