United Nations Population Division has announced that world's population is estimated to reach between 9.5 and 13.3 billion by the end of the century, The Christian Science Monitor reports.
This was announced at Seattle's annual Joint Statistical Meeting. The UN says there is a 23% probability that the world's population will stop growing within this century.
Population experts predict that Africa's population is the main contributor to the world's population. The population of the African continent is likely to reach between 3.4 billion and 5.6 billion people by 2100. Populations in sub-Saharan Africa are increasing at an alarming rate.
Rapid population growth in high-fertility countries can lead to a variety of problems such as resource scarcity, pollution, maternal and child mortality, unemployment and low wages and poverty. Developing countries with young populations but lower fertility will face the prospect of a major portion of population aging before the end of the century.
The Christian Science Monitor's Pete Spotts said, "Yet this is where some of the poorest countries on the planet are - where energy demand will grow with development and where the effects of climate change will tax economies lacking the resources to effectively adapt."
This week, the planet approaches the "Earth Overshoot day," the day when the world's entire population utilizes all the natural resources the Earth can generate in a single year as defined by the Global Footprint Network.
According to The Global Footprint Network, the world's population demands the resources of 1.6 Earths.
"This overshoot leads to a depletion of Earth's life-supporting natural capital and a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," reads the Overshootday.com website.
