Discussion and recommendations

The growth of the world’s population over the past 60 years has been unprecedented. World population reached 7.3 billion in 2015, twice the number of people that were on the planet in 1969, reflecting the progress that has been made in combating infectious and childhood diseases and in reducing the burden of premature and avoidable deaths, especially in the poorest countries of the world. Nevertheless, the rapid growth of the world’s population, in combination with increasing prosperity, higher standards of living and unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, has led to growing concerns about the impact of human actions on the environment. While the relationship between population size and growth, consumption, technology and the environment is far from simple, lower population growth combined with more responsible patterns of consumption and production would ease pressure on ecosystems to generate food, preserve natural resources and allow the world more time to identify and adopt new technologies.

Связанные Темы : Population and Demography