Sustainable Societies

Population

In the year 2000, estimates determined that 6 billion people live on earth, more than double the population of 1960, estimated at 2.5 billion people. The projected population for the year 2025 is 9.3 billion people. Of the 77 million people being added to the world's population each year, most are born in the world's poorest, often rural, communities where water is scarce, population density is already high and land degradation is most severe. Such population growth leads to stagnant and dependent economies that cannot sustain minimum human needs. Driven by economic or social disparities, rural to urban migration is increasingly occurring, and, combined with the effects of HIV/AIDS, is resulting in both the economic stagnation of rural regions and the urgent need to provide infrastructure and basic social services, including housing, energy, water, sewage disposal, transportation and communications to migrants.