Population data sheet 2023
The Population Data Sheet, published annually by ESCAP, features a range of key indicators on population and development. The focus is on population size, structure and growth rates, as well as fertility,
Population Trends
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Forewarned is forearmed
Doomsday predictions are funny things. We are predisposed to pay attention to bad news, and the news industry thrives on disasters. Yet our fascination is fickle. If the warning is too scary or distressing, we attack the messenger as a doom-monger. Take the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, one of the first efforts to predict the future using computer models. It found that if trends in population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion continued unchanged, resources would eventually run out. (Editorial)
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Delhi is India's maximum city
As of last year, Delhi may have overtaken Mumbai as the country's largest city in terms of population, as per a recent study. For over two decades now, the Census reports have pegged Mumbai as the country's biggest metropolitan area. But two demographers from the Washington DC-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) have found that if the same definition for measuring the populations of Mumbai and Kolkata is applied to Delhi, then the national capital's estimated population for 2007 is much more.
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View Point: Checking population a burning problem
In 1947 when India got freedom from the alien British rulers the population of the country was much less than 30 crores and the agricultural production of the grains was only 3 crore metric tones, qui
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Over 55% of India will live in urban areas by 2050
Over 55 per cent of Indians will live in urban areas by 2050, a big change from now when only about 30 per cent of the country's population is urban, according to projections in a United Nations report. In terms of numbers, over 900 million people in India will be living in urban centres in another 40 years, three times the over-300 million urbandwellers today. However, India will still not be as urbanised as China where the number of people living in cities will go up to 70 per cent from the current 40 per cent. India will remain the country with the largest rural population during most of the future decades, according to the 2007 Revision of World Urbanisation Prospects released by the UN on Tuesday. By 2025, Chennai will be another mega city of over 10 million people, besides Mumbai with 26.4 million (up from 18 million in 2005), Delhi at 22.5 million (up from 16 million) and Kolkata with 20.5 million residents (up from 14 million). The population growth in many second tier cities will even be high er. In Ahmedabad by 2025, the population will grow to 7.7 million, up 50 per cent from the current 5.1 million. In Pune, 6.8 million people will live by then, a growth of 60 per cent from the current 4.4 million. Migration from rural to urban areas would continue despite attempts by the country's planners to prevent people from moving to cities, said Hania Zlotnik, director of department of economic and social affairs' population divi sion, while releasing the report in New York. Ms Zlotnik said Indian planners should try to promote economic development in rural areas. But improving agriculture and establishment of agroindustries would mean fewer people would be needed in that sector, pushing excess labour to the non-farm sector in the cities. She outlined two scenarios - either people would migrate to cities such as Mumbai, or one-time rural areas would transition into urban centres by generating other activities as has been happening in China. The annual population growth in India's rural areas has been declining since reaching a peak of 1.9 per cent during 1980-85. It will record negative growth by 2025. In comparison, the urban growth rate reached a peak of 3.9 percent during 1975-80 and has been declining since, yet will remain above two per cent till 2040. Projecting for the world, the UN report said half the global population would live in cities by the end of this year, for the first time in human history. Their number would rise to 70 per cent by 2050, most of that growth being concentrated in Asia and Africa. The number of mega cities is expected to double from the current 20 to 40 by year 2025. The greatest expansion, however, would happen not in metropolises but in cities with populations of less than 500,000 and even some of the rural areas will graduate into urban areas. The report notes that its projections will be realised only if fertility rates in the developing world continue to decline.
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Humanity moving to cities, towns
Half of them will live in urban areas by end of 2008:U.N. Half the world's people will live in urban areas by the end of this year and about 70 per cent will be city dwellers by 2050, with cities and towns in Asia and Africa registering the biggest growth, according to new U.N. projections. But India is expected to urbanise at a significantly lower rate than China, and is expected to remain the country with the largest rural population during coming decades. The report predicts that there will be 27 "megacities' with at least 10 million population by mid-century compared to 19 today, but it forecasts that at least half the urban growth in the coming decades will be in the many smaller cities with less than 500,000 people. According to the latest U.N. estimate last year, world population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion in 2007 to 9.2 billion in 2050. During the same time period, the report said, the population living in urban areas is projected to rise from 3.3 billion to 6.4 billion. "Thus, the urban areas of the world are expected to absorb all the population growth expected over the next four decades while at the same time drawing in some of the rural population,' the report said. "As a result, the world rural population is projected to start decreasing in about a decade, and 600 million fewer rural inhabitants are expected in 2050 than today.' The report stresses that these projections will take place only if the number of children in families in the developing world continues to decline, especially in Africa and Asia. Hania Zlotnik, head of the U.N. Population Division, expressed the hope that increasing urbanisation "will go hand in hand with economic growth.' She said more than 70 per cent of the population in Europe, North America, and many other richer developed countries already live in urban areas. But only 39 per cent of Africans and 41 per cent of Asians lived in urban areas last year . "During 2008, for the first time in history, the proportion of the population living in urban areas will reach 50 per cent,' it said. By mid-century, Asia is projected to see its urban population increase by 1.8 billion, Africa by 900 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean by 200 million, it said. China at this moment is 40 per cent urban, Ms. Zlotnik said. The U.N. expects its urban population to reach more than 70 per cent by 2050 , she said. By contrast India, currently has just over 300 million urban residents, or 29 per cent of its population living in urban areas, Ms. Zlotnik said, and by 2050 it is expected to have only 55 per cent of its population, about 900 million, in cities. "So India is expected to urbanise much less than China, and therefore it is expected to remain the country with the largest rural population during most of the future decades.'
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Integrating economic and environmental indicators in the assessment of desertification risk: a case study
Desertification involves many countries featuring different ecological, economic, and social conditions. In Mediterranean Europe, high human pressure, economic development, and climatic changes combine to produce land consumption, soil erosion, salinization, and fire risk, all considered as key factors to start desertification processes.
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Ranking port cities with high exposure and vulnerability to climate extremes: exposure estimates
This global screening study makes a first estimate of the exposure of the world's large port cities to coastal flooding due to storm surge and damage due to high winds. This study also investigates how climate change is likely to impact each port city's exposure to coastal flooding by the 2070s, alongside subsidence and population growth and urbanisation. The assessment provides a much more comprehensive analysis than earlier studies, focussing on the 136 port cities around the world that have more than one million inhabitants.
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Give native knowledge its due place
Ethnobotanist and director-general of Amity Foundation's Institute of Biotechnology at Thiruvananthapuram, Palpu Pushpangadan, tells P R J Pradeep that India can learn a lot from China about making
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Chemicals blamed for skewed sex ratio
<font class="UCASE">imbalances</font> in sex ratio around the world have been attributed to a variety of reasons. Scientists have now found more evidence of a link between chemicals like polychlorobiphenyls (<font class="UCASE">pcb</font>) and a decline in the birth of males.<br><br> Over the years scientists and communities have descerned a peculiar trend. The Aamjiwnaang community near Sarnia in Canada have, for example, voiced concerns over the declining male population in the community. Their observation was confirmed in a study by Ottawa University in 2005.<br>
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High hopes for the low lands
There's a beautiful wetland in Nepal that's being destroyed-yet it's no ones fault. Seb Buckton reports on an innovative WWT (Wildlife & Wetlands Trust) project aimed at bringing the balance back to a pristine land.